Hiding Man_ A Biography Of Donald Barthelme Part 24

Magazine work and teaching were time-consuming and draining, but also revitalizing for Don. Briefly, he distracted himself from worries about Anne. He could work through literary problems unrelated to his own writing (though he continued to labor diligently on stories), and he was surrounded by people-students and younger colleagues-who looked to him as a pioneer, a mentor, a father figure.

"I was in every sense his junior and happy to carry his cup of coffee," Mirsky says.

Nationally, Don's profile continued to rise. Leslie Cross, a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal Milwaukee Journal, who was visiting New York, called and asked to interview him. Surprised and pleased that a woman from Milwaukee had read his fiction, Don met her at the Cedar Tavern. Immediately, he asked her if she'd seen Fiction Fiction magazine. He was quite proud of it. "When a magazine like magazine. He was quite proud of it. "When a magazine like Harper's Bazaar Harper's Bazaar announces it isn't buying any more fiction and book publishers cut back on their fiction lists but find money for stuff like announces it isn't buying any more fiction and book publishers cut back on their fiction lists but find money for stuff like Valley of the Dolls Valley of the Dolls, that seems to me madness, sheer idiocy. So we're getting out this newspaper," he said. "It's a co-op: the writers don't get paid; the artists don't get paid; the editors get paid, the printers get paid. It's cheap to produce because it's on newsprint and it's done offset. It's printed in a Chinese plant down in Broome Street. This causes some problems because they don't speak much English around there. But it's selling!"

Don was getting ready for another trip to Buffalo. Ms. Cross wondered if writing could really be taught. No, Don said, but it could be encouraged. "I don't lecture," he explained. "Rather than talking about the art of fiction-which I haven't yet understood myself-I read ma.n.u.scripts. I take a pencil and say, 'This is good' or 'That sentence doesn't do what you want it to do.' All the while I emphasize that this is only one man's opinion-I might be wrong, but consider it. I try to bring up what the student is trying to do, because you don't want to produce little imitations of yourself. I'm fairly rough with their ma.n.u.scripts, and they appreciate it."

After a couple of drinks, Don said he had to go. The Sales were having plumbing problems, and Don had to let them into his apartment so they could take baths. He helped Ms. Cross hail a cab. With "Texas-sized strides," she said, he walked back up West Eleventh Street. That evening, he was due at Grace Paley's for supper: one last taste of neighborhood comfort before braving the snows of Buffalo.

Along with newspaper reporters, young academic scholars were beginning to notice Don. In December 1972, he was asked to give a formal talk on fiction at the annual meeting of the Modern Language a.s.sociation, the nation's largest professional organization for English professors. Serious critical articles on Don's work had been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The New Republic The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The New Republic, and The New York Review of Books The New York Review of Books, as well as in academic journals such as Twentieth Century Literature, The Minnesota Review, Modern Occasions, The Hudson Review Twentieth Century Literature, The Minnesota Review, Modern Occasions, The Hudson Review, and the Western Humanities Review. Western Humanities Review. Don's stories received lengthy attention in books, including Tony Tanner's Don's stories received lengthy attention in books, including Tony Tanner's City of Words City of Words, William Peden's The American Short Story The American Short Story, Charles B. Harris's Contemporary American Novelists of the Absurd Contemporary American Novelists of the Absurd, and Ihab Ha.s.san's Contemporary American Literature. Contemporary American Literature. Most of these commentators cla.s.sified Don as a "black humorist" whose "disjunctions" came from the "absurdity" of modern life, or they hailed him as the most successful purveyor of American Surrealism. Most of these commentators cla.s.sified Don as a "black humorist" whose "disjunctions" came from the "absurdity" of modern life, or they hailed him as the most successful purveyor of American Surrealism.

A dissenting voice rose from Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote in the June 4, 1972, issue of The New York Times Book Review The New York Times Book Review that Don's art was random, antiseptic, unemotional, disengaged from the world, and ultimately irresponsible. "If you refuse to make choices," she said, accusing Don's fiction of lacking clear values, "someone else will make them for you." that Don's art was random, antiseptic, unemotional, disengaged from the world, and ultimately irresponsible. "If you refuse to make choices," she said, accusing Don's fiction of lacking clear values, "someone else will make them for you."

In the early 1970s, the most determined scholar pursuing Don was an a.s.sistant professor at Northern Illinois University named Jerome Klinkowitz. He taught contemporary literature and, finding Don's work distinctive, wrote to him care of Lynn Nesbit. He asked to do an interview-which eventually appeared in a book called The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American Writers The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American Writers, edited by Joe David Bellamy and published by the University of Illinois Press in 1974. The book included talks with John Barth, Susan Sontag, Kurt Vonnegut, William Ga.s.s, Joyce Carol Oates, and others.

Don told Klinkowitz in a letter, "Usually I don't like to be interviewed, for several reasons, among which Paranoia is probably Paramount. However, your project sounds like a meaningful one, and I would be willing to answer written questions, which would give me an opportunity to think rather than mumble."

Klinkowitz "put together a kit of sorts, with each question typed at the head of a blank page which Barthelme could fill as amply or spa.r.s.ely as he chose." When a month pa.s.sed with no reply from Don, Klinkowitz nudged him with a note. Don wrote back, "Dear Mr. Klinkowitz-I know I know I know."

Another month of silence ensued. Klinkowitz was about to write Don again, when the phone rang late one afternoon. "The voice was clipped and mannered in a way that sounded almost British, and I was surprised to hear it was Donald Barthelme calling from New York," Klinkowitz said. He recalled their conversation: "I've just put my answers to your questions in the mail," he said, and I remarked that this was good news indeed and thanked him. Yet his tone was anything but happy; in fact, he was apologizing for the material, and urged that I not even open the package when it arrived."Are you retracting the interview?" I asked in alarm, but Barthelme a.s.sured me that he wasn't, that I could do anything I wanted with his answers. He just felt badly that "they weren't any good," and didn't want me to be bothered with such nonsense."I thought of pulling them out of the mailbox," he admitted, "but that would be misunderstood."

In fact, Klinkowitz was delighted with the answers. They were full, funny, and honest, touching on Don's journalistic background, his love of music, and his pa.s.sion for European literature. "I think fewer people are reading," he said in answer to a question about the "death of the novel." "I invite you to notice that the new opium of the people is opium, or at least morphine. In a situation in which morphine contends with morpheme, the latter loses every time." As for his working methods, Don said, "I do a lot of failing and that keeps me interested."

In preparing the interview for book publication, Klinkowitz arranged the Q & A in New Yorker New Yorkerstyle columns and type. This distressed Don. "I think it's too cute and also serves to place too much emphasis on the NYer-as if the magazine were in some sense responsible for what I do," he said. Klinkowitz agreed to drop the format.

Don could not resist devising his own question to end the piece: "In your story 'See the Moon?' one of the characters has the line 'Fragments are the only forms I trust.' This has been quoted as a statement of your aesthetic. Is it?"

Don answered Don: "No. It's a statement by a character about what he is feeling at that particular moment. I hope that whatever I think about aesthetics would be a shade more complicated than that. Because that particular line has been richly misunderstood so often (most recently by my colleague J. C. Oates in the Times Times), I have thought of making a public recantation. I can see the story in, say, Women's Wear Daily: Women's Wear Daily:

"WRITER CONFESSES THAT HE NO LONGER TRUSTS FRAGMENTS.

"Trust 'Misplaced,' Author Declares _________________________________.

"DISCUSSED DECISION WITH DAUGHTER, SIX

"Will Seek 'Wholes' in Future, He Says"

"NEW Y YORK, JUNE 24 (A & P)-Donald Barthelme, 41 year-old writer and well-known fragmentist, said today that he no longer trusted fragments. He added that although he had once been 'very fond' of fragments, he had found them to be 'finally untrustworthy.' 24 (A & P)-Donald Barthelme, 41 year-old writer and well-known fragmentist, said today that he no longer trusted fragments. He added that although he had once been 'very fond' of fragments, he had found them to be 'finally untrustworthy.'

"The author, looking tense and drawn after what was described as 'considerable thought,' made his dramatic late-night announcement at a Sixth Avenue laundromat press conference, from which the press was excluded.

"Sources close to the soap machine said, however, that the agonizing reappraisal, which took place before their eyes, required only four minutes.

" 'Fragments fall apart a lot,' Barthelme said. Use of antelope blood as a bonding agent had not proved...' "

This was not the sort of reply to appease stern critics.

In 1972, Don received the Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in recognition of his achievement in writing. The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine was nominated for a National Book Award. was nominated for a National Book Award.

The NBA was a twenty-two-year-old program in 1972-a series of literary prizes funded by the book industry and administered by a committee composed of a group of editors, sales personnel, publicists, book reviewers, and former prizewinners. Annually, the committee awarded one-thousand-dollar prizes to the authors of the year's "best books," in an effort to promote the "wider and wiser use of books." Initially, the committee considered only fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. By 1972, the number of prize categories had jumped to ten, to include Arts and Letters, Biography, Contemporary Affairs, Fiction, History, Children's Books, Philosophy and Religion, Poetry, the Sciences, and Translation. Literary purists grumbled that the awards had been watered down, publicists were happy to pounce on several new advertising opportunities, and in general the NBA tried to steer an honest course between literary excellence and good business.

The award ceremonies were held in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in late April. By all accounts, it was a rather melancholy affair. Three of the prizewinners were dead. Flannery O'Connor, who had pa.s.sed away in 1964, topped the fiction category with her just-published volume of collected stories. The late Frank O'Hara's Collected Poems Collected Poems split the poetry prize with Howard Moss's split the poetry prize with Howard Moss's Selected Poems Selected Poems, and the history award went to the recently deceased Allan Nevins for the final two volumes of Ordeal of the Union Ordeal of the Union, his eight-volume study of the Civil War.

The ceremony was made even gloomier by many of the prizewinners' forecasts about the planet, the subject of several nominated books, such as George L. Small's lament for the vanishing Blue Whale. Blue Whale. Other speakers warned against creeping commercialism in the book trade; the previous year, businessman Leonard Riggio had bought New York's floundering Barnes & n.o.ble store, sold B & N's publishing division to Harper & Row, and made plans to create a huge discount-bookselling chain, sending tremors of fear through small presses and literary enthusiasts. Other speakers warned against creeping commercialism in the book trade; the previous year, businessman Leonard Riggio had bought New York's floundering Barnes & n.o.ble store, sold B & N's publishing division to Harper & Row, and made plans to create a huge discount-bookselling chain, sending tremors of fear through small presses and literary enthusiasts.

And what would an awards show be without controversy? Gary Wills walked out when his fellow judges in Contemporary Affairs chose The Last Whole Earth Catalogue The Last Whole Earth Catalogue, a "non-book," said Wills, put together by a committee. And Lore Segal, a longtime writer of juveniles, protested when her fellow judges awarded a newcomer who had weighed in with a decidedly off-kilter book: Donald Barthelme and The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine. The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine.

Unlike many of the winners, Don kept his acceptance speech to a graceful minimum. "Writing for children, like talking to them, is full of mysteries," he said, adding: I have a child, a six-year-old, and I a.s.sure you I approach her with a copy of Mr. Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity Seven Types of Ambiguity held firmly in my right hand. If I ask her which of two types of cereal she prefers for breakfast, I invariably find upon presenting the bowl that I have misread my instructions-that it was the other kind she wanted. In the same way it is quite conceivable to me that I may have written the wrong book-some other book was what was wanted. One does the best one can. I must point out that television has affected the situation enormously. My pictures don't move. What's wrong with them? I went into this with Michael di Capua, my editor [for held firmly in my right hand. If I ask her which of two types of cereal she prefers for breakfast, I invariably find upon presenting the bowl that I have misread my instructions-that it was the other kind she wanted. In the same way it is quite conceivable to me that I may have written the wrong book-some other book was what was wanted. One does the best one can. I must point out that television has affected the situation enormously. My pictures don't move. What's wrong with them? I went into this with Michael di Capua, my editor [for this this book] at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, who incidentally improved the book out of all recognition, and he told me sadly that no, he couldn't make the pictures move. I asked my child once what her mother was doing, at a particular moment, and she replied that mother was "watching a book." The difficulty is to manage a book worth watching. The problem, as I say, is full of mysteries, but mysteries are not to be avoided. Rather they are a locus of hope, they enrich and complicate. That is why we have them. That is perhaps one of the reasons why we have children. book] at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, who incidentally improved the book out of all recognition, and he told me sadly that no, he couldn't make the pictures move. I asked my child once what her mother was doing, at a particular moment, and she replied that mother was "watching a book." The difficulty is to manage a book worth watching. The problem, as I say, is full of mysteries, but mysteries are not to be avoided. Rather they are a locus of hope, they enrich and complicate. That is why we have them. That is perhaps one of the reasons why we have children.

40.

SADNESS.

Sadness, Don's fourth short story collection, published on September 19, 1972, signaled a more personal turn in his work. Though most of its contents had appeared in The New Yorker The New Yorker over the previous three years, the most formally complex pieces, "Traumerei" and "The Sandman," had been rejected by the magazine. Don did not include "The Educational Experience" and "At the End of the Mechanical Age," which Angell had pa.s.sed on. over the previous three years, the most formally complex pieces, "Traumerei" and "The Sandman," had been rejected by the magazine. Don did not include "The Educational Experience" and "At the End of the Mechanical Age," which Angell had pa.s.sed on.

The book contained fewer graphics and less typographical play than Don's earlier efforts-Angell had informed him that William Shawn was getting fed up with such stuff, so Don produced less of it. He worked significant changes on "The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace" and "A Film" between magazine and book publication-mostly to avoid repet.i.tions and set pieces that didn't contribute to an overall effect. The order of the stories in prepublication galleys differs widely from that of the finished book. The shuffling indicates that Don was still trying to get a feel for the new directions and registers of the stories-directions implied by the simplicity of the t.i.tle.

"Sadness was a different sort of t.i.tle [for me]," Don said, "and I thought a long while before using it. And somebody, I think it was Rust Hills of was a different sort of t.i.tle [for me]," Don said, "and I thought a long while before using it. And somebody, I think it was Rust Hills of Esquire Esquire, inquired how the devil I ever got the publishers to accept it, how I got away with it. I'm not sure I did get away with it in the sense of having it work as a book t.i.tle, but it's not embarra.s.sing to look at. Of course, it's ironic, as well as being what it is."

Wordplay remains central to his fiction, but more than expressing verbal irony, the t.i.tle emphasizes a psychological stance toward the world. This is underscored in the one pa.s.sage in the book that includes the word sadness. sadness. In the story "The Rise of Capitalism," the narrator says, "The first thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was a.s.sume an att.i.tude-melancholy sadness-toward it." Don's satire, wit, and erudition are abundant from page to page, but more than his previous collections, the book explores the att.i.tudes of recognizable men and women living under late capitalism in late-twentieth-century America. In the story "The Rise of Capitalism," the narrator says, "The first thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was a.s.sume an att.i.tude-melancholy sadness-toward it." Don's satire, wit, and erudition are abundant from page to page, but more than his previous collections, the book explores the att.i.tudes of recognizable men and women living under late capitalism in late-twentieth-century America.

Reviewing the collection in the November 5, 1972, issue of The New York Times Book Review The New York Times Book Review, Charles Thomas Samuels neatly summarized the shift that had taken place in Don's writing: Before Sadness Sadness...most of Barthelme's best stories put you into the problem of art in a world hostile to the continued vitality of imagination...[the] stories [in City Life City Life] const.i.tute brilliant literary criticism written in fictive form. Anxious parables, they a.s.sert that literature, which was once a means of revitalizing the imagination and opposing ba.n.a.lity, has itself become exhausted and ba.n.a.l.The best stories in Sadness Sadness put us into a different, though related, problem. Not parables so much as monologues spoken by neurasthenics, they throb with distress at what one of them calls "the present era's emphasis on emotional cost control" and "its insistent, almost annoying lucidity." put us into a different, though related, problem. Not parables so much as monologues spoken by neurasthenics, they throb with distress at what one of them calls "the present era's emphasis on emotional cost control" and "its insistent, almost annoying lucidity."

Oblique literary references energize the stories. As usual, Kierkegaard preoccupied Don. The narrator's self-disgust in "The Party" ("Wonderful elegance! No good at all!") recalls a famous pa.s.sage in Kierkegaard's journals in which he berates himself for his "witticisms" at a party and feels such emptiness he wants to shoot himself. The ordinary saint in "The Temptation of St. Anthony" is an embodiment of Kierkegaard's "Knight of Faith," as well as a first cousin to Flaubert's St. Anthony.

Pa.s.sages from Paul Klee's published diary appear, barely transformed, in "Engineer-Private Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft Between Milbertshofen and Cambrai, March 1916" (a story equating art to fraud). King Kong's dialogue in "The Party" is a clear homage to Kafka's "A Report to an Academy."

But for all these references, the book is characterized by remarkable straightforwardness and a strong autobiographical strain. In "Critique de la Vie Quotidienne," Don mined details from his marriage to Birgit. "A City of Churches" is a phrase he often used to describe Houston. "The Genius" also tips its hat to Texas: At the end of the story, the Genius receives a gift from the mayor and city council of Houston, a "field of stainless steel tulips." The image may have been suggested by the life-size metal palm tree adorning the lot of Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum. "Perpetua" appears to be a satiric response to a feminist call to action, "Cutting Loose: A Private View of the Women's Uprising," published in Esquire Esquire by Sally Kempton, Harrison Starr's ex, in which she claimed most men need to marry a child in order to protect their egos. (Don dedicated the book to Starr and his new wife, Sandra). "The Catechist" takes us back to Catholic teaching, and "Departures" touches on many of Don's experiences, not the least of which is his friendship with Marianne Frisch. by Sally Kempton, Harrison Starr's ex, in which she claimed most men need to marry a child in order to protect their egos. (Don dedicated the book to Starr and his new wife, Sandra). "The Catechist" takes us back to Catholic teaching, and "Departures" touches on many of Don's experiences, not the least of which is his friendship with Marianne Frisch.

A character in "Daumier," sounding very much like Don, thinks, "[Y]ou want nothing so much as a deep-going, fundamental involvement-but this does not seem to happen. Your attachments are measured....What does this say about you-that you move from person to person, a tourist of the emotions? Is this the meaning of failure?"

Perhaps the clearest autobiographical note rings in the depictions of mental effort and its costs. "I always say to myself, 'What is the most important thing I can be thinking about at this minute?' " the Genius says. The narrator of "The Party" muses, "Of course we tried hard, it was intelligent to do so, extraordinary efforts were routine," but he winds up lamenting, "What made us think that we would escape things like bankruptcy, alcoholism, being disappointed..." In "Subpoena," the narrator tries to comfort himself: "See, it is possible to live in the world and not change the world."

Don's strengths were best displayed in "The Sandman." It picked up where "Views of My Father Weeping" left off, probing Freud's theories of s.e.xuality with marvelous textual compression, but it presented a more contemporary and forthright surface.

The story grows out of E. T. A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman" (1815) and Freud's "The Uncanny" (1919). Hoffmann's fantastic tale, related partially in a series of letters, concerns a young man named Nathaniel. He is haunted by an evil figure, a friend of his father, who threatens to s.n.a.t.c.h Nathaniel's eyes. As an adult, Nathaniel continues to be stalked by this presence; he is unable to find romantic fulfillment-unable to distinguish reality from fantasy-and he winds up a suicide, driven to his death by the reappearance of the threatening man.

In "The Uncanny"-in part, an examination of Hoffmann's story-Freud said that, symbolically, Nathaniel's papa and the evil figure were one, representing a child's ambivalence toward his father. The fear of losing one's eyes is "a subst.i.tute for the dread of being castrated." Nathaniel's inability to form a mature and stable s.e.xual union is related to his failure to resolve Oedipal tensions.

Don's story is in the form of a letter: A man writes to his girlfriend's "shrink" to challenge the therapist's a.n.a.lysis of the woman. He asks the therapist not to show his letter to his girlfriend. "Please consider this an 'eyes only' letter," he says.

He heaps scorn upon psychoa.n.a.lytic theory, yet he quotes a variety of sources (Anton Ehrenzweig, Walker Percy, Erwin W. Strauss) to b.u.t.tress his theoretical arguments. At one point he tells the therapist, "I thought of making a personal visit [to you to discuss Susan, the girlfriend] "but the situation then, as I'm sure you understand, would be completely untenable-I would be visiting a psychiatrist. visiting a psychiatrist."

Despite his contempt for the doctor, he has made an overture by writing the letter. The Percy pa.s.sage suggests that reversals by doctors and patients are common maneuvers in psychoa.n.a.lytic procedures; the narrator's protests might be cries of help. His defensiveness masks some shame. What about? According to Ehrenzweig, Oedipal fears and the role guilt plays in the ego's death wish.

On the other hand, the narrator cites "Shame as a Historiological Problem" by Erwin Strauss. Shame is a healthy impulse, Straus says, protecting whatever is still in the act of "becoming"-a new love affair, a creative project-from the destructiveness of public exposure. Exposure "completes" a process before it is ready to be formed. "Becoming" is thwarted and it shrivels. Hiding and shame can be powerful, positive virtues.

Don's narrator is a man torn between the desire to escape the torments of his shame and his impulse to protect his creative and erotic vitality.

As for the girlfriend's depressions: "I wouldn't do anything," he says. "I'd leave them alone. Put on a record." In a footnote, he recommends George Harrison's song "Wah-Wah" (from Harrison's spiritually pitched alb.u.m, All Things Must Pa.s.s All Things Must Pa.s.s). "What I am saying is that Susan is wonderful. As is As is," he concludes. "There are not so many things around to which that word can be accurately applied. Therefore I must view your efforts to improve her with, let us say, a certain amount of ambivalence."

The narrator a.s.serts, "The world is is unsatisfactory; only a fool would deny it," but ultimately he affirms things as they are, embracing the ordinary, even run-of-the-mill problems. This was a new note in Don's work, and it would be repeated in work to come. unsatisfactory; only a fool would deny it," but ultimately he affirms things as they are, embracing the ordinary, even run-of-the-mill problems. This was a new note in Don's work, and it would be repeated in work to come.

Sadness received near-unanimous praise from book reviewers. In received near-unanimous praise from book reviewers. In The Sat.u.r.day Review The Sat.u.r.day Review, John Seelye called Don's stories "serious toys." "The artistic tradition in which Barthelme works originated in the legendary company of magicians, jugglers, tightrope walkers, necromancers, wizards of all sorts," he wrote. Guy Davenport, writing in the National Review National Review, said that Don was the "first American writer" to understand and adopt the strategies of the great modernists such as Flaubert, Joyce, and Beckett. "Barthelme's talent is real, authentic, and thoroughly new," he said. Charles Thomas Samuels concluded that Don had written "stories that belong among the finest examples of the art in recent times."

A few years earlier, Don had announced his literary arrival with absurd, combative, and bl.u.s.tery t.i.tles such as Come Back, Dr. Caligari Come Back, Dr. Caligari and and Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts. Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts. Now in his early forties, he was turning toward more doc.u.mentary impulses; he was more willing to accept the world as it is (though not without complaint). If the stories are any guide, he was less angry than he used to be. As he wrote in "Daumier," "There are always openings, if you can find them, there is always something to do." Now in his early forties, he was turning toward more doc.u.mentary impulses; he was more willing to accept the world as it is (though not without complaint). If the stories are any guide, he was less angry than he used to be. As he wrote in "Daumier," "There are always openings, if you can find them, there is always something to do."

41.

MARION.

In Copenhagen, Anne found lots to do on her own. "My mother just let me go. I ran wild," she says. "Midnight tree climbing and rooftop hunting with these banshee friends. In that sense, Copenhagen was extraordinary, a magical place to grow up in.

"I saw my dad twice a year, at Christmas and in the summer. Sometimes he'd take me to readings he was giving, and sit me on the stairs of the auditorium and people would say, 'That's Donald Barthelme's daughter.' I ate it up."

New York was gorgeous at Christmas, and there was no school, and Don would take her shopping, just the two of them. She didn't want to leave. "He cooked all my meals for me and he was a great cook. I would miss him so much when I was away that I was probably a little overwhelming once I was back in New York. I would hug him and he would be affectionate in his own way, with words, with how he'd tease you. When I was little we would roughhouse a lot. He didn't understand his own strength with me. I was a child and he was this big guy...I would end up in tears. I'd watch a lot of television when I was in New York. I was obsessed. Whenever there was a commercial, I'd go over to his desk. I'd wrap my arms around him from behind. He knew what was going on. He'd scowl and say, 'Commercial?' But he would never go, 'I'm writing; I can't talk to you.' He was there there the whole time." the whole time."

After the holidays, back in Denmark, she'd ask herself, "Why isn't my dad coming to rescue me?" Her mother was a ghost. Don would call and tease her: "Well, when you're older and you come back to the States, maybe you'll go to Berkeley." And Anne says she'd think, "I'm never coming. I can never leave her. I'm all she's got. He didn't know. He didn't ask questions, other than just, 'How's your mother?' And I didn't tell him how bad it was. I think I was secretly afraid that if I told him, he wouldn't come anyway. He had terrible constraints. And he didn't know what to do."

Anne found pleasure playing ice hockey and soccer. She told school officials she was older than she was, so she could get into after-school social groups. She linked up with other kids who had troubled home lives. "This was the early seventies; we had parents who grew up in the sixties, very laid-back, sort of loosey-goosey," she says. Even at an early age, she felt that Don's reserve was partially a way of protecting her: "I was never unsure of how he felt about me. He'd tell me he missed me, but I think he thought if I knew how much much he missed me, it would burden me. Not showing his need. 'Just push it down,' you know. And I matched him, was afraid to show it, but I missed him terribly." he missed me, it would burden me. Not showing his need. 'Just push it down,' you know. And I matched him, was afraid to show it, but I missed him terribly."

Don sent as much cash as he could to support her mother. He wrote steadily, trying to earn bonus payments from The New Yorker The New Yorker. Joe Maranto hired him to write ad copy for Mobil World. Mobil World. Don took the job not only to earn money for his family but to prove to his landlord that he had regular work with a steady income, so he could continue to qualify for a rent-controlled apartment. Don took the job not only to earn money for his family but to prove to his landlord that he had regular work with a steady income, so he could continue to qualify for a rent-controlled apartment.

He remained in debt to The New Yorker. The New Yorker.

He followed his Buffalo stint with a visiting position at Boston University, another appointment that came to him through John Barth's connections. The writer John Domini, a BU student at the time, recalls after-cla.s.s gatherings with Don in a bar across Commonwealth Avenue from the campus. One night, some students announced that they had gotten a deal on air fares to Copenhagen and planned a long weekend there. "I lived in Copenhagen once," Don told them. "I was very happy there. It's a good place to live if that's what you want-to be happy."

"In cla.s.s he went on instinct and taste," says Domini. "Late in the term he shared a first draft of the story 'Nothing: A Preliminary Account' and he made a change based on a student's concern that one phrase was too close an echo of Eliot."

One evening in 1973, Don and Kurt Vonnegut read together in Boston. The university auditorium was "packed and boisterous (marijuana in the air). By far, most of the crowd had come to hear Vonnegut," Domini recalls. He says of the reading: He read a piece of Breakfast of Champions Breakfast of Champions, then his most recent book. His material pretty much had Don coming across as marginal. Don closed with "The Indian Uprising" and it had most people squinting and shaking their heads. After the tepid response, the chair of Creative Writing, George Starbuck (a sweet, funny guy) stepped up to the podium and spoke a few extemporaneous words in defense of the story, declaring it one of the few pieces he could think of that effectively responded to the crisis in the arts since World War Two. But alas, in saying that, Starbuck left most people all the more puzzled. That evening in front of two or three hundred folks who just didn't get him certainly must've shaken Don, as galling proof of the special nature of his gifts-of their limits, you could say.

Off and on, Don continued his affair with Karen Kennerly. He stayed busy editing and doing layouts for Fiction Fiction magazine. One afternoon in the spring of 1972, while shopping for dinner at the Jefferson Market, he ran into a beautiful blond young woman. Her name was Marion Knox. She worked as a researcher-reporter for magazine. One afternoon in the spring of 1972, while shopping for dinner at the Jefferson Market, he ran into a beautiful blond young woman. Her name was Marion Knox. She worked as a researcher-reporter for Time Time magazine, and she lived just up the street from Don, at 274 West 11th. That afternoon, she had popped into the market after playing softball in Central Park. Howard Junker, who worked at magazine, and she lived just up the street from Don, at 274 West 11th. That afternoon, she had popped into the market after playing softball in Central Park. Howard Junker, who worked at Newsweek Newsweek (and who would later found the West Coast literary journal (and who would later found the West Coast literary journal ZYZZYVA ZYZZYVA), had challenged his friend Jose Ferrer at Time Time to put together a team. Marion says she was a "very expendable pitcher but the teams had to have some women." to put together a team. Marion says she was a "very expendable pitcher but the teams had to have some women."

"Donald always says he stepped on my foot [in the market]," Marion says, "but we just started chatting at the counter and he asked me out. I thought he was very distinguished and nice-looking. I knew who he was because I knew Henry Robbins, one of his Farrar Straus editors, and had read a couple of his short stories ('The Gla.s.s Mountain') in the New Yorker. New Yorker."

Kennerly remembers the day Don broke the news to her that he had "met someone." He had spent a weekend with Marion and fallen in love. "He dumped me, but I was relieved to be dumped," she says-her affair with him didn't seem to have legs. "I think he wanted me to suffer a little bit and was unhappy when I didn't. We stayed close for three or four months after that, and then, after a time, we became real friends."

Kennerly thought Marion a "Goody Two-shoes" compared to Don's literary pals. "She's a very proper woman, with a strong, healthy ego," Kennerly says.