Hiding Man_ A Biography Of Donald Barthelme Part 30

On the other hand, little is known about Peto. According to Wilmerding, he is an "American artist only partially discovered": a hiding man. Like Don, he was born in Philadelphia, and later moved to the East Coast. He "appears to have been a bit of an eccentric," someone who "spent his creative energies alchemizing domestic bric-a-brac." His still lifes "were indexes of his autobiography, and...his work was about the mysterious struggle of creation." Peto's later still-life paintings came to resemble collages, shaded with complex buried meanings, and were often "eloquent meditations on the mortality of things." Additionally, Peto was "out of tune" with his age. In his formal constructions, he antic.i.p.ated such "modern artists as Robert Rauschenberg."

Given all this, it's easy to see why Don was drawn to Peto-his playfulness, his compressed images, his sadness and obscurity.

The American still-life tradition flourished toward the end of the nineteenth century, in the wake of the Civil War. "It borders on oversimplification to [suggest] a change in national life from innocence to complexity and cynicism" at that time, admitted Wilmerding, "yet unquestionably the tone of America's self-perception and of artistic expression was different" from the way it was before the war.

The same mood obtained in post-Vietnam America. Don's Bishop stories focus on an urban, middle-cla.s.s American in the late twentieth century who is surrounded by material luxuries that fail to fulfill him. The first great American still lifes were created at a time of "great acc.u.mulations and expenditures of wealth" in this country; the Bishop stories chronicle another moment of affluence and decadence. They reveal the spiritual and cultural dead ends to which prosperity is p.r.o.ne to lead.

When "Bishop" first appeared in print, Don "began getting calls from friends, some of whom I hadn't heard from in a long time and all of whom were offering Tylenol and bandages," he said. "The a.s.sumption was that identification of the author with the character"-a man experiencing "a rather depressing New York day"-was "not only permissible but invited. This astonished me. One uses one's depressions as one uses everything else, but what I was doing was writing a story. Merrily merrily merrily merrily."

In this case, it's impossible to miss the parallels between author and character (in early drafts, Bishop's name was Plumly Plumly): same age, same physical appearance, same home city, same general profession. When we encounter Bishop again in "Visitors," he has a teenaged daughter who lives apart from him. He begins a desultory affair with a young woman.

"Roger Angell and I went to a reading on the Upper West Side-must have been the Y-in which Don read 'Bishop,' " Ann Beattie recalls. "People who knew Don were rather astonished that with Marion in the audience, this was what he was reading. Years later, I found out that several people a.s.sumed they they were the one he was writing about in that story." were the one he was writing about in that story."

Oscar Hijuelos remembers Don saying around this time that he'd like to write a straightforward book about growing up in Texas but that no one would expect that from him. "Had Don lived to experience the age of memoir, I can only think it would have made him back off from writing about growing up in Texas," Beattie says.

Even at his most autobiographical, Don was more likely to layer material, and to reference works of art, than he was to confess anything. Here, again, John F. Peto provided a model for him. Peto's mature paintings brim with outdated furniture and old tin cups-objects, Wilmerding wrote, that evoke "nostalgia for a lost frontier past: in a sophisticated urban age the simple tin cup is a relic to dream on." In similar fashion, "Bishop" ends with a weary city dweller dreaming about his grandfather's country ranch.

Don's other signature style, late in his career, is the lyrical dialogue, which he continued to write. He included eight of them in his retrospective collection, Sixty Stories Sixty Stories, which was published just before he returned to teach at the University of Houston. With a new job, a new (old) home, a new baby on the way-and having just turned fifty-the time was right for taking stock.

Reviewers received the collection warmly. Writing in Newsweek Newsweek, Walter Clemons said, "Barthelme isn't easy, and he frequently fails, but he's written some of the best stories of the last twenty years." Clemons had lost patience with critics who claimed the word story story didn't adequately describe Don's work: "Somerset Maugham didn't believe Chekhov or Katherine Mansfield wrote proper stories either, because theirs weren't like Maupa.s.sant's, or like his own." didn't adequately describe Don's work: "Somerset Maugham didn't believe Chekhov or Katherine Mansfield wrote proper stories either, because theirs weren't like Maupa.s.sant's, or like his own."

Clemons said the "tension, gaiety, and exact.i.tude of [Don's] despair" are what give his stories "their eerie energy." His "calm, precise prose requests the most strenuous attention." After all these years, Don was still, according to Clemons, "one of the most adventurous American writers now at work."

In The New York Times Book Review The New York Times Book Review, John Romano recalled the "excitement caused among readers" at the appearance of Don's first stories in the 1960s. "There just weren't then, as there aren't now, very many stories published that you wanted to call your friends up and read aloud from; and Barthelme gave us more than a few," wrote Romano.

"[Now] on rereading, [he is] not just witty but extremely funny," Romano said. "[The] will to please us, to make us sit up and laugh with surprise, is greater...than the will to disconcert. The chief thing to say about Barthelme, beyond praise for his skill, which seems to me supererogatory, is that he is fiercely committed to showing us a good time...although there is an avantgardist flair, and broken lines and paragraphs, and an air of experiment everywhere in his prose, nothing much is finally challenged....The spirit is: Many things are silly, especially about modern language, and there is much sadness everywhere, but all is roughly well. So let's try and enjoy ourselves, as intelligently as possible."

Romano concluded by saying that Don was "marvelously gifted"; still, he felt that Don's "development [has been] more or less toward the lyric and trivial...he is shifting his artistic focus from the true to the beautiful; instead of conjuring, in his fractured, collagiste way, the weirdness of emotional life, he is seeking the unbroken arias of the imaginary." This made for "slicker and slicker prose" but led Don more and more into "trifles."

What no reviewer discussed was that Don's recent works seemed meant for public performance more than for silent reading, as was true of the earlier, denser work. The dialogues, especially, crackled with energy when delivered aloud-a point not lost on director J. Ranelli and the actors at the American Place Theatre in New York, who set about trying to adapt several of them for the stage (a process that took several years).

The dialogues were minimalist Don: a style nevertheless distinct from the fiction being called called "minimalist" by book reviewers and critics. By the early 1980s, "minimalism" had become the hottest trend in American literary publishing. "minimalist" by book reviewers and critics. By the early 1980s, "minimalism" had become the hottest trend in American literary publishing.

"1975 seems to be the year when minimalist fiction first appeared significantly in the 'slick' [magazines], with the publication of [Ann] Beattie's 'Dwarf House' and 'Wanda's' in the New Yorker New Yorker in January and October, respectively, and [Raymond] Carver's 'Collectors' in in January and October, respectively, and [Raymond] Carver's 'Collectors' in Esquire Esquire in August," noted Roland Sodowsky, who studied American magazine fiction during the 1970s and 1980s. "[Mary] Robison's stories began to appear in 1977, followed by [Bobbie Ann] Mason's in 1980. The 'heavy' years in the in August," noted Roland Sodowsky, who studied American magazine fiction during the 1970s and 1980s. "[Mary] Robison's stories began to appear in 1977, followed by [Bobbie Ann] Mason's in 1980. The 'heavy' years in the New Yorker New Yorker began in 1981...when Beattie, Robison, and Mason were joined by Frederick Barthelme and Carver." began in 1981...when Beattie, Robison, and Mason were joined by Frederick Barthelme and Carver."

Kim Herzinger, Rick Barthelme's former colleague at the University of Southern Mississippi, described minimalist fiction this way: It is "characterized by equanimity of surface, 'ordinary' subjects, recalcitrant narrators and deadpan narratives, slightness of story, and characters who don't think out loud." If most of this list could describe Don's work of the previous twenty years, there were two striking differences between him and the minimalists: Whereas Don's fiction was pervaded by an "experimental spirit," the minimalists pursued an "aggressive lucidity," and, in general, betrayed a "profound uneasiness with irony as a mode of presentation." Minimalist stories were "terse, oblique, realist or hyperrealistic," John Barth wrote. Often, their spare settings were evoked by nothing more than product brand names. Purposely flat, many of the stories were first- or second-person narratives, and many of them (especially those by Carver and Mason) concerned bluecollar lives. Beattie, on the other hand, limned the affairs of white middlecla.s.s yuppies.

Arguably, Don had been the most imitated short story writer in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Raymond Carver could now claim that distinction. Critics advanced various theories as to why minimalism had caught on-some said university writing programs promoted a certain simple style that was easy to teach and learn; others said that in a culture saturated with too much information, readers' minds were no longer attuned to difficult prose; some claimed that in an increasingly ambiguous world, readers longed for clarity, others termed minimalism the literary equivalent of the nation's "energy crisis." Whatever the reasons, by the early 1980s, the "minimalist fad" was so dominant that "nothing else could get through into the light," said the novelist Madison Smartt Bell.

Of the twenty-two pieces in the annual O. Henry Prize Stories O. Henry Prize Stories published just before published just before Sixty Stories Sixty Stories appeared, all were "realistic" and most matched Herzinger's definition of minimalism. Magazine editors declared the end of the "experimental" era. Daniel Halpern, editor of the prestigious (now defunct) journal appeared, all were "realistic" and most matched Herzinger's definition of minimalism. Magazine editors declared the end of the "experimental" era. Daniel Halpern, editor of the prestigious (now defunct) journal Antaeus Antaeus, went so far as to say, "Experimentalism is only the misuse of the language."

Contemplating the state of the American short story in 1980, Anita Shreve said that U.S. fiction remained "surprisingly isolated, for the most part, from current international trends. The best foreign stories-those of Argentina's Jorge Luis Borges, Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italy's Italo Calvino and Austria's Peter Handke-are surrealistic in style, rent with bizarre invisible seams, unsettling, and sometimes to the uninitiated, even creepy....Most American stories attempt to draw readers in; many of the best foreign stories challenge them."

Readers old enough to recall the first issue of Location Location saw how similar Shreve's observation was to Harold Rosenberg's diagnosis of American fiction in 1963. Despite a brief blip on the screen, "experimental" prose had always been, and remained, an anomaly in American literature. "Donald Barthelme," Shreve said, "[is] often seen as the only American alternative to the naturalistic story." saw how similar Shreve's observation was to Harold Rosenberg's diagnosis of American fiction in 1963. Despite a brief blip on the screen, "experimental" prose had always been, and remained, an anomaly in American literature. "Donald Barthelme," Shreve said, "[is] often seen as the only American alternative to the naturalistic story."

Released into the context of minimalism's strongest year to date, Sixty Stories Sixty Stories was a stubborn statement by the nation's "most adventurous writer" as well as a summing up. Walter Clemons reminded readers that the volume wasn't "the late-life 'Collected Stories' of a senior master who may not write many more but an interim selection of a distinctive writer who just turned fifty and is, I hope, in mid-career." was a stubborn statement by the nation's "most adventurous writer" as well as a summing up. Walter Clemons reminded readers that the volume wasn't "the late-life 'Collected Stories' of a senior master who may not write many more but an interim selection of a distinctive writer who just turned fifty and is, I hope, in mid-career."

51.

INPRINT.

In the fall of 1981, as he was living in Houston with Pete and awaiting the birth of his second child, Don imagined conversations with the unborn baby. This unfinished fragment is an example:

It's Wednesday morning, b.u.t.tercup.

Got to go out to the university to pick up my check. Unless Uncle Pete decides to put the truck into the shop to get the m.u.f.fler fixed. The m.u.f.fler's wired to the body with coathangers.

The air is clear but hot. I hear you've been kicking your mother in the stomach and belching. Belching is not polite. The first of 500,000 admonitions...

This place has black iron bars on all the windows and doors. The outside is seen through a IIII or in the case of the bigger doors, a IIIII-IIIII. If I had the wings of an angel / over these prison walls I would fly. No, it's really not so bad, an irk here and an irk there but bearable....

Going to put your box under my desk and tickle your stomach with the toe of my boot. Hurry up, b.u.t.tercup, we're tired of waiting....

When fall cla.s.ses ended, Don flew back to New York. "Katharine was born January 13, 1982 in the middle of a horrific snowstorm," Marion says. "It took what seemed ages to get to New York Hospital from the Village and I'm not sure how Donald ever snagged the cab we took but I was Lamaze deep-breathing the whole way up through the deeply whitening city with Donald saying, 'You're not supposed to do that until it's really time,' and me saying, 'It's time!' "

Anne visited in the summer and introduced herself to her good-natured sister. In the fall, Don moved his wife and new child to Doville, in Houston's Montrose area. Doville was named for Dominique de Menil. In the 1960s, she began buying the old bungalows in the area around the University of St. Thomas, where she would also commission the Rothko Chapel to be built in 1969 (followed, nearly twenty years later, by the Menil Museum). The bungalows had been constructed in the teens and twenties, when Montrose was the city's elite residential neighborhood.

Here, de Menil hoped to salvage old Houston charm. Her dream, which she realized over the years, was to rent the houses to artists and patrons of the arts.

Rosellen Brown moved into the neighborhood in the early 1980s, when she was hired to teach fiction writing at UH. She loved the "vernacular 'everyman' feel" of the "little wooden bungalow[s]" with their "cement and brick" front steps. "The light that filtered through our large magnolia and pecan trees was perfectly softened; the temperature of the long [fall and winter] was ideal," she said. "A lovely informal peace prevailed around the loosely controlled s.p.a.ce of the Menil 'compound.' " On any given evening, wedding parties might "break...out through the doors of the Rothko [chapel]"-or funeral crowds, mourning victims of AIDS.

Marion thought her own "little Menil" house was "wonderful." She says it was "fixed up in [Don's] stark minimalist way with some rented furniture, striped wallpaper tacked up for shades in the windows, my kimono which he hung on the wall, a desk he'd made from a hollow core door, a kitchen table he fashioned, a borrowed crib, four forks, four knives, etc. He loved that clean interior design, Knoll look, influenced by his father, I'm sure."

Around a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling in a corner of the living room, Don placed a large, round paper shade, startlingly white. It fascinated Katharine.

One warm mid-September evening, with sunset lingering and cricket song in the air, Don and Marion invited students over for drinks. Whenever Marion walked by carrying Katharine-like her mother, a stunning little blonde-Don's eyes softened. That night, Katharine took some of her first steps toward one of the students in the kitchen. Don looked on, beaming.

"I never really did get over my surprise at Don's inst.i.tutional energy, his savvy, the sheer kick he seemed to get out of creating an academic program that mattered," said Lois Zamora, a comparative literature teacher in the English Department at the University of Houston. "His dedication to his students ('They're my new affinity group, Lois'), to English Department and Creative Writing projects, to hiring, fundraising, cheerleading, mentoring, enabling, never ceased to amaze me, in part because I didn't expect him to be so generous with his time but mainly because he was so good at it all. His authority as 'famous writer' was important, but that was only a starting point. Don was, I think, fascinated by the workings of the often unwieldy bureaucracy of our large state university. Its inst.i.tutional irrationalities and its moments of collective genius coincided with Don's own sense of the world-absurd, mysterious, deeply worthwhile."

Barry Munitz, chancellor of the University of Houston from 1977 to 1982, knew he'd struck gold with Don. "I knew that to build an excellent program in the arts, you had to take some risks and move across dotted lines. In the arts, the student-faculty ratio has to be smaller, and you have to bring in different types of people," he says. "The fact that Don didn't have a university degree made no difference to me. The best places can afford to stretch out. It's the B, B+ inst.i.tutions that are too tight, too caught up in traditional notions of prestige. If you're serious about being good, you get past that."

Munitz says he asked Don to be the "head of our celebrity dog and pony show as the school raised money throughout the city for the writing program, and set up Inprint, an organization that allowed the program to raise funds independently of the university.

"The key was, we'd have these conversations with potential donors in small groups," Munitz says. "Eloise Cooper, the owner of a Houston cafe called Ouisie's, hosted events for us. In fact, one of our first terrific fundraisers was built around the movie Babette's Feast Babette's Feast. We rented the Greenway Plaza movie theater, screened the movie for folks, and Eloise cooked the same meals as in the movie. So people got to see a show, schmooze with writers, and have a wonderful meal."

Don designed a poster for the program featuring silhouettes of a man and woman, dressed in a tux and a flapper-style dress, dancing. The text reads: Tried Houston. It was terrible.Terrible?Terrible in the morning, terrible at night. Even in the spring?Even in the fall.How are their funerals?Terrible.Even in the rain?Especially in the rain.Their weddings?Terrible. Jasmine, that sort of thing-Do they hug and kiss?Sometimes, but not well. Terribly, in fact.Why is that?They're writers.

"At a fund-raiser, we'd host, say, twenty or thirty people at a time," Munitz says. "These were local corporate heads and entrepreneurial people, high-net-worth individuals who were multigenerational or who had built their own companies. And they were extraordinarily generous. At the time, those of us interested in the arts were working to build the opera, the Alley Theatre, the ballet....Our pitch was, none of these could be sustained without a strong public university and a strong writing program.

"In a small group, Donald would sit and draw on place mats or on napkins, saying, 'We can do this in fiction, this in poetry, and let's not forget nonfiction. We can bring in so-and-so to lecture.' We'd tie the writing program to the other arts."

Always, Don's priority was "shoring up student stipends." He worked more on that than on faculty salaries. "Don wanted the very best students. And he was determined to work them hard," Munitz says.

"His commitment to the program was genuine and extraordinary. He made it out of loyalty to the city and to the inst.i.tution-he wouldn't have felt the same way anywhere else," says Munitz. "But he was also loyal to the type of students he had here. It was counterintuitive-Houston? He loved running into people in New York, and they'd ask him, 'What have you been up to?' and he'd say, 'I've been teaching down in Houston,' and they'd say, ' He loved running into people in New York, and they'd ask him, 'What have you been up to?' and he'd say, 'I've been teaching down in Houston,' and they'd say, 'Houston? Why?' Or he'd meet some academic from Boston who'd tell him how much trouble they were having getting Stephen Spender to come for a talk, and Don would say, 'Oh, he just spent a semester with us in Houston.' He'd tell these stories joyfully. He was proud that we built something out of nothing." Why?' Or he'd meet some academic from Boston who'd tell him how much trouble they were having getting Stephen Spender to come for a talk, and Don would say, 'Oh, he just spent a semester with us in Houston.' He'd tell these stories joyfully. He was proud that we built something out of nothing."

Phillip Lopate also noted Don's commitment to "underdogs." "He attended all the meetings, never missed a cla.s.s, gave enormous amounts of time to his students. He was incredibly responsible," Lopate says.

Students who spent a lot of time with Don realized it was best to catch him in late afternoon or early evening, when he'd want to slip off to a bar, or-now that Katharine was around-when he'd invite you to bring a ma.n.u.script to his house for an editing session, during which he broke out the scotch. Earlier in the day, he was often taciturn and withdrawn. Later in the evening, he'd tend to lose focus, and might repeat something he'd forgotten he'd told you the day before.

A faculty member recalls telling Don that a relative of his had an awful drinking problem. Don asked him, "Is she sober sometimes and then out of it, or a little drunk all the time?"

Then Don admitted, "I'm a little drunk all the time."

His colleague answered, "I know, Don."

"In his distance" from his colleagues and friends, "he seemed to be monitoring some inner uneasiness," Lopate says. "I suppose that was partly his alcoholism...[but] I never saw Don falling-down drunk; he held his liquor, put on a good performance of sobriety."

At work and at home, "he was a world-cla.s.s worrier," says the poet Ed Hirsch, another colleague of Don's. "I picture him like the speaker in his story 'Chablis,' sitting up in the early morning, at the desk....It is five-thirty, and he is 'sipping a gla.s.s of Gallo Chablis with an ice cube in it, smoking, worrying.' "

Don was scared that something would happen to his baby girl; scared that the castle would crumble; scared that he possessed neither faith nor fidelity enough to shoulder what he had, in fact, shouldered; scared that he had "done his little thing."

"He may have felt he had done what he could in writing, and then turned to the Houston program to leave a different sort of legacy," Barry Munitz says. "That's a hard thing to doit's like being a n.o.bel Prizewinning physicist who gives up research to keep the lab running. There's satisfaction in helping others, but it's hard to know that you're not doing the real work anymore."

"Sometimes he would come to my house late at night, unannounced," says Hirsch. "He'd show up around twelve and ring the bell. He wouldn't talk about what had happened, but clearly something had propelled him out of the house. I'd give him a hug, which made him feel awkward. I'd ask questions and he'd answer them or he wouldn't answer them. He liked that I would fill the s.p.a.ce. I'd do the social work when we were together. We'd talk about writing and the literary life and then he'd go home. 'Do you want me to drive you?' I'd ask. He'd answer, 'I've been driving drunk since I was sixteen. I can manage.' On those occasions I saw the depth of his solitude."

Writing had ceased to be pure enjoyment. It was business-and, in tangible terms, not terribly rewarding. Royalty statements show that Snow White Snow White, the one book that had remained steadily in print, earned Don anywhere from thirty to three hundred dollars a year. For all his other books combined, he was liable to make, in any given year, less than a thousand dollars. For a while, even after taking the Houston job, he remained in debt to The New Yorker The New Yorker.

Frustrated with Farrar, Straus and Giroux's penny-pinching, its lack of commercial chutzpah, Don finally jumped ship. He took Sixty Stories Sixty Stories to his old friend Faith Sale, now an editor at Putnam. He signed a three-book deal, breaking his contract with FSG. He had promised his old publisher a second children's book and another novel. Early in 1982, Maggie Curran, to whom Lynn Nesbit now entrusted much of Don's business, told Don that FSG was demanding 75 percent of everything he earned from to his old friend Faith Sale, now an editor at Putnam. He signed a three-book deal, breaking his contract with FSG. He had promised his old publisher a second children's book and another novel. Early in 1982, Maggie Curran, to whom Lynn Nesbit now entrusted much of Don's business, told Don that FSG was demanding 75 percent of everything he earned from Sixty Stories Sixty Stories. In turn, they would pay him 50 percent of the 75 percent. This was in addition to FSG's demand that the entire advance for Sixty Stories Sixty Stories-thirty thousand dollars-be paid back, which was a further condition of releasing Don from his contract. As of February 1982, the book had earned only fifteen thousand dollars, so Don was likely to owe FSG for a long time.

He took genuine delight in Katharine and in living with his family. Katharine was becoming more active, and the rental agreement on his Doville house would soon be up. Don looked for another place. He found a stately brick house on South Boulevard, in one of Houston's oldest and most elegant neighborhoods, close to Rice University and the Museum of Fine Arts. It was right across the street from the Edgar Allan Poe Elementary School. The boulevard was distinguished by a fifty-three-foot esplanade down its center, with ma.s.sive oak trees on either side whose limbs met overhead and provided a leafy canopy.

Don, Marion, and Katharine moved into the shady upper floor of the house. White floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined one wall of the living room. A framed De Chirico print hung next to the kitchen doorway. Just off the living room, a s.p.a.cious area with windows all around overlooked the neighborhood's backyard gardens. Don liked to sit there in a wicker rocker. His bedroom doubled as his study. His desk sat before a window above the boulevard. Early in the mornings, Don would rise, heat an El Patio enchilada dinner for breakfast, and write.

Here, he composed "Chablis" and "The Baby," two affectionate pieces about Katharine. He loved to read the stories to audiences. In "The Baby," a hapless father fails to train his infant not to tear pages out of books, and ends up joining her in her mischief. "That is one of the satisfying things about being a parent-you've got a lot of moves," he wrote. Now, "[t]he baby and I sit happily on the floor, side by side, tearing pages out of books, and sometimes, just for fun, we go out on the street and smash a windshield together."

In "Chablis," a gentle father worries that his baby "may jam a kitchen knife into an electrical outlet while she's wet" or that she may wolf down a box of crayons. He worries about money. He worries about the fact that he is "not a more natural person, like [his] wife wants [him] to be." As he sits at his desk, watching runners on the street, "individually or in pairs, running toward rude red health," he remembers his reckless youth. The story ends on a note of wistfulness for his long-ago wildness, but also with love for his child: "I remember the time, thirty years ago, when I put Herman's mother's Buick into a cornfield, on the Beaumont highway. There was another car in my lane, and I didn't hit it....That was when I was a black sheep, years and years ago. That was skillfully done, I think. I get up, congratulate myself in memory, and go in to look at the baby."

52.

MANY DISTANCES.

"He was going to settle down and be the family man. And it didn't work," says Phillip Lopate. "[Don's] return to Houston was a kind of defeat, I believe. In stories like 'Chablis,' he tried to put the best face on things, but he was restless. He cared a great deal about the writing program, but his world had shrunk, and I think he knew it, and he tried to cover that up. He'd shut down. He'd stopped taking things in, so there was no more Kierkegaard, no more Cortes and Montezuma. What he was taking in were lifestyle things, new cars, food. I used to tell him, 'You know, Don, just because you haven't heard of something doesn't mean it's not important.' He'd made up his mind a long time ago about things."

Several times, Don told Lopate he'd lost his zest for life. With the deaths of Harold Rosenberg and Tom Hess he'd stopped learning new things. "I'm still working off that old knowledge. What I really want are older men, father-figures who can teach me me something. I don't want to be people's d.a.m.n father-figure. I want to be the baby," Don said. "The problem is that the older you get, the harder it is to find these older role models." something. I don't want to be people's d.a.m.n father-figure. I want to be the baby," Don said. "The problem is that the older you get, the harder it is to find these older role models."

In this sad spirit, Don confided to Padgett Powell that he "might retire, that he had done...his 'little things.' "

"Well, Don, why not do the big things big things?" Powell asked him one day.

"I have a black heart," Don said.

"Well, write write a black heart." a black heart."

"Have a wife and child."

"We are talking Art, Art, aren't we? d.a.m.n the torpedoes." aren't we? d.a.m.n the torpedoes."

"No."

"At times he gave the impression, like a burn victim lying uncomfortably in the hospital, that there was something I was neglecting to do or figure out that might have put him at greater ease," Lopate says. "[I noticed] he liked to be around women, particularly younger women, and grew more relaxed in their company. I don't think this was purely a matter of lechery, though l.u.s.t no doubt played its cla.s.sical part....Certainly some of the women in the writing program objected to what they felt was [Donald's] preference for the pretty young females in cla.s.s."

"Donald was existentially very lonely and by temperament alienated. He liked to be part of something," says Ed Hirsch.

In Don's next book-Overnight to Many Distant Cities, published in 1983-one of the stories, "The Palace at Four A.M.," paints an indelible portrait of loneliness. The t.i.tle alludes to a Giacometti sculpture, a piece the artist made after he'd lost a lover. published in 1983-one of the stories, "The Palace at Four A.M.," paints an indelible portrait of loneliness. The t.i.tle alludes to a Giacometti sculpture, a piece the artist made after he'd lost a lover.

In Don's story, a king writes his autobiography. The king's representative implores Hannahbella, a "tiny spirit" with whom the king has had a romance, to read the pa.s.sages about her: a ploy to get her back. The story ends: "You loved him, he says, he is convinced of it, he exists in a condition of doubt....The palace at four a.m. is silent. Come back, Hannahbella, and speak to him."

The reviews for Overnight Overnight were among the harshest of Don's career. The book "repels any understanding whatsoever," Jonathan Penner wrote in were among the harshest of Don's career. The book "repels any understanding whatsoever," Jonathan Penner wrote in The Washington Post. The Washington Post. "What this book says is that nothing can be said....Lifemeans nothing, art is false...." In "What this book says is that nothing can be said....Lifemeans nothing, art is false...." In The New York Times, The New York Times, Anatole Broyard bemoaned what had "become a pattern in the late Barthelme work: the promise is grand, but then the author...stutters...." Anatole Broyard bemoaned what had "become a pattern in the late Barthelme work: the promise is grand, but then the author...stutters...."

Also in the Times, Times, Joel Conarroe remarked on the "curiously vacuous" effect of most of the stories, and concluded, "I don't mean to suggest that the Emperor [has] no clothes. I do, though, increasingly get the impression that his suit [is] threadbare." Joel Conarroe remarked on the "curiously vacuous" effect of most of the stories, and concluded, "I don't mean to suggest that the Emperor [has] no clothes. I do, though, increasingly get the impression that his suit [is] threadbare."

Twelve brief interchapters link the stories in Overnight, Overnight, similar to the vignettes in Hemingway's first collection of stories published in the United States, similar to the vignettes in Hemingway's first collection of stories published in the United States, In Our Time. In Our Time. Hemingway remarked that his vignettes offered coast-line views as seen from a ship. In Don's case, the interchapters offered "overnight" dreams, weirdly transforming the daylight material from the book's companion tales of domesticity and urban life. Hemingway remarked that his vignettes offered coast-line views as seen from a ship. In Don's case, the interchapters offered "overnight" dreams, weirdly transforming the daylight material from the book's companion tales of domesticity and urban life.