Depressed, Don walked. All around him, New York seemed to be selling itself off to pay its debts.
The "government isn"t very good and the New York Culture Center is being sold and there is so much p.o.r.nography around...many people are persuaded that these are dark times," Don wrote in a "Notes and Comment" piece for The New Yorker The New Yorker. In the midst of the deterioration, he took a cue from his moviegoing and tried to make "good and true observations." At first, he noticed "shrubs-whatever-" but then he looked more closely. In the window of a bakery, he saw the "silverware, cups and saucers, sugarers and creamers, stainless steel pots and pans, and five sets of spun-candy wedding bells in their plastic wrappings." Sadly, the bakery was going out of business. He saw a book, Graham Greene on Film Graham Greene on Film, in the open rumble seat of a parked British car. He stopped at the window of the Elephant and Castle on Greenwich Avenue to read the menu: a "Love Omelette (hearts of artichoke, hearts of palm) for $3.05." He studied the bulletin board inside the Perry Street Laundromat: a reading by Nelson Algren, a flyer from the "International Committee to Reunite the Beatles, headquartered in Merrick, N. Y. Send one dollar to Let It Be."
Don"s writing began to swell with details. Buoyed by his ability to observe observe-which had never been central to his meditative fiction-he began to relax and become more comfortable with personal comment, personal revelation. He turned to what W. H. Auden had called the "doggy life." From such materials, much of Don"s late style would grow.
"In the "70s the sheer glut of consumable culture reached almost oceanic proportions as the media-television, movies, theater, books, records, concerts, opera, dance, radio, the visual arts-poured out an endless stream of beguilement to be soaked up by vast, voracious audiences," says Jack Kroll. For him, the decade"s most important cultural development was the "process of blurring the distinctions between serious stuff and pop stuff" (so the "high intelligence, formal brilliance and even mythic aspiration" of a movie like The G.o.dfather The G.o.dfather was inextricable from its "entertainment value"-an example of what "popular culture can produce under optimum conditions"). was inextricable from its "entertainment value"-an example of what "popular culture can produce under optimum conditions").
Also of note was the "attempt to come to terms with the [Vietnam] war" in movies and books, the mentality of "big budgets, big risks, big successes, big failures" in the arts, and the "question of the relationship of art to morals" (not because of John Gardner but because of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his exposure of Soviet gulags).
Of this period, Alfred Kazin wrote that American life had taught especially harsh lessons to city dwellers. "The city arouses us with the same forces by which it defeats us," he said.
Nearly twenty years after setting foot on the island, and despite his literary successes and fresh marriage, Don felt more defeated than aroused by his adopted city. There were too many spirits-of every kind; too many losses. As he walked through the Village, fewer and fewer faces were familiar.
-Will you always remember me?-Always.-Will you remember me a year from now?-Yes, I will.-Will you remember me two years from now?-Yes, I will.-Will you remember me five years from now?-Yes, I will.-Knock knock.Who"s there?-You see?
So ends "Great Days." And in "Morning," Don concluded: -Say you"re not frightened. Inspire me.-After a while, darkness, and they give up the search.
This was a far cry from the "Heigh-ho!" that ended Don"s first novel, years ago. But that book"s final thought remained pertinent to him now-perhaps more so than ever. He craved a "new principle."
PART FIVE.
RETURN.
48.
MISS PENNYBACKER"S CASTLE.
In the fall of 1980, the poet Cynthia Macdonald, then teaching creative writing at the University of Houston, wrote Don, "[People] are tying yellow ribbons round all the oak trees. Guess why?-in honor of the Iranian hostages."
She said, "You are ardently wanted by us all. Saying here what I am too inhibited to gush in person, I think you are an inventive, touching, funny, strong, wonderful writer. And I like you. To have you as a colleague would be special." The coquettish tone, and the joke about the ribbons (no, it"s not about you you, dummy-it"s the hostages) was perfect, and perfectly timed. Don was intrigued.
Macdonald had met him in 1971, when she was teaching at Sarah Lawrence College. Don came to give a reading. He presented "On Angels." The story"s unusual structure started an on-again, off.a.gain conversation with Macdonald that lasted the rest of his life. The topic was the frontier between fiction and poetry-"a kind of no-man"s land," Macdonald wrote, where she and Don felt at home. "Poetry should only be attempted by saints and Villons," Don often quipped. He agreed with Macdonald that poetry and prose offered "different [kinds of] music," but he enjoyed mixing the tunes.
Shortly after meeting Don, Macdonald moved to Houston with her husband. A former opera singer and a trained psychoa.n.a.lyst, Macdonald was by nature restless. Her marriage didn"t last; she fled Texas, and wound up teaching poetry workshops at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. But Houston left a lasting impression on her. The city "has a sense of possibility that is very, very different from the Northeast," she said. "The att.i.tude...is, "If you want to do something, well why not?" " This is the same ah-h.e.l.l ah-h.e.l.l civic disposition that inspired Don"s dad in the 1930s, and Philip Johnson in the 1950s. Macdonald tasted it in the early seventies. She loved the "excitement of the city," so in 1978, when the English Department at the University of Houston called and asked if she"d like to spearhead a new creative-writing program there, the "Joanna Appleseed" in her stirred to life. civic disposition that inspired Don"s dad in the 1930s, and Philip Johnson in the 1950s. Macdonald tasted it in the early seventies. She loved the "excitement of the city," so in 1978, when the English Department at the University of Houston called and asked if she"d like to spearhead a new creative-writing program there, the "Joanna Appleseed" in her stirred to life.
Immediately, she thought of Don, but after consulting colleagues she decided to lay a solid foundation in one literary genre at a time. She phoned a fellow poet, Stanley Plumly. He was living in New York and teaching at Princeton. Eventually, Macdonald convinced him that Houston was "on the make." If he agreed to come, the university would need to hire two fiction writers to even out the faculty.
In her mind, the key component-as ribbons adorned Houston"s thick and sumptuous trees-was to lure the city"s most famous literary son back home.
From 1935 until 1970, creative writing at the University of Houston was Ruth Pennybacker"s castle. She was the sole ruler-and a n.o.ble figure she was. "She taught by offering the works of great writers as examples. And she kept her ego out of it," said a former student, Glenda Brownback. Another UH graduate, Janet Marks, agreed. "She creat[ed] an environment where [students] all came together. She helped us to help each other. She was very generous with her time, and she gave her all to the students." This was the teaching model Don witnessed when he was Miss Pennybacker"s pupil in the 1950s, and he carried it into his cla.s.srooms in Buffalo, Boston, and New York.
With Pennybacker"s retirement in 1970, Sylvan Karchmer, who had published over one hundred stories and plays, mostly under pseudonyms, took over the creative-writing cla.s.ses with the help of a younger colleague, James Cleghorn. A few years later, Karchmer fell ill and retired. His departure coincided with the university"s procurement of a grant to hire the critic Helen Vendler to study the university"s programs and recommend "paths to distinction." She told the school to focus its energy on one area of study and marshal its resources there to achieve a national reputation.
John McNamara, then chair of the English Department, knew that creative-writing programs were inexpensive to maintain-they required no equipment and minimal library additions. Faculty salaries accounted for most of the costs. Terrell Dixon, a UH English professor, said that "the feeling at the time was that...we should do something a little different. And when we looked at the city and looked at the department, creative writing looked like a good way to go." Houston was booming financially; nationally, it had finally been recognized as a cultural center. Its visual and performing arts were strong: a writing program, if it could be "about Houston," was a natural. Houston," was a natural.
Initially, Cynthia Macdonald refused the program directorship. "I didn"t want to isolate myself from the writing world," she said. She agreed to serve as a special consultant to integrate writing into the department"s literature curriculum. It was Peter St.i.tt, a poetry critic and young UH professor, who suggested recruiting Stanley Plumly.
"Houston seemed so foreign to me and it just seemed like an impossible task," Plumly said. But at this point, Macdonald was "captured by the feeling of what a really good creative writing program could do for the city." She began to work on Plumly, and erased his resistance. She met him in New York. "[W]e negotiated this program going back and forth through Central Park," Plumly recalled.
Next, Macdonald set her sights on an off-kilter Texan living in the Village.
Don had come to enjoy teaching on a limited basis. He liked socializing with students, and watching them succeed. Still, he had resisted a full-time position. When Macdonald first approached him about Houston, he refused. But something in their conversation encouraged her not to quit asking him. He shared with her the story about the therapist he"d seen before leaving Houston in the 1960s-the one who"d told him he could return when he"d reached a certain level of achievement. "I think I"m almost ready," Don told Macdonald (she was, after all, an a.n.a.lyst, with a gift for drawing people out).
She asked him again. Money was a factor. So was inst.i.tutional commitment to the program. But by now, Macdonald knew Don well enough to understand what would really appeal to him: the certainty that his talents were needed. Macdonald saw that Don had a "willingness to work" for others "unusual" in someone "at that level of achievement." She appealed to his generosity.
Her overtures were brilliant-possibly no one else could have swayed him. Of course, she benefited from timing. Roger Angell was still lukewarm about the dialogue stories. The loss of so many close friends in quick succession had left Don reeling. New York City was broke, dark, dangerous. And on the positive side, Don had just started over with a new young wife. Change was in the air.
Despite Marion"s steadying influence, Don struck Kirk Sale as enormously sad. The "death of friends" was part of his melancholy. Don "took friendship seriously," Sale says, but he feels there was more to it than this. "I would say the sadness had to do with a sense of failure to have a larger influence on literature, and the culture around him, and an awareness that he had said what he had to say and there wasn"t much point in saying it over again....I think that basically [by 1980] he felt he had written himself dry, and that"s the reason he agreed to go to Houston. He wouldn"t say it, exactly, but I felt he was pushing it, forcing [the work]."
On the other hand, Jerome Charyn feels sure Don "didn"t want want to go to Texas. He wanted to stay in New York. But he couldn"t get the kind of job that would have supported him." Anne was in her teens, college expenses were looming, and Don"s CCNY salary wasn"t much help there. to go to Texas. He wanted to stay in New York. But he couldn"t get the kind of job that would have supported him." Anne was in her teens, college expenses were looming, and Don"s CCNY salary wasn"t much help there.
Marion had gotten profit sharing when she left Time Time, and earned $25,000 the second year she freelanced. Still, Don wanted to take financial pressure off his writing and he turned to his dad for advice.
"The biggest mistake you can make is to a.s.sume a.s.sume that what exists now will be true [later]," the elder Barthelme said. "So all the determinations based on current facts are suspect." that what exists now will be true [later]," the elder Barthelme said. "So all the determinations based on current facts are suspect."
He told Don that, when it came to financial planning, the one "advantage your mother and I have [is that] we don"t expect [to live] another ten years." More than anything else, it may have been this talk of mortality that convinced Don he should return to Texas.
"I felt that he needed to be in Houston again for a while," wrote Helen Moore Barthelme. "He was fifty years old and sad" at the pa.s.sing of friends. Recently, Mary Ann Hayes, whom Don had known since the 1950s, when they had worked together at the University of Houston, had died of a brain tumor. Don had seen her in New York when she came through on a visit. "Her visit and subsequent death...deeply affected" him, Helen said.
So when Cynthia Macdonald called again, putting out another feeler, Don agreed to go to Houston for a year, beginning in September 1981. ("I was furious when [City College] let him go and will never forgive the Chairman at that juncture for not fighting harder [to keep him]," says Mark Mirsky.) Harrison Starr figured that "going to Texas would be a good thing [for Donald]. Texas would give him a little grounding to do whatever came next." He understood that Don"s departure, even on a part-time basis, would be a blow to New York"s literary culture. Starr says, "Donald, even though he was an avant-garde writer, was considered in New York by most of the people I knew as one of the best writers in America, if not the the best-certainly, one of the top three or four writers of any significance. And the best-certainly, one of the top three or four writers of any significance. And the best best writer, word for word, pound for pound-no matter how many commas they tried to put in, in the G.o.dd.a.m.n writer, word for word, pound for pound-no matter how many commas they tried to put in, in the G.o.dd.a.m.n New Yorker New Yorker."
"People I knew used to think that one of the great things about being in New York was Donald," Roger Angell says.
"I thought that moving to Houston would be interesting although it surprised me because Don had kind of fled Houston when he first went to New York," Marion says. "It didn"t mean we would pull up stakes because initially it was every other semester. It was nice to have a steady salary and we had happily visited Don"s parents a number of times in the past, and Joan and the brothers were around."
Also, Marion had learned she was pregnant. "I was totally content with just about anything," she says.
Don"s parents, especially his mother, welcomed the news of Don"s return. His father wrote him in April 1981: "Your mother"s check-up...turned out OK-or so the Doctor said-what does he know? Pete"s still in trauma about not being married [anymore]. Joan is wra.s.sling with her job and the background of the kids and a husband. Rick glows even by daylight-let him enjoy it. Steve is-Steve[,] and I guess he is ent.i.tled to play the game anyway he wants to. I guess we"ll see you this fall."
49.
THE KING.
To someone who had been away from Houston for a long time (except for short visits), the city by 1980 must have seemed overbuilt and decentered. In the late 1930s, Fortune Fortune magazine called Houston "the city the Depression missed"; following World War II, bankers, developers, and Realtors helped Houston enjoy a longer period of economic growth than any other metropolitan area in America. Four hundred and one major office buildings rose in downtown Houston between 1971 and the early 1980s. The boom had been sustained by the early development of a freeway system, cheap land, and the absence of zoning laws. But more than anything, Houston"s reputation as the nation"s oil capitol spurred its growth. In 1971, a barrel of crude oil cost $3.39. By 1981, the price had risen to $31.77. Money showered onto the city. In no time, there were "too many dollars chasing too few deals," according to one investor-by 1982, this situation would spark a fiscal crisis in the city-but the perception remained that Houston was "hot." magazine called Houston "the city the Depression missed"; following World War II, bankers, developers, and Realtors helped Houston enjoy a longer period of economic growth than any other metropolitan area in America. Four hundred and one major office buildings rose in downtown Houston between 1971 and the early 1980s. The boom had been sustained by the early development of a freeway system, cheap land, and the absence of zoning laws. But more than anything, Houston"s reputation as the nation"s oil capitol spurred its growth. In 1971, a barrel of crude oil cost $3.39. By 1981, the price had risen to $31.77. Money showered onto the city. In no time, there were "too many dollars chasing too few deals," according to one investor-by 1982, this situation would spark a fiscal crisis in the city-but the perception remained that Houston was "hot."
Don"s childhood neighborhood once sat out in the country, slightly beyond the western edge of Houston. Now, the Galleria shopping complex dominated the area, along with high-rise buildings and high-end retail outlets. Most of the single-family homes were gone. "I never knew what led the elder Barthelme to sell his house in West Oaks and move to a very ba.n.a.l townhouse development several miles farther west," says architectural historian Stephen Fox. "On the one occasion I visited Mr. and Mrs. Barthelme in the mid-eighties, I was disconcerted to see the ordinary surroundings they lived in, knowing how exceptional and insistently singular the architect Donald Barthelme had been about his domestic setting. It was as if they had gone into exile. The house seemed cramped and anonymous."
Traces of the old Houston were hard to find, but on his return, Don loved going to Felix, a family-owned Tex-Mex restaurant on Westheimer, near Montrose. "The food at Felix is really terrible. But everyone I know who grew up in Houston in the 1940s and 50s loves it," Fox says. "It is one of those rare Houston places (and especially a middle-cla.s.s place) that never changed, and its mediocrity was part of what made it so rea.s.suring. It still exists, and it"s still terrible."
In the UH English Department, "there was a feeling among the literature students that their position was being usurped by creative writing students," recalled Tom Cobb, who had been a Ph.D. candidate at the time. "I don"t think that"s true. The creative writing students were not standing on Cullen Boulevard with baseball bats keeping the lit students" from getting into the English building.
Phillip Lopate, who had just been hired to teach fiction writing, absorbed the fury of certain literature professors who resented the higher salaries given to creative writing teachers. Lopate believed that several of the writers-students and and faculty-engaged in "high-handed behavior" toward old-timers in the department. faculty-engaged in "high-handed behavior" toward old-timers in the department.
The "writing program ventilated the department and maybe the university in a way it hadn"t been before. And opened it to things it wasn"t quite sure at the time how it felt about," Plumly commented later.
Cynthia Macdonald dismissed these tensions as the natural growing pains of a department in transition. But clearly the old castle was in tatters, and it wasn"t going to straighten up without a firm hand.
Within a month of Don"s arrival, a male teacher who was suspected of sometimes teaching his cla.s.ses drunk infuriated women on the staff by telling a s.e.xist joke in the main office. One day, he stopped Don in the hallway and said, "These tight-a.s.s feminists are taking potshots at me." He laughed, apparently expecting Don to sympathize with his plight. Don replied, "You don"t seem to understand. I"m part of the firing squad."
Days later, this particular teacher appeared to be gone from the department.
Word filtered out of Don"s cla.s.ses that he would not brook bad writing. Years later, reflecting on Don"s workshops, a former student named Glenn Blake said, "What he was teaching us, what we were learning, was how to edit our own fiction....He knew that one day we would move on, away from writing cla.s.ses, away from writing instructors, alone, with only our own mean eyes."
The process was rigorous. "All you had to do was walk to the front of the room, stand, and read your story to the cla.s.s," Blake said. "And when it was all over, you could not sit down and hide. No. You had to stay up there for as long as it took and listen to the criticism-sometimes, line by line. You could not say a word-that was in the rules-could not defend yourself."
He remembered his first writing cla.s.s with Don: A friend of mine [named Rick] walked to the front of the room and started reading this forty-five-page story about basketball-it seemed he was always writing about basketball-long stories. I mean, there wasn"t so much as a dribble until the tenth page. stories. I mean, there wasn"t so much as a dribble until the tenth page.Somewhere about halfway down the third page, Don stopped him and said, "Rick, does it get any better?""Yes," Rick said. "Oh yes," Rick said. "Oh h.e.l.l yes, Don. It gets a whole whole lot better. Just wait." lot better. Just wait."Don just looked at him and said, "I think not. Have a seat."
Tom Cobb remembered taking the first chapter of his novel into Don"s cla.s.s, a story about a down-and-out country singer. Don asked Cobb what he planned to do with the character. Cobb said the man would "play a couple of bars, get drunk, and take some women back to his room." Don replied, "Well, I think you should pour gasoline on him and set him on fire. The novel"s getting nowhere."
To another student, Don advised removing all descriptions of weather from a story. Writing about sunshine and storms, he said, led to "acres and acres of rather ordinary prose." The student protested: "But what would King Lear King Lear be without weather?" Don responded, "If you write be without weather?" Don responded, "If you write Lear Lear again, I"ll make an exception in your case." again, I"ll make an exception in your case."
If a student"s work appealed to him, Don stirred from his boredom and became exceedingly generous with his time. Olive Hershey, then writing a novel, later recalled "epic" editing sessions with Don. One day, he called her and said, "I"m coming over, buy a bottle of Scotch." "What kind?" she asked. "Teacher"s, of course," Don said.
Off and on, over a period of four days, Don cut more than a hundred pages from her ma.n.u.script. He would draw a line though an entire page. "All right?" he"d ask. Hershey would swallow hard and say, "All right." Don would then say, "Good woman."
Padgett Powell recalled, "For our first tutorial...Don put a comment in a margin of mine and blotted it out before I saw it." Powell recounted the conversation that ensued: What was that? I asked.A comment.I suspected suspected that. What did it say? that. What did it say?What did it say?Yes, sir. What did it say? What did it say?I didn"t know you. I can see now you can take it.All right, I can take it. What did it say?That half said Faulkner Faulkner.And that half?That half?That half. half.That half said ersatz ersatz.
Powell sat silently. Don asked him, "You do know what "ersatz" means?"
"Of course I know what I know what ersatz ersatz means. What is the big deal with means. What is the big deal with ersatz Faulkner? Of course ersatz Faulkner? Of course it"s ersatz Faulkner. it"s ersatz Faulkner. Everybody Everybody does does ersatz Faulkner ersatz Faulkner-"
"Okay, okay. I said I didn"t know you. You can take it."
Powell made Don promise he would never "withhold a comment" from him. "I am not here to get a degree get a degree," he said. "I am here to write a book write a book." And then he told Don, "If we have to do this this anymore, we"re not doing it in an office. We are doing it in a bar." anymore, we"re not doing it in an office. We are doing it in a bar."
Looking back on this incident, Powell said: I was a bl.u.s.tery boy then, and had no idea I"d called for a change of venue so dear to my...mentor. Whether he liked my slapping around of the father-insisting on more more discipline-or the betrayal of my own proclivity to drink, or was reminded that it was time for one himself, I do not know. He was to extend to me...a very careful, gingerly fathering and I to him a very careful, bl.u.s.tery obedience, neither of us admitting very much the little tango. discipline-or the betrayal of my own proclivity to drink, or was reminded that it was time for one himself, I do not know. He was to extend to me...a very careful, gingerly fathering and I to him a very careful, bl.u.s.tery obedience, neither of us admitting very much the little tango.
With remarkable swiftness, mediocrity had been banished from the castle. An actual writing program actual writing program took shape. Since Don had never earned a university degree, the department would not let him teach literature courses, but he offered a Fiction Forms cla.s.s, in which students edited and rewrote Hemingway"s took shape. Since Don had never earned a university degree, the department would not let him teach literature courses, but he offered a Fiction Forms cla.s.s, in which students edited and rewrote Hemingway"s Islands in the Stream Islands in the Stream. If Hemingway had lived, Don said, he never would have published such terrible prose. Don set another group of students to writing stories that employed plot devices from the television police drama Hill Street Blues Hill Street Blues-a way of learning to manage many characters at once.
Marion says that despite his strict standards, "He never thought anyone was a hopeless writer."
To his fellow faculty members, Don went out of his way to present himself as part of the group. He was not, he insisted, the program"s director. He was firm that all program decisions be made by faculty agreement. But everyone knew who was king. His status as hometown boy gave him clout with the university, and connections to the city"s art world.
That first semester, in the fall of 1981, Don lived with his brother Pete in Pete"s house at the corner of Bissonnet and Shepard streets, not far from Houston"s best bookstore, the Brazos, and the Museum of Fine Arts. Marion stayed in New York. Pete"s eighteen-year-old daughter shared the Houston house, which made the place feel crowded and "sort of like a barracks," Don said. But he enjoyed "uncling," picking his niece up from school, driving Pete"s big Chevy Ranger; he liked cooking for his brother, and he put a lot of energy into housekeeping.
Occasionally, he lunched with his ex-wife Helen at a restaurant called Ruggles on Westheimer Street. They talked about old friends-Pat Goeters was now practicing architecture in California; Robert Morris was still in Connecticut; Harry Vitemb had been shot to death during a holdup in a doughnut shop. Don seemed happy to be in Houston. Anne was nearly sixteen. He missed her terribly during the year, he told Helen, but he was glad she was going to school in Copenhagen and not in New York City, whose schools were "h.e.l.l holes." Marion was expecting a child in January; she had "worn [him] down" on the subject of having a baby. He said he was trying to write a novel. Its tentative t.i.tle was Ghosts Ghosts.
50.
STILL LIFE.
"I know that Donald was good for the university and am prepared to believe that the university was good to to him. Whether academic life was good him. Whether academic life was good for for Donald Barthelme the writer is not for me to speculate," John Barth said. Donald Barthelme the writer is not for me to speculate," John Barth said.
In Don"s late work, wrote Jerome Klinkowitz, "No longer will Kafka or Tolstoy be asked to sit uncomfortably within the...confines of our postmodern world...nor will there be a cubist disorder of conversations....There will be precious few fragments...."
Did Don, easing into tenured life, lose his edge? Was he stunned into contentment by fine furniture, good food, and the habits of domesticity? His new colleague Phillip Lopate entertained the possibility. "He would often talk to me about new types of VCRs or word-processors, a sportscar he was fantasizing buying," Lopate said. "He was also very interested in food: I would run into him shopping in the supermarket, wicker basket in hand, throwing in a package of tortellini; one time he began talking about the varieties of arugula and radicchio, then added that he could never leave the place without spending a fortune. "They create these needs and you can"t resist. They"ve figured out a way to hook you," he said.
"These disquisitions on arugula were not exactly what I had hoped for from Barthelme," Lopate wrote. "I wanted him to stand up and be the staunch intellectual hero-father. Part of me responded with a line from Ernest Becker"s The Denial of Death: The Denial of Death: "The depressed person enslaves himself to the trivial." Another part suspected that I, long-time bachelor, was merely envious of his settled...family life." "The depressed person enslaves himself to the trivial." Another part suspected that I, long-time bachelor, was merely envious of his settled...family life."
Marion points out that Don had been interested in food and cooking for quite some time. "It was a way for him to both relax and be creative. And it"s another form of nourishing people," she says. "He was always in search of that elusive Thai curry from the days in Korea, and an early-memory gumbo that he kept trying to replicate. He"d spend hours cooking it and then would say, "Nope, it"s not right."
"I liked to cook, too," Marion says. "I had a friend who gave me a couple of lessons when I first lived in New York. She knew Julia Child, so that was my cookbook. Don"s was Rombauer [The Joy of Cooking]. Our copy still has his annotations on how to [improve] popovers. It"s so old and splattered now, you could toss it in water and make soup. He"d make great stews in which there was b.u.t.ter, b.u.t.ter, b.u.t.ter and he always cooked fried chicken for Anne the first night [she"d arrive for a visit]."
As for the writing: Such early eighties stories as "Bishop" and "Visitors," meditations on a middle-aged man"s not-so-eventful days, may seem tame after so many years of Don"s formal playfulness. But straightforward narrative straightforward narrative was just one more approach to storytelling that Don had added to his a.r.s.enal (and, in any case, narrative wasn"t unprecedented in his work). Klinkowitz has suggested that Don"s late stories are more "relaxed" and "generous" than his earlier pieces. Don was no longer dueling with tradition; he was drawing from material he had established over time. The late work reveals a "confidence with subject and form equal to almost any previous high point in the development of the American short story." was just one more approach to storytelling that Don had added to his a.r.s.enal (and, in any case, narrative wasn"t unprecedented in his work). Klinkowitz has suggested that Don"s late stories are more "relaxed" and "generous" than his earlier pieces. Don was no longer dueling with tradition; he was drawing from material he had established over time. The late work reveals a "confidence with subject and form equal to almost any previous high point in the development of the American short story."
Then there"s this: When Don turned to "realism" in stories like "Bishop," he held in mind a model from the visual arts. His early work thrummed with the spirits of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Dada, and Surrealism. Now, he contemplated American still lifes.
Still lifes depict inanimate objects arranged for aesthetic purposes. Though often viewed as extreme realism-domestic experience in its humblest aspects, fruit on a table, picked flowers-still life is, in fact, "the most artificial of all artistic subjects and the one most concerned with the making of art," wrote John Wilmerding, who had closely studied the subject. "Before actually painting, an artist has crucial preliminary decisions to make regarding his selection and arrangement of forms." Thus, the "foremost concern of still-life painting is pure artistic form. In this regard, it is not accidental that the great cubist breakthrough...took place via still-life components," Wilmerding said. "[Still life] has always drawn special attention to its inherently abstract and conceptual character."
Wilmerding"s insights help us grasp Don"s distinctive type of "realism": As ever, he was mostly engaged with formal concerns-juxtapositions, layerings-and the nature of art.
"Bishop" tells the story of a man"s day, but every gesture, thought, or activity in which he engages is isolated from the others, sentence by sentence. The story presents a series of moments, arranged the way objects are grouped together (but apart) in a still life. Bishop, an art critic, is writing a biography of the nineteenth-century American painter William Michael Harnett. In the course of his research, he learns about a second artist, the still-life painter John F. Peto, whose work "was discovered when, after his death, his pictures were exhibited with the faked signatures of William Michael Harnett."
Peto and Harnett are actual historical figures. Harnett enjoyed a successful career. His most famous painting is called After the Hunt After the Hunt, a phrase appropriate to Bishop"s emotional life.