Once more, Helen became pregnant, and once again she lost the baby. "I a.s.sumed that with Don"s Catholic background, we would eventually have children," she later said, "[but] I now had ambivalent feelings about [it]." Just before the latest pregnancy, her gynecologist, Dr. Charles Bancroft, had recommended medical testing; nothing suggested that either she or Don had any reproductive problems. "It was apparent that Don detested having to undergo...tests and seemed to feel that somehow it tainted the idea of having a child. I was struck by the depth of his need for "mystery" and spontaneity. It was becoming clear that Don"s sensibilities made it difficult for him to confront the realities of being a father." Helen wrote that in the 1950s, "pregnancy was an event that women faced pretty much alone," and she admitted that after the latest miscarriage, "I...had no desire whatsoever to become pregnant again."
Typically, Don wanted to move on and put the past behind him. He told Helen he was always seeking a spot where "everything is different." He found a two-story apartment that he liked on Kipling Street, and placed a deposit on it. Designed by Burdette Keeland, a colleague of his father, it had white brick exteriors, redbrick interior floors, and a gla.s.s wall overlooking a garden out back. Don added texture to the living room by covering one wall with natural burlap.
Linn and Celestine Linnstaedter had been very kind to the couple, both as friends and landlords; Don dreaded telling them that he and Helen had found a new place to live. He informed them one evening in their yard. Before they could respond, Don, apparently self-conscious about Celestine"s psychiatric training, told her in a "sharp, accusatory tone that he knew what she was thinking about the psychological implications" of his frequent desire to move. "Celestine was visibly stunned," Helen recalled. Don seems to have mounted an attack to ward off criticism-or to deflect the guilt he was feeling.
18.
THE MECHANICAL BRIDE.
In 1959, without alerting his editorial board, Don decided Forum Forum would publish fiction. He was preparing to take his own fiction from the back burner; fitfully, he had been working on a story he"d eventually call "Hiding Man." would publish fiction. He was preparing to take his own fiction from the back burner; fitfully, he had been working on a story he"d eventually call "Hiding Man."
On September 25, he wrote to Martha Foley, a Columbia University professor and editor of the annual Best American Short Stories Best American Short Stories anthology. He asked her if she could "recommend some young fiction writers...who might be interested in contributing fiction or poetry to our quarterly. We have only recently decided to add fiction and poetry to the magazine, and this letter is an exploratory gesture." There is no record of a reply. No doubt, Don was exploring the possibility of advancing his own efforts while expanding anthology. He asked her if she could "recommend some young fiction writers...who might be interested in contributing fiction or poetry to our quarterly. We have only recently decided to add fiction and poetry to the magazine, and this letter is an exploratory gesture." There is no record of a reply. No doubt, Don was exploring the possibility of advancing his own efforts while expanding Forum Forum"s scope.
In a letter signed "Earl Long," Walker Percy told Don he had been "wra.s.sling with a piece of fiction and not doing too well." Don phoned him and asked to see what he was up to. Percy hesitated; he was not yet comfortable enough to show Don the "curious adventures of my ingenious young moviegoer."
To encourage him, Don phoned his old friend Herman Gollob, now working as an acquisitions editor for Little, Brown in Boston. He mentioned Percy"s novel. Gollob made some calls and discovered that Knopf had already bought it. Don contacted Percy, who admitted, "Yes, Knopf did option my book, paid me a small sum, then shot it back with the suggestion that I rewrite it. Since then I"ve been sitting here...of no mind to do anything...[but] soon...[I"ll] give you any part you might want."
True to his word, Percy mailed the book"s second chapter to Don, who wasted no time setting it into type. To shape it as a stand-alone story, Don deleted most of the last twelve pages of the ma.n.u.script. Percy didn"t mind. "Glad you wish to use as much as you do. You are welcome to it. Your reaction to the last section will probably be of great value to me. There"s my weakness...Platonizing...and it may be fatal."
The excerpt, ent.i.tled "Carnival in Gentilly," appeared in the Summer 1960 issue, a year before Percy published the novel.
Don fought hard to land another story in Forum Forum, by a young author named Bruce Brooks. John Allred, chair of Forum Forum"s editorial board, objected to the story"s h.o.m.os.e.xual theme and nixed it without submitting it to the other board members. Furious, Don wrote to him, "[N]ot publishing this story (or the next one) is a certain way to kill Forum. Forum. The magazine is dead just as soon as we are governed by other people"s antic.i.p.ated reactions to what we print. We have killed it ourselves." He went on to say "Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Lawrence, Stein etc. etc. were all greeted with exactly this kind of outraged alarm when they first appeared. They were redeemed by time. Ought we to content ourselves with "safe" writers or writers for whom other people have already taken the risks? To argue that ours is a special situation is no argument. Our situation is precisely what we make of it." The magazine is dead just as soon as we are governed by other people"s antic.i.p.ated reactions to what we print. We have killed it ourselves." He went on to say "Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Lawrence, Stein etc. etc. were all greeted with exactly this kind of outraged alarm when they first appeared. They were redeemed by time. Ought we to content ourselves with "safe" writers or writers for whom other people have already taken the risks? To argue that ours is a special situation is no argument. Our situation is precisely what we make of it."
Don"s relationship with the board, uneasy from the start, began to crumble. He initiated another editorial brawl when he accepted an essay by William Ga.s.s, a relatively unpublished young professor then teaching at Purdue. "The Case of the Obliging Stranger" opens with an elaborate description of a man bound and trussed and baked in an electric oven. Ga.s.s wrote: Any ethics that does not roundly condemn [baking the man] is vicious....This is really all I have to say, but I shall not stop on that account. Indeed, I shall begin again.
Several paragraphs follow, in which Ga.s.s argues that the task of ethics is to "elicit distinctions from a recalcitrant language." Meanwhile, the man "is overbaked. I wonder whether this is bad or not...."
Forum"s board did not know what to make of Ga.s.s"s playfulness and erudition-early hallmarks of his later, much-celebrated essays. On October 30, 1959, board member Howard F. McGraw sent Don a formal letter: "I...undoubtedly...have [a] different audience in mind for Forum. Forum. I myself conjure up, as the typical reader, a busy layman of better-than-average curiosity and intelligence....[M]y guess is that at least nine out of ten readers would give up [on Ga.s.s"s essay] after a page or two." I myself conjure up, as the typical reader, a busy layman of better-than-average curiosity and intelligence....[M]y guess is that at least nine out of ten readers would give up [on Ga.s.s"s essay] after a page or two."
At the bottom, in different typescript, McGraw added informally: Don,If, at this point, you"d be embarra.s.sed to reject the piece, go ahead and run it...but I do feel strongly about this matter. I think you...a.s.sume too much interest, background, and mental acuteness on the part of Forum Forum"s readers.
Don published Ga.s.s"s essay in the spring of 1960.
Maggie Marrs returned to Houston to retrieve the car she"d left with Don when she flew to France. She noticed a new gravity in him. "I wouldn"t say it was sadness," she says. "We were young. Sadness is something you learn later. I learned sadness over time, on subsequent trips to Paris because it"s so old, with the ancient stones on the bridges....Don probably learned sadness in New York." But he had visibly matured since she"d seen him last.
Around this time, Maurice Natanson made a brief return to Houston, for a guest lecture sponsored by the Contemporary Arts a.s.sociation. Don was pleased to see him, but the visit reminded him how dry his intellectual environment had become since his former teacher"s departure. Ever the existentialist, Natanson urged Don to act to dispel his gloom about Forum Forum"s future, but Don"s actions had been thwarted at every turn. He had proposed a "Conference of Editors of American Literary and Intellectual Journals" to be held in Houston, but the university refused to fund it. He submitted a grant application to the Ford Foundation, but it was rejected.
Don also felt isolated in his personal life. The Marantos had moved to Dallas; Joe had joined the PR wing of the Mobil Oil Corporation. Pat Goeters was busy establishing his architectural practice and producing doc.u.mentaries for Houston"s public television station. Don and Helen had made many friends among those active in the local art scene, but few of them could discuss writing and philosophy. Helen was only peripherally part of Don"s intellectual world. She worked full-time in advertising, a field Don disdained, no matter how supportive he wished to be of his wife. After a series of medical tests and miscarriages, the marriage no longer held the mystery, romance, and spontaneity Don thought he could sustain with Helen. As with the magazine, his idealism had vanished. It was an increasing burden to maintain creativity at home and at work, and to keep a high level of interest. And he wasn"t writing much.
"I could see and feel an abating of his exuberance for life," Helen recalled. A few months after her most recent miscarriage, Don read William Shirer"s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Shirer"s accounts of n.a.z.i atrocities so wrenched him, Helen "became apprehensive that he might commit suicide." He seemed now to "live with an intense consciousness of the world as evil." Shirer"s accounts of n.a.z.i atrocities so wrenched him, Helen "became apprehensive that he might commit suicide." He seemed now to "live with an intense consciousness of the world as evil."
If there had been hints of a persistent melancholy in Don-in his clashes with his father, his lip twitch, his defensive irony, his fear that something might be "permanently gone" after the army-this period, in 1959 and 1960, just before his breakthrough into important literary work, provides the first glimpse of a depression that would hound him all his life.
He retained enough Catholicism and stoic pride to rule out killing himself. Even in the pit of his misery, he told Helen he believed that a person "had a responsibility to live out his life, whatever the circ.u.mstances." In later years, he liked to paraphrase Nietzsche: The thought of suicide had often consoled him, Don said, and gotten him through many a bad night.
Natanson"s visit unnerved him. He worried that isolation had changed his personality. One night, half-jokingly, Natanson "alluded to Don"s penchant for fast cars, a reference to his Austin-Healey," Helen wrote. After that, Don "seemed to feel guilty that we were indulging ourselves." Though he "insisted on a beautiful place in which to live and work," he had a horror of seeming phony. He bristled when a friend kidded him about his fancy Bertoia chairs, and when another acquaintance told him he and Helen made a "chic" couple. He talked disparagingly of "driving a Jaguar," his shorthand for wealthy elitism. In years to come, many of his critics dismissed him as chic-in part, Don believed, because his stories appeared in The New Yorker The New Yorker next to glittering ads for watches, jewelry, fashion, and Jaguars. next to glittering ads for watches, jewelry, fashion, and Jaguars.
Following Natanson"s visit, Helen and Don talked again of Don leaving the university in order to write. "Don saw it as the need to confront the choice between a career with money and the lifestyle it could provide...or a wholehearted commitment to writing," Helen said later. At the end of 1959, she had started her own ad agency. She continued to teach at Dominican College. Despite her earnings, the couple remained in debt because of Don"s reckless spending. He wasn"t "indulging" himself so much as failing to keep track of finances in any organized way.
Helen feared he"d want to move again to ease his restiveness. She was happy on Kipling Street, and tired of constant change. Sure enough, one day Don complained to her-after they had lived on Kipling little more than a year-that the apartment was "inappropriate for a serious writing career."
That Don stayed with Forum Forum as long as he did, despite his frustrations, suggests he knew what he had accomplished, even if few others did. Simply put, for a brief time he edited one of the nation"s most serious and innovative intellectual journals-and at an out-of-the-way place with little funding and a conservative editorial board. The "strange and beautiful" pieces he published pleased him immensely, as evidenced by their echoes in his fiction. as long as he did, despite his frustrations, suggests he knew what he had accomplished, even if few others did. Simply put, for a brief time he edited one of the nation"s most serious and innovative intellectual journals-and at an out-of-the-way place with little funding and a conservative editorial board. The "strange and beautiful" pieces he published pleased him immensely, as evidenced by their echoes in his fiction.
The American College Public Relations a.s.sociation gave Forum Forum its highest award, in recognition of its distinction, in 1958. In a testimonial for the journal, Norman Mailer noted, "It looks as if I might receive better than full value for my subscription." Tirelessly, Don explored funding schemes. He sent a copy of the magazine to Ima Hogg, the wealthy daughter of Texas"s former governor, with a note saying, "[We] thought you might be interested." When Mc-Neil Lowry of the Ford Foundation came to Houston to talk to the directors of the Alley Theatre, Don notified the UH Development Office that they ought to pitch the magazine to him. The "drudge work" and his "numerous petty tasks" must have been "more deadening for him than anyone knew," Helen wrote. its highest award, in recognition of its distinction, in 1958. In a testimonial for the journal, Norman Mailer noted, "It looks as if I might receive better than full value for my subscription." Tirelessly, Don explored funding schemes. He sent a copy of the magazine to Ima Hogg, the wealthy daughter of Texas"s former governor, with a note saying, "[We] thought you might be interested." When Mc-Neil Lowry of the Ford Foundation came to Houston to talk to the directors of the Alley Theatre, Don notified the UH Development Office that they ought to pitch the magazine to him. The "drudge work" and his "numerous petty tasks" must have been "more deadening for him than anyone knew," Helen wrote.
At the same time, he delighted in the journal"s growing body of work: a ma.s.sive collage. In January 1959, he wrote Patrick J. Nicholson of the university"s Development Office: "Because Forum Forum has now published a total of ten issues, and because its future is now being debated" (in light of budget constraints), "it seems appropriate to offer at this time some facts about it which may serve to enrich the discussion." He composed an eclectic list, a precursor of the playful catalogs that would appear in his fiction. With great exuberance, he noted the wide range of subjects represented in the pieces that has now published a total of ten issues, and because its future is now being debated" (in light of budget constraints), "it seems appropriate to offer at this time some facts about it which may serve to enrich the discussion." He composed an eclectic list, a precursor of the playful catalogs that would appear in his fiction. With great exuberance, he noted the wide range of subjects represented in the pieces that Forum Forum had published: had published: Educational television, engineering education, sea animals, H. H. Bancroft"s histories, opera, Faulkner, the new Germany, the director Elia Kazan, consumer research, anthropology, radiation in venom tests, the natural numbers in mathematics, home design, the French playwright Jean Giraudoux, the "new critics," pottery, Niccolo Machiavelli, the idea of progress, semantics, the Suez crisis, the separation of church and state, Ernest Jones, freedom as an idea, Coleridge, the relation between philosophy and the social sciences, Stalinism, contemporary music, the Algerian question, logical positivism, angels, academic freedom, psychology and ancient religions, scientism, movies and art, C. G. Jung, architectural literature, recognition of China, the fantastic, the Organization Man, nihilism, disarmament, magic, Eliot"s verse plays, the Welfare State, destiny, the Affluent Society, the new French fiction, modern composers, Freud, dictators, the contemporary theatre, the suburbs, the neo-Dada movement, Fortune Fortune magazine, and James Fenimore Cooper. magazine, and James Fenimore Cooper.
Don thrilled at this woolly mix, at the fur that flew when worlds collided. He continued to attract top talent: Robbe-Grillet, Gregory Bateson, Roger Caillois, and Marshall McLuhan. Pat Goeters had studied with Mc-Luhan in Toronto; he had talked with Don about Mc-Luhan"s vision of a new kind of writing for the electronic age.
Don solicited a piece from McLuhan. For Forum Forum"s Summer 1960 issue, McLuhan submitted a copy of a speech he had written, ent.i.tled "The Medium Is the Message." Soon, this phrase would ring throughout the "global village."
McLuhan a.n.a.lyzed the way power structures-government, media-"get inside the...collective mind" through propaganda, advertising, and electronic imagery to ensure a "condition of public helplessness." Individuals exist in a storm of information and stimuli, he said, and the way to survive it is to ride the waves, just like Edgar Allan Poe"s main character in the story "A Descent into the Maelstrom." "Poe"s sailor saved himself by studying the action of the whirlpool and by cooperating with it," McLuhan wrote in a book ent.i.tled The Mechanical Bride The Mechanical Bride, first published in 1951.
McLuhan"s version of riding the maelstrom was to forget what we think think we know-about newspapers, laundry detergents, magazine ads, movies, clothing-and study objects as they really are (a phenomenological approach); so, for example, the front page of we know-about newspapers, laundry detergents, magazine ads, movies, clothing-and study objects as they really are (a phenomenological approach); so, for example, the front page of The New York Times The New York Times is not just a summary of the news but also a series of discontinuous columns of pictures and print, collaged together in a frenzied fashion that recalls Cubist paintings, Joyce"s novels, and modern theories of physics. is not just a summary of the news but also a series of discontinuous columns of pictures and print, collaged together in a frenzied fashion that recalls Cubist paintings, Joyce"s novels, and modern theories of physics. Something Something about the present conjures chaos, and it is changing the way we process thought, the way we act and consort with one another. about the present conjures chaos, and it is changing the way we process thought, the way we act and consort with one another.
Trivia, cultural products, and social behavior are signs, McLuhan said. These signs don"t always match the meaning of a thing (a Cadillac and a clunker both "mean" transportation, but they signal different values: wealth and cla.s.s versus versus tastelessness and poverty). Power creates and repeats certain signs (Cadillac equals cla.s.s) to control ma.s.s behavior. tastelessness and poverty). Power creates and repeats certain signs (Cadillac equals cla.s.s) to control ma.s.s behavior.
Poe"s sailor, locked in the whirlpool, dodging debris, says, "I must have been delirious, for I even sought amus.e.m.e.nt amus.e.m.e.nt in speculating" upon the objects sinking and flying around. For McLuhan, the sailor"s surrender to chaos, and his playfulness, provided a guide to the future. in speculating" upon the objects sinking and flying around. For McLuhan, the sailor"s surrender to chaos, and his playfulness, provided a guide to the future.
Notably, in France, Roland Barthes was writing essays similar to McLuhan"s for the left-wing magazine Les Lettres Nouvelles Les Lettres Nouvelles. Eventually, Barthes"s pieces were gathered in a collection called Mythologies: Mythologies: discourses on Greta Garbo"s face, food photos in magazines, laundry detergents, popular wrestling, tabloid profiles of s.p.a.ce aliens. Like McLuhan, Barthes argued that the trivia of everyday life was packed with meanings that were often at odds with their functions. We inhabit a world of signs; they claim to be "natural," but, in fact, they mask power"s real motives. discourses on Greta Garbo"s face, food photos in magazines, laundry detergents, popular wrestling, tabloid profiles of s.p.a.ce aliens. Like McLuhan, Barthes argued that the trivia of everyday life was packed with meanings that were often at odds with their functions. We inhabit a world of signs; they claim to be "natural," but, in fact, they mask power"s real motives.
Don adopted this outlook in writing his first successful short story, "Me and Miss Mandible," in October 1960. "We read signs as promises," his narrator says. "I believed that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love....
"All of us...still believe that the American flag betokens a kind of general righteousness. But I say...that signs are signs and some of them are lies."
In a later story, "Brain Damage" (1970), Don echoed "A Descent into the Maelstrom." Like Poe"s sailor, discovering entertainment in chaos, Don"s narrator goes "[s]kiing along on the soft surface of brain damage, never to sink, because [I] don"t understand the danger-"
In his Forum Forum essay, McLuhan sketched themes he would expand in books ( essay, McLuhan sketched themes he would expand in books (The Gutenberg Galaxy, Understanding Media, The Medium Is the Ma.s.sage, Counterblast, Through the Vanishing Point): Electric light is pure information; electronic media have created a global village that connects people through transmitted images (the modern equivalent of tribal drums); in the past, print technology isolated individuals, enforcing private instead of public experiences; electricity has made us tribal again, postliterate, yoked together in a seamless electronic web; the real "message" of television is the subtle mutation of our sensory patterns; and literature must change to reflect the fragmented, instantaneous nature of our age.
The best writing now, according to McLuhan, is inclusive: inclusive: elliptical, indeterminate, open-ended, forcing readers to partic.i.p.ate in extracting meanings from texts. elliptical, indeterminate, open-ended, forcing readers to partic.i.p.ate in extracting meanings from texts.
McLuhan provided some of the earliest, most cogent dissections of the "information age." Don saw something else in his work-a kind of media the ology. As Andreas Huyssen has written, "... try an experiment in reading [McLuhan]: for electricity subst.i.tute the Holy Spirit, for medium read G.o.d, and for the global village of the screen understand the planet united under Rome....G.o.d is the ultimate aim of [the electronic] implosion...."
Years later, McLuhan"s "theology" appeared in Don"s story "At the End of the Mechanical Age" (1973). A couple meets over kitchen soaps in a supermarket-"RUB and FAB and TUB and suchlike." The pair "huddle[s] and cling[s]" as the "mechanical age" comes to a close. Meanwhile, "G.o.d...stand[s] in the bas.e.m.e.nt reading the meters to see how much grace had been used up....Grace is electricity, science has found, it is not like like electricity, it electricity, it is is electricity..." electricity..."
After work each day, Don huddled with Helen on Kipling Street, trying to keep his restlessness at bay. Finally, he insisted on moving again. They drove around for hours in the evenings and on weekends, often at night. Helen later explained that "Don wanted to "see the interior and the lighting-we can learn more about the house at night," [he said]." Eventually, they found a duplex on the corner of Harold and Roseland streets, near a number of art galleries and the University of St. Thomas, a Basilian school. The duplex owner was a commercial artist; the apartment, built between 1910 and 1920, opened onto a yard next to his office building. Don converted the screened sleeping porch into a study. It overlooked Chinese elms, oaks, and magnolias. Awnings draped the windows. Next door, a rooming house sheltered transients. Nearby, other old homes were being converted into architectural offices, galleries, or advertising firms. When Helen first saw the new place, its shabbiness and darkness depressed her. Within a couple of weeks, Don, his brother Pete, and Henry Buckley had painted the interior a bright white, with an ocher accent in the living room.
"After we moved [in], I became unusually nervous," Helen wrote. "Not only was I still recovering from the emotional loss of the two little boys but I was also physically exhausted." Don wasn"t soothed by the change, either. A few months earlier, he had decided to see a psychiatrist, a prominent Houston doctor named Spencer Bayles.
How could Don afford him? Clearly, he and Helen were living beyond their means, and turning to Don"s family for help-a situation that kept him dependent on his father.
With Bayles, Don shared his frustrations with the Forum Forum board, his feelings of aloneness, his difficulty finding time to write, his concern over Helen"s uneasiness. He didn"t discuss these sessions with her, but she understood how unhappy he was; three years earlier, he had talked her out of psychoa.n.a.lysis, ridiculing its uselessness. It was a sign of his desperation that he was willing to see a doctor now. board, his feelings of aloneness, his difficulty finding time to write, his concern over Helen"s uneasiness. He didn"t discuss these sessions with her, but she understood how unhappy he was; three years earlier, he had talked her out of psychoa.n.a.lysis, ridiculing its uselessness. It was a sign of his desperation that he was willing to see a doctor now.
In "The Sandman," an unusually autobiographical story, Don"s narrator recalls his a.n.a.lysis with a doctor "down in Texas"-"a tall thin man who never said anything much. If you could get a "What comes to mind?" out of him you were doing splendidly." The doctor urges his patients to act, but never does anything himself. The experience leaves the narrator a "little sour."
In "Florence Green Is 81," Don compares story writing to a psychiatric appointment, with the reader as the doctor, bored, "washing...hands between hours," and the writer as the "nervous dreary patient."
It"s likely that Don considered himself smarter than Dr. Bayles-at the very least, he was quicker with words. The heavy emotional masking in his writing, his aloofness in public encounters, his cutting irony-all suggest the self-consciousness and defensiveness a doctor would have had to negotiate to make any headway with Don. Bayles wasn"t up to the task-or so Don felt. In the 1980s, he told his UH colleague, the poet Cynthia Macdonald, that as a young man he had seen a therapist who advised him it was time to get out of Houston. The therapist said "that when he had achieved certain things in life and in himself"-presumably, literary success and peace with his father-"he could return." Don already knew these things. As he would write years later in "Return," any "ordinary shrink could have said to me, "Why are you being so hard on yourself?" and many have, I was disappointed."
Disappointments aside, Don didn"t completely dismiss psychoa.n.a.lysis (his fiction is enriched by his broad reading in the subject). In the spring of 1959, he published in Forum Forum a piece called "The Psychology of Destiny," by Henri F. Ellenberger, which argued that the individual is free to choose from among the traits he has inherited from his family to shape an a piece called "The Psychology of Destiny," by Henri F. Ellenberger, which argued that the individual is free to choose from among the traits he has inherited from his family to shape an elected destiny elected destiny.
In that same issue of Forum Forum, Don elected to publish a short story he had written, "Pages from the Annual Report." The byline read "David Reiner."
In the story, Baskerville, a worker stuck in a drab office among piles of paper, "some of them four feet tall," laments being lost in a bureaucratic dead end along with his partner, a man named De Vinne. Baskerville "likes things a little more exciting than they are," but he can"t change anything. He can"t locate the corporate "headquarters." His aimless exchanges with De Vinne read like dialogues from Waiting for G.o.dot Waiting for G.o.dot.
At one point, a "girl from the mimeograph room" barges into the office. Baskerville wants her to give "headquarters" a message from him. The scene mimics Didi"s talks with the mysterious boy in G.o.dot G.o.dot.
Eventually, Baskerville reveals to De Vinne that the papers on their desks contain the "substance of human lives." The office holds together "the meaningless lives of hundreds and hundreds of people." Baskerville asks, "You"re aware that there"s nothing on the paper?"
"[W]hy has our own organization...turned on us?" De Vinne inquires.
"Because it knows we"re thinking."
In this early attempt to translate Beckett and Kafka to an American setting, Don overburdens a slender conception with broad jokes and existential torpor. But the rhythm is tight-a fine balance, learned from Beckett, between melancholy and humor. The fiction ends with a fiction-a contributor"s note affixed to the bottom of the page, in which Don"s longing is palpable: "David Reiner lives in New York City. He is now at work on a novel."
In the fall of 1959, Don printed Harold Rosenberg"s "The Audience as Subject." It thrilled him to publish this man whose views had galvanized him from the moment his father gave him Marcel Raymond"s From Baudelaire to Surrealism From Baudelaire to Surrealism. Don"s correspondence with Rosenberg had begun when Houston"s Contemporary Arts Museum planned a show ent.i.tled "Out of the Ordinary," featuring works by Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg, Leon Golub, Francis Picabia, Joan Miro, Yves Tanguy, Jim Love, and Guy Johnson. Don was friends with Love and Johnson; he had become active in the Contemporary Arts a.s.sociation, which supported the museum. He had helped the museum"s director, Robert C. Morris, enlist Rosenberg to write the show"s catalog introduction. In the course of their exchanges, Don courted Rosenberg for a contribution to Forum Forum. Soon thereafter, "The Audience as Subject" arrived in the mail. In it, Rosenberg wrote of Robert Rauschenberg, "his work has sought out the clutter of souvenirs and legacies to which the common heart is attached."
Don would remember that line. In "See the Moon?" his narrator says of the elements that compose his story, "It"s my hope that these...souvenirs...will someday merge, blur-cohere is the word, maybe-into something meaningful. A grand word, meaningful. What do I look for? A work of art, I"ll not accept anything less."
Like Marcel Raymond, Rosenberg insists that the authentically authentically new is a variation on tradition, not a thing randomly conceived for novelty. He concludes that the "new" is "full of pep in having found out how to make materials talk back in unexpected ways to the civilization that is producing them." new is a variation on tradition, not a thing randomly conceived for novelty. He concludes that the "new" is "full of pep in having found out how to make materials talk back in unexpected ways to the civilization that is producing them."
Among the last pieces Don published in Forum Forum was "Sartre and Literature," by Maurice Natanson. The writer of fiction, Natanson said, must plunge into the "world of objects" and return to " "the things themselves" " in human experience. It is impossible to was "Sartre and Literature," by Maurice Natanson. The writer of fiction, Natanson said, must plunge into the "world of objects" and return to " "the things themselves" " in human experience. It is impossible to speak speak of consciousness, or to of consciousness, or to represent represent its movement, without emphasizing the objects of its awareness. its movement, without emphasizing the objects of its awareness.
Natanson believed this fact had profound implications for the concept of character in fiction.
If a writer merely depicts a character in a setting, a "false dualism" gets established. The setting is presented as "out there," separate from the character. Natanson insisted that, in life, "[any object I perceive is] not at a distance from me, it does not subsist over there." Rather, "[it is] an integral part of my awareness." To be true to the nature of awareness, a writer must render the "world unbetrayed by sensibility or understanding." This, Sartre did in his fiction. He "erased the distance between consciousness and the world."
In "existential literature," we are "presented with reality as the...product of consciousness situated in the world." Writers can best represent the activity activity of consciousness by simultaneously offering and interrogating the "given." This creates "an internal questioning of the literary work." Ideal forms for "self-interrogation" are the "confession, the diary, the embattled monologue," in which "each fragment of experience takes on multiple possibilities for interpretation." of consciousness by simultaneously offering and interrogating the "given." This creates "an internal questioning of the literary work." Ideal forms for "self-interrogation" are the "confession, the diary, the embattled monologue," in which "each fragment of experience takes on multiple possibilities for interpretation."
In an existential novel, the characters "cause the world to be," Natanson stated; every scene"s "particulars...are exploded by consciousness into a kind of shrapnel."
The "central achievement" of this kind of fiction is the "uncovering of the imaginary as the informing structure of the literary microcosm." To denigrate writers like Sartre for insufficient realism, undeveloped characters, and missing action (as some critics did, and do) is to condemn them for not doing what they never intended to do in the first place.
Don"s editorial choices-and his stubbornness-continued to upset Forum Forum"s editorial board. When John Allred received Don"s response to his rejection of the Bruce Brooks story, he called a meeting to review ma.n.u.script procedure. According to policy, if two board members vetoed a ma.n.u.script, it would be dropped. For nearly four years, Don had slipped his choices past the majority of the board, because most members didn"t bother to read any one piece.
The meeting took place on March 23, 1960. Don didn"t attend. The board decided it would a.s.sume complete editorial control. On March 30, Don informed the board, "[T]here is apparently a fundamental disagreement about what kind of a magazine Forum Forum should be. [I have] been attempting to publish a serious journal, comparable to other university-sponsored journals." In truth, should be. [I have] been attempting to publish a serious journal, comparable to other university-sponsored journals." In truth, Forum Forum existed in a league of its own. Don did not feel that "there was sufficient support for [his] objective." He offered his resignation. existed in a league of its own. Don did not feel that "there was sufficient support for [his] objective." He offered his resignation.
In a letter to his old friend Herman Gollob, he admitted that his plans were "very nebulous" and joked, "Probably, I"ll reenlist." More seriously, he said, "I"m...toying with the idea of going to Iowa for a sort of combined study/vacation at their summer writing program. It would be a couple of months and although I dislike the idea of this kind of thing, it might spur me to get more work done." He didn"t pursue this avenue.
When Don threatened to quit the magazine, he was in the midst of preparing the Summer 1960 issue. He agreed to stay on until it had gone to print. On September 9, with his obligations met, he wrote another letter of resignation; he left the job on October 1.
19.
DARLING DUCKLING.