In these remarks, Don found a theme for his story.
He took several other cues from James. At a hotel party, James said, he encountered "violence in...communication" and was "transported to conditions of extraordinary complexity and brilliancy." The whole thing "remains for me...a gorgeous golden blur."
From these these remarks, Don fashioned his story"s form, its fresh style for "new and heedless" readers. remarks, Don fashioned his story"s form, its fresh style for "new and heedless" readers.
He wrote: "Carola Mitt, brown-haired, brown-eyed and just nineteen, was born in Berlin (real name: Mittenstein), left Germany five years ago. In her senior year at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich, Conn., Carola went to the Viennese Opera Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria, was spotted by a Glamour Glamour editor." editor."
The story then mixes fashion-industry talk with talk by academics, wealthy doctors, and other guests at the ball (a series of "violent communications"). The effect is to undercut the glittering surface, and to suggest the hypocrisy at the core of the nation"s "machinery." The narrative points out that the fashion world"s marketing of female beauty has serious consequences for s.e.xual behavior and pregnancy rates. One result is that abortion has become a financial boon to the medical community (in the story, abortion is the doctors" main topic of conversation). Art, history, and people have become products churned out in America"s lubricious whirl.
As it turned out, Henry James was not Don"s only source for the story. In its December 22, 1961, issue, Time Time magazine ran an article on fashion models ent.i.tled "The Bones Have Names." The piece profiled the latest "leaders in the new wave" of modeling: Dolores Wettach, Isabella Albonico, Dorothea McGowan-and Marola Witt. "Marola Witt, brown-haired, brown-eyed and just 19, was born in Berlin (real name: Wittenstein), left Germany five years ago," the article says. "In her senior year at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich, Conn., Marola went to the Viennese Opera Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria, was spotted by a magazine ran an article on fashion models ent.i.tled "The Bones Have Names." The piece profiled the latest "leaders in the new wave" of modeling: Dolores Wettach, Isabella Albonico, Dorothea McGowan-and Marola Witt. "Marola Witt, brown-haired, brown-eyed and just 19, was born in Berlin (real name: Wittenstein), left Germany five years ago," the article says. "In her senior year at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich, Conn., Marola went to the Viennese Opera Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria, was spotted by a Glamour Glamour editor." editor."
A gleeful collagist, Don lifted whole paragraphs from the Time Time piece, pasted them against the background of James"s remarks about the Waldorf-Astoria (which Don a.s.sumed any sophisticated reader-the kind of reader piece, pasted them against the background of James"s remarks about the Waldorf-Astoria (which Don a.s.sumed any sophisticated reader-the kind of reader he he was after-would know), and produced a tiny, potent meditation on American culture. He saw how the fashion article ill.u.s.trated James"s theme-how, more than ever, James"s theme was current. Rather than was after-would know), and produced a tiny, potent meditation on American culture. He saw how the fashion article ill.u.s.trated James"s theme-how, more than ever, James"s theme was current. Rather than commenting commenting on this, Don produced a collage that on this, Don produced a collage that demonstrated demonstrated it. The result is a far more effective snapshot of contemporary America-with links to the nation"s past-than any direct presentation of weighty material. it. The result is a far more effective snapshot of contemporary America-with links to the nation"s past-than any direct presentation of weighty material.
Toward the end of the story, a character quotes Emile Meyerson, in French. In English, the line would read: "Man practices metaphysics just as he breathes, without thinking about it." Even in the shallowest situations, the human soul-however we define it-is at issue.
In "Florence Green Is 81," Don had quoted Oscar Wilde"s remark that "Mr. Henry James writes fiction as though it were a painful duty"-a comment on James"s style style, although not on his content, for which Don had the greatest admiration. America"s style had changed; New York"s style had changed, wholesale, at least twice over since James had first observed it. Don knew that for old truths to emerge refreshed, they would have to be clothed in yet another style, for yet another generation. His chosen duty was to find that style, to join the community of writers he admired-makers of books, window signs, New Yorker New Yorker stories-and add his contribution. His duty was to celebrate the city and lament its sorrowful wounds. stories-and add his contribution. His duty was to celebrate the city and lament its sorrowful wounds.
24.
LOVELY OLD PICTURESQUE DIRTY BUILDINGS.
In Houston, Don had "learned to impersonate a Texan well enough," he said. For better or worse, his "sensibility was pretty well put together" before he came to New York. Still, "New York is...our Paris; you go to have your corners knocked off."
Night after night now, often at parties in Elaine de Kooning"s studio, he got his corners shaved. "I was one night congratulated by a prominent poet on my "rural irony"; being from Texas, you"re a natural target," Don said.
Meanwhile, in Texas, Helen was miserable. Every other day, she spoke to Don on the phone. "I could hear [his] loneliness as well," she recalled. By late October, after sitting alone on her wedding anniversary, she"d had enough. She told her sister Odell to manage the ad agency, at least temporarily. Helen was going to New York.
As soon as she told Don she was ready to join him, he began to search for an apartment. He "walked around for days," he wrote Helen. He looked at, he said:
lovely old picturesque dirty apartment buildings in filthy and fine neighborhoods, bits of old Village, up to 36th Street (Murray Hill district) and as far up as the sixties where the rents are really high but everything is double-picturesque. On the Lower East Side the rents are lower but the place is filled with b.u.ms (an estimated 45,000) whereas Street (Murray Hill district) and as far up as the sixties where the rents are really high but everything is double-picturesque. On the Lower East Side the rents are lower but the place is filled with b.u.ms (an estimated 45,000) whereas on the Upper East Side the rents are higher but the place is filled with...h.o.m.os.e.xuals...(an estimated 100,000). On the West Side the place is filled with Puerto Ricans and Americans who will, it is said, cut your throat for a nickel.
He settled on a flat in the Mayfair Fifth Building at Fifteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, about eight blocks north of Washington Square. He sent Helen a sketch of the floor plan; the sleeping alcove was "like the dining room part of a living room-dining combination rather than a bedroom." There was a "handsome parquet floor." He a.s.sured Helen that "the neighborhood is quite good"-the building had a "24-hour doorman." The rent was $163 a month. He suggested that Helen recruit his brothers to help her ship the couple"s furniture. "Sweetheart, I look forward eagerly to your G.o.dd.a.m.n arrival," he told her, and signed the letter with "every kind of love."
"I really had no idea how we would get our agency through this crisis," Helen recalled. Despite an upturn in business (largely by representing beer and wine interests in the city), "I knew that I was leaving Odell with a serious indebtedness."
Don met Helen at Newark"s airport. They took an airport bus into Manhattan, then caught a cab to their new apartment. Helen"s reaction to New York was just as muted as during her previous visits. The apartment was "really...an efficiency," mostly bare of furniture, she wrote later. "Directly across from us on 15th Street there was a garment manufacturing shop. We could look into a room crowded with sewing machines, racks of clothes, and the workers-all women-bent over them." Street there was a garment manufacturing shop. We could look into a room crowded with sewing machines, racks of clothes, and the workers-all women-bent over them."
Don was eager to show her around the city, and also determined, perhaps, to keep her from dwelling on the apartment"s small size, so he fed her a quick lunch and took her to the magazine office. "It was dark and dismal," Helen slated flatly in her memoir. Don was frustrated that she didn"t share his excitement about the romance of New York. Their apartment building had once housed the publication offices of Il Martello Il Martello, Carlo Tresca"s anarchist newspaper. Delmonico"s once stood across the street-Charles d.i.c.kens had been honored there on his lecture tours in America. Don pointed out to Helen the site of the old Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which happened to be near Henry James"s childhood home. None of this impressed her.
On Sunday evening, Don took her to Kenneth Koch"s apartment in the West Village. Koch had promised Don a piece for the first issue of Location Location, and Don wanted to discuss it with him. "The apartment...was extremely depressing," Helen recalled. It "was in an older building that needed remodeling. The paint was flaking and peeling everywhere, and there were water stains on the wallpaper and other signs of decay. When I saw the bathroom, I immediately thought of Baby Doll Baby Doll, a 1950s film with Karl Malden. The film became famous in part for a notorious scene in which Carroll Baker is bathing in an old enamel tub in a run-down farmhouse."
Koch"s wife had set up a table with a typewriter in the kitchen so she could work on her dissertation. Helen mentioned that she might enroll in graduate school, and Koch promised to help her find part-time teaching at the New School for Social Research. Don sat down with Koch and his ma.n.u.script, Koch"s wife resumed her typing, and Helen was left with little to do for two hours but contemplate the apartment"s dreariness. She had not liked Koch on his visit to Houston. Though she saw a "more serious dimension" of him now, as he and Don discussed writing, Helen was "extremely uncomfortable" throughout the visit. "I was...relieved when we left the building," she said. "Don said he thought Kenneth"s apartment could be comfortable as a home, but I could not take [him] seriously."
On Monday after breakfast, Don went to work at the Location Location office. Helen didn"t want to sit around the nearly empty apartment, so she walked all morning, trying to find grocery stores and cleaners. Don came home for lunch, and in the afternoon Helen walked up Fifth Avenue to the museums. She carried with her Joseph h.e.l.ler"s office. Helen didn"t want to sit around the nearly empty apartment, so she walked all morning, trying to find grocery stores and cleaners. Don came home for lunch, and in the afternoon Helen walked up Fifth Avenue to the museums. She carried with her Joseph h.e.l.ler"s Catch-22 Catch-22, which had been published the previous year and was gaining cult status among serious readers. Now and then she"d find a bench in a park where she could sit and read the book or a newspaper. A week earlier, President Kennedy had announced that Soviet missiles had been discovered in Cuba. The world appeared to be on the brink of a nuclear confrontation; it was hard to know how seriously to take the threat, but New York was busy stocking its fallout shelters with food and water.
On Monday evening, Don and Joe Maranto took Helen to a spaghetti house near Grand Central Station. They noticed Dwight Macdonald eating at a corner table-recently, Don had read Macdonald"s Against the American Grain Against the American Grain. He loved the fact that he could walk around town and run into writers he admired. After dinner, Don, Helen, and Joe headed to the Village Gate to catch a Miles Davis set, then to another bar to hear Sonny Rollins.
Don was especially thrilled to see Rollins perform. Rollins had just released his landmark bop alb.u.m, The Bridge The Bridge. Early in his first set, Helen began to complain that she was exhausted. She asked Don if they could take a taxi home. "Don was unhappy at giving up the evening so early," Helen recalled. Once again, she had failed to grasp the romance of the city and its music, which had so captivated Don. "For the very first time, I became unreasonably angry with him and we were soon having an explosive and devastating argument," Helen said. They "had spoken harshly to each other only two or perhaps three times" during their six years of marriage, but now their underlying worries-Helen"s fears about her business, Don"s anxiety about succeeding as a writer-lay bare the tensions between them. Helen accused him of ignoring his responsibilities. Her debts were his debts. She had sacrificed to make it possible for him to come to New York, and here he was, spending all their money in jazz clubs. For his part, he no longer felt he could "take care" of her the way she wanted to be taken care of and still pursue his literary dream.
Underneath all this was his clear delight in New York and her equally obvious disgust with most of what she had seen of the city. The argument got so bad, Don finally said that he had agonized over their separation at first, but now he had begun to enjoy his independence. He wanted to "live alone and date other girls."
"I was shattered by this admission, even though I too had begun to enjoy the freedom of being without the daily responsibility of marriage," Helen wrote. "I told him that I "understood" and had certainly found other men attractive but that I could not fathom giving up our marriage.
"By the end of the evening," she said, "I had decided that I should just return to Houston."
The following morning, they agreed to wait a few weeks before deciding anything. Don insisted on sticking to his daily routine. He went to the Location Location office, and he met Helen for lunch at the Museum of Modern Art. He had arranged to meet Jack Kroll there. Don had been introduced to Kroll at a party-a bear of a man, a veteran of the Korean war, a former jazz drummer, now a writer with a love of high and popular culture, he understood Don and looked past Don"s "rural irony." In 1963, Kroll would join the staff of office, and he met Helen for lunch at the Museum of Modern Art. He had arranged to meet Jack Kroll there. Don had been introduced to Kroll at a party-a bear of a man, a veteran of the Korean war, a former jazz drummer, now a writer with a love of high and popular culture, he understood Don and looked past Don"s "rural irony." In 1963, Kroll would join the staff of Newsweek Newsweek and become the magazine"s premier arts and entertainment critic, but for now "he seemed a bit lost," Helen recalled. "Don told me that Jack"s friends wanted to help him, but it was not clear what he wanted." and become the magazine"s premier arts and entertainment critic, but for now "he seemed a bit lost," Helen recalled. "Don told me that Jack"s friends wanted to help him, but it was not clear what he wanted."
Kroll had "troubles" with women, and he was behind on alimony payments to his ex-wife; his friends knew him as a world-cla.s.s procrastinator who could never decide what to write about. He was six years older than Don and he knew the city well-Don watched him closely to see how he handled the "mess" he was in.
In any case, Helen liked Kroll. The witty lunch conversation kept her from stewing. Still, she continued to feel like an outsider in the city. "Jack...[was] sometimes difficult to follow in his stream of erudite conversation," she recalled, "allusions to people, events, and ideas that were then part of the New York scene." But the day was brilliantly sunny. Khrushchev had just agreed to dismantle Russia"s Cuban missiles; the world crisis seemed to be over and the public relief was palpable. Don invited Kroll to come over sometime for fried chicken-one of Don"s favorite meals, "but one that I seldom cooked," Helen wrote. Nevertheless, the invitation suggested steadiness, and she left the museum feeling better.
For the next couple of weeks, Helen relaxed a little. She found Manhattan to be "an adventure every day. Walking around it was an exhilarating experience. We could walk everywhere-to restaurants, theaters, museums, art galleries, and even produce markets, grocery stores, and the laundry. Even though our future together was still undecided, [Don and I] spent hours looking at furnishings for our apartment."
Then depression set in again: "There were so many shops...that the search for new or exciting designs was exhausting and made the effort less an aesthetic experience than we had known" together in Houston, she recalled.
Every day, Helen phoned her sister. They discussed the ad agency"s accounts and once or twice a week Helen would go with Don to the Location Location office. There, she"d write copy to send to Odell. Don had always cordoned off his worlds: He kept his interests far from his father so his father couldn"t mock them; he kept his journalist friends away from his art pals so conflicts wouldn"t arise between them; he had kept his fiction hidden from most of the Houston crowd. Now Helen was bringing ad accounts into his New York office-smuggling Houston, a world he had tried to leave, into Gotham. Don"s discomfort grew as Helen-despite her efforts to enjoy the city-failed to adjust to her surroundings. office. There, she"d write copy to send to Odell. Don had always cordoned off his worlds: He kept his interests far from his father so his father couldn"t mock them; he kept his journalist friends away from his art pals so conflicts wouldn"t arise between them; he had kept his fiction hidden from most of the Houston crowd. Now Helen was bringing ad accounts into his New York office-smuggling Houston, a world he had tried to leave, into Gotham. Don"s discomfort grew as Helen-despite her efforts to enjoy the city-failed to adjust to her surroundings.
Her worries about the agency prompted her to press him for a decision about their future. His response was mixed-evidence of genuine anguish. "During these few weeks in Manhattan, Don was more pa.s.sionate than ever but unyielding in asking for a separation," Helen recalled. "He thought that the life we had shared was "too pretty," that the "real world is not like that." "
In his youth, in a city struggling for respectability in the arts, he had idealized women. Now, in this world-cla.s.s metropolis, he saw sophisticated men and women-people like Jack Kroll-moving casually in and out of romantic "messes."
In Houston, Don had had to accept being the "great man"s son." Here in New York, he found himself a "target"-the naive Texan full of "rural irony" in an art world rent by petty jealousies. He chafed against these saddles. For all his love of romance-and his efforts to keep it alive-he did not want to be hoodwinked by "pretty" ideals. He wanted to see the "real world." He wanted to be his own own Donald Barthelme. Donald Barthelme.
Even if Texas had shaped his sensibility, he didn"t have to deny his limitations or stop trying to overcome them. The world was not not filled with eccentric prairie homes; it was crowded with dirty apartment buildings, and he would seize the world. filled with eccentric prairie homes; it was crowded with dirty apartment buildings, and he would seize the world.
When Helen confronted him about his confusing behavior, he blurted that he "hated the idea of having a child." This sentiment seemed apropos of nothing, but it was consistent with his new obsession with the "real." More than anything else, Helen"s miscarriages had eroded the romance of marriage for him. Now, he insisted on facing what he saw as the truths about women and men.
At the same time, he refused to sacrifice romance and mystery. He wanted pa.s.sion. He wanted separation. "I had known that Don was repelled by the physical realities of pregnancy, a reaction I certainly shared," Helen wrote in her memoir. Don"s impulse to shut the past behind him played a role here, too. He and Helen had never confronted their grief over the lost babies, or their decisions to donate the bodies for medical research. It was a grief that haunted their intimacy together.
Eventually, Helen understood that "Don did not want to give up our marriage but wanted to change the conditions of it." She yearned for a "happy and pleasant relationship." He longed for a "pa.s.sionate" one. If they lived apart, Don reasoned, they could retrieve-and preserve-the mystery and excitement they had once shared together. To Helen, this was just one more crazy New York idea.
"After arriving in New York, I realized immediately that Don was now drinking excessively," Helen recounted. "In Manhattan, there were endless reasons for drinking, among them the jazz clubs, where he could indulge his pa.s.sion for music." Though she could not imagine "that alcoholism would eventually become a serious problem" for him, she began to worry about the frequent "social affairs to which he was invited each week, including those at Elaine [de Kooning"s] home."
"Pop art was flowering" in the art world, "but the agon of Pollock and de Kooning was still in the air," says Phillip Lopate. Since the early 1950s, hard drinking and casual affairs had been part of the Cedar crowd"s ambience-and Don had landed in its midst.
It "was just a.s.sumed" that everyone got "drunk at the Club," remarked one of the people who had frequented the artists" old meeting place on Eighth Street. In recalling those days, Elaine said, "We used to drink until all of the booze was gone....If there was one bottle, we drank that. If there were ten bottles, we emptied them."
At the Cedar, many of the painters-flush now with money from their growing celebrity-switched from beer to scotch. "Openings in galleries had bars. Pretty soon, artists went to the openings and drank the bars dry," said a friend of the de Koonings. "Bill sort of went along at first. And then, he was a real drinker." Harold Rosenberg had a prodigious capacity for liquor. He never seemed to get tipsy, "no matter how much he drank," Elaine said. Friends joked that his b.u.m leg was hollow and alcohol drained straight into it. By the early sixties, Elaine was "darkening, becoming a sloppy drunk,"write Stevens and Swan, Willem de Kooning"s biographers. "Increasingly, she seemed to need an audience of young people-often gay men-to admire and fawn over her. She was growing mannered, some thought, trying too hard to be marvelous." An acquaintance of hers said, "She absolutely insisted on being the center of attention every minute and on wrecking all social situations until she pa.s.sed out."
Sociability aside, each individual had his or her own reasons for drinking. Willem de Kooning sipped whiskey at night to steady his racing heart when he couldn"t sleep, worrying over a painting. Franz Kline used scotch to loosen his tongue; a little high, he could entertain people with witty stories. Many artists believed alcohol weakened their superegos and gave them access to the unconscious. And, of course, s.e.xual inhibitions dropped away.
Pollock "would glower into his drink, greet men with "f.u.c.k you" and women with "Wanna f.u.c.k?" " say Stevens and Swan. Don was a courtly Texan, and he never would have spoken that way, but Pollock"s att.i.tudes lingered in Don"s new world. Elaine drank to be one of the guys. After a few belts, she talked as raunchily as the boys. One night, at the Cedar, she referred to Helen Frankenthaler, who painted in light, wispy colors, as "that tampon painter."
In the mid-fifties, Rosenberg, who was genuinely fond of de Kooning, took to stopping by the painter"s studio to talk about his work. He always carried a bottle of whiskey with him. At first, Rosenberg drank most of what he"d brought. Eventually, de Kooning shared more of the liquor. Elaine believed it was the frequent gallery openings, "together with Rosenberg"s habit of stopping by the studio...that tipped the crowd-shy de Kooning into alcoholism."
What might get missed, at a distance, is the degree to which these artists and writers believed alcohol helped them think think. Rosenberg loved all-night conversations about art, aesthetics, politics-always with a bottle to fuel him. Don"s "wicked lunches" with him were a version of this. If Don had addictive tendencies early in life, his lunches with Rosenberg and Hess, and his nights at Elaine"s studio and in jazz clubs, appear to have tipped him over the edge.
Elaine invited Don and Helen to a party about a week after Helen arrived in New York. Willem de Kooning was there-an "extremely appealing" man, Helen recalled. "Gray haired and very handsome, he was easy to talk to...he told me a story about returning home to Europe for a visit after the war. Whenever he had found himself homesick for the United States, he would go to see American westerns, especially films directed by John Ford."
Franz Kline had died a few months earlier, and de Kooning was grieving for his friend. Frightened by Kline"s untimely pa.s.sing, he "seemed not to fit into the frantic atmosphere" of Elaine"s studio, Helen said.
In her memoir, she is characteristically restrained in describing Elaine"s parties. Elaine"s friend Lee Hall says that Elaine"s studio had become a "loony command center in the art world, a hurly-burly of activity [and] ambition" filled with "art world hang-abouts, spongers, drunks, and punks." Helen said only that "Elaine drank heavily" and that her portraits of faceless men on the walls were "disconcerting." Helen"s reserve hides the profound discomfort she felt among gay men, among hard-core drinkers, and amid such open s.e.xuality.
Harold Rosenberg went around parties "acting like a stallion," commented one woman who attended these gatherings. He would "flar[e] his nostrils and glar[e] in what I suppose he thought was a s.e.xy and a little dangerous way. But Harold was not much-a lot of promise with too much wifey in the background and too much drink." And he was Don"s new mentor-another source of Helen"s anguish.
Elaine was unusually charismatic and completely uninhibited with men. In the early 1960s, according to Lee Hall, Elaine "seemed to flaunt with renewed vigor her s.e.xual promiscuity." She would pace in front of a man in whom she was interested, wearing platform-heeled shoes, one arm crossing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as she cupped her right elbow in her left hand. One of Elaine"s young lovers at the time spoke of her later to Hall: "She was this kind of daredevil, and she was fun. A lot of fun." She "just came on really hard," he said, an "amazing force...infusing energy" into everyone around her. "She found everything amusing." He remembered the way she would say that word: "A-muuusiing. Sort of extending it over a long breath."
Don was clearly beguiled by her, an older artist trained, like his father, in the Beaux-Arts drafting tradition.
"Despite the immediacy and the vivacity, I felt that Elaine was always holding something back, that there was some secret that she couldn"t impart," commented John Ashbery. He said she was eaten up with "despair." Her melancholy touched the hiding man in Don: In her, he saw himself.
Elaine found Don amusing, and her conversations with him dissolved much of his anxiety about plunging into a literary life. "Just take care of the luxuries," Elaine once told a lover, quoting her mother, "the necessities will take care of themselves."
Helen did not share this outlook. But Don was listening to Elaine now, and Helen was becoming more and more unhappy. At night, she would walk the city with him, past Times Square, which was getting increasingly seedy. Martin J. Hodas, the "King of the Peeps," had set up p.o.r.nographic nickelodeons all over the area. Neon signs for Canadian Club, Admiral televisions, BOA, and Coca-Cola flashed above the streets, and in the garish red-and-yellow light Helen despaired of her future with Don. Back in the Village, he tried once more to inflame her imagination with the lure of the place. He pointed out an abandoned umbrella on a window ledge and said it looked surreal-like Lautreamont"s famous b.u.mbershoot next to a sewing machine on a dissecting table. Walking on MacDougal Street, he pointed out the Cafe Bizarre on West Third and told her it had once been Aaron Burr"s livery stable. But Helen was too locked on the present to care about the past.
During the day, she walked to the New School and to NYU, collecting graduate catalogs and information about various programs. Don continued to insist on a separation. Don felt she would need a job in order to rent her own place. Each morning, over breakfast, he spread the cla.s.sified section of The New York Times The New York Times on the table and circled available advertising positions in Manhattan. After managing her own firm in Houston, Helen was determined not to start at the bottom with some new outfit. She wanted to go back to school and prepare to teach full-time. Don"s fiddling with the ads "annoyed" her. He "wanted...me to stay in New York but to have an income independent of his," she wrote. "Such an arrangement would free him of concern for my financial well-being." on the table and circled available advertising positions in Manhattan. After managing her own firm in Houston, Helen was determined not to start at the bottom with some new outfit. She wanted to go back to school and prepare to teach full-time. Don"s fiddling with the ads "annoyed" her. He "wanted...me to stay in New York but to have an income independent of his," she wrote. "Such an arrangement would free him of concern for my financial well-being."
Finally, Don forced her hand, saying "if I decided to remain in New York, I could stay in this apartment and he would look for another for himself. I had seen Don use this kind of coercion to obtain what he wanted with other people, but never before had he used it to impose his will on me," Helen recalled. "Don...was adamant. I was equally unyielding about not searching for a job that I did not want."
After a few more days of arguments and tears, Helen, "numb with grief, but unwilling to stay in Manhattan under the conditions that Don demanded," returned to Houston.
25.
UP, ALOFT IN THE AIR.
In early December 1962, Don wrote to Helen that she should not fly back to New York on the nineteenth, as she had planned. "[T]he fact is that I want to live alone and have wanted to for a long time," he said. "I can give you what you want only by pretending to feel otherwise than I do feel...it is better to hate myself than to hate you, and I am afraid, if a reunion is forced rather than natural it would come to that."
He decided that he and Helen should "remain apart for now, being miserable in our separate ways: everything feels so temporary to me I don"t know what"s happening."
Helen recalled that in her frequent phone calls to Don, she heard the anguish in his voice, but he was also thrilled to have landed in a stimulating world teeming with intelligent, creative people-a world Helen, despite her ambitions and gifts, had resisted. In keeping with Don"s tendency to isolate areas of his life, he insisted on a clean break with his former existence in Houston; Helen"s attachments to the Bayou City remained firm, and threatened to sink him. Furthermore, there was something romantic in the sophisticated messes Don"s new friends were making of their lives. He wrote to Helen that Kenneth Koch "came over the other night and declared that everything is going to h.e.l.l around him," which, he added, "seems to be true." Jack Kroll continued to flounder.
Don did not aspire to be in a mess, but he admired what he saw as the courage and sacrifice necessary to survive as a writer in Manhattan. The romantic image of the struggling artist did not have much s.p.a.ce in it for domestic responsibilities. And though Don was working hard, he was also roaming the jazz clubs every night.
He told Helen he was discouraged about his writing. "[N]o other stories have been sold, or for that matter written," he said. The evidence contradicts this; he seems to have been making a sad face for Helen in order to soften her pain. Lynn Nesbit had taken him on as a client. Almost immediately, she sold "Florence Green Is 81" to Harper"s Bazaar Harper"s Bazaar for three hundred dollars-the story would appear in the magazine"s April 1963 issue. Don wrote every morning in the for three hundred dollars-the story would appear in the magazine"s April 1963 issue. Don wrote every morning in the Location Location office, revising stories he had drafted, or started to draft, in Houston: "The Piano Player," "For I"m the Boy Whose Only Joy Is Loving You," and "The Ohio Quadrilogy," which he would ret.i.tle "Up, Aloft in the Air." Around the time Don told Helen he wasn"t writing, he began a new story, "Carl," which he would eventually call "Margins." He sent his father some dialogue from the story and said the piece "further extends the line of attack originally announced in my stories "The Joker"s Greatest Triumph" and "The Ohio Quadrilogy" "-that is, a lack of linear narrative and a flattening of emotional content. Neither of these stories had yet been published; it seems Don had been sending drafts of his work to his father, whose responses, if any, have been lost. office, revising stories he had drafted, or started to draft, in Houston: "The Piano Player," "For I"m the Boy Whose Only Joy Is Loving You," and "The Ohio Quadrilogy," which he would ret.i.tle "Up, Aloft in the Air." Around the time Don told Helen he wasn"t writing, he began a new story, "Carl," which he would eventually call "Margins." He sent his father some dialogue from the story and said the piece "further extends the line of attack originally announced in my stories "The Joker"s Greatest Triumph" and "The Ohio Quadrilogy" "-that is, a lack of linear narrative and a flattening of emotional content. Neither of these stories had yet been published; it seems Don had been sending drafts of his work to his father, whose responses, if any, have been lost.
Nesbit was pleased that her new client was so disciplined and prolific. A small, energetic woman with a wide, thin smile, she was "easy...to approach," combining "brains and beauty," wrote the editor Michael Korda. She lived on Barrow Street in a garden duplex, and in later years she gave the only book parties in town that weren"t "dull and stiff," according to Korda. "She was elegant, witty, and to all appearances self-a.s.sured," he said, and always impatient to get her business done.
"Donald and I had instant chemistry," Nesbit says. When she met him, she was surprised that he "wasn"t a crazy bohemian. He liked good living, good food. He had bourgeois values." They became a couple, though Nesbit says it was clear "he was restless in his personal life. Loyal but not steadfast." Occasionally, on weekends, she and Don stayed with Joe Maranto in Stamford. "They"d go to the beach and have a good time in the country while I was in Texas with the kids, visiting my parents," Maggie Maranto recalls.
Nesbit encouraged Don to keep after Herman Gollob. Don told his old friend that "a really courageous book publisher" would grab his work. "[My stories are] brilliant, they"re better than anyone else"s, so why don"t you have a little courage." Don"s letters were "swaggering," Gollob recalls, "but ingratiating as well as engaging." The confidence was "part of Don"s posture, not much of a posture actually, but I never saw Don suffer much about the quality of his work."
In the meantime, Don continued to a.s.sert his editorial muscle at Location Location, often at cross-purposes with Rosenberg and Hess. He wrote Helen: [Robert] Bly reacted so violently to the...editing job I did on his thing that our relations deteriorated rapidly from an impa.s.se to a shambles, with the result that he picked up his marbles and went home. He told me that he"d shown the edited version to his friends Louis Simpson and John Logan (both Poets), who agreed with him that it was the worst single job of editing a ma.n.u.script seen in the Western World since the invention of movable type. Luckily, Harold didn"t agree.
Still, Rosenberg was miffed at Don for alienating Bly, who did not relent and would not resubmit work to the magazine. Don felt the first issue of Location Location was shaping up to be an "uneasy collection of good things which don"t seem to cohere in any meaningful synthesis. Maybe they will with a little more tinkering and shifting about." He was proud to get a piece from Marshall McLuhan as well as four "brief chapters" from Kenneth Koch"s novel was shaping up to be an "uneasy collection of good things which don"t seem to cohere in any meaningful synthesis. Maybe they will with a little more tinkering and shifting about." He was proud to get a piece from Marshall McLuhan as well as four "brief chapters" from Kenneth Koch"s novel The Red Robins The Red Robins. The rest of the material he wasn"t crazy about (a Kenneth Burke poem, solicited by Rosenberg, was "fantastically poor," Don said), and he especially disliked Larry Rivers"s cover design, a charcoal drawing of the Hudson, as well as Rivers"s layout ideas, which Don had worked to develop with Rivers at a Southampton retreat. Rosenberg and Hess were pleased with the artist"s work, so Don backed off, as he did when Rosenberg accepted an excerpt of Saul Bellow"s Herzog Herzog. Don agreed that Bellow"s work was good, but he still resented the elder writer"s treatment of him on Staten Island, and he was not keen to publish the old master.
Helen always objected whenever Don used her name in a story, as he did in "The Ohio Quadrilogy," a piece about a man named Buck, who flies around Ohio conducting s.e.xual affairs while his wife, Helen, sits at home in Texas.
When Helen complained about the story, Don changed "Helen" to "Herodiade," from a Mallarme poem about the search for ideal beauty. Don revised the piece as he and Helen grew apart, and she developed fresh routines in Houston. "In 1963, I made new friends and became interested in activities that were a change from my former life with Don," Helen wrote in her memoir. "I...attended sports car races, and along with a young biology professor who was a colleague at Dominican College, I learned to fly a Cessna 150."
In recoil from the drinking and casual affairs of the writers and artists she had met in New York, she seems to have courted straight-ahead adventurers. Flying made Don nervous, and he didn"t like it that Helen was taking lessons. "Tell [the pilots]...when they crash...[to] turn off...the ignition," he wrote at the end of "Up, Aloft in the Air."
By late January 1963, Don had completed most of the stories that would form his first book. He had recently finished a new story, "To London and Rome," and sent it to the Evergreen Review Evergreen Review. The magazine rejected it, but it would appear in the Fall 1963 issue of Genesis West Genesis West, edited by Gordon Lish. Contact Contact had already published "The Darling Duckling at School" and "The Viennese Opera Ball"; "Hiding Man" had appeared in had already published "The Darling Duckling at School" and "The Viennese Opera Ball"; "Hiding Man" had appeared in First Person First Person, and New World Writing New World Writing had taken "The Big Broadcast of 1938." "Florence Green Is 81" would soon surface in had taken "The Big Broadcast of 1938." "Florence Green Is 81" would soon surface in Harper"s Bazaar Harper"s Bazaar, and Don was working on a couple of new stories to round out the collection. Esquire, n.o.ble Savage Esquire, n.o.ble Savage, and The Paris Review The Paris Review were among the magazines that had not responded favorably to his work. He had not yet tried were among the magazines that had not responded favorably to his work. He had not yet tried The New Yorker The New Yorker.
In late January, Helen made one last try to salvage a marriage that was clearly in a tailspin. She returned to New York without telling Don she was coming. When she arrived, a "girl was there with him" in his apartment, she recalled. "I discreetly waited downstairs until he had escorted her out."