16.
FORUM.
Don wasn"t writing much, but his discovery of Beckett and his philosophical studies were guiding him away from vague attempts at an "unlove" story. He was forming a firmer aesthetic. He grounded his magazine editing in philosophy, too, especially in existentialism as it evolved under Jean-Paul Sartre.
Sartre"s influence in America is hard to measure. In the forties and fifties, Time Time and and Harper"s Bazaar Harper"s Bazaar ran pieces on existentialism. The word "today refers to faddism," Maurice Natanson complained. But when Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir visited New York City in the 1940s, the intellectuals there, led by Hannah Arendt, gave them a cool reception. Sartre had declared himself an atheist, but Arendt and her circle traced his ideas to Kierkegaard"s apolitical Christianity. In addition, Arendt saw Sartre as an apologist for the Soviet Union. ran pieces on existentialism. The word "today refers to faddism," Maurice Natanson complained. But when Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir visited New York City in the 1940s, the intellectuals there, led by Hannah Arendt, gave them a cool reception. Sartre had declared himself an atheist, but Arendt and her circle traced his ideas to Kierkegaard"s apolitical Christianity. In addition, Arendt saw Sartre as an apologist for the Soviet Union.
In Manhattan, Sartre sought the nitty-gritty of American culture: the vitality of jazz, Harlem, popular movies, novels by James M. Cain, John Steinbeck, and Richard Wright-raw, pa.s.sionate writers, to whom the New York intellectuals felt vastly superior. What Sartre interpreted as bold American energy, the Old Left regarded as lowbrow, and they questioned his taste.
If existentialism didn"t take with Arendt"s crowd, or with most American academics, it had a stronger and longer-lasting effect on American fiction. Among others, Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison were intrigued by Sartre"s thinking. So was Harold Rosenberg, though he never used the word existential existential in any of his art criticism. Rosenberg would exert a strong personal influence on Don. But already, in the mid-1950s, Don was mapping a steady route. in any of his art criticism. Rosenberg would exert a strong personal influence on Don. But already, in the mid-1950s, Don was mapping a steady route.
The first issue of the new Acta Diurna Acta Diurna-renamed Forum Forum-appeared in September 1956 "in spite of every imaginable obstacle-a scarcity of money, faculty indifference, and very little editorial talent other than [Don"s] own," Helen says. Don"s desire to make the journal interdisciplinary ruffled the university"s bureaucrats. Even more outrageously, he wanted to solicit articles from nonacademic writers.
The debut-made up mostly of contributions from UH faculty-fell short of Don"s hopes. Natanson"s piece, "Defining the Two Worlds of Man," on the relationship of philosophy to science (accompanied by a Ben Shahn sketch of a man holding his head in his hands), was exemplary, but on the whole, the articles were disappointing. Still, they covered a remarkably wide range of subjects-photography, television, engineering, music, art, and history.
As he laid out the issue, Don wrestled with the fear that his wife would not grant a divorce in time for him to marry Helen when he"d planned. Maggie had received a Fulbright Fellowship. She suggested postponing the divorce until after she returned from France. Finally, though, after much back-andforth, she agreed to move ahead. Helen"s divorce from Peter Gilpin was finalized on October 5. "Don was concerned that his mother should understand that we both had grounds for divorce, reasons acceptable to her, although not to the Catholic church," Helen said later. More than anything, "Don seemed to want...to live as if neither of us had been previously married." He insisted that she drop the name Gilpin and restore her surname to Moore. "I had no doubt that he was trying to change the past."
On October 12, at the First Unitarian Church, Don and Helen were married. The timing, so soon after their divorces, convinced them to downplay the event. George Christian and Helen"s youngest sister, Odell Pauline Moore, were the attendants. Otherwise, only family filled the seats.
That night, the couple stayed in Don"s apartment on Hawthorne Street, listening to jazz and drinking champagne. Helen recalled: Don had filled the entire apartment with flowers. There were huge bouquets wherever I looked, on the tables, on the floor, upstairs as well as downstairs. On the previous weekend, Don had painted some of the rooms, and then on the day of our wedding he spent hours cleaning the house and making other preparations. Later, I found [his] list of things to do that day.The next morning...we drove to New Orleans for our honeymoon. Before we left, Don gathered up all the flowers and took them next door to our neighbor, an attractive young woman and the mother of two small children.
In the French Quarter, the couple listened to jazz at Pete Fountain"s, and to the Preservation Band (though Preservation Hall had not yet been opened as a venue for musicians). They drank hurricanes at Pat O"Brien"s, ate lunch at the Court of Two Sisters, had dinner at Antoine"s, and beignets at the French Market. They sat in Jackson Square, watching people and pigeons flock around St. Louis Cathedral. Even in the 1950s, these pastimes were standard tourist fare, and they were the kinds of things Don tended to mock. Many years later, he disparaged New Orleans jazz as the worst sort of treacle.
Within a few days, Don and Helen returned to Houston, and Don was back on the job. He insisted they live off his university salary, and asked Helen not to look for work. When, after several months at home, she became restless, he urged her to develop a newspaper column that might be syndicated, something that would muster her "authority" and "clear...distinct ideas." For three months, she tried, halfheartedly, to compile material for a column, but she decided she was "not interested in writing anything that [would] appeal to a broad newspaper audience."
Meanwhile, "Don"s writing consisted almost solely of the work that he was doing for the university," she said. "Although he usually had some kind of ma.n.u.script in progress, he had very little time for writing fiction and seldom worked on it. He kept this ma.n.u.script and anything else creative...in a single letter-size file folder that he sometimes carried back and forth to the office."
Bored, Helen enrolled in philosophy and art cla.s.ses at UH. She fantasized with Don about attending an Ivy League school where he could concentrate on philosophy and she could earn a doctorate in literature, but neither of them looked into the possibility. Between cla.s.ses, she shopped and tried to become a gourmet cook. Don designed their living s.p.a.ce. He painted the apartment white, with the exception of one wall, which he covered in redwood paneling. He bought a chest of drawers for the bedroom and finished it with walnut stain; for the living room, he purchased a Danish walnut couch and chair. He built redwood bookshelves. "Don had no desire to own possessions for the sake of possessions," Helen wrote. Unlike his father, "he was not compelled to add or change anything" once a place was furnished. "[In] creating a comfortable, handsome...s.p.a.ce, Don thought only of the present. If we did not have enough room or there was some other reason to give up unnecessary furnishings...he would give up whatever seemed appropriate, even recordings and books [including Helen"s Steinbeck collection.]" Helen said he "did so with little sense of loss."
Helen wished for more furniture, "even a little clutter," but Don had a "clearly defined notion of what a room or house should look like." She deferred to his austerity. At his suggestion, she took up sewing, though the idea was foreign to her; she discovered it was easy to make bedspreads and curtains.
Most of all, Don was adamant that she jettison items she had shared with Peter Gilpin.
During the week, they ate at home, where Helen cooked the meals. Don cleaned up afterward and generally straightened the apartment. After dinner, they"d listen to Maria Callas or bebop on their hi-fi, lying on a rug near the speakers. Don would tell Helen who played the instruments on every jazz recording. On the weekends, they went for lunch at Alfred"s Delicatessen on Rice Boulevard or the El Patio Mexican Restaurant on Kirby Drive. They went to movies, plays, concerts. Sat.u.r.day afternoons were for browsing the bookshops-Guy"s, Brown"s, Rita Cobler"s. On Sundays, they"d eat a late breakfast, listen to Bach, especially the Concertos for Two Harpsichords, or Gregorian chants. In the early afternoon, they drove to Don"s parents" house. "At first, I found these visits uncomfortable," Helen admitted later, "chiefly because of harsh arguments between Don and his father." Usually, the get-togethers began pleasantly enough, "with Don laughing at his father"s adventures"-battles with university administrators or clients, including Bud Adams, later the owner of the Houston Oilers (Barthelme designed Adams"s Petroleum Center). Don would talk about Forum. Forum. Helen said that although "these conversations were largely between Don and his father...I was struck by the repartee...among the entire family, including Peter, who was in his last year at St. Thomas High School in 1956 and planning to enter Cornell University the following year." In describing the family, Helen wrote, "Rick [was] a handsome youth whose rebellious years were just beginning. Joan"s wit, like Don"s, was sharp and sometimes biting when directed at her father. Don"s mother...an especially attractive woman...was articulate and witty but always kind." Steve was nine in 1956, and treated with "special affection" by the family. Helen said that although "these conversations were largely between Don and his father...I was struck by the repartee...among the entire family, including Peter, who was in his last year at St. Thomas High School in 1956 and planning to enter Cornell University the following year." In describing the family, Helen wrote, "Rick [was] a handsome youth whose rebellious years were just beginning. Joan"s wit, like Don"s, was sharp and sometimes biting when directed at her father. Don"s mother...an especially attractive woman...was articulate and witty but always kind." Steve was nine in 1956, and treated with "special affection" by the family.
Always at some point just before dinner, during a brief "c.o.c.ktail hour," as a soft symphony unfolded on the record player, Don and his dad "began to disagree about something." They argued over "ideas or writers"; his father "disapproved of Don"s interest in the "new" literature, and was not interested in reading the avant-garde work with which Don could identify." They also differed on "how to rear the younger sons. Don felt his father was too rigid in the rules he set for Pete and Frederick. [He] believed that his father"s continual disapproval [was] harmful."
Despite her discomfort, Helen saw that the "brilliant, witty afternoons and evenings" at the Barthelme home "gave Don"s life a dimension that he could not find anywhere else." His disagreements with his father "emerged from the forthrightness of their relationship." From his father, he had inherited an "inflexible will and [the] ability to challenge anyone at all."
On the couple"s first Thanksgiving together, Helen baked a turkey and they invited Henry Buckley, one of Don"s old roommates, to eat with them. Right after Christmas, they threw their first party. Over a hundred people-from the university, the Post Post, the advertising world-jammed their apartment. They were ready "to boast" of their marriage.
Their friends included the Marantos, George and Mary Christian, Pat Goeters and his wife, Georgia, who had their first son by now, Helen"s sister Margo and her husband, Roy, and new acquaintances they"d made in the local art world: Jim Love, a sculptor working with found materials, Robert Morris and Guy Johnson, painters who mixed straightforward landscapes with irrealism. Johnson taught art cla.s.ses at Lee College in Baytown, an oilrefining center on the Gulf Coast. Often, Don and Helen drove down to dinner with Johnson and his wife, Nancy. "It was at their home that we first heard a recording of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht"s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny," Helen recalled. They bought two of Johnson"s paintings, their first art purchases together. One featured a solitary guitar player sitting on a desolate coastal sh.o.r.eline.
At the heart of these friendships was a yearning for cultural excitement. Houston wasn"t New York, but it wasn"t a backwater, either. It was brash and fast, and there was plenty of money in Houston. Sometimes at work, Don and his friends suffered isolation (Beckett? Brecht? What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?), but they had each other, and they felt a powerful sense of possibility.
Don was especially happy that Helen got along so well with his dad, who amused her. She wasn"t intimidated by him. One of his favorite pastimes, during family visits, was showing his slides. One Sunday afternoon, he slipped in a picture of Don"s first wife. Helen didn"t blink. By staying calm, she seems to have pa.s.sed a test, and he moved on without comment. Later, at her request, he designed, free of charge, a building for her friend Betty Jane Mitch.e.l.l"s ad agency. Don was flabbergasted. The old man never worked without a commission. "He likes you," Don concluded.
Don wrote to small businesses, larger companies, and arts organizations, soliciting ads for Forum. Forum. In the spring of 1957, he claimed that In the spring of 1957, he claimed that Forum Forum had "at present a circulation of 3,000." had "at present a circulation of 3,000."
On March 13, he contacted Dr. William J. Handy at the University of Texas, seeking an article. The letter served as a template for his requests.
"The magazine is, in a sense, experimental in character, in that the audience for which it is published differs somewhat from that of most university quarterlies," he said. "The people we are trying to reach are, largely, graduates of colleges, in responsible positions, who have allowed their intellectual ties with the universities to lapse or become crusted over, but at the same time are eager for the kind of special knowledge and insight to be found in the scholarly community. This group, numerically large, represents an audience and a need that the scholarly community cannot easily ignore." He added, "Unfortunately, we cannot compete with other journals in terms of compensation."
Pat Goeters and Henry Buckley, now working as architects, designed covers for the first two issues. Most of the contents still came from University of Houston professors: a piece on "alienation" in the novels of William Faulkner, a study of rattlesnake venom, a discussion of "social motivation a.n.a.lysis." Don contributed an essay called a "A Note on Elia Kazan," in which he argued that the unfettered emotions in Kazan"s films were a response to the "crucial problem posed for imaginative literature...by the widespread public acceptance of the "new sciences" of sociology and psychology." He quipped that "sound [psychological] motivation is now required even for song cues in musical comedy." While noting that Method acting and Marlon Brando were somehow "right...for this time," he stated that "Method actors do not fare well...in high comedy or expressionistic drama, where manner is valued above psychological realism."
While generally lauding Kazan"s craft, Don concluded that the "wordlessness and frustration" in his actors" performances "seem overwhelmingly images of helplessness, a universal lostness in the face of an existence that is complex and unforgiving."
Steeped in existentialism-and moving far beyond film reviewing-Don established terms here that would define his fiction: the recognition that form is not a given, that it is buffeted by social developments, that it is timedependent and that it can lose its power. He believed that style and manner are more central to art"s effects than content.
He read widely in popular and academic journals, seeking writers and subjects for Forum. Forum. He had always prided himself on being a quick study; when he started at the He had always prided himself on being a quick study; when he started at the Post Post, he and George Christian had joked that "given forty-five minutes, they could master anything."
He wrote to Leslie Fiedler, then teaching at the University of Montana, to solicit an article on J. D. Salinger. And he noticed the work of a young writer named Walker Percy. On March 12, 1957, he wrote to Percy, "Your recent articles in Partisan Review Partisan Review and and Commonweal Commonweal...especially "The Man on the Train," represent the kind of thing in which we are particularly interested." "The Man on the Train" explored existentialist themes in American landscapes. Along with his letter, Don sent Percy copies of the first two issues of Forum. Forum. Percy responded on March 26: " Percy responded on March 26: "Forum is most attractive-and original (Rattle snakes and existentialism!). Liked articles on Kazan and consumer behavior. Would like to see more-to get a better feel of what you"re trying to do." is most attractive-and original (Rattle snakes and existentialism!). Liked articles on Kazan and consumer behavior. Would like to see more-to get a better feel of what you"re trying to do."
Don felt an immediate link with Percy: Both men had been raised as Catholics, both were immersed in Kierkegaard, and both looked to popular culture for signs of the nation"s health. But many weeks would pa.s.s before Don got back to Percy. Helen had discovered she was pregnant.
One day in March, she was home alone and began to hemorrhage. She tried to phone her doctor, but without success. She reached Don at the university; he called one of their neighbors and asked her to look after Helen until he could get home. By now, Helen was dangerously weak. She later recalled that "in Houston, a city ordinance prohibited ambulances from carrying a pregnant woman to the hospital. A pregnancy or miscarriage did not qualify as an emergency."
Don phoned his father, whose architectural offices on Brazos Street were near the apartment. He got to Helen right away. Her neighbor had a friend who pulled some strings and managed to lure an ambulance. Don arrived in time to help the attendants carry his wife down the apartment steps on a stretcher. On the way to St. Joseph"s Hospital, she began to lose consciousness. Don pleaded with the driver to go faster, but he refused to break city rules and turn on the siren. Dutifully, he stopped at all the traffic lights. Helen arrived at St. Joseph"s with a frighteningly low pulse, but she recovered quickly under the doctors" care. Don implored her not to worry about the miscarriage, saying they would have plenty of chances to have children.
17.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ANGELS.
Soon after Helen"s miscarriage, Don moved her into a new apartment inside an old house remodeled to accommodate several flats. It was on Richmond Avenue, near Montrose, a rapidly developing area of town. Oaks, cicada-riddled willows, and imported palm trees shaded the neighborhood. Don threw himself into erasing the couple"s loss. Despite Helen"s claim that he"d fix a place up and leave it alone, the open-ended environments he"d known at home and at school had given him a spatial restlessness. He bought a black table for the new living room and spent several days lacquering it. Dissatisfied, he took the table to a professional finisher. Don filled the apartment with houseplants and flowers. On weekends, he and Helen haunted junk shops and cut-rate antique stores. They bought a walnut breakfast table. At a place called Trash "n Treasure on Westheimer Road, they found a nineteenth-century oak table for their dining room. The owner thought it an "old piece of junk," but Don refinished it and it made a handsome addition to their home. He bought an Alvar Aalto lounge chair, a Bertoia set, and a set of Prague side chairs. From the Museum of Fine Arts he bought a Chagall poster for the living room wall. He enjoyed working with his hands, arranging and rearranging things.
Meanwhile, Don continued his correspondence with Walker Percy. On May 20, 1957, he told Percy he would like to have a five-thousand word essay for the summer issue of Forum. Forum. In July, he nudged Percy again, saying the "issue would be closed out by the end of the month and appear sometime in August." Percy responded with an article that he hoped would "interest both the scientifically minded and the literarily minded." He added, "[D]on"t hesitate to send it back." In July, he nudged Percy again, saying the "issue would be closed out by the end of the month and appear sometime in August." Percy responded with an article that he hoped would "interest both the scientifically minded and the literarily minded." He added, "[D]on"t hesitate to send it back."
Originally ent.i.tled "Symbol and Sign," the essay ran in Forum Forum"s summer issue under the t.i.tle "The Act of Naming." In it, Percy argued that, because of language, man is "that being in the world whose calling it is to find a name for Being, to give testimony to it, and to provide for it a clearing."
On October 2, Percy wrote to say he"d received his copy of the issue. A "very good-looking job," he said, "striking format. I, for one, am proud to be part of it. Thanks also for your skillful editing which helped my piece not a little." He praised Don"s choice of contributors, including James Collins, a "first-cla.s.s philosopher...[and] writer" who had recently published a book called The Mind of Kierkegaard. The Mind of Kierkegaard.
In the fall of 1957, Maurice Natanson left Houston for a job at the University of North Carolina. Don felt "academically stranded." He and Helen talked again about moving east, perhaps to Brandeis or the New School in Manhattan, but once more they failed to follow up on it. Helen had gone back to work (her way of coping with the miscarriage). Her friend Betty Jane Mitch.e.l.l was faring better now with her ad agency, after handling the account of the popular patent medicine Hadacol. Helen served as as an account executive for the firm. way of coping with the miscarriage). Her friend Betty Jane Mitch.e.l.l was faring better now with her ad agency, after handling the account of the popular patent medicine Hadacol. Helen served as as an account executive for the firm.
With Natanson gone, "Don was more isolated than ever," Helen recalled. He stayed in touch with Natanson, seeking topics for Forum Forum, and he kept the books he"d bought for Natanson"s courses, including a copy of Tolstoy"s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
At the ad agency, Betty Jane Mitch.e.l.l a.s.signed Helen to represent Dominican College, a four-year Catholic school for girls in Houston. She met the school"s dean, who invited her to teach a few courses in journalism and literature. She had missed teaching, and happily accepted the offer. Occasionally, she asked Don to give a guest lecture. He looked forward to these sessions, reading aloud from a poem or novel, and kidding the "sweet nuns."
One day, he soothed a young woman dismayed by the portrayal of the alcoholic priest in Graham Greene"s The Power and the Glory. The Power and the Glory. Don explained that the church"s hierarchy was humane and effective, with young priests standing ready to correct their elders" missteps. Don explained that the church"s hierarchy was humane and effective, with young priests standing ready to correct their elders" missteps.
These cla.s.sroom visits gave Don his second taste of teaching (after the tutoring in Korea). He was conscientious and thorough in his lectures. His tone was polite, even when discussing religious themes. He revealed, Helen said later, "nothing of his own withdrawal from the church."
Early in the summer of 1957, Helen learned that she was pregnant again. In spite of her recent miscarriage, and the loss of a premature child with Peter Gilpin, she did not want to cut her hours at the ad agency or change her daily routines.
She and Don continued to walk in the evenings, and to go to movies and plays. On the weekends, they made their regular trek to the Barthelme house. Steve showed them snakes and frogs he"d found in the woods or in the bayou. Don"s mom bragged about Steve"s school a.s.signments.
At the end of October, Helen lost the child: a boy weighing less than two pounds. She never saw him. When she awoke from the anesthesia, Don asked her how she"d feel about donating the baby"s body to the hospital for medical research. "He thought this was the best thing for us to do and I agreed at once. The child I lost in my first marriage was buried in our family cemetery plot in Houston, and I did not want to face that experience again."
She returned to work and stayed active so as not to dwell on the loss. In quick succession, she and Don attended events at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Joan Crystal"s Louisiana Gallery, and the New Arts Gallery. One evening at a reception in the Museum of Fine Arts, she noticed how often people introduced Don as the "son of the architect." Over and over, he affirmed that he was "indeed the son of the great man"; then he "withdrew into a kind of aloofness." For the first time, she realized how difficult these evenings were for Don.
On another occasion, at a surrealism exhibit, Don saw a "small eggshaped object covered in fur, the inspiration for what became [his] favorite line in his fiction," Helen recalled. Most likely, she was thinking of Meret Oppenheim"s fur-covered teacup (1936), one of surrealism"s icons. In "Florence Green Is 81," Don"s narrator claims that the "aim of literature...is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart."
Every night, Don brought home proofs from the magazine. Sometimes, Helen helped him read them. She found the time spent on type fonts, ill.u.s.trations, and the placement of page numbers tedious. He"d spread everything on a rug and spend "hours moving type around." For him, "every element was part of the design." He was "never entirely satisfied."
In the mornings, "he would walk over to the university"s press to help with headlines and other display type that was set by hand." He wrote constantly to designers and typographers, requesting special fonts. "He kept a file of clippings of miscellaneous art," Helen wrote, "mostly out-of-copyright art, that he could use as ill.u.s.trations, a practice he had begun as a reporter at the Post. Post."
His whimsical eye is apparent in Forum Forum"s Fall 1957 issue. To accompany Maurice Natanson"s article on the tension between "Philosophy and the Social Sciences," Don chose drawings of Tweedledee and Tweedledum sidling up to each other. Loose caps cover their eyes.
He never lost the "guilty pleasure" of playing with clip art, and ill.u.s.trated many of his early stories. A number of his letters to Roger Angell, and to book editors, concern the appearance of his stories on the page once they had gone to the printer.
On October 17, 1957, Don wrote to Natanson that he had "evolved a new type dress and a very Bauhaus layout scheme." He had a strong sense of what he wanted visually. In an exchange with New York photographer Gene Gaines, he asked for a portfolio of the Dancers of India, a troupe traveling in the United States under the auspices of the Indian government. "Our idea...[is to]...catch the dancers at the height of their various movements, silhouette these shots and superimpose them on shots of the ancient Indian statues from which they are supposed to derive their inspiration," he said.
That fall, the famed sociologist David Riesman wrote to Don. In 1950, Riesman had published The Lonely Crowd The Lonely Crowd, a study of the insular American character. He was tinkering now with fiction. On November 8, Don replied that Forum Forum didn"t publish fiction: The editorial board wouldn"t allow it. "It is difficult to know where to publish short stories that are not formula or run-of-the mill," Don said. He suggested didn"t publish fiction: The editorial board wouldn"t allow it. "It is difficult to know where to publish short stories that are not formula or run-of-the mill," Don said. He suggested Southwest Review Southwest Review at Southern Methodist University. They have "run a good deal of distinguished fiction." at Southern Methodist University. They have "run a good deal of distinguished fiction."
Scarce funding continued to plague him. The board pressured him to cut costs. On April 17, 1958, he wrote Wayne Taylor of the UH Printing Department, "[W]e would...like to pay not more than $16.00 per page for [the next] issue, which will run forty pages." He proposed that "margins will be, for this issue, restrained to more conventional proportions," that "there will be no full-page, four-way bleed cuts," that the "amount of handset type will be drastically reduced," and that "no changes will be made (except for typos) in pages that are already made up." This is confession confession more than more than plan plan, revealing Don"s previous layout practices. He concluded, "The undersigned will stay out of your way as much as possible."
His agony is even more palpable in his letters to writers. Percy had asked him, "[H]ow come a U. of Houston publication isn"t paying about a dollar a word?" After all, Houston was an oil town; the university was famous for the generous endowment it had gotten from Hugh Roy Cullen. But the Cullen money had been used for capital expenditures, not for daily operations or faculty salaries. The Cullen myth kept other potential donors away. The university would soon become part of the state system, but at that time it was still a private inst.i.tution.
Don explained all this to Percy, who never again mentioned money. Other writers were not as understanding. In the summer of 1957, Don had written to Thomas A. Bledsoe, director of Beacon Press in Boston, hoping to excerpt chapters from some of Beacon"s books in Forum. Forum. Initially, Don was interested in Lewis A. Coser and Irving Howe"s Initially, Don was interested in Lewis A. Coser and Irving Howe"s The American Communist Party: A Critical History. The American Communist Party: A Critical History. Coser and Howe were amenable, but Bledsoe wrote what Don considered a "very nasty letter," insisting that oil-soaked Houston ought to be able to pay reprint fees. Coser and Howe were amenable, but Bledsoe wrote what Don considered a "very nasty letter," insisting that oil-soaked Houston ought to be able to pay reprint fees.
Alfred Kazin, whom Don hoped would move the magazine"s literary studies beyond "pale new critic[ism]," wrote to say that he appreciated Don"s interest in his work, but couldn"t understand why Forum Forum didn"t pay. Perhaps feeling he had nothing to lose, Don responded: didn"t pay. Perhaps feeling he had nothing to lose, Don responded: You are absolutely right but if I sent you...money I would have to cut exactly 16 pages out of the magazine. If I sent $300 each to three more contributors there would be no magazine. This perhaps would be no great loss but I must believe otherwise. The magazine is produced at absolute minimum cost. The University has an annual deficit of close to $600,000 a year. All of Cullen"s money went into grandiose buildings with nothing left to keep the radiators burning. The magazine is printed in our own makeshift campus printing plant where the question of whether or not we should spend $15 for a new roller is gravely debated. The printers, about half of whom are students, are suitably underpaid. I set a good deal of the display type myself and do a number of other things which you probably wouldn"t believe to save money. We bought the good paper in quant.i.ty at a distress sale. The handsome typefaces were begged by me from the manufacturers. If I send a telegram I have to pay for it out of my own pocket (I"m not a professor either, by the way). The faculty feels that it"s too esoteric: what is all this Dada business anyhow? Because the magazine is produced here, all hands are pretty sure that it can"t be much good.All of this is irrelevant. The answer to your question is that the printer shouldn"t shouldn"t be paid when the writer is not. But the printer is invariably adamant whereas the writer is sometimes willing to be victimized. This difference between printers and writers is what makes possible marginal journals like our own, which have no real (economic) right to exist. Whether all this effort on the part of writers, printers, and editors is worthwhile-whether the magazine itself is a good magazine, or is meaningful in any way-is another question. We are, of course, visited from time to time by the thought that we are merely deluding ourselves about the worth of the whole project....But this is my problem, not yours. be paid when the writer is not. But the printer is invariably adamant whereas the writer is sometimes willing to be victimized. This difference between printers and writers is what makes possible marginal journals like our own, which have no real (economic) right to exist. Whether all this effort on the part of writers, printers, and editors is worthwhile-whether the magazine itself is a good magazine, or is meaningful in any way-is another question. We are, of course, visited from time to time by the thought that we are merely deluding ourselves about the worth of the whole project....But this is my problem, not yours.
Don was all alone in endeavoring to create a first-cla.s.s publication. The writers he rejected didn"t always respond with grace. A journalist named James Boyer May submitted an article ent.i.tled "I"m an Old Anti-Sartrean." Don turned it down, citing his affinities with Sartre. May wrote back, "As to your sympathy with the "existential-phenomenological movement" (to me no more definable than the non-existent "beat movement" I"ve...wasted time in a.n.a.lyzing for CBS)-every editor is undoubtedly ent.i.tled to promote his views [but this one is] narrow...self-defeating..."
Clearly, Don considered himself an editorial artist. artist. Early in his marriage to Helen, he told her that the two of them "should be committed to becoming part of the intellectual and artistic elite rather than the wealthy elite." He "believed his mother was disheartened over having a less affluent lifestyle than any of her friends, the kind of life that one could have expected from an architect as famous as his father," Helen recalled. "Several of their early friends were now quite wealthy, but it was not a world that Don envied." Early in his marriage to Helen, he told her that the two of them "should be committed to becoming part of the intellectual and artistic elite rather than the wealthy elite." He "believed his mother was disheartened over having a less affluent lifestyle than any of her friends, the kind of life that one could have expected from an architect as famous as his father," Helen recalled. "Several of their early friends were now quite wealthy, but it was not a world that Don envied."
Still, he did not want to be part of the "carriage trade." Growing up, Don had never had to worry about money. He told Helen they "should buy whatever [they] needed and then find the money to cover [their] expenses." She wrote, "This was a new approach to budgeting for me." She oversaw their joint bank account. Don never kept track of his spending. Each month, despite Helen"s efforts, several checks came back marked "insufficient funds." Don simply wrote new checks to replace the returns.
In the spring of 1958, Helen suggested they move in order to economize. They took a tiny flat on Emerson Street. Shortly after settling, they invited Don"s dad to dinner-he was alone for a few days while the rest of the family visited Don"s aunt in Pennsylvania. Helen asked her father-in-law what he thought of the apartment. He looked around. It"s "ingratiating," he said dryly.
Soon, Helen became pregnant again. Though she and Don had lived in the apartment less than six months, they began to look for a larger s.p.a.ce. They wound up moving across the street, to a 1920s house owned by Linn and Celestine Linnstaedter. Linn was a colleague of Don"s dad in the UH architecture department; Celestine practiced psychiatry in Houston"s VA Hospital.
Don was not happy with the new place. He part.i.tioned the big central room with a j.a.panese rice-paper screen, which he built to hang from the ceiling. He converted one of the bedrooms to a living room. Despite his dissatisfaction, he enjoyed the Linnstaedters, who lived next door.
He asked Helen if she would still love him after the baby was born. She a.s.sured him she would. She worked as hard as ever at the advertising agency. In the early fall, she lost the child, another boy. Again, she and Don donated the body to the hospital for research, but Helen wrote that she regretted this later and was always haunted by "images" of the "two infants." She remained convinced that Don had felt the same way. In her book, she cited a pa.s.sage from his 1973 story "One Hundred Ten West Sixty-First Street": Paul and Eugenie went to a film. Their baby had just died and they were trying not to think about it. The film left them slightly depressed. The child"s body had been given to the hospital for medical experimentation. "But what about life after death?" Eugenie"s mother had asked. "There isn"t any," Eugenie said. "Are you positive?" her mother asked. "No," Eugenie said. "How can I be positive? But that"s my opinion."
"I have no doubt that Eugenie was speaking for Don," Helen wrote. "Don knew that the Catholic church would not have approved of what we did, and he later told me that his mother talked to him about it. Giving the bodies to the medical school...was, I believe, an attempt to leave the experience in the past. The presence of two tiny graves would not let us do this. And as always, he was driven by an implacable will to make decisions independent of all authority, in this instance both the church and his mother."
Fighting Forum Forum"s editorial board was like "working in a vacuum," Don said, but still he plowed ahead. He secured articles from Leslie Fiedler ("The Secret Life of James Fenimore Cooper"), Walter Kaufmann (from his forthcoming book From Shakespeare to Existentialism From Shakespeare to Existentialism), Hugh Kenner (discussions of T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett), James Collins ("Art and the Philosopher"), Richard Evans (interviews with Carl Jung and Freud biographer Ernest Jones), Peter Yates (on West Coast music), Parker Tyler, the editor of Art-News Art-News (on contemporary American film), William Carlos Williams (from (on contemporary American film), William Carlos Williams (from I Wanted to Write a Poem I Wanted to Write a Poem), and Norman Mailer (an excerpt from Advertis.e.m.e.nts for Myself Advertis.e.m.e.nts for Myself). Walker Percy submitted a new piece, "The Loss of the Creature," which dealt with the gaps between perceptions and reality.
Though they were not paid, these writers were eager to be part of a journal composed with the care, seriousness, and range of curiosity Don brought to his work. In the spring of 1958, he published a translation of Jean-Paul Sartre"s essay "Algeria," which a.n.a.lyzed the torture techniques of French soldiers. Sartre noted it was a bitter irony that Frenchmen had become torturers in Africa so soon after the French had suffered at the hands of German troops.
The piece had first appeared in Europe (it was banned in France); Malcolm McCorquodale, a Houstonian who worked for the arts patron Dominique de Menil, saw the essay while traveling and brought it to Don"s attention.
Without hesitating-and without university approval-Don phoned Sartre in Paris to ask his permission to print McCorquodale"s translation of the piece. Sartre eagerly agreed. Several follow-up calls were needed to finalize arrangements. When Don"s boss, Farris Block, saw the phone bill, he exploded. The magazine did not have the budget to cover such expenses. Don replied, "I"ll pay for it." Block knew Don didn"t have the cash, and he dropped the argument. Helen recalled that the couple"s home phone bill was a nightmare of magazine-related charges.
Don kept pressing his luck with Block and the editorial board. At his own discretion, he solicited work from writers all over the country and beyond: Randall Jarrell, E. B. White, Erwin Panofsky, Ronnie Dugger, Kenneth Tynan, Cyril Connolly, the editors of Dissent Dissent, Diana Trilling ("I"ve been reading and enjoying your Partisan Partisan pieces for some time..."). One of his favorite contributors to pieces for some time..."). One of his favorite contributors to Forum Forum was Joseph Lyons, a research psychologist with the Veterans Administration Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. In the Summer 1958 issue, Lyons"s essay "The Psychology of Angels" appeared. Parts of the piece resurfaced in Don"s 1969 story "On Angels." was Joseph Lyons, a research psychologist with the Veterans Administration Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. In the Summer 1958 issue, Lyons"s essay "The Psychology of Angels" appeared. Parts of the piece resurfaced in Don"s 1969 story "On Angels."
By July 1958, in a general fund-raising letter, Don could accurately boast, "The response from our readers has far exceeded our expectations; and some of the nation"s most distinguished scholars have informed us that Forum Forum has filled a major gap in the field of scholarly publishing." has filled a major gap in the field of scholarly publishing."
Then the bad news: "We are now...at a point where certain difficulties must be resolved if the magazine is to make the fullest use of its opportunities. The University of Houston, as you may know, is suffering heavily from lack of funds...."