12.
NO b.u.t.tERFLY.
While on the thirty-eighth parallel, Don tried to write "THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL." His letters to Joe Maranto provide the first direct record of his ambition to write serious fiction. On December 29, 1953, he said, "[the novel] is moving forward steadily. Two chapters, about 12,000 words have been written, and an addition[al] 1400-word beginning for Chapter the Third. It"s hard work, especially as all I can tell about it right now is that certain portions are terribly bad."
He read Ezra Pound, Saul Bellow, and Dylan Thomas as he made his way through these early chapters.
In January, he told Maranto he"d made corporal, and that he"d drafted a fifth chapter. "When the sixth is done I will go back and make drastic revisions on it and the preceding chapters, which will comprise the first half of the book and run to about 36,000 words. It"s a very peculiar book to date; it keeps changing its form."
His accurate daily word count indicates Hemingway"s influence on his working methods. To his parents, he wrote that his project was not a "deeply disturbing novel of the south"-despite his admiration for Faulkner and Carson McCullers-nor was it a "persecuted artist-type thing, or the record of somebody"s miserabboble adolescence." It was "an unlove story, like the unbirthdays in Disney"s "Alice in Wonderland." "
A few months later, he told Maranto: No I am not satisfied with [the novel], not by a couple of miles, but I have seven and a half long chapters on paper now and am nearing 50,000 words and that"s more words than I"ve ever laid end to end before in my life on one subject. I fear it is a terribly bad novel but hope to do a rewrite that will correct the most glaring faults. I haven"t tried to write the thing paragraph by polished paragraph, and make each paragraph a jewel as I tried to do with the pieces for the Post. Post. I would never have gotten more than a few gilded pages on paper if I had. I would never have gotten more than a few gilded pages on paper if I had.
As it stands the thing has a million rough edges and I will never get all of them smoothed out but perhaps it"s better that way.
He sounded more optimistic with his wife"s parents. "[I] am working on a major fiction project that may turn out well enough to publish," he wrote Mr. and Mrs. Marrs in February 1954. "I have written about 30,000 words...and so far it doesn"t seem too bad."
Writing time was hard to find. "[W]e"re short-handed and over-loaded here," Don told Maggie"s parents, "and it"s getting to the point where there is very nearly no such thing as off-duty hours....Next week I have to take our tape recorder out and record some tank noises for the Psychological Warfare people, who will then transcribe the tape on disks and in the event of a resumption of the fighting play the records over an amplifier to confuse the enemy and make him believe there are tanks where no tanks actually exist."
On R and R in Tokyo, Don laid the novel aside. He purchased paperback copies of Camus"s The Plague The Plague, Gide"s Strait Is the Gate Strait Is the Gate, Orwell"s Down and Out in Paris and London Down and Out in Paris and London, Eisenstein"s The Film Sense The Film Sense, the "Hortense Powdermaker study of Hollywood...[and] a lot of stuff by the various Sitwell"s [sic], including the Canticle of the Rose. Canticle of the Rose." He saw the movies The Robe The Robe and and The Moon Is Blue. The Moon Is Blue.
Finally, on April 22, 1954, he announced to Maranto: "The first draft of the novel is finished and I have launched a radical campaign of revision. It is a new attack which could conceiveably [sic] erase the major difficulties. It will in any case likely go into a third draft. Right now it"s just under 50,000 words, and that"s kind of slight for what I want."
R and R gave Don a break from soldiering and writing, and at least one of his Tokyo excursions had implications for his marriage and future s.e.xual affairs. Years later, he told Helen Moore about an incident that eventually appeared in "Visitors": "[In] Tokyo...[h]e was once in bed with a j.a.panese girl during a mild earthquake, and he"s never forgotten the feeling of the floor falling out from underneath him, or the woman"s terror. He suddenly remembers her name, Michiko. "You no b.u.t.terfly on me?" she had asked....He was astonished to learn that "b.u.t.terfly" meant, in the patois of the time, "abandon." "
As "Don described the experience later," Helen says, the girl"s "skin "turned white" with terror when the tremors began. Spending the night with [her] posed a moral dilemma for Don as well as for a fellow soldier who had made the trip with him. They discussed whether when you were married but forcibly separated like this, it was immoral to be with another woman. It was a dilemma that Don seemed not to have resolved when he told me the story a few years later."
The incident stayed with him. In 1979, he reviewed the Dutch war film Soldier of Orange Soldier of Orange for for The New Yorker The New Yorker. In describing the movie"s skill at depicting sudden horror, he wrote, "The transformation of everyday reality into unprecedented ghastliness is like being in bed in an earthquake, the bed falling beneath you."
On R and R, Don abandoned his khaki field uniform for a more comfortable cotton poplin shirt and an olive-drab tie, an M-1950 garrison cap, softly c.o.c.ked above his right ear, and the army"s new "Mickey Mouse" boots (so called because they resembled Mickey"s big feet). The boots were rubber-lined inside, which helped in the soggy hills, though they were too hot for town.
Don"s favorite spot in Tokyo was the Imperial Hotel-he admired it "more than any other building." Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1916, the hotel was demolished in 1968, despite worldwide pleas for its preservation-the owners said it had become expensive to repair.
When commissioned, the hotel was meant to symbolize j.a.pan"s relationship to the West as well as to announce the emergence of j.a.pan as a modern nation. Wright planned a thoroughly up-to-date building that managed to respect the "worthy tradition" of j.a.panese aesthetics. He followed the "principle of flexibility instead of rigidity"-a far cry from the "luxury hotel" Don had seen in Seoul, which forced its "artiness" onto a landscape of poverty and ruin.
Don spent hours wandering the Imperial"s halls, delighted by their unpredictable curves, admiring-with his father"s eye-the way Wright had designed the floors to be supported by centered joists, like a waiter balancing a tray on his fingertips, so earth tremors wouldn"t yank down the walls.
"There were little terraces and little courts [in the building], infinitely narrow pa.s.sages suddenly opening into large two or three-storey s.p.a.ces....And there were many different levels," wrote the critic Peter Blake. Famously, the Imperial had survived the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 (as well as the bombings of 1945)-another reason Don liked to spend time there. He admired the walls" low center of gravity, wide at the base, thin at the top, with small windows in the first two stories and more abundant s.p.a.cings on the third.
Like Don"s father, in the best of his work, Wright made the most of minimal units, marrying practicality and pleasure. To travel over eight thousand miles from home, and to see these familiar principles at work, rea.s.sured Don, and convinced him of the wisdom of modern design.
At the same time, he saw how unique the Imperial was. Most of Tokyo"s modern buildings were top-heavy-foolish in a quake-p.r.o.ne region, further examples of "arty" designers forcing their will on a place, rather than learning from it. Don was beginning to see the flaws in modernist zeal.
At dusk, the Imperial"s lovely Oya stone (an easily carved lava) caught light from the reflecting pool out front. Don walked past the water and headed for the Tennessee Tea Room or the Roppongi district"s bars, with their wide-open doors, loud music, and drooping banners declaring you must be drinking here to remain inside. He went in search of jazz.
American jazz had been popular in j.a.pan starting in the 1920s; it was banned from the airwaves during the rabid nationalism of World War II, and began to make a comeback in the fifties. Still, American performers rarely appeared in Tokyo. The 293rd Army Band played at service clubs near the Roppongi district and in Hibiya Hall, frequented by Gen. Mark Clark. Don may have caught the band there, but he would have preferred a less regimented sound. It"s possible he saw the trumpeter Webster Young and the pianist Hampton Hawes, both of whom served in the military in Asia.
A pair of j.a.panese jazz drummers drew rave notices in Tokyo at the time, and Don would have found them. Oguchi Daihachi, who had been a POW in China in the forties, returned to his home in Nagoya after the war, and decided to pursue a music career. He learned about taiko drumming, an ancient j.a.panese art, featuring large ba.s.s drums and hypnotic rhythms. Building on this tradition, he added small drums to the taiko core, and scored jazz-based multirhythmic pieces to create a new style of music. At the same moment, in and around Tokyo kissas kissas (cafes), the drummer Joji Kawaguchi and his Big Four band were making a name for themselves by taking current pop tunes and jazzing them up with long, percussioncentered improvs. (cafes), the drummer Joji Kawaguchi and his Big Four band were making a name for themselves by taking current pop tunes and jazzing them up with long, percussioncentered improvs.
In "The King of Jazz" (1978), Don honored the players he listened to in Tokyo. In the story, a trombone player named Hideo Yamaguchi challenges the top "bone man," Hokie Mokie, for the t.i.tle "King of Jazz." "Tell me, is the Tennessee Tea Room still the top jazz place in Tokyo?" Hokie asks Hideo. "No," Hideo replies, "the top jazz place in Tokyo is the Square Box now."
The story"s t.i.tle comes from a 1930 movie, The King of Jazz The King of Jazz, directed by John Murray Anderson and featuring the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, whose most popular tune was "j.a.panese Sandman."
After a night of music and drink, Don might have walked to the Hardy Barracks in central Tokyo, a large American military installation with an NCO club, ten-cent movies, a swimming pool, a library, and-most important-cots to crash in. The compound was constructed around a white stone building with trim rectangular windows; just outside its gates, laundry, grocery, and tailor shops vied for the GIs" dollars. Several blocks to the west, the Shinjuku neighborhood, with its tiny bars, overpriced liquor, and available girls, beckoned. It"s likely that Shinjuku is where Don met "Michiko." The area was known among American soldiers for its "love hotels." Shinjuku stank of cigarettes, sugar, and burning stovetop oils. The streets were sticky with spilled drinks and greasy food wrappers. The neighborhood had come to life in the mid-twenties because it was one of the few areas of Tokyo to survive, intact, the Kanto earthquake. It "only concerned [itself] with customers" yen," says Leonard Anderson, a Korean vet. In bed there, a boy could fall and fall.
Don"s grandfather, Mr. Bart, died while Don was overseas, a sadness he never overcame. In a tent on the side of a grimy hill, or in a noisy Tokyo kissa kissa, he recalled the saddles on the walls of his grandfather"s ranch, the creaking windmills, and the creek. He remembered the lumberman"s tools, their faint metallic smells; baseball; the odor of pine; the joy on the old man"s face when he spotted Don and Pat Goeters in front of the Reforma Hotel in the heart of Mexico City. Don recalled the world he had known, and he knew he could not now return to it, not to the way it had been.
As Don"s tour of duty neared its end, he wondered what to do with himself. His wife had been awarded a teaching a.s.sistantship in the French department at Rice. She would need at least two more years to finish her degree. If he returned to the Houston Post Houston Post, he would work nights and he and Maggie would rarely see each other. On the other hand, "for better or worse," he wrote to Joe Maranto, he could not "imagine anything" other than being a journalist, since he could not live off "literature." The sloppy work of the wire-service reporters he had met-their lack of investigative ac.u.men, their parroting of military press releases-disenchanted him, but he liked the access to celebrities and dignitaries that journalism provided him. His friend Sutchai Thangpew had made him curious about Thailand. The U.S. Military Advisory Group was expanding its operations there; Hanoi was about to fall, and America planned to double its Southeast Asia advisory contingent. For a while, Don flirted with the idea of applying for duty in Thailand, to cover "straight news," but he never followed up on it. His hope of joining the Tokyo staff of Stars and Stripes Stars and Stripes was thwarted by a grumpy first lieutenant, who refused to let him leave the Second Division. Then Don"s tour was up. was thwarted by a grumpy first lieutenant, who refused to let him leave the Second Division. Then Don"s tour was up.
Meanwhile, he reported to Maranto that the "current novel is better than anything I"ve ever done but not finished and I can"t get a typewriter after hours to nurse it on here and so will have to wait until I get home. I don"t think I"ll want to publish it when it"s finished, but I do want to finish it and see how it comes out. It"s been tremendously good exercise and has taught me much."
When he did get back to Houston, he refused to show the ma.n.u.script to any of his friends. It has never surfaced. His remark that it was an "unlove story" like the "unbirthdays" in Disney"s Alice in Wonderland Alice in Wonderland suggests its unconventional nature. When Don suggests its unconventional nature. When Don did did publish a novel, publish a novel, Snow White Snow White, over ten years later, it, too, echoed Disney.
As the Second Division prepared to ship out, the Indianhead Indianhead planned a farewell edition. Don wrote a story for it, describing life in the trenches for the Thirty-eighth Regiment as the cease-fire took hold. He interviewed soldiers who had been there that day, and reported: planned a farewell edition. Don wrote a story for it, describing life in the trenches for the Thirty-eighth Regiment as the cease-fire took hold. He interviewed soldiers who had been there that day, and reported: At 2200 hours, men of the division were told, the ceasefire was to go into effect.After that time, they were instructed not to fire unless attacked.The Communists opposite the 38th Regt"s sector wanted to slug it out until the final bell. Round after round came into the 38th trenches. The fire was returned.At 2154 hours, regiment ordered all shooting stopped.At 2200, despite many warnings, men dashed from their bunks, shed their flak jackets, and stood in little groups on the edge of a no-man"s land that was suddenly safe.On the opposite side of the line, the Chinese poured out of their bunkers and caves by the hundreds. They waved and shouted unintelligible English words and phrases. Many wore peculiar dead-white garments. Many sat out in the open and began to eat.Men got the feeling that something, or a part of something, was finished.
Despite the boxing imagery and the repet.i.tion, Hemingway this wasn"t. Not only was the report a final piece for the Indianhead Indianhead, it was Don"s last, halfhearted attempt to be Papa (or else it"s a parody). His own novel may have dissatisfied him, but it signaled the direction he was commited to, away away from strict realism-as did his layout for the paper"s last issue. from strict realism-as did his layout for the paper"s last issue.
He outranked his young editor, and put the man through the "most nerve shattering experience he ever had" by "jumping design"-providing sixteen pages of staggered headlines, articles beginning above and below the fold, photographs arranged asymmetrically: all, now, standard newspaper design, but radical at the time, especially in military culture. It "shook up the printers" who thought "in terms of straight newspaper makeup," "scared [every-body] to death," and convinced them that Don had "gone ape." He wasn"t even supposed to produce the issue, but he took over by pulling rank and "browbeating the poor devil [his editor] to the point of madness."
His determination sprang from an earlier episode, when a lieutenant who objected to a story Don had written asked him to change the piece. Don refused, until the man gave him a direct order. Don"s implacability-and his frustrations-with the Indianhead Indianhead presage the conflicts he would face in just a few years as editor of the University of Houston"s presage the conflicts he would face in just a few years as editor of the University of Houston"s Forum. Forum.
Any "rumors of new newspaper or mag ventures [in Houston] that sound remunerative?" Don asked Joe Maranto. Maranto said no, and admitted he was getting tired of the low pay and odd hours of newspaper writing. He considered jumping to an ad agency. This horrified Don. "Your present lick is no good," Don wrote back, "but at least it"s better than the cess pool." Advertising is "DISASTER," he insisted. Then he quoted the Duke Ellington song, saying, "DO NOTHING TILL YOU HEAR FROM ME."
"I am still dreaming this old dream...of starting a weekly mag a la Harold Ross," he wrote Maranto, or of founding something like the Allied Arts Review Allied Arts Review, "but sans any quality of hope; it can only be created in despair."
In March 1954, he wrote Maranto, "I have no juice, no fire. Ba.n.a.lity...I"m d.a.m.n near done for. I think perhaps a high opinion of yourself and your talents is a condition of the kind of writing I used to do...probably something that I"ll never do again. You see from all this that I"m desperately conscious of my inadequacies. Novel begun as a defense against this, among other things. I just threw the first two chapters of the draft away, by the way, and am trying to concentrate on the refurbishing of the rest."
Members of the Second Infantry Division sailed out of Korea in shifts; briefly, in late September, Don was rea.s.signed to the Public Information Office in Seoul. There, he continued to read: Mark Twain"s Life on the Mississippi Life on the Mississippi, Oscar Wilde"s The Picture of Dorian Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray, Will Durant"s The Story of Philosophy The Story of Philosophy, a biography of Emerson, plays by August Strindberg, Jean Cocteau, and Gerhart Hauptmann.
On September 28, Don told Maranto that he was "resettled in a relatively plush little berth [in Seoul] with the Korea Civil a.s.sistance Command, which administers the flow of US aid to Korea, as an information specialist....I will be here for another 60 days and then I will come HOME." He said his new strategy was to finish up at the "so-called University." After Maggie completed her studies at Rice, he intended to consolidate my gains and head for Stanford, an MA and a job with the San Francisco Examiner San Francisco Examiner or or Chronicle Chronicle, which is my next objective, newspaper-wise. The plan is to spend two years in that area and then whip off to the Yale Drama School for two more years, say, and a Boston or Philadelphia paper, at which time I"ll be ready to take a crack at NEW YORK. This is my five year plan, anyhow, at the finish of which I hope to have an MA in English and a lot of related work in drama and the cinema (perhaps a year at the CCNY Film Inst.i.tute could be worked in, or at the Southern Cal equivalent) and nine years" experience in journalism. The latter would break down as two years on the Post Post pre army, two years in army writing jobs, another year on the pre army, two years in army writing jobs, another year on the Post Post or some allied job in Houston, two years on a Bay area paper and two years on a Boston or Philly paper. or some allied job in Houston, two years on a Bay area paper and two years on a Boston or Philly paper.
This master plan is of course subject to being screwed up by a number of things: recall into the army, for one, a third world war, fall of the H bomb, divorce, anything. But it has a lovely sound and it is one of these lines that I"ll be working. All this time, incidentally, I would concurrently be working in fiction, like Glenn Miller in that awful picture, searching for a cool sound.
In December, he boarded a troopship for California, from where he"d settle at Fort Lewis for a short reorientation period. On the ship, Don hunkered into his berth, his back against white-painted steel, enjoying the pillow and the clean sheets, the electric lights by which to read. He would be home by Christmas. The rivets in the ship"s hull looked like snowman"s b.u.t.tons.
"[I sat] in the bow fifty miles out of San Francisco, listening to the Stateside disc jockeys chattering cha cha cha. Ready to grab my spot at the top," he wrote.
To Joe Maranto, he had written, "Whatever you can say about the army you can"t say that it doesn"t take something away from you....It will take me six months to get back in shape at least. Maybe something is permanently gone. I don"t know. I"m afraid to look."
13.
c.o.c.kYPAP.
It"s impossible to arrive in Houston for the first time ready for its physical challenges, and equally hard to return to it, prepared, after a long period away. The intense humidity and the heat-even in winter-along with the swampy odors rising from Buffalo Bayou (the city"s "c.u.n.ty" smell, according to Larry McMurtry) give the air a solid, flinty feel.
On a warm December day, Don came back to Houston with a well-worn ma.n.u.script in his duffel-pages he would soon throw away-and tried to catch his breath. He had been released from the army on reserve status; six more years would pa.s.s before he"d receive his official discharge. Fears of being recalled into the service made his homecoming dicey-no fanfares, bands, or parades, no rituals to mark an end. Oscar Cortes, another Korea veteran from south Texas, says, "I got a card from the Apache Distributing Company that distributes beer. They sent me a card for me to go by and pick up a free case of beer. That"s the only thing I got." It was more recognition than most vets received.
Christmas helped. Don"s family had always set up a tree (in a corner, near a window, or in the middle of the living room, depending on the placement of the furniture and/or the walls that year). Joan was home from school, Don"s younger brothers were excited by the presents, and Maggie made a holiday effort to enjoy the family. Don"s father photographed his son"s "veteran face, f.6 at 300," Don wrote. In fact, the elder Barthelme snapped the whole clan: Don"s mother, her hair beginning to gray, her posture slightly droopy; Joan, more poised than ever, wary around her dad; Pete, a strapping adolescent; Rick, practicing toughguy looks, wearing his wide-collared shirts rumpled and loose; Steve, the baby, blissful, tender, doted on.
Then there was the old man: face as blocky as his chest. Was he proud of his eldest son? Not so you"d know.
Maggie was a dream-and as distant distant as a dream-dark hair pulled back with a bow, eyes roving and alert. The noise, the bustle-preparing for Christmas, recovering from it later-prevented prolonged intimacy with Maggie, a mercy, perhaps, in these first awkward days at home. Don sat in his father"s house, knee touching his wife"s knee almost shyly, wondering why he"d worn a gaudy Asian shirt with a leaf motif. It was so out of place. "My clothes looked old and wrong," he wrote later. as a dream-dark hair pulled back with a bow, eyes roving and alert. The noise, the bustle-preparing for Christmas, recovering from it later-prevented prolonged intimacy with Maggie, a mercy, perhaps, in these first awkward days at home. Don sat in his father"s house, knee touching his wife"s knee almost shyly, wondering why he"d worn a gaudy Asian shirt with a leaf motif. It was so out of place. "My clothes looked old and wrong," he wrote later.
His arm circled Maggie"s waist as they watched the kids rip into their gifts. (Had he bought the right things? What did one get for kids these days?) As Maggie laughed at the children"s delight, she rested a hand uneasily on Don"s thigh.
After "[my] pause at Pusan," the "city looked new with tall buildings raised while my back was turned," says the narrator of "See the Moon?"
"There just wasn"t much to Houston" in the early 1950s, Philip Johnson once said. "I couldn"t understand how anyone lived there, but that was before the personality of the place came through to me: I found out those people weren"t afraid to try anything anything!"
Stephen Fox, an architectural historian, once wrote that Houston"s view of growth has always been "What is coming will be of more value than what is here already." The city"s "yearning" for a "new start" had begun in earnest while Don was gone. Fresh structures would eclipse the old Houston: the Melrose Building on Walker Avenue, a conventional U plan decked out like a sleek steel skeleton; the Texas National Bank Building, in progress on Main, with a green curtain wall and rooftop terraces; the First Unitarian Church, built in the style of Eero Saarinen, around a courtyard on Fannin Street; and, most impressively, Mies van der Rohe"s plan for a new addition to the Museum of Fine Arts, slated for completion in 1959. The design for this addition called for a double-volume s.p.a.ce made mostly of gla.s.s, "full of the "nothing" to which Mies...aspired to reduce architecture."
In Don"s absence, the city, afloat on oil money, had stepped up to announce itself as an architectural center. Don"s father supplied much of the energy behind this move. In Tokyo and Seoul, Don had seen the triumph-for better and and worse-of modern architecture. Now, with Houston"s rapid development, he saw his father"s old religion catching on. The narrator in "See the Moon?" describes his father as a "cheerleader." "We have to have cheerleaders"-they help promote the possible. And the possible worse-of modern architecture. Now, with Houston"s rapid development, he saw his father"s old religion catching on. The narrator in "See the Moon?" describes his father as a "cheerleader." "We have to have cheerleaders"-they help promote the possible. And the possible was was possible in Houston. Don never doubted that. possible in Houston. Don never doubted that.
But he had to get to know the place again, starting with the theaters. He spent long afternoons in the familiar old seats, hiding inside the Majestic, Loew"s, the River Oaks, watching shoot-"em-ups, gangsters, and eating b.u.t.tered popcorn.
There was the El Patio Restaurant on Kirby Street: a sea of melted cheese, chili peppers, good cold beer. Downtown was Guy"s Newsstand, next to-amazing!-a block of new Korean shops. Guy"s offered over three thousand magazines on every subject from stock tips to t.i.ts, including German rags and French newspapers. At Guy"s, you could buy Churchill cigars, marked down because their wrappers were flawed. An old woman, Mary Thompson, ran the place-she called it an "emporium"-having inherited it from her late husband, who had established the newsstand with winnings from the racetrack.
Slowly, by drifting back to his haunts, Don convinced himself he hadn"t gone missing in action.
All his friends-Maranto, Goeters, Christian-were married now, or about to be married. They threw plenty of couples parties, but Maggie was always studying or grading papers, and she rarely went to gatherings with Don. In January 1955, he enrolled in spring cla.s.ses at the University of Houston. He returned to the arts beat, and his old night shift, at the Post. Post. As he"d predicted, he rarely saw his wife. As he"d predicted, he rarely saw his wife.
His first new piece for the paper, on January 18, was a review of Jean-Paul Sartre"s The Flies The Flies at the Alley Theatre: a "respectable" production, Don said. Though movie notes took most of his time once more, his writings for the at the Alley Theatre: a "respectable" production, Don said. Though movie notes took most of his time once more, his writings for the Post Post from January to October 1955 show him battling his editors to broaden his range, covering such subjects as city planning (a speech by Richard Neutra), sacred music (a French organ recital at the First Presbyterian Church), screenwriting (a discussion with William Inge about from January to October 1955 show him battling his editors to broaden his range, covering such subjects as city planning (a speech by Richard Neutra), sacred music (a French organ recital at the First Presbyterian Church), screenwriting (a discussion with William Inge about Bus Stop Bus Stop), contemporary fiction (a review of Joyce Cary"s latest novel, Not Honour More Not Honour More). Obliged to include trivia in his columns-for example, "Tiny Diva Warms Shamrock," about the dancer and baton twirler Maureen Cannon-Don nevertheless filled the entertainment pages with more and more references to high art: a stage production of Macbeth Macbeth, Elia Kazan films. After his reading binge in Korea, he was desperate to believe he hadn"t backslid. "John Wayne Goes to the Bottom" read the t.i.tle of his impatient review of the movie The Sea Chase. The Sea Chase.
Occasionally, the paper let him out of his box to cover some of the straight news" he"d gotten a nose for in Korea. Sometimes he worked the police beat, an experience recalled in "The Sandman" (1972): ...the cops decided to show...four black kids [they"d arrested] at a press conference to demonstrate that they weren"t...beat all to rags, and that took place at four in the afternoon. I went and the kids looked OK, except for one whose teeth were out and who the cops said had fallen down the stairs. Well, we all know the falling-down-the-stairs story....There weren"t any TV pictures because the newspaper people always pulled out the plugs of the TV people, at important moments, in those days-it was a standard thing.
Helen Moore later recalled seeing Don at arts events and parties throughout that spring. She was married at that time to Peter Gilpin, a staffer at the Houston Chronicle. Houston Chronicle. "[Pete and I] were always together when I saw Don," she said. "Don"s wife Marilyn was never there." Helen still worked in the news and public relations department at the University of Houston, and did some teaching in the journalism school. Don took to dropping by her office, and asking her to coffee at the Cougar Den, a snack bar in the student union. He found her prettier than ever, with her hair short, casually combed. She smiled easily, a smile that barely stifled laughter. She had dark eyebrows and a slender nose. "[Pete and I] were always together when I saw Don," she said. "Don"s wife Marilyn was never there." Helen still worked in the news and public relations department at the University of Houston, and did some teaching in the journalism school. Don took to dropping by her office, and asking her to coffee at the Cougar Den, a snack bar in the student union. He found her prettier than ever, with her hair short, casually combed. She smiled easily, a smile that barely stifled laughter. She had dark eyebrows and a slender nose.
"I began to realize he was an attractive man," she admitted later. "He not only looked older [than before], but his demeanor was also more somber."
In July, Don showed up in Helen"s office and told her he was interested in a day job so he could leave the Post. Post. He asked if there were any full-time positions on her staff. She informed him that she had just given notice to the university president; she was taking a job with a private advertising firm. Don drooped (to him, advertising was a "cess pool"). "Talk to Farris Block," Helen told him. Block, a former journalist, would be her replacement in the PR pool. Don said he didn"t want to work for anyone else at the school, and that he"d miss his afternoon coffees with her. He asked if there were any full-time positions on her staff. She informed him that she had just given notice to the university president; she was taking a job with a private advertising firm. Don drooped (to him, advertising was a "cess pool"). "Talk to Farris Block," Helen told him. Block, a former journalist, would be her replacement in the PR pool. Don said he didn"t want to work for anyone else at the school, and that he"d miss his afternoon coffees with her.
Eventually, he changed his mind and did did talk to Block. Like Don, the narrator of "See the Moon?" applies for a job at his "old school" and presents a "career plan on neatly typed pages with wide margins." The interviewer says, "You seem married, mature, malleable," then adds, "We have a spot for a poppyc.o.c.k man, to write the [university president"s] speeches. Have you ever done poppyc.o.c.k?" talk to Block. Like Don, the narrator of "See the Moon?" applies for a job at his "old school" and presents a "career plan on neatly typed pages with wide margins." The interviewer says, "You seem married, mature, malleable," then adds, "We have a spot for a poppyc.o.c.k man, to write the [university president"s] speeches. Have you ever done poppyc.o.c.k?"
"I said no but maybe I could fake it....[So] I wrote poppyc.o.c.k, sometimes c.o.c.kypap." Which Don did, beginning in the fall of 1955 (though his pieces for the Post Post continued through October 2). He also became the editor of continued through October 2). He also became the editor of Acta Diurna Acta Diurna, a weekly faculty newsletter.
Now his social circle widened to include university staff members, administrators, and teachers. Maggie still wouldn"t go with him to parties. His interests dovetailed with very few of the people he met. "At four o"clock the faculty hoisted the c.o.c.ktail flag. We drank daiquiris," he wrote. His colleagues nudged him in the ribs, nodded at music pounding from the hi-fi speakers, and said, " "Listen to that ba.s.s. That"s sixty watts" worth of ba.s.s, boy," " or told him, " "[You get] a ten-percent discount on tickets for all home games."" But Don didn"t belong with these folks. Not really. He didn"t listen to them. Dreaming, he withdrew and "stared at the moon"s pale daytime presence."
As he would write years later, "I had never...[worked] in the daytime before, how was I to know how things were done in the daytime?"
That fall, in a Restoration Drama course, he met Herman Gollob, an affable fellow Texan, a Korea vet, with a pa.s.sion for literature and the theater. "I"d read his [movie] reviews...and thought they were exceptionally trenchant and witty and graceful," Gollob recalls. "I introduced myself to him, told him I"d been a fan, and then proceeded to argue with what I recalled as his mocking a.s.sessment of The Man from Laramie The Man from Laramie, a western starring James Stewart."
Don hated the cla.s.s they shared. Gollob liked the professor, a man who told "little whimsical jokes" and spoke of his father"s love of George Bernard Shaw. Don "reviled" Gollob for his excitement in the cla.s.s, and for turning his work in on time. Gollob didn"t take any of this personally-Don was "unwilling to suffer fools," but he wasn"t "mean-spirited."
The two friends started going to movies together, and they went to hear jazz. Gollob credits Don with teaching him about music. Always, Don kept his eyes on the drummers, gauging how much energy they expended or reserved. He raved about Sid Catlett. Catlett refused pyrotechnics. He barely moved, sitting straight on his throne. Listen, Don told Gollob. Catlett"s fourbar solos, his triplets and ruffs, weren"t just fills, they were expansion expansion and and a.n.a.lysis a.n.a.lysis, linking musical themes. Style was the answer to life"s stress, Don said. Style was something clean clean.
Don was "very much the gla.s.s of fashion, very Ivy League...the first person I"d known who wore b.u.t.ton-down blue oxford shirts, rep ties, and tweed jackets," Gollob says. He was a "courtly guy. Always opened doors for women and walked on the outside of the street. Gentlemanly." Around this time, Don began driving an MG. "He"d bought it secondhand off some guy on campus," Gollob recalls. "It was bad-looking but I loved tooling around with him in it."
In the afternoons, after cla.s.ses at UH, they"d retire to Stubby"s Lounge, across the street from the campus, "a windowless concrete blockhouse with the best jukebox in town." From there, they"d make their way to the rental house Don shared with Maggie. Gollob remembers: ...we spent many an evening in [Don"s] living room killing a fifth of Black and White, listening to Sh.e.l.ly Manne and Shorty Rogers and Bud Shanks and Andre Previn (a fantastic jazz pianist back then) and Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan, descanting and descanting again on life and art (the latest Salinger story in the New Yorker New Yorker, Robert Aldrich"s scorching movie version of Odet"s...The Big Knife), while in the bedroom Maggie a.n.a.lyzed the genius of Mallarme and Baudelaire, emerging occasionally to ask us, in a voice taut with controlled animosity, to turn down the music and lower our voices.