Hiding Man_ A Biography Of Donald Barthelme Part 25

"It was not to my liking when Marion first came into my father's life," Anne admits. "I wanted him to myself in those days. I was p.i.s.sed off, but n.o.body paid much attention to that. I always liked Karen Kennerly because she was enamored of me. Marion was straight and narrow, kind of blue-b.l.o.o.d.y... Dad called her Marigold, Good as Gold."

"When [she and Donald] first [got] together, they were like freshmen in high school," says Harrison Starr. "I always had a car in New York. Native Californian, right? I'd thread my way. We went to dinner [one night] at a French restaurant up in the Thirties, East Thirties, and they were in the backseat like little high school children."

Kirk Sale saw that Don's hours were "much warmer and fuller" whenever Marion was around.

"Don had never led a normal life, but he sort of started one with Marion," Kennerly says. It was the "closest he'd come to a steady life."

Marion Knox was born in Baltimore, the middle sister of three. Her father was a general surgeon. She attended Garrison Forest School in Baltimore, then the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. In 1967, she earned a B.A. in history at the University of Wisconsin. After that, "I went to Paris with a girlfriend intending to backpack around (it was those days)," she says. She "ended up working at different jobs (no green card)," including a several-month stint with La Jeune Afrique La Jeune Afrique, a magazine for francophone countries of Africa. The editors paid her "under the table." Eventually, Time Time's Paris bureau hired her to file newspaper clips and to make telephone calls in French. She had to get stock market quotes from the bourse, "which was horrifying because they were given so fast and I had to secretly call back many times to get them right," she says. During Les Jours de Mai Les Jours de Mai, when gasoline was rationed because of student riots and workers' strikes, the office staff asked Marion to fill the tank of her borrowed car so they could siphon the gas off. In 1971, she moved to Manhattan and went to work in the forty-eight-story Time-Life Building on the Avenue of the Americas, at first doing research for other writers, then more and more reporting, primarily on education and women's roles in various professions.

"I am happy and know myself to be happy-a rare state," Don wrote soon after meeting Marion. Other events did not escape his attention: the increasingly nefarious lunacy of the Nixon administration and the opening of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, which sucked much of the island's trade its way. Contemplating these developments, in his new happy mood, Don wrote a whimsical letter to George Christian in Houston, proposing that the two of them "form a new government." The "inadequacies of the existing government I need not dwell upon," he said. Don's idea was that "when the former real government does anything especially especially horrible, dull, stupid, or evil, we will issue a press release, stating the position of the new real government....Our statements will be so eloquent, right-on and funny that the press will of course eventually become conditioned to turn naturally to us for comment on the major issues of the day." horrible, dull, stupid, or evil, we will issue a press release, stating the position of the new real government....Our statements will be so eloquent, right-on and funny that the press will of course eventually become conditioned to turn naturally to us for comment on the major issues of the day."

Don suggested Norman Mailer for president (sworn in on the steps of the New York Public Library, with his right hand on a copy of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary Webster's Unabridged Dictionary), Lynn Nesbit for chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and for himself, "Gray Eminence." Oh-and one of the Supreme Court seats, he said, should go to "my dear friend Marion Knox."

42.

PEN AND SWORD.

A secret White House tape, recorded on June 23, 1972, caught Richard Nixon haranguing his perceived enemies. He ordered the CIA to block investigations of Howard Hunt. Nixon had offered Hunt hush money so he wouldn't reveal the "seamy things he had done" for the president during the Watergate affair. The June 23 tape became known in Was.h.i.+ngton as the "smoking gun," and led to the final stages of the debacle that ended in Nixon's resignation.

"Watergate sure did get [Don] revved up," wrote Thomas Pynchon, who met Don through Kirk and Faith Sale. By 1972, Pynchon said, Nixon had "mutated into a desperate and impersonal force, no longer your traditionally human-type President, but now some faceless subG.o.d of folly."

Don wrote, "One can attempt to explain this Administration in a variety of ways, but folie a deux folie a deux is perhaps too optimistic, and on the other hand I do not want to believe that we get what we deserve." He could only fall back in "stunned wonder at the fullness and mysteriousness of our political life." is perhaps too optimistic, and on the other hand I do not want to believe that we get what we deserve." He could only fall back in "stunned wonder at the fullness and mysteriousness of our political life."

He penned half a dozen satires of Nixon, including this parody of the White House tapes: P-What did I do then?E-You understood that inaudible had unintelligible. P-When did I understand that? P-When did I understand that? E-You understood that on the morning of the unintelligible. E-You understood that on the morning of the unintelligible. P-Oh, I see. I understood that because inaudible had informed me that unintelligible...But won't that look like expletive deleted? P-Oh, I see. I understood that because inaudible had informed me that unintelligible...But won't that look like expletive deleted? H-It will look like you at least knew that unintelligible before inaudible and had the guts to be unintelligible. H-It will look like you at least knew that unintelligible before inaudible and had the guts to be unintelligible. P-I've never been afraid to be unintelligible. P-I've never been afraid to be unintelligible.

Don published his satires in The Village Voice The Village Voice, in The New Yorker The New Yorker 's "Notes and Comment" section, and on the op-ed page of 's "Notes and Comment" section, and on the op-ed page of The New York Times. The New York Times. They were his attempts to "hurl great flaming buckets of Greek fire (rhetoric) at the Government," he said, "not thinking that the Government is paying the slightest attention, but merely for the splendid exercise given the Citizens.h.i.+p muscle." They were his attempts to "hurl great flaming buckets of Greek fire (rhetoric) at the Government," he said, "not thinking that the Government is paying the slightest attention, but merely for the splendid exercise given the Citizens.h.i.+p muscle."

His ruefulness reveals why his satires were generally more gentle than biting. He was "prevented from becoming a world-cla.s.s curmudgeon on the order of, say, Ambrose Bierce, by the stubborn counter-rhythms of what kept on being a hopeful and unbitter heart," Pynchon says. A "tenderness and geniality" always "s.h.i.+ne through" whenever Don "drops the irony, even for a minute."

During the early seventies, Pynchon lived off and on in the Sales's bas.e.m.e.nt apartment, below Don, when the Sales were away. He wrote parts of Gravity's Rainbow Gravity's Rainbow there. As he came to know Don, he was impressed by Don's neighborliness. "He disliked being alone, preferring company, however problematical, to no company," Pynchon recalled. The two men hit it off; they shared a quick wit. Karen Kennerly says that one morning, Pynchon called Don and said, "I've just put the cat in the refrigerator. Do you think that's a problem?" On another day, he sent Don a note saying he'd thought he'd spotted Don walking around the Village, but he didn't approach him "on the off-chance it was Solzhenitsyn." there. As he came to know Don, he was impressed by Don's neighborliness. "He disliked being alone, preferring company, however problematical, to no company," Pynchon recalled. The two men hit it off; they shared a quick wit. Karen Kennerly says that one morning, Pynchon called Don and said, "I've just put the cat in the refrigerator. Do you think that's a problem?" On another day, he sent Don a note saying he'd thought he'd spotted Don walking around the Village, but he didn't approach him "on the off-chance it was Solzhenitsyn."

Most Village dwellers cheered Nixon's departure, though local politics consumed them more intensely than national battles. For many in the neighborhood, the demolition of the Women's House of Detention, a twelve-story prison at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Tenth Street, was a greater source of joy than the fall of the paranoid in chief. The building had been an eyesore; it housed mostly addicts, black and Puerto Rican prost.i.tutes, and antiwar activists. In an era of growing feminist consciousness, it had come to be seen as a shameful reminder of social inequalities.

Grace Paley had been held there for six days in the late 1960s, for sitting in a street and impeding a military parade. In her cell, a tall black woman put her arm on Grace's shoulder. "What's your time, sugar?" she asked.

"Six days," Grace said.

"Six days? What the f.u.c.k for?"

When Grace told her, the woman screamed at the guards, "Hear me now, you motherf.u.c.kers, you grotty pigs, get this housewife out of here! Six days in this low-down hole for sitting front of a horse!"

When the prison came down under pressure from neighborhood activists, and after large trucks had hauled away all the bricks, Grace was one of the few people sorry to see the place go. "[I]f there are prisons, they ought to be in the neighborhood, near a subway-not way out in distant suburbs...and the population that considers itself innocent forgets, denies, chooses to never know that there is a huge country of the bad and the unlucky and the self-hurters," she said.

A group calling itself the Village Committee for the Jefferson Market Area designed and planted a garden on the old site, to "create a verdant blooming oasis in the heart of Greenwich Village," filled with daffodils, tulips, and roses. On his daily walks in the neighborhood, Don watched the garden in progress. "It's going to be pretty," he wrote. "I don't know who the genius responsible for getting this done is, but I take off my hat to her."

Grace's objection to the prison's removal was ideological; Don's approval of its absence was aesthetic. Grace did not want people to forget how the world is. how the world is. Don insisted on considering Don insisted on considering how the world should be. how the world should be.

His privacy and decorum were always at odds with his love of community and his powerful sense of shouldness. shouldness. The more he walked and talked to his neighbors, the more he acknowledged how much he "dearly" loved the Village. "I care for the marvelous dangerous Oz-like city as a whole." Increasingly, his writing reflected this, in the less angry, more personal style of The more he walked and talked to his neighbors, the more he acknowledged how much he "dearly" loved the Village. "I care for the marvelous dangerous Oz-like city as a whole." Increasingly, his writing reflected this, in the less angry, more personal style of Sadness. Sadness.

For instance, in an unsigned piece in The New Yorker The New Yorker's "Notes and Comment," he wrote of a local street festival, where a high school stage band played jazz standards. The kids in the band copied the att.i.tudes and gestures of professional musicians. When "they played 'Yesterdays,' tears came to my eyes, which I don't much like in public, so I asked this girl if she wanted to dance," Don said. "She wasn't a girl, really, she was a woman, and all the time we were dancing she had this three-year-old child (wearing gla.s.ses) clinging to her right leg. I didn't get her name, but I sure did enjoy that dance."

What is remarkable about this pa.s.sage-and, again, it was new in Don's writing at this time-is the ease with which he conveyed complex emotions and simultaneously painted a social portrait. Central but unspoken in the scene is time's relentlessness: The high school kids strained toward the future, imitating mature gestures, while their performance evoked an embarra.s.sing nostalgia in Don. He tried to recover decorum with a romantic gesture, but the girl he asked to dance was not really a girl (youth was lost to him) and the romance was tarnished by the clinging three-year-old, whose body was already starting to fail (the gla.s.ses), and yet, the moment was exquisitely touching, because Don accepted the frailties of everyone present, including himself. For all his utopianism, he never lost his "tenderness and geniality" toward things as they are. As it turns out, nothing is more radical, as a source of political consciousness, than tenderness.

To his fellow writers, Don was by now a potent political force, respected for his modesty and his refusal to promote himself, and admired for his ability to get things done for those whose causes he chose to champion. Since he had moved to New York in 1962, he had been busy bringing people together from various reaches of the literary world. Because he usually worked behind the scenes, rarely pushed overt agendas, and couched his arguments precisely and with common-sense righteousness, he almost never met resistance.

"Don was a very active, astute, literary politician," wrote Renata Adler, who gave an example of this in her book Gone: Gone: Once he enlisted me to block the appointment of a particular candidate for The New York Times Book Review. The New York Times Book Review. "Why me?" I asked,..."You've worked for the "Why me?" I asked,..."You've worked for the Times Times," he said. "It's your duty." His voice had its note of irony, as his voice always did,...but he meant it. In the event, I called Diana Trilling, who spoke to Lionel, who did intervene. The rejected candidate never knew what happened; neither did the man, Harvey Shapiro, who actually got the job.

He took numerous stands on small but crucial issues, including a censors.h.i.+p flap at the Caldwell Parish Library in Louisiana. A librarian there had hand-painted diapers on the ill.u.s.trations of Mickey, the naked little hero of Maurice Sendak's popular children's book In the Night Kitchen. In the Night Kitchen. Don signed a letter to the American Library a.s.sociation objecting to the librarian's handiwork. Don signed a letter to the American Library a.s.sociation objecting to the librarian's handiwork.

Most of his literary politicking came through the international organization for poets, playwrights, essayists, editors, and novelists. P.E.N. was founded in London in 1921 by John Galsworthy and C. A. Dawson Scott. P.E.N. initially had the feel of a private club, but it harbored the ambitions of the League of Nations. Its logo was a quill pen slicing a sword in half. Walt Whitman once wrote, "My dearest dream is for an internationality of poems and poets, binding the lands of the earth closer than all treaties and diplomacy." P.E.N. embraced this sentiment.

PEN American Center sprang to life in New York with the help of the writers and publishers Joseph Anthony, Willa Cather, Carl Van Doren, and John Farrar. A formal dinner in Manhattan's Coffee House Club on April 19, 1922, marked its official beginning. From England, Galsworthy sent words of support: "We writers are...trustees for human nature...[a]nd the better we know each other...the greater the chance for human happiness in a world not, as yet, too happy."

According to Marchette Chute, keeper of PEN's official history, in the 1930s the organization found itself "with less and less s.p.a.ce in a world" making room "for the absolute power of the totalitarian state." Hitler became chancellor of Germany the month that Galsworthy died. At International P.E.N.'s 1933 Congress, held in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, the delegation of German writers, led by the author of a Hitler hagiography, tried to prevent Ernst Toller, a German Jew living in exile, from speaking. H. G. Wells, the president of the Congress, forced the matter to a vote and Toller got his moment. But the German delegation (which walked out on the speech) had intimidated many other partic.i.p.ants. Henry Seidel Canby, the only American delegate at the Congress, felt a "visible fear rising like a cold fire."

This is the moment when PEN really really became a political organization. At the Congress, Canby read a statement drafted by the Executive Committee of the American Center: "... it is the duty of the artist to guard the spirit in its freedom, so that mankind shall not be prey to ignorance, to malice, and to fear..." became a political organization. At the Congress, Canby read a statement drafted by the Executive Committee of the American Center: "... it is the duty of the artist to guard the spirit in its freedom, so that mankind shall not be prey to ignorance, to malice, and to fear..."

Under John Farrar's leaders.h.i.+p in the fifties, the American Center returned to its private-club atmosphere, holding regular c.o.c.ktail parties at the Pierre, a Fifth Avenue hotel. In the 1960s, when Don became an active member, the group found office s.p.a.ce in a building at Fifth Avenue and Twentieth Street. The c.o.c.ktail parties continued at the Pierre, though they were stuffy affairs. Don didn't enjoy them much. He preferred to drink at home. "In time, Don developed considerable influence in PEN," says Kirk Sale. "It was he and I who started up chapters in places outside New York-Texas being the first." At the "PEN Board meetings...he would habitually come in his cowboy boots, and habitually sit in the back, the eminence gris eminence gris as owl. And he would not talk often, and never long, but what he said was always pithy and appropriate, and usually right. I recall the time he was to present a report to the Board of a PEN all-star reading that we had just put on at the University of Houston. He stood up and, as I remember it, said just, 'Richard Howard took the word as owl. And he would not talk often, and never long, but what he said was always pithy and appropriate, and usually right. I recall the time he was to present a report to the Board of a PEN all-star reading that we had just put on at the University of Houston. He stood up and, as I remember it, said just, 'Richard Howard took the word rebarbative rebarbative to Texas...where it was badly needed,' and sat down." to Texas...where it was badly needed,' and sat down."

Don took an energetic role in PEN's letter-writing campaigns to free prisoners of conscience. When Soviet police agents forcibly detained Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Don signed a cablegram to Soviet party leader Leonid Brezhnev. It said, in part, "We, his colleagues in the West, call for the immediate cessation of threats and persecution of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn." He sent a telegram urging then secretary of state Henry Kissinger to condemn the Soviet Union.

On behalf of PEN, Don and others worked to get restrictions lifted on the travel visas of a number of Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

He signed a letter to Poland's prime minister, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, calling for an end to martial law in that country, the release of "imprisoned writers, educators, labor leaders, students and others" and a "speedy restoration of basic human rights in Poland."

For Don, now in his early forties, political conscience was inextricable from a traditional, almost religious, notion of morality that valued generosity and tolerance-values linked to his Catholic schooling and his father's modernist crusade. Late in his life-and despite people like Richard Nixon-Don said, "Democracy is the best idea we have come up with that I know of politically-a Greek-Christian kind of social organization." Any "individual guy or voter (poorly educated or well-educated, it doesn't matter)...is going to vote for X who answers his own needs, or he's going to vote for Y because this man seems to be more in tune with him spiritually."

But, he concluded, "I haven't seen a government I liked yet."

43.

GUILTY PLEASURES.

Marion kept her apartment at 274 West Eleventh Street, but spent most of her time at Don's place. Her steady daily life with him-bolstered by his acceptance of the position of Distinguished Visiting Professor at the City College of New York-simmered with creative tension. "Living unmarried with an artist/writer wasn't bourgeois convention," Marion says. "I had a solid, middle-cla.s.s upbringing, and while I wanted a different life-path, [my background] gave me a centeredness and independence that Donald appreciated. I thought he was the most fascinating person I had ever met. He wanted to know everything and he understood everything, even things only women understand. My mother thought he had bewitched me. He had. One of the first mornings I stayed over, he read me all of Krapp's Last Tape Krapp's Last Tape in bed. That could win a girl over." in bed. That could win a girl over."

Kirk Sale recalls several small "spats" peppering the couple's days, but Marion says, "The only spats we had concerned my long hours at Time Time and Donald's occasional paranoia about my whereabouts." Max Frisch, on a return visit to the city, wrote this fictionalized portrait of an afternoon he spent with the pair: and Donald's occasional paranoia about my whereabouts." Max Frisch, on a return visit to the city, wrote this fictionalized portrait of an afternoon he spent with the pair: He is now divorced, the apartment unchanged though recently painted; the INGRES poster in the same place. When she returns home, he looks at his watch: where has she been all this time? She is (so others had told me) a brilliant woman. She greets me with unconcealed curiosity, not entirely free of constraint, but with watchful eyes, as if comparing me with a police description. She is blond, her hair combed upward...they pretend to be joking with each other. It is three o'clock, she left the house at eleven. I say something or other-about West Berlin and East Berlin, I believe. He really wants to know where she has been since eleven o'clock. She laughs and shows what she has bought-not very much. Four hours for that? She is interested in West Berlin and East Berlin. She knows Paris pretty well. She would be happy to make some coffee. His tone is still joking: when one rings her in the office, she is out shopping or has gone to the library, where one can't telephone her; and when one doesn't ring her in the office, she has been there the whole time. She laughs; he does not.

Like Karen Kennerly, Marion put up with but was more amused by Don's possessiveness and jealousy-his constant teasing about younger men who might be her lovers, remarks designed to test her reactions and provoke s.e.xual tension. "It was a game," Marion says. "I never really worried about it; it just seemed to be one of Donald's personality quirks, and I knew he wasn't a 'regular' guy." Consistently, his stories ("Florence Green Is 81," "Can We Talk," "Three") explored the fear of boring one's lover, or the feeling of inadequacy compared to more vigorous or intelligent men. A real fear, clearly, but also, as Marion says, a game-on the page and in the home-played to keep things snappy. With Marion, Don's stratagems were particularly intense. So was his generosity.

"Right after I met Donald, I went to Stonington, a small town in Maine that had an historic granite quarry whose workers-immigrant quarrymen from Scotland, Ireland, and Italy-were still living with lots of colorful stories about the old days," Marion recalls. "It was my first freelance piece and it ran in The Maine Times. The Maine Times. Donald gave me a small antique Corona typewriter as a present afterwards." Donald gave me a small antique Corona typewriter as a present afterwards."

It pleased him to see her freelance. "He didn't like Time Time," Marion says. "Once, early [in our relations.h.i.+p], I took him up after a dinner to show him my cubicle. Donald felt uncomfortable and never returned. But he was keenly interested in my work and in the office details. When I came home each evening, I would get a gla.s.s of wine and he would pull up a chair to his desk and debrief me. Various details ended up in his work. It was a great lesson for me in observation. He was intensely curious about everything."

Among the stories she worked on that caught his fancy was a piece on the Unification Church. "I pretended to be a lost young person so I could infiltrate the church ranks," Marion remembers. "Donald advised me about ponytails or braids-which looked sillier and more 'dazed and confused.' When I started freelancing, he went out and bought a bunch of magazines on men's fas.h.i.+on, dressed accordingly and then had me describe him, 'pants puddling at the ankles.' The [fas.h.i.+on] story ran in the Atlantic. Atlantic. I was learning so much. He gave me books to read. We listened to jazz. We looked at art. We were always fixing up the apartment. One spring he painted the walls and I did the windows. When I quit I was learning so much. He gave me books to read. We listened to jazz. We looked at art. We were always fixing up the apartment. One spring he painted the walls and I did the windows. When I quit Time Time, and started freelancing seriously, he took me out to buy a hollow core door desktop, which he set up in the back room on filing cabinets. We had already taken down the kitchen wall and put in a butcher block counter. He loved interior decorating, simple and clean, j.a.panese. Even when we traveled to a hotel, he'd move the furniture around-I think because of the joy of creating a new s.p.a.ce that was unique and beautiful that didn't involve writing."

Their travel together included summer weeks spent in Copenhagen to visit Anne and Birgit. While there, they stayed in an apartment that belonged to Madame Schuman, an elegant equestrian in the Schuman Circus, which overlooked Hans Christian Andersen Boulevard. "The acrobats and performers lived there, too," Marion recalls. "Donald would write in the mornings and then we would have lunch, get Anne, and sightsee. We invested in a cheap badminton set and the three of us played together in the courtyard. Once, when the birdie got stuck on a second floor window sill, I stood on Donald's shoulders and was able to grab it-to the applause of the circus people who, unknown to us, were watching from a window above."

Back in New York, Don and Marion would cook together happily. "People have talked a lot about Donald's melancholy and sadness. It was deep in him, but so was great humor and joy," she says. "We once had a big argument which he wrote about and, to my amazement, there was my point of view perfectly understood and represented. He was, as he said, a double-minded man. The only thing that frightened him was not writing well."

Though they weren't yet married, Don considered Marion his domestic partner. Kirk Sale recalls a conversation with Don in the early 1970s: "Don asked me if I was having an affair because I looked so happy. I said I was. d.a.m.n if he didn't tell Marion, and d.a.m.n if she she didn't tell Faith, and when I complained to Don, he simply said, 'Men don't have secrets from their wives.' " didn't tell Faith, and when I complained to Don, he simply said, 'Men don't have secrets from their wives.' "

It was not his love life but his growing visibility as a literary icon that provoked genuine genuine paranoia in Don. In the December 23, 1973, issue of paranoia in Don. In the December 23, 1973, issue of The New York Times Book Review The New York Times Book Review, he published the following letter: The fall 1973 number of the Carolina Quarterly contains a story called "Divorce" and signed with my name. As it happens, I did not write it. It is quite a worthy effort, as pastiches go, and particularly successful in reproducing my weaknesses. A second story, "Cannon," also signed with my name, appears in the current issue of Voyages. As a candidate-member of the Scandinavian Inst.i.tute of Comparative Vandalism, I would rate the second item somewhat inferior to the first, but again, I am not responsible. May I say, as a sort of notice to mariners, that only ma.n.u.scripts offered to editors by my agent, Lynn Nesbit, are authentic-not good or bad, but at least authentic.

"Divorce" mimics several of Don's stories, including "Philadelphia," "City Life," and "Porcupines at the University." Pa.s.sive voice, non sequiturs, and absurd imagery predominate, but without the philosophical underpinning or melancholy that give Don's best efforts their gravity and meaning. Don's "golden ear" is nowhere in evidence.

Even clunkier is "Cannon!" which appeared in Voyages Voyages and in the Winter 1973 issue of and in the Winter 1973 issue of The Georgia Review. The Georgia Review. "Cannon!" echoes "Porcupines at the University," but where the language in Don's story is an obvious parody of film Westerns and country music, "Cannon!" and "Divorce" offer deliberately mixed metaphors and abstract phrasing "Cannon!" echoes "Porcupines at the University," but where the language in Don's story is an obvious parody of film Westerns and country music, "Cannon!" and "Divorce" offer deliberately mixed metaphors and abstract phrasing without without Don's satiric intent. Don's satiric intent.

In the Spring 1974 issue of The Georgia Review The Georgia Review, Edward Krickel, the editor, apologized to readers and to Don for being duped. "Admittedly, editing a journal easily becomes a kind of celebrity-mongering," he wrote, but he defended his decision to publish the piece on the basis of its "quality." He said he wasn't wasn't dazzled by the name Barthelme on the ma.n.u.script. "Why would anyone mask as anyone else?" he asked. "Specifically, why would anyone other than the real author submit a story under the name of Donald Barthelme, correspond with us on letterhead stationery (and pompously say he was 'glad to help out down there'), correct proofs, submit upon request a social security number so that he might be paid-all of this over a period of six months before the truth came out? For money? We don't pay that much." dazzled by the name Barthelme on the ma.n.u.script. "Why would anyone mask as anyone else?" he asked. "Specifically, why would anyone other than the real author submit a story under the name of Donald Barthelme, correspond with us on letterhead stationery (and pompously say he was 'glad to help out down there'), correct proofs, submit upon request a social security number so that he might be paid-all of this over a period of six months before the truth came out? For money? We don't pay that much."

He concluded that the hoaxer was a "monster of malice" seeking to "damage" Don's reputation.

One more fake appeared in 1973, "Sentence Pa.s.sed on the Show of a Nation's Brain Damage, etc., Or, The Autobiography of a Crime," a poor pastiche of Don's visual collages, published by Chicago's December Press.

Don's letter to the Book Review Book Review effectively silenced the prankster or pranksters. effectively silenced the prankster or pranksters.

Meanwhile, Don had published several pieces under pseudonyms. Publicly, he admitted to wearing only one mask, Lily McNeil, which he first used to parody the theatrical style of women's magazine articles. One day, "Esquire called up and wanted to know if Lily would be interested in writing a monthly column for them, giving the women's view on things," he said. "Lily...didn't feel up to it." called up and wanted to know if Lily would be interested in writing a monthly column for them, giving the women's view on things," he said. "Lily...didn't feel up to it."

Later, William White was another name he used, in The New Yorker The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" section, in pieces parodying book reviewers and fas.h.i.+onable new authors.

While he was busy writing, with or without a false face, Don continued to bring other people's work to the attention of readers as one of the invisible editors of Fiction. Fiction. Mark Mirsky had finally talked City College into giving the magazine a small office and a stipend for a graduate student to help with production. Owing to Don's and Marianne Frisch's connections, the magazine published an astonis.h.i.+ng array of talent: J. G. Ballard, John Barth, Samuel Beckett, Robert Creeley, Kenneth Koch, Thomas McGuane, Nathalie Sarraute, Leonard Michaels, Russell Banks, Anthony Burgess, Frederick Busch, William Kittredge, Clarence Major, Ronald Sukenick, Raymond Carver, Sallie Bingham, Halldor Laxness, Peter Handke, John Hawkes, and Manuel Puig. Mark Mirsky had finally talked City College into giving the magazine a small office and a stipend for a graduate student to help with production. Owing to Don's and Marianne Frisch's connections, the magazine published an astonis.h.i.+ng array of talent: J. G. Ballard, John Barth, Samuel Beckett, Robert Creeley, Kenneth Koch, Thomas McGuane, Nathalie Sarraute, Leonard Michaels, Russell Banks, Anthony Burgess, Frederick Busch, William Kittredge, Clarence Major, Ronald Sukenick, Raymond Carver, Sallie Bingham, Halldor Laxness, Peter Handke, John Hawkes, and Manuel Puig.

Don solicited a story from Grace Paley, a meditation on racism, which Mirsky found too incendiary, given racial tensions on campus. Grace submitted another piece, "The Immigrant Story," which ran in the magazine's third issue.

Walter Abish recalls getting a call one day from Don, whom he didn't know at the time. "I said, 'Snow White'? He said yes. He had read some of my work in New Directions New Directions and and TriQuarterly. TriQuarterly. He invited me to be published in He invited me to be published in Fiction. Fiction. I sent him a couple of pieces and he took one of them, 'Non-Site,' about a Richard Smithson earthwork." I sent him a couple of pieces and he took one of them, 'Non-Site,' about a Richard Smithson earthwork."

Abish lived in New Jersey, in a cottage built into the cliffs overlooking the Hudson River and Ninety-sixth Street in Manhattan. After Don accepted his story, Don asked him to drop by with a photo to run with the piece. "We got along very well," Abish says. "Unlike most writers I knew, he was very knowledgeable about the arts. My wife's an artist. The seventies was a very exciting period in the art world, and Don and I were both very intrigued by it all."

One thing hampered the men's closeness. "I had a health problem and couldn't drink, and that was a problem for the friends.h.i.+p," Abish says. "In any case, I would see Donald from time to time-we had people in common in the art world. We prioritized literature, prioritized work. He'd come to my book parties. And there were parties at his house. I was the younger writer, you know...his early work was very significant to me."

Like Frisch, Abish observed Don's avidity toward Marion. "She was very striking, very nice. I was quite fond of her," he says. "But this possessiveness was something in Donald's makeup. Once, she came home with flowers. Donald was, 'Where have you been, where have you been?' Frisch was the same way toward women. These men from a rigorous home...they don't show any pain or mercy...in one way, very stoic....I found this fascinating. There was a whole crowd like that: Frisch, Donald, Saul Steinberg. Though I felt a literary kins.h.i.+p with Donald, in the playfulness of our work, finally we were very different. I like to scrutinize things, and I want it all out. I want it all out. Donald was about concealment." Donald was about concealment."

Ultimately, Abish felt that, with friends and and lovers, "Donald was just not prepared to give certain things. In giving them, he would be transformed into someone he was not." The lovers, "Donald was just not prepared to give certain things. In giving them, he would be transformed into someone he was not." The Fiction Fiction group, and the writing teachers at City College, "belonged to a different world than Donald did," according to Abish. True, "they seemed to satisfy something in him. Jerry Charyn is an incredibly nice guy...and Mark Mirsky...but like many literary people, Donald inhabited more than one world, and the worlds did not converge." group, and the writing teachers at City College, "belonged to a different world than Donald did," according to Abish. True, "they seemed to satisfy something in him. Jerry Charyn is an incredibly nice guy...and Mark Mirsky...but like many literary people, Donald inhabited more than one world, and the worlds did not converge."

In part, it "satisfied" Don to serve as a father figure to younger colleagues and students. As for his other partners: From time to time, the creative writing faculty at CCNY included John Hawkes, James Toback (who later made his name as a filmmaker), Ishmael Reed, and Frederick Tuten. Like Charyn and Mirsky, Tuten was younger than Don, but he shared Don's sensibility. "I was taken by the idea of an impersonal fiction, one whose personality was the novel's and not apparently that of its author, an ironic work impervious to irony," Tuten wrote.

One day, Peter J. Rondinone, one of Don's students, got up the gumption to ask Don, "How can I be like you?" Don responded, "How many words do you think I put into print before I sold my first short story?"

He "had no set reading list," says Brian Kitely, another pupil. "He simply said, 'Read all of Western philosophy...then read some history, anthropology, history of science.' " Kitely recalls a cla.s.s at Johns Hopkins: "A student there said, 'But we have to eat and sleep.' 'Give up sleeping,' Barthelme replied; 'that's a good place to start.' "

Outside of cla.s.s, and apart from Fiction Fiction, Don advanced American letters. "One day in 1973 he crossed the street to talk to me on my stoop," wrote Grace Paley. " 'Grace,' he said, 'you now have enough stories for a book.' (My last book had been published in 1959.) 'Are you sure? I kind of doubt it,' I said. 'No, you do-go on upstairs and see what you can find in your files-I know I'm right.' I spent a week or so extracting stories from folders. He looked at my list at dinner at his house. 'You're missing at least two more,' he said. 'You've got to find them. I'll wait here.' "

At Don's insistence, she pulled the stories together and published her second book, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Meanwhile, beneath Don's floor, in Kirk and Faith Sale's apartment, Thomas Pynchon had been typing away at Gravity's Rainbow. Gravity's Rainbow. Faith read several rough pages and blessed them with her editorial hand. Faith read several rough pages and blessed them with her editorial hand.

Joseph McElroy recalls having dinner one night with Don and John Barth "down in Baltimore" around this time. McElroy's novel Lookout Cartridge Lookout Cartridge had just been published. According to McElroy, "Barthelme said...'Well, the smart money is on you for the National Book Award.' And I was surprised to hear that, but surprised also because he was in a politically rather strong position." (Don was set to serve as one of the NBA judges.) had just been published. According to McElroy, "Barthelme said...'Well, the smart money is on you for the National Book Award.' And I was surprised to hear that, but surprised also because he was in a politically rather strong position." (Don was set to serve as one of the NBA judges.) His plans for McElroy's book-if he'd had had any plans-changed when the 1974 Pulitzer Prize advisory panel ignored the unanimous recommendation of the fiction jury (Benjamin DeMott, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Alfred Kazin). The jury proclaimed any plans-changed when the 1974 Pulitzer Prize advisory panel ignored the unanimous recommendation of the fiction jury (Benjamin DeMott, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Alfred Kazin). The jury proclaimed Gravity's Rainbow Gravity's Rainbow most deserving of the fiction prize. The book was so controversial-dense, challenging, obsessive-the panel overruled the jury and offered no prize that year. most deserving of the fiction prize. The book was so controversial-dense, challenging, obsessive-the panel overruled the jury and offered no prize that year.

Later that year, in his service as a judge for the National Book Awards, Don joined Truman Capote; Timothy Foote, a book editor at Time; Time; James Boatwright, the editor of the literary journal James Boatwright, the editor of the literary journal Shenandoah; Shenandoah; and Cynthia Ozick. The judges were paid $250 apiece to read over 160 books and to sit one afternoon in an empty Broadway theater and argue with one another. and Cynthia Ozick. The judges were paid $250 apiece to read over 160 books and to sit one afternoon in an empty Broadway theater and argue with one another.

Don was determined to right the Pulitzer wrong-no easy task, given Capote's personal disregard for him (he had once called Don, in print, a "fraudulent" writer) and Ozick's strong opinions. But Don would not be swayed, and he managed to force a split decision. The 1974 NBA in fiction went to Isaac Bashevis Singer's A Crown of Feathers and Other Short Stories A Crown of Feathers and Other Short Stories and and Gravity's Rainbow. Gravity's Rainbow.