Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (39 page)

Expand on that.

Your book has been received well, you’ve gone out and promoted it. You’ve got other books to write. You’re back at Bloomington. Your dogs are here, you’re at home, about to finish your book of essays, you now are someone whose words—I mean, they’ve been taken seriously for years—but they’re now guaranteed to always be …

I think I’m where I want to be because I need to—we talked about this last night. There’s things about this that are good. But there are things that are hard, and things that are dangerous. And I’m gonna have to work ’em out. And I’m gonna have to work them out by myself. You know, nobody else is gonna help me work them out. And this is a good place to do it. ’Cause, ’cause I’m left alone here. And I also have a set of friends who like me for reasons that don’t have anything to do with this. Which is a real precious thing. Yeah, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

Are you pleased about where you are professionally?

I don’t know, no, I’m not where I want to be artistically. I wanna—I feel like I shoulda done, I could’ve done a whole lot more original work in this last year, and I’ve been sort of jacklighted by all this stuff. I’m worried about this book of essays, and that a couple of these things are gonna have to be rewritten, or that Michael is going to have really smart editorial suggestions.

You typed this book, the whole thing, three times?

Yeah—except the first two times of typing there were also big changes, sticking stuff in.

The whole time you’re doing this, you don’t know how it’s gonna be taken. And then everything goes about as well as it can go
.

Well, the
Times
dumped on it.

Well, forgetting the Times, this is one of the few cases when the Times didn’t matter—

I guess—again, my big worry, I mean, I have a problem with a diminished capacity to enjoy stuff that’s goin’ on. My big worry is that I won’t enjoy this. But it’ll just up my expectations for myself. Which … and expectations of ourselves are a very fine line. Because up to a certain point, they can be motivating, and inspiring, and can be kind of a flame thrower held to our ass, get us moving. And past that point they’re toxic and paralyzing. And—it’s another reason it’s very good I live here. Because New York would not help me work this out. And you know, you can’t help me work this out, nobody can.

And when I walk out of here after I pack up, you’re here with the dogs, and no more touring—

Well, I’ve got fact-checker phone conversations, but it’s essentially over.

[I want something positive from him, some sense of the achievement: he moved from football to tennis, to writing, to McLean’s, to writing again, rebuilding himself, a huge thing to have brought off, and now he’s become who he from now on is going to be. I can’t find it. He’s looking at it as a tennis player: The match is still on, it’s just late in the set; he’s eyeing the alleys, where the sun is shining on the court, how his serve is falling, what’s on the other side of the net.]

I think it’s going to be really scary. I think I’ve kind of unplugged myself for the last three weeks. And I’m going to have to sit and kind of feel it. The question will be whether I have the balls to do it. I mean, I could just go to the movie theater for three straight days and just sit there. And I may do that for a while. The thing about living here, shit eventually catches up with you.

Still, this place is a nice place to be, isn’t it? I mean, this house, that you own, and your dogs …

This is a good place. This is a good place. It’s been so long since I’ve gotten excited—like last night when we were in the car, pulling into town, or the big thing is in airplanes coming back to Bloomington. I can remember, not since I was at college and would come home for vacations, there’s this weird warm full excitement of coming home. And I feel like this place is home. And I know in so many ways I’m so lucky. I mean, if this, if all this stuff had happened five or six years ago, I think it would have torn me to shreds.

Why?

Because I didn’t have a home. And I didn’t have—I didn’t have the equipment to treat myself even marginally like a friend. Or to take care of myself, at all. And now I have at least the rudiments of it.

[He nods and turns off the tape.]

Alanis Morissette cover from Spin, her taking a photograph in a grocery aisle. Um, American flag. Some weird surrealist posters. The guest room is like a trophy room or fortress of solitude: his books in different languages and editions. Magazines where essays by him have appeared. A Swiss version of Broom of the System. Lots of big, ingot-sized copies of Infinite Jest
.

A Barney towel in his bedroom
.

Dog stuff. Dogs have chewed everywhere, gnawed the edges off chairs and tables. Fur, crap stains on the carpet, crate for the dog. Chewed-up stuff all over the place. A shark doll—he’s a great white fan—on the bookcase. Globes from old cartography thing. Three bookshelves. Um … low chandelier he keeps bumping his head on when he forgets to duck. How much it hurt that he refers to me on the phone a second ago as “this guy.”

[Not even the
“Rolling Stone
reporter”—“this guy is over right now.”]

Photographs of the dogs. Scottish calvary charge poster on the wall: he is, after all, a proud Scot. His dad gave him that
.

Some sort of coal-burning fireplace set in the living room. Brick wall. Fake wood paneling. Soda cans. It’s like a frat’s first floor: the bookish frat. Curtains. One-story house, five, six rooms with a basement. Postcard of Updike. A cartoon: Comparative anatomy; Brains—Male, Female, Dog. Fra Filippo Lippi painting. “Sign of the Killer Cow” card on wall
.

Jeeves’s throw-toys everywhere. Living room: Nothing except three stuffed, crammed bookcases and dog stuff. It’s a living area for bibliophile dogs
.

The Barney towel is a curtain of one window in his room. Over his head there’s a photograph of some German philosophers who he says—he has German ancestry, “These guys tend to be paunchy, bearded, scowling, wooly, they resemble ways I could have turned out really badly, physically.” Over his dresser, in his room, photo collage of his family. Like the kind of collage kids pin on dorm walls. Photographs of his sister and stuff like that on the wall
. [His house is an exhibit of separate stages of his life: dorm stage, work stage, Illinois stage, success stage (oddly enough, the guest room). Just books and dogs. His sister is pretty, and looks like a female him.]

Clothes everywhere. The closet looks like the closet of a dorm: a lot of sneakers, stuff on the floor, warm-up stuff, rolled-up stuff. It’s like the kitchen of a restaurant, at the end of a long, Friday night rush. This is the swinging door, the equivalent of the full sink, the crusted pots, the sliced chives on the floor. Things draped on things. A lot of draped stuff—-
draping
is the best descriptor for his organizing approach, how he’s keeping his clothes. Aquaish lighting: blue gray. The light comes through semiclean windows, giving everything the feel of an afternoon in winter
.

Bathroom
.

[He tells me, “You might not want to go in, I just wreaked a little havoc.”]

The padded toilet seat. Postcards: baboons crawling. The Clintons. St. Ignatius Prayer that sounds very like the AA prayer
. (
“Lord, teach me to be generous. / … to give and not to count the cost, / to toil and not seek for rest / to labor and not to ask for reward …”
)
Baby climbing up the stairs by its head
.

Tapes and CDs by the stereo, and a Botticelli calendar, Birth of Venus. Gold and silver chess set
.

[I walk to the garage. Dave has reverted to Illinois Dave, the Midwesterner who has a relationship with his scraper. He’s chipping an entire Antarctica off his car. It’s encased in ice, like something that’s come packed that way from the manufacturer. I mean, it’s total.]

It’s my poor, shitbox car.

What’s the make on this? It’s a Nissan?

(Like prisoner reciting his numbers) 1985 Nissan Sentra. I know it dudn’t look like much, man, but this thing
starts
. This thing never breaks, it starts all the time. It’s actually a terrible problem: ’cause I gotta get a new one. But I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I
can’t
junk this.

Why?

Because it’s like, it’s my
friend
. I’ve had this thing all … but I can’t really leave it in the garage, I mean, that’s just
sick
.

Although riding in
that
—[He indicates my forest-green Pontiac Grand Am—like Tower Books, Dutton’s, the book circuit, the Whitney Hotel, a car that also no longer exists]—made me realize that I’m, that there are whole vistas of driving experience that I am not getting.

[He did the driving home and to McDonald’s.]

The feeling of
gliding
when you’re driving, instead of … I mean my car dudn’t even have shock absorbers, it’s like riding a power lawn mower.

A pile of the tobacco things against the window …
[Gives me a level look; I’m still saying things into the tape machine, which makes him laugh, then me.]

Who drew the kid’s drawing? On the shelves: the “chickenhead David Wallace”?

Um, one of my friend’s daughters calls me Chickenhead, and I call
her
Chickenhead. This is her latest
salvo
in the war.

[There was a poster—written schedule—of tour in Eastern Europe.]

You went to Eastern Europe?

No. My parents are there right now.

They gave you an itinerary? That’s cool
.

Yeah.

[Surrealist image, floating and piping: bent over, sort of Rasta hair, flute.]

That’s that Hopi flute god. Um, that my parents have statues of. And then a friend sent me that postcard. I keep trying to get
Harper’s
to run that painting. I think it looks good.

Paradox: Do you think that kind of attention comes to people who want it very much. Or do you think that it comes paradoxically when you’ve
ceased
trying to get it …?

I don’t know, because you know there are real good writers who I think have always wanted to be—I mean, I think Mailer wanted to be superfamous. And he
did
become … It’s just, I think part of it just has to do with your constitution. I think if you’re not a real strong person, it’s pretty hard to get any work done, you know, when you want that, because there’s not room for anything else. I mean, do you want to be famous?

[He’s neatening up. We’ve walked back in the house.]

I’d like to have the widest possible readership
.

Well, that’s a kind of clever answer. But I’m—but answer the question as baldly as you put the question to me.

[I turn the tape off. Which makes David laugh.

I’m younger than him, and this is, I see, paramount in my mind: that he must feel an accomplishment here, to have carried this off. I still want him to say this is as good as I imagine it has to feel.]

You said you’re afraid of being unmasked or something. Isn’t it reassuring that people are reading you a lot and saying they like the book, are also saying that you’re a strong writer and—

It’d be very interesting to talk to you in a few years. My own experience is that that’s not so. That the more people think that you’re really good, um, actually the stronger the fear of being a fraud is. That the backlash or turnaround could be much more powerful. You know? And that’s the worst thing about having a lot of attention paid to you, is that if you’re afraid of
bad
attention. If bad attention hurts you, then you realize that the caliber of the weapon that’s pointed at you has gone way up. Has gone from like a .22 to a .45. You know? But again, I know it’s terrible, because it’s more complicated than that: because there’s also the good side of it. And yeah, I’m like you, there’s a part of me that wants a lot of attention. And that thinks I’m really good, and wants other people to see it. And … it’s this queer blend of shyness and exhibitionism that I think is part of, you know, it’s one of the ways I think we’re sort of alike, you know?

Because you—there’s that thing of showing people that you weren’t wasting your time. Staying in at night, during days, weeks, seasons, and stuff like that
.

Or that you weren’t wasting your time when you were doing something that’s regarded by the culture as kind of odd and self-indulgent. And is not—and is really off the beaten track, you know? We could’ve, you know, we coulda gone premed, or gone to Wall Street. And that would have been a much more American thing. It’s all, it’s all tremendously complicated.

It’ll be very interesting, before you leave, I really would like, if
we could trade address data. Because I’ll read
The Art Fair
after the Heinlein and I’ll send you a note. I’m gonna be very curious to see how—to see what it’s like being inside your head.

Come look at the Alanis Morissette thing for a second: I just think it’s funny, and I want …
[And finally, it works. Success: we locate a good thing about this. Entrée to a midrange pop star.]

It’s silly, but I left it up when you came.

You must’ve thought about taking it down before I did. Why? She’s pretty, I guess
.

She’s pretty, but she’s pretty in a sloppy, very human way. There’s something about—a lot of women in magazines are pretty in a way that isn’t
erotic
because they don’t, they don’t
look
like anybody you know. You can’t imagine them putting a quarter in a parking meter or eating a bologna sandwich. And
her
—even though I’m smart enough to know part of that image is crafted, the sloppiness—there’s a kind of sexiness
in spite of
, that’s very, I don’t know. I just find her absolutely riveting.