The Imaginary Girlfriend (9 page)

My friend the poet Donald Justice (a very
good
poker player, I'm told) once confided to me that Mr. Algren lost a lot of money in Iowa City—coming down from Chicago, as he did, and expecting to find the town full of rubes. He took me for a rube—and certainly I
was
—but he caused me no lasting wounds. Creative Writing, if honest at all, must be an occasionally unwelcoming experience. I appreciated Mr. Algren's honesty; his abrasiveness couldn't keep me from liking him.

I would not see Nelson Algren again until shortly before his death, when he moved to Sag Harbor and Kurt Vonnegut brought him to my house in Sagaponack for dinner. Again I liked him, and again he teased me; he was good at it. This time he claimed not to remember me from our Iowa days, although I went out of my way to remind him of our conversations; admittedly, since they had been few and brief, it's possible that Algren
didn't
remember me. But in saying goodnight he pretended to confuse me with
Clifford
Irving, the perpetrator of that notorious Howard Hughes hoax; he appreciated a good scam, Mr. Algren said. And when Vonnegut explained to him that I was not
that
Irving, Algren winked at me—he was still teasing me. (You shouldn't take a Creative Writing course, much less entertain the notion of becoming a writer, if you can't take a little teasing—or even a lot.)

But, thankfully, there were other teachers at Iowa. I was tempted to study with José Donoso, for I admired his writing and found him gracious—in every way that Nelson Algren was not. Then, upon first sight, I developed a schoolboy's unspoken crush on Mr. Donoso's wife; thereafter I could never look him in the eyes, which would not have made for a successful student-teacher relationship. And so my principal teacher and mentor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop became Kurt Vonnegut. (I once had a brawl in a pool hall—convincingly demonstrating, although never to Nelson Algren and not in his presence, that wrestling is superior to boxing—because a fellow student at Iowa, a boxer, had called Mr. Vonnegut a “science-fiction hack”; this false charge was made without the offending student's having read a single one of Kurt's books, “only the covers.”)

Did Kurt Vonnegut “teach” me how to write? Certainly not; yet Mr. Vonnegut saved me time, and he encouraged me. He pointed out some bad habits in my early work (in my first novel-in-progress), and he also pointed out those areas of storytelling and characterization that were developing agreeably enough. I would doubtless have made these discoveries on my own, but later—maybe much later. And
time
, to young and old writers alike, is valuable.

Later, as a teacher—I taught at the Workshop from 1972 until 1975—I encountered many future writers among my students at Iowa. I didn't “teach” Ron Hansen or Stephen Wright or T. Coraghessan Boyle or Susan Taylor Chehak or Allan Gurganus or Gail Harper or Kent Haruf or Robert Chibka or Douglas Unger how to write, but I hope I may have encouraged them and saved them a little time. I did nothing more for them than Kurt Vonnegut did for me, but in my case Mr. Vonnegut—and Mr. Yount and Mr. Williams—did quite a lot.

I'm talking about technical blunders, the perpetration of sheer boredom, point-of-view problems, the different qualities of first-person and third-person voice, the deadening effect of exposition in dialogue, the crippling limitations of the present tense, the intrusions upon narrative momentum caused by puerile and pointless experimentation—and on and on. You just say: “You're good at that.” And: “You're not very good at this.” These areas of complaint are so basic that most talented young writers will eventually spot their mistakes themselves, but perhaps at a time when a substantial revision of the manuscript might be necessary—or worse, after the book is published.

Tom Williams once told me that I had a habit of attributing mythological proportions and legendary status to my characters—he meant before my characters had
done
anything to earn such attribution. (The same could be said of Garcia Märquez, but in my case Mr. Williams's criticism was valid.) And Kurt Vonnegut once asked me if I thought there was something intrinsically funny about the verbs “peek” and “peer.” (What could be “intrinsically funny” about
verbs?
I thought. But Mr. Vonnegut meant that I overused these verbs to a point of self-conscious cuteness; he was right.)

When I was a student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Gail Godwin was a student there, and the future (1989) National Book Award winner, John Casey, was in my class—Gail and John were “taught” by Kurt Vonnegut, too.

Mr. Casey recently reminded me that Ms. Godwin was, upon her arrival in Iowa City, already a writer to take seriously. Casey recalled how Gail defended herself in the parking lot of the English & Philosophy Building from the unwanted attentions of a lecherous fellow student, who shall remain nameless.

“Please leave me alone,” Ms. Godwin warned the offending student, “or I shall be forced to wound you with a weapon you can ill afford to be wounded by in a town this small.”

The threat was most mysterious, not to mention writerly, but the oafish lecher was not easily deterred. “And what might that weapon be, little lady?” the lout allegedly asked.

“Gossip,” Gail Godwin replied.

Andre Dubus and James Crumley were also students at the Writers' Workshop then. I remember a picnic at Vance Bourjaily's farm, where a friendly pie-fight ensued; Dubus or Crumley, bare-chested and reasonably hairy, was struck in the chest by a Boston cream pie. Who threw the pie, and why, escapes my ever-failing memory—I swear I didn't do it. David Plimpton is a possible candidate. Plimpton and I were wrestling teammates at Exeter—he was the team captain a year ahead of me—and our being together in Iowa seemed an unlikely irony to us both. (Plimpton had wrestled at Yale.)

These were the days before the fabulous Carver-Hawkeye Arena; the Iowa wrestling room was up among the girders of the old fieldhouse. Dave Mc-Cuskey was the coach; he was friendly to me, but ever-critical of my physical condition. I was capable of wrestling, hard, with Coach McCuskey's boys, but only for three or four minutes; then I needed to sit down and rest on the mat with my back against the wrestling-room wall. McCuskey frowned upon this behavior: if I wasn't in shape to go head to head with his boys for “the full nine minutes,” then I shouldn't be wrestling at all. I was content to shoot takedowns until I got tired; then I'd rest against the wall—and then I'd shoot a few more takedowns. Coach McCuskey didn't like me resting against the wall.

David Plimpton, who was as out-of-shape as I was, also enjoyed sparring with Coach McCuskey's Iowa wrestlers. Plimpton told me that McCuskey was similarly disapproving of him. From Plimpton's and my point of view, we were making a contribution: we were offering our aging bodies as extra workout partners for McCuskey's kids. But it was Coach McCuskey's wrestling room; he set the tone—and I respected him. No resting against the wall. As a consequence, my appearances (and Plimpton's) in the Iowa wrestling room were sporadic—I went there only when I wanted to punish myself.

A happy solution might have been for Plimpton and me to wrestle together, but Plimpton had been a 191-pounder at Yale (when I'd been a 130-pounder at Pitt); we'd both put on 15 or 20 pounds since then, but we couldn't wrestle together—there was about a 60-pound difference between us.

Seven years later, when I would go back to Iowa to teach at the Writers' Workshop, the wrestling room was still in the girders of the old fieldhouse but the atmosphere in the room had changed. Gary Kurdelmeir, a former national champion for Iowa in 1958, was the head coach. In ‘72, Kurdelmeir's new assistant coach arrived in Iowa City—Dan Gable, fresh from a Gold-Medal performance in the Munich Olympics at 149½ pounds. In Kurdelmeir and Gable's wrestling room, there were lots of “graduate students” (as Plimpton and I had been in 1965-67) and other postcollege wrestlers. The years I taught at the Workshop (1972-75) were the beginning of Iowa's dominance of collegiate wrestling under Dan Gable. (As the head coach, Gary Kurdlemeir won two national team titles for Iowa—in ‘75 and ‘76—but the head-coaching job would soon be Gable's; he won his first team championship in ‘78. J. Robinson, now the head coach at the University of Minnesota, became Gable's assistant.)

Brad Smith, Chuck Yagla, Dan Holm, Chris Campbell—they were all in the Iowa wrestling room at that time, and they would all become national champions. That wrestling room was the most intense wrestling room I have ever seen; yet Gable and Kurdlemeir were happy to have you there, contributing—even if you were good for no more than two minutes before you had to go rest against the wall. In that room, two minutes was all I was good for.

At several of Iowa's dual meets, I sat beside the former Iowa coach, Dave McCuskey, who was retired; as fellow spectators, Coach McCuskey and I had no philosophical differences of opinion. Everyone admired Gable: with three national collegiate titles at Iowa State (just
one
loss in his entire college career), he drew a crowd—not only at Iowa's matches but in the wrestling room. Everyone wanted to wrestle with him—if only for two minutes. In those years, I generally chose easier workout partners, but there were no easy workout partners in that Iowa room. Like everyone else, I couldn't resist the occasional thrill (and instant humiliation) of wrestling Dan Gable. I never scored a point on him, of course. In this failure, I was in good company: in the 1972 Olympics at Munich, where Gable won the Gold Medal, none of his opponents scored a point on him either.

To win the Olympics in freestyle wrestling without losing a single point is akin to winning the men's final at Wimbledon in straight sets, 6-0, 6-0, 6-0; or perhaps a four-game sweep of the World Series, while holding the losing team scoreless. It's rarer still that Gable's dominance as a wrestler has undergone the transition from competitor to coach with equal success: in 1995, Iowa won its fourth NCAA title of the last five years—and its fifteenth national championship of the last 21. In ‘95, Iowa also captured its 22nd straight Big 10 crown; I believe that's a record for consecutive collegiate championships—in any conference, in any sport. Out of 10 weight classes, the ‘95 Iowa team advanced seven wrestlers to the semifinal round of the NCAA tournament. Ever the perfectionist, Dan Gable was disappointed: Iowa's 150-pounder and 190-pounder were both defending national champions—in the finals, they both lost.

It's always the wrestling I remember; it marks the years. My memories of being a student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and of being a teacher there, frequently intermingle; I even confuse my fellow students with my students. But I can manage to sort out the years (not only in Iowa) by the workout partners that I had, and by recalling who the coach was—and in which wrestling room I worked out. And possibly it is a testimony to the practical, businesslike atmosphere of the Writers' Workshop that I remember my student days and my teaching days as much the same. I felt fortunate to be at Iowa—in both capacities.

Don Hendrie, Jr., who was a classmate of mine at Exeter, although I hardly knew him there, was another student at the Iowa Workshop (in my
student
days); he is the author of four novels and one collection of short stories—in addition to serving for several years as the director of the graduate writing program at the University of Alabama. The coincidence of my being at Iowa with Don Hendrie is an even more unlikely irony than my being there with David Plimpton, because, when Hendrie and I were students at Exeter, we both sought the affections of the same young woman; she married Hendrie, who in Iowa became my closest friend. Our children would grow up together. When I was teaching and coaching at a small college in Vermont, Hendrie would be teaching at a small college in New Hampshire—about an hour's distance. When he taught at Mount Holyoke College, I followed him there.

Hendrie had a habit of including the physical descriptions of his friends in his novels, where we would appear as characters under fictional names; this never offended me, because Hendrie's narrative voice was consistently teasing and affectionate. My last appearance in a Don Hendrie novel was as a character named Barry Kessler, a screenwriter, in
A Survey of the Atlantic Beaches.
He saw me as “a rabid, middle-aged athlete given to the long run and the heavy weight.”

We had a lifelong argument about Oscar Wilde—Hendrie liked him, I don't. By the way, I bear no loathing for writers because they are minor; it isn't Wilde's being minor that troubles me. And my dislike of Wilde was never fueled by his homosexuality—that “gross indecency,” as it was called in Britain at the time Wilde was sentenced to two years in prison, from which he never recovered. On the contrary, one has to like Oscar Wilde for championing “obscenity,” as sodomy was then presumed to be. But what I hate about Wilde is that he was an inferior writer who delighted in aiming his one-liner wit at his superiors; did he so envy Dickens and Flaubert that he felt compelled to scorn them?

Wilde shouldn't have spent a day in jail for being “obscene,” but posterity will relegate Wilde to where he belongs, which is where he can already be most widely found: in coffee-table books of harmless quotations. By comparison, Flaubert and Dickens still have actual
readers.
(What is ordinary about Wilde is that there's no shortage of writers whose lifestyles are more deserving of attention than their work.)

I say all this because the centenary of Oscar Wilde's wrongful imprisonment occurred as I was rewriting this memoir; predictably, the centenary was not allowed to pass without all manner of overpraise being heaped upon Wilde. Whereas I was prepared to read that “Wilde's imprisonment ranks as one of literature's greatest tragedies,” I was
not
prepared to suffer the Wilde centenary hyperbole in silence; yet my friend Don Hendrie had died—there was no one else I wanted to argue about Oscar Wilde with.