A few years later, in "For I'm the Boy Whose Only Joy Is Loving You" (1964), Don took a swipe at Maggie. In mock-Joycean brogue, a husband and wife banter: "Ah Martha coom now to bed there's a darlin' gul. Hump off blatherer I've no yet read me Mallarme for this evenin'. Ooo Martha dear canna we noo let the dear lad rest this night? When th' telly's already shut doon an' th' man o' the hoose 'as a 'ard on? Don't be comin' round wit yer lewd proposals on a Tuesday night when ye know better. But Martha dear where is yer love for me..."

"I've never been a good drinker," Maggie says, looking back on her marriage to Don. "It's not about principles. I just can't digest alcohol very well." At the parties Don took her to, "which I have to say weren't very wild, I was the only sober person left after the first two hours, which isn't very fun. It was difficult."

"She wasn't relaxed or natural," Gollob says of Maggie. "We couldn't have been couldn't have been more more relaxed. I will say, she was sultry-looking, had a great body and great mind...." relaxed. I will say, she was sultry-looking, had a great body and great mind...."

As for alcohol: "We were all drinking," Gollob says. "Partly it was a Texas thing. Don was a bitter drinker. He drank when he was sad and it added to his gloom. When he was drunk, he could be a cold motherf.u.c.ker. You did not approach him frivolously. He'd freeze you out quickly."

Gollob began dating a Rice undergraduate who happened to be one of Maggie's students. One night, in Stubby's Lounge, he admitted to the girl that he thought Maggie was a "sn.o.bbish b.i.t.c.h" and that it must be awful to have her for a teacher. A few days later, Gollob dropped by Don's office at UH to take him to lunch at their favorite barbecue place. "I understand you think my wife is a sn.o.bbish b.i.t.c.h," Don said. "My date had ratted on me, possibly because I'd had the poor taste to take her to Stubby's, not one of Houston's chic watering spots," Gollob says. Fearing a freeze-out from Don, he decided it was best to confess. "Yes, I do think she's a sn.o.bbish b.i.t.c.h," he replied. "Rising, [Don] patted me on the arm and said, 'So do I. In fact, I'm getting a divorce. I'll have to look for an apartment right away. Why don't we share one?' "

Despite Don's flippancy with Gollob, the decision to split from Maggie wasn't easy or made without regret. Later, he told Helen Moore he had gone to her office seeking work a few months back hoping a day job would save his marriage. He told her it was Maggie who "no longer wanted to be married."

"By the time Don came back from Korea, it was evident that our paths had diverged seriously, and we never got it back together again," Maggie explains. "I was very much into my schoolwork and the thesis.

"I think Donald always wanted two things that were incompatible, and he spent a lot of time and effort trying to reconcile the two," she says. "He wanted a bourgeois family life, like the one he'd grown up with, and at the same time he wanted a swinging bohemian life. That's one of the reasons I knew the marriage wasn't going to work. I didn't want either of those things. I wanted to go out and see the world. You know, in the fifties, most people just wanted to settle in the suburbs with two kids. In 1956, I went to France, to the University of Paris, and got a doctoral degree. I left Donald my car. In 1959, I saw him in Houston, to get the car back." She laughs as she recalls the quirky charm that drew her to Don in the first place. "He told me the car had needed two things: It needed to be painted and it needed new brakes. He couldn't afford both. So he'd gotten it repainted."

Gollob was eager to move out of his parents' place, so he and Don, along with Henry Buckley and Maurice Sumner, both graduates of the UH architecture school, rented a dilapidated Victorian-style house on Burlington near Hawthorne, just west of Main Street downtown. It was a "gothic dwelling to gladden the heart of Charles Addams," Gollob says. The guys were "too scared to unboard" the door to the attic, and "fantasized all these horrible things that were up [there]." Finally, they "made a pact that no one could leave anybody else in the house alone. It was terrifying." In retrospect, it was also like the "ultimate Barthelme story...funny, but dark and unknown too." Later, when city planners ran the Southwest Freeway through midtown, the house came down.

Gollob remembers Don working on a novel in the gloomy old rooms. Don told him he had already tossed two complete drafts of the project, so this was likely an evolution of the "unlove" ma.n.u.script. Gollob a.s.sumed it was "autobiographical and rich in Maggie-inspired angst." He suggested that Don had been too "extreme" in rejecting the earlier drafts. "Maybe you're too harsh a critic of your own work," he said. "Maybe you could have benefited from someone else's perspective."

"[Don] hit me with the kind of look that Hamlet must have given Claudius [when Claudius] advised him to stop mourning because it was unmanly," Gollob recalls. Don said, "Thanks so much. I'll remember that when I'm throwing this third draft into the toilet. I can see that it's full of the same self-pitying s.h.i.t that smelled up the others."

From Korea, Don had written to Joe Maranto that he would probably take the novel into a third draft; that he wanted to finish it even though it wasn't likely he'd publish it. He stuck to his plan. He was teaching himself discipline, self-editing.

Otherwise, goofiness prevailed. Don entertained his housemates by acting out movies. The Man with the Golden Arm The Man with the Golden Arm was one of his favorites, Gollob says-an indication, along with Don's review of was one of his favorites, Gollob says-an indication, along with Don's review of The Flies The Flies, that he was developing an interest in existentialist fiction. Based on a Nelson Algren novel, Otto Preminger's film starred Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine, a former card dealer and heroin addict struggling to reintegrate into society and find a new livelihood-subjects of interest to Don after his service in the army. Though he cracked up his housemates with parodies of Sinatra's anguish, it was the restraint of Sinatra's performance that impressed Don. Kim Novak's role in the movie also intrigued him: a sympathetic female, woman as savior.

Within a few months, Gollob moved out of the Burlington Street house and went to California to enroll in a fine arts program at the Pasadena Playhouse. "Don always loved Houston," Gollob says. "I never did-couldn't wait to get out of the G.o.dd.a.m.ned place."

Don, with whom he stayed in touch, was "as close to a Hamlet figure as anyone I've ever known," Gollob recalls. "Hamlet's soliloquies and speeches could have sprung directly from [Don's] soul, not just the pain, the bitterness, the scorn of 'I have of late...lost all my mirth'...but the antic wit and humor of Hamlet the punster, the jiber-he had among his other talents a prodigious gift for laughter and a love of plays and players."

"[You] go to college, and if you run through one or two or three very good teachers, you're extremely lucky," Don said. He had been disappointed in the faculty at the University of Houston; he continued to take cla.s.ses because he was unable to imagine anything else. Finally, in Maurice Natanson, a philosophy professor, Don found a sympathetic soul and an engaging mentor. Natanson's enthusiasms were Kierkegaard, Sartre, Husserl, and phenomenology in modern literature. He was a "wonderful guy, an excellent teacher, and I took everything," Don said. "[Because of Natanson,] what I mostly did, at school, was study philosophy."

Natanson's long career included teaching stints at the universities of Nebraska, Houston, North Carolina, and California-Santa Cruz, as well as at Yale (he died in 1996). Eileen Pollock, a young novelist who studied with him many years after Don did, says that Natanson's knowledge of Kafka, Beckett, and Thomas Mann made him the perfect philosophy teacher for budding writers. "He was a lovely man," she recalls. In addition to sharing his love of literature, "he had a nicely old-fashioned way of making a soph.o.m.ore or junior feel as if studying philosophy actually had something to do with figuring out how to live one's life"-a powerful appeal for Don after his sojourn in the army. "He had a warm, charismatic presence," Pollock says, "very rabbinical, with a full white beard, crinkly, lively eyes, and an impish smile. He spoke in this hypnotically odd cadence, drawing out some syllables, accenting others, while stroking his beard. He had a wry sense of the absurd. He took his subject seriously-and yet he didn't, perhaps because the subject itself seemed to indicate that nothing had a solid foundation beneath it."

Don was already familiar with existentialism, but Natanson excited him about it. Kierkegaard became a guiding spirit for Don. In the course of his career, he would make half a dozen direct or indirect references to Kierkegaard in his work, as well as numerous echoes of phrases, images, and ideas from Kierkegaard's writings. "Purity of heart is to will one thing," says a character in Don's story "The Leap." "No," his companion replies. "Here I differ with Kierkegaard. Purity of heart is, rather, to will several things, and not know which is the better, truer thing, and to worry about this, forever." Timidly, the first speaker asks, "Is it permitted permitted to differ with Kierkegaard?" His companion replies, "Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him." to differ with Kierkegaard?" His companion replies, "Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him."

14.

THE OBJECT.

Despite her writing, editing, and teaching experience at the University of Houston, Helen Moore was earning, when she left the inst.i.tution, less than Farris Block offered Don as a new hire with little PR experience. When she told the school's president, A. D. Bruce, that she planned to take a job with the Boone and c.u.mmings advertising firm, he made a tepid counteroffer in an attempt to keep her. She informed him that his figures fell far short of her new salary-nearly twice what she'd made at UH. "But that's more than some of our male male faculty members earn!" he said. faculty members earn!" he said.

She had tried to get a job with the newspapers, but for most women in the 1950s, journalism was a closed shop. The city's dailies, and the smaller papers, were boys' clubs. Helen's husband, Peter Gilpin, a staffer at the Chronicle Chronicle, took long lunches with his comrades once they'd met the hectic morning deadlines. Alcohol oiled their talk of wives and kids. Women were rarely allowed at the table. Over at the Post Post, Don, George Christian, and an all-male crew had always worked at night, getting home at dawn, a routine Don was grateful to leave behind.

Television newsrooms were as unfriendly to women as the papers. In 1953, Helen had helped the university launch the nation's first educational TV station, KUHT. She had written much of its PR material. But the school's radio and television department was all male, as were the station's news writers and on-air personalities.

Because of television, advertising was booming. The big firms needed talent, so their doors were open to women, and the salaries were compet.i.tive. Helen joined Boone and c.u.mmings. Shortly thereafter, she moved into an apartment with one if its executives, Betty Jane Mitch.e.l.l. Helen's marriage to Gilpin had foundered because of his drinking. "I felt quite alone in my marriage," Helen says. The new job and her friendship with Mitch.e.l.l were gifts.

Meanwhile, Don had taken charge of the faculty newsletter she had edited at the university. In her memoir, Helen claims that she started the newsletter. Lee Pryor, a UH English professor, says he he founded it. In any case, the publication did not become significant until Don took the reins. Right away, he set out to broaden the newsletter's range and widen its readership. On February 27, 1956, he sent a memo to Douglas McClaury in University Development, arguing that founded it. In any case, the publication did not become significant until Don took the reins. Right away, he set out to broaden the newsletter's range and widen its readership. On February 27, 1956, he sent a memo to Douglas McClaury in University Development, arguing that Acta Diurna Acta Diurna's format should be revised so it was not just an "internal news organ," but, rather, was a "p. r. medium for outside distribution." He wanted to change the layout and make it standard magazine size. The cost of the new Acta Acta would be about $77.50 per week, as opposed to the old budget of $47.50, because of better paper, an increased press run, and more mailings. The administration was slow to respond. Don kept pushing. A month later, he wrote to Pat Nicholson in the Office of Development: "As to material used [in the proposed new would be about $77.50 per week, as opposed to the old budget of $47.50, because of better paper, an increased press run, and more mailings. The administration was slow to respond. Don kept pushing. A month later, he wrote to Pat Nicholson in the Office of Development: "As to material used [in the proposed new Acta Acta], articles written by members of the faculty on subjects of wide general interest could supplement regular news and feature stories. Publication in this format might be an especially valuable method of presenting our faculty to the community and to their colleagues."

While Acta Acta had been a small newsletter about staff activities on campus, Don envisioned his editorship as an opportunity to become Harold Ross. He hoped to learn from the pieces he edited, to advance his education, and to make contacts in publishing, academia, and other fields. Within a few months, his tenacity had convinced the university to take a chance on a multidisciplinary journal. In a PR statement, he announced that in September 1956, the University of Houston planned to publish "as part of our public relations program the first issue of a monthly magazine which will run from 16 to 24 pages." He solicited articles on and off campus. He convinced Maurice Natanson to contribute a piece on selfunderstanding, and he wrote Dr. Richard A. Younger, of the Harris County Historical a.s.sociation, requesting permission to publish Younger's talk "The Grand Jury on the Frontier," which he had delivered in Houston. "The level of readership we are aiming at will be roughly that of had been a small newsletter about staff activities on campus, Don envisioned his editorship as an opportunity to become Harold Ross. He hoped to learn from the pieces he edited, to advance his education, and to make contacts in publishing, academia, and other fields. Within a few months, his tenacity had convinced the university to take a chance on a multidisciplinary journal. In a PR statement, he announced that in September 1956, the University of Houston planned to publish "as part of our public relations program the first issue of a monthly magazine which will run from 16 to 24 pages." He solicited articles on and off campus. He convinced Maurice Natanson to contribute a piece on selfunderstanding, and he wrote Dr. Richard A. Younger, of the Harris County Historical a.s.sociation, requesting permission to publish Younger's talk "The Grand Jury on the Frontier," which he had delivered in Houston. "The level of readership we are aiming at will be roughly that of Harper's Harper's or the or the Atlantic Atlantic," Don said.

"Kierkegaard is Hegel's punishment," Natanson might say to start a cla.s.s. Or: "Philosophy, for Husserl, is the search for radical cert.i.tude." As Natanson presented them, philosophers were romantic figures, just like the jazzmen Don heard on Dowling Street. "[After] Sartre...there are few philosophers alive today who qualify for a magisterial role. The elders are not being replaced," Natanson said. "Instead, there is a profusion of professors. Whatever esteem philosophy may have had in earlier times has been eclipsed by the demands of immediacy: the realms of politics, economics, and history...."

Natanson's wistfulness-his longing for philosophy on a grand scale-appealed to Don; it matched his feeling that previous generations had chewed up the landscape, leaving sc.r.a.ps for their followers to harvest. Something vital had leaked from the world. Papa's wars had been spectacular; in their wake, only minor skirmishes remained. "Although it has always been known that philosophy bakes no bread, it was a.s.sumed that it could occasionally supply a little yeast," Natanson said, adding that philosophy was virtually invisible now in Western Europe and America.

Stubbornly, Don attached himself to the discipline's marginal status, the way he'd embraced Baudelaire, Mallarme, and a literary tradition with limited public appeal. Like Kierkegaard, he disdained the "untruths" of crowds. At the same time, a sweet optimism-a pinch of his father's crusading spirit-encouraged him to believe that intellectually rigorous art could improve everyone's everyone's lives. Natanson kindled this fire in him. lives. Natanson kindled this fire in him.

Prior to Kierkegaard, the "story of...philosophy is the story of the loss of individuality," Natanson taught. By contrast, Kierkegaard's "burden" is the "exploration of the Self." He went on to explain: "By the Self Kierkegaard means the 'inwardness' of the individual, that unique aspect of each of us [that balances] freedom and necessity." (English translations of Kierkegaard's works were still fresh in the fifties; Walter Lowrie had begun issuing his versions in the late 1930s.) "Paradox is the b.o.o.by-trap into which we plunge [with Kierkegaard], just as Alice went down the rabbit hole," said Natanson. Kierkegaard's writings contain "odd inner ironies" and fantastic "humor" that celebrates the Self's contradictions: "One does not know for sure at any point whose side the laugh is on."

In Kafka, "Kierkegaard found his novelist." Kafka gave narrative shape to the horror of feeling "condemned" in a G.o.dless world. Prior to Kafka, Dostoevsky had located life's meaninglessness in consciousness. "I was conscious every moment of so many elements in myself," says the unnamed narrator of Notes from Underground. Notes from Underground. "I felt them simply swarming in me." Worse, every thought he has, every phrase he utters, he has stolen from some other source; the ubiquity of language, its overuse, leaves him skeptical of ideas. Urgencies (the world is never still), endless possibilities, and the Self's confusions necessitate action "I felt them simply swarming in me." Worse, every thought he has, every phrase he utters, he has stolen from some other source; the ubiquity of language, its overuse, leaves him skeptical of ideas. Urgencies (the world is never still), endless possibilities, and the Self's confusions necessitate action in the moment in the moment, though what to do remains a mystery.

For Natanson, it was Edmund Husserl, born in 1859 in what is now the Czech Republic, who best expressed the weight of the moment. At every instant, Husserl said, consciousness remakes the world. Consider a chair. A chair can be a place to sit, or a surface on which to stack books, or it can be torn apart, rearranged, and turned into a sculpture. Or it can be made into a sculpture by virtue of our agreeing to call it one. Depending on our intention intention, the chair has several possibilities, and its actualization here, now, in one shape, serving one particular function, is merely one choice among many. When we turn to an object, we're aware of our awareness of it. Whatever we make of a thing, our choice reveals our intentionality. By studying objects, consciousness discovers its form form. It haunts the world as the spirit of what the world might be, or what it might still become.

In cla.s.s, Natanson pointed out that fiction fiction is an object in the world, made of words. What is an object in the world, made of words. What is is fiction, he said, but an invitation to consider the real by way of the unreal, to examine possibility for a clearer grasp of the actual. This is fiction's strategy. "What if fiction, he said, but an invitation to consider the real by way of the unreal, to examine possibility for a clearer grasp of the actual. This is fiction's strategy. "What if this this happened?" it asks. "Or happened?" it asks. "Or that that?"

Just as we can seize a chair and remake it, fiction seizes us. us. The object of The object of fiction's fiction's intentionality is human nature, human experience. intentionality is human nature, human experience.

Following Husserl's example, Sartre used fiction to trace consciousness: In Sartre's work, the "chain of thought [that was] stated with agonizing force by Kierkegaard," and was echoed in Dostoevsky and Kafka, "comes to artistic fruition," Natanson said.

What did he mean by this? In his biography of Sartre, Ronald Hayman reported that Sartre sought a "means of blending philosophical reflection with the direct transcription...of personal experience," a literary form that would bypa.s.s the "familiar opposition between realism and idealism, affirming both the supremacy of reason and the reality of the visible world." Sartre wanted to be able to sit in a sidewalk cafe, contemplate a chair or the drink in front of him, and call it "philosophy." Husserl's phenomenological method was a revelation to him. So was Hemingway's prose. Papa made "insignificant-seeming details significant" without relying on subjectivity, Hayman wrote. "Objects in his narratives were conspicuously solid, though he offered no more than would have been apparent to the character he was presenting."

For example, in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," Hemingway's lack of metaphors and similes forces the story's objects to emerge as themselves, in and of themselves, in all their raw thingness thingness: "...the leaves of the tree made [shadows] against the electric light" and "The waiter poured on into the gla.s.s so that the brandy slopped over and ran down the stem into the top saucer on the pile."

A phenomenological impulse lies behind Hemingway's celebrated prose style-an obsessive focus on objects, stripped of mental baggage-and Hemingway elevated it to a literary aesthetic.

Sartre extended Hemingway's method. In Nausea Nausea (1938), his narrator, Roquentin, says of a chestnut tree, its presence "pressed itself against my eyes." Usually, "existence hides itself," but now "existence had unveiled itself" to him. "It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things, this [tree] root was kneaded into existence." (1938), his narrator, Roquentin, says of a chestnut tree, its presence "pressed itself against my eyes." Usually, "existence hides itself," but now "existence had unveiled itself" to him. "It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things, this [tree] root was kneaded into existence."

Seeing to the "very paste of things" and choosing an immediate response to it is an a.s.sertion of value, an a.s.sumption of responsibility for one's self and one's fellows, Natanson said.

"A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing," Sartre wrote. Therefore, everything everything is at stake in every moment. What Natanson made his students read, from Kierkegaard to Sartre, was a literature of moments. Don absorbed it all: Kierkegaard's hidden narrators, his ironies and fragments, Dostoevsky's self-consciousness, Kafka's paradoxes, Sartre's is at stake in every moment. What Natanson made his students read, from Kierkegaard to Sartre, was a literature of moments. Don absorbed it all: Kierkegaard's hidden narrators, his ironies and fragments, Dostoevsky's self-consciousness, Kafka's paradoxes, Sartre's things. things. These writers were not interested in characterization, setting, or the development of action. Rather, they built word objects that engaged consciousness directly, so that consciousness could engage itself. These writers were not interested in characterization, setting, or the development of action. Rather, they built word objects that engaged consciousness directly, so that consciousness could engage itself.

Busy with the magazine, Natanson's cla.s.ses, and speechwriting for the school president, Don didn't spend much time at the house on Burlington Street, especially after Herman Gollob left for California. In the evenings, he'd go to movies or plays or to an occasional dinner party. One night in March 1956, he ran into Helen Moore at a dinner given by a couple they knew from the university. In the living room, after the meal, they withdrew into a corner and caught up with each other. Don had heard from mutual friends that Helen had separated from Pete Gilpin, and she knew of his split from Maggie. He asked Helen if she had any hope for reconciliation with her husband. She told him she only wanted to be free. "With scarcely a pause in our conversation, Don startled me by asking if I would marry him in the event I should get a divorce," Helen says. "He was quite serious. At the moment, I had not the least doubt about his seriousness....I was not at all prepared for such a proposal. I could only reply that I felt he was too young for me-as in fact I did. Then addressing me as 'old girl' for the rest of the evening, Don...set about to persuade me that he was indeed as mature as I."

Don had been attracted to Helen for some time. Is it a stretch to think that talk of the moment the moment, making a choice, in Natanson's cla.s.ses, affected his behavior with her at the dinner that night, particularly as he had felt the need of a "master plan" after Korea, and had seen that plan vanish?

In any event, the morning after the party, Don phoned Helen at her office and asked her out to a restaurant that night. She accepted. "I never imagined falling in love with him," she says. "I had not yet made a decision about my marriage even though I had been distraught over it for a long time. This was the 1950s, and divorce was a difficult alternative to an unhappy marriage. At the same time, I had made a big career change the previous year and until that week would not have taken seriously the possibility of leaving one marriage and beginning another."

Don spun her around town in his new Austin-Healey sports convertible, treated her to "romantic and often expensive" restaurants, took walks with her at night down tree-lined avenues near the Rice campus. The apartment she lived in with Betty Jane Mitch.e.l.l, on Harold Street, was close to his place on Burlington. It was in a big house that had been converted into flats; the tenants shared a swimming pool out back. Often, Don strolled over to see Helen. He would sit with her on the terrace by the pool, recounting his overseas experiences, speaking of his desire to return to j.a.pan someday, of his dreams of being a writer. She got the impression he was "excited and happy" about the challenge of turning Acta Diurna Acta Diurna into a respectable magazine. into a respectable magazine.

One evening, she and Don invited friends from the UH news service to an all-night swim party. On other occasions, they went to dinner parties with Helen's sister, Margo Vandruff and her husband, Roy, or they ate with George Christian and Mary Blount, who were engaged to be married. They saw Joe and Maggie Maranto. Don told Helen he felt envious of "Georgia and Pat Goeters [, who] sat close to each other when they were in [a] car and...held hands in public. He wanted that, too. He was as demonstrative as he could be without causing us embarra.s.sment," Helen says.

Pat Goeters "liked Helen a lot" and Maggie Maranto thought of her as an "earth mother" for Don, though she fretted that he had latched on to her on the "rebound" from Maggie Marrs. On visits to town, Herman Gollob found Helen to be a "good, intelligent person"; though not "inspired," she was "wonderful, warm, outgoing."

Throughout the spring and summer of 1956, Don courted Helen. They attended concerts by the Houston Symphony in the Miller Outdoor Theatre in Hermann Park, went to movies and plays, or spent evenings in friends' apartments discussing performances they'd seen or books they'd read. Helen loved the intimacy of these evenings, so different from the "lavish social events that were popular with many of the journalists" in town. "Perhaps as important as anything else, no one was particularly interested in talking about sports," an immense relief to her.

Don had found an object of adoration. He focused on her with phenomenological (not to say phenomenal phenomenal) fervor. He studied her carefully, cherishing her good sense, her humor and beauty, gauging her mysteries and potentials. Helen felt "uneasy" with his unreal expectations about the "possibility of perfection" in marriage. Still, "being with Don was so intensely romantic," she says, "I soon believed that the life he imagined for us was indeed possible."

15.

THE MANY FACES OF LOVE.

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry, "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, Till she cry, "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!"

Don was fond of quoting The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby's epigraph to Helen, perhaps for the literary game in it as much as for its sentiments. Fitzgerald attributed the lines to Thomas Parke D'Invilliers, a fictional character, a campus wit in Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise. This Side of Paradise. D'Invilliers publishes densely layered poems in the college literary journal that puzzle his cla.s.smates. "What the h.e.l.l is [this poem] all about?" Amory Blaine complains. "I swear I don't get him at all, and I'm a literary bird myself." D'Invilliers publishes densely layered poems in the college literary journal that puzzle his cla.s.smates. "What the h.e.l.l is [this poem] all about?" Amory Blaine complains. "I swear I don't get him at all, and I'm a literary bird myself."

In one of the novel's funniest scenes, D'Invilliers disparages American writers. "[They're] not producing among 'em one story or novel that will last ten years," he says. "Every author ought to write every book as if he were going to be beheaded the day he finished it." In short, D'Invilliers is Bardley. (Fitzgerald based D'Invilliers on his friend, the poet John Peale Bishop, whom he found to be "exquisite, anachronistic, and decadent." Bardley to a tee.) Helen recalls that, along with The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby, Don read at the height of their courtship a book called The Many Faces of Love The Many Faces of Love, by Hubert Benoit, a psychiatrist strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism. Perhaps because of the time American soldiers spent in Asia, and their exposure to new ideas, Eastern religions were getting a lot of Western press-a trend that would continue into the 1960s-and Zen, in particular, attracted those who saw in its stoicism affinities with existentialism.

Moving from a failed marriage into a hopeful new romance, Don sought certainty in what he would later call the "incredibly delicate and dangerous business" of love. "[He] desired both the beauty of the mythic Helen and the promise of his own 'Daisy' [Buchanan]," Helen says. "The 'mystery' of a girl became a recurring theme for Don, but I'm not certain that he ever fully accepted the notion that in marriage it would be impossible for her to retain the mystery for which he yearned."

Benoit lingered on love's mysteries. Words are "snares and often lead us into error," he wrote: Above all, the "word 'love' is one that conceals the most dangerous pitfalls." His skepticism, and his sense of language as a tricky sign system, appealed to Don, as did the book's format. It takes the shape of a conversation among The Author, a Young Woman, and a Young Man. Its exploration of love, s.e.x, and marriage in Q & A form recalled the Baltimore Catechism Baltimore Catechism, but without the punitive overtones. It also resembled Kierkegaard's Either/Or Either/Or, a dialectic on marriage written shortly after Kierkegaard's failed engagement.

Benoit echoed Kierkegaard in a chapter called "The Fear of Loving," which Don underlined extensively. "As soon as I am in erotic love," Benoit wrote, I become aware of "my temporal self," aware of " 'existing' in time, the time in which [I] will have to die." This "great central question, of existence or non-existence, of being affirmed or denied by existence, arises particularly and intensely in erotic love, concerned as it is with man's highest organic function, that of s.e.x."

A person of great imagination, for whom awareness of death is keen, will have difficulty satisfying his desires "without coming into collision" with an almost paralyzing fear, Benoit contended, tying language to the fear of death. Words may be "snares," but they are our only means of giving "intellectual recognition" to our needs. If we are conflicted or frightened, we may refuse refuse "plain language." We are likely to express ourselves indirectly so as not to expose-to ourselves and others-what we really want, or fear. "plain language." We are likely to express ourselves indirectly so as not to expose-to ourselves and others-what we really want, or fear.

Either/Or, Kierkegaard's tortured meditation on marriage, is a prime example of a refusal of "plain language." He published it under a pseudonym and stocked it with voices speaking indirectly through allusions and aesthetic references. Don was reading Either/Or Either/Or with Maurice Natanson around the time he read with Maurice Natanson around the time he read The Many Faces of Love The Many Faces of Love, and it became a seminal book for him. "By bypa.s.sing" a subject in writing, "you are able to present it in a much stronger way than if you confronted it directly," Don once said, indicating what he had learned from Kierkegaard. "I mean there are some things that have to be done by backing into them...indirection is a way of presenting the thing that somehow works more strongly."

Later, in Kierkegaardian spirit, Don called one of his earliest successful stories "Hiding Man." The t.i.tle remained an apt description of most of his narrators.

The Many Faces of Love was part of Don's enormous personal library. Natanson's cla.s.ses added new volumes to his shelves, but in the spring and summer of 1956, he sold hundreds of books to used-book stores to pay for his "romantic" meals with Helen. "He really wanted nothing less than an ideal relationship," she said. was part of Don's enormous personal library. Natanson's cla.s.ses added new volumes to his shelves, but in the spring and summer of 1956, he sold hundreds of books to used-book stores to pay for his "romantic" meals with Helen. "He really wanted nothing less than an ideal relationship," she said.

"I was startled one day when [Don] said that we 'should have met and married when we were nineteen...we missed a lot by not having those years together,' " Helen said. He would have liked to "erase our earlier marriages, especially mine. He wanted to recover the past, what he thought of as our 'innocent years.' "

Helen remained uncertain. Don pressed hard for a marriage date, even though neither of their divorces was final. One August night, on the terrace by the pool at Helen's place, she agreed to mid-October.

Since returning from Korea, Don had rushed to align his life just so, like a man desperate to repair something shattered. But whatever image he held of an "ideal relationship," it did not involve adjustment, falling in line, or caution.

An interest in pop culture, antiauthoritarian sentiments, and s.e.xual liberation was stirring in America. In 1956, Allen Ginsberg's Howl Howl was published. Elvis Presley's pelvis caused a buzz. The previous year, was published. Elvis Presley's pelvis caused a buzz. The previous year, Blackboard Jungle Blackboard Jungle and and Rebel Without a Cause Rebel Without a Cause hit movie theaters. Jasper Johns painted the American flag as if it were an advertising logo. Less noticed-but noted by Don-was the publication a few years later of Grace Paley's short story collection hit movie theaters. Jasper Johns painted the American flag as if it were an advertising logo. Less noticed-but noted by Don-was the publication a few years later of Grace Paley's short story collection The Little Disturbances of Man The Little Disturbances of Man, which celebrated the overlooked lives of mothers and wives.

Don wasn't wild about the Beats; in any case, the Beats were not yet a coherent cultural force. Rock and roll was trifling next to jazz. No youth movement existed, no specific battle cry against traditional values. But Don's vast reading, and his experience as a journalist, had taught him to notice signs of change.

He wasn't alone. In 1955, Pauline Kael, who would one day join Don as a New Yorker New Yorker writer, published an essay ent.i.tled "The Glamour of Delinquency," in which she excoriated the "prosperous, empty, uninspiring uniformity" of American life. The modernist dream of improving society through better surroundings had failed to erase the routine of "a dull job, a dull life, television, freezers, babies and baby sitters, a guaranteed annual wage, taxes, social security, hospitalization insurance, and death." What tipped Kael off to rising middle-cla.s.s misery? The movies. "When the delinquent becomes the hero in our films," she wrote, "it is because the image of instinctive rebellion expresses something in many people that they don't dare express." She didn't fully endorse writer, published an essay ent.i.tled "The Glamour of Delinquency," in which she excoriated the "prosperous, empty, uninspiring uniformity" of American life. The modernist dream of improving society through better surroundings had failed to erase the routine of "a dull job, a dull life, television, freezers, babies and baby sitters, a guaranteed annual wage, taxes, social security, hospitalization insurance, and death." What tipped Kael off to rising middle-cla.s.s misery? The movies. "When the delinquent becomes the hero in our films," she wrote, "it is because the image of instinctive rebellion expresses something in many people that they don't dare express." She didn't fully endorse On the Waterfront, East of Eden On the Waterfront, East of Eden, or The Blackboard Jungle The Blackboard Jungle, but she understood their importance. Ultimately, the pictures failed for her in not plumbing the issues they raised: "It's a social lie to pretend that these kids are only in conflict with themselves or that they merely need love and understanding. Instinctively, the audience knows better."

As a journalist, Don had reviewed enough movies to appreciate the undigested longings buried in Hollywood formulas. What characterizes much of his fiction, and art that critics would later call "postmodern," is a tendency to view culture as a series of signs-guideposts to the nation's hidden roads-and to suggest possible (but not authoritative) readings of the messages written there. The signs are incomplete, hastily made, and they could be wrong.

One afternoon in August, Don dropped by Guy's Newsstand at the corner of Main and Blodgett. The place smelled of newspaper ink, car exhaust, and sweet cigar smoke. Among German and French cinema journals, Don found a copy of Theatre Arts. Theatre Arts. In it was In it was Waiting for G.o.dot. Waiting for G.o.dot. He stood there and read the whole thing. He stood there and read the whole thing.

That evening, when he took Helen out to dinner, he brought the magazine with him. She had already read the play. "I found it exciting but did not foresee the implications for Don," she says. "He was deeply moved and ecstatic about the language....Each time we were in a bookstore after this, Don looked for work by Beckett and immediately read whatever he found. It seemed that from the day he discovered G.o.dot G.o.dot, Don believed he could write the fiction he imagined." It would be heavily ironic, and he could "use his wit and intellect in a way that would satisfy him."

Of course, Don's breakthrough wasn't that easy. "The problem is...to do something that's credible after Beckett, as Beckett had to do something that was credible after Joyce," he said years later.

Initially, though, the excitement excitement! Waiting for G.o.dot Waiting for G.o.dot showed Don that philosophy could become drama, almost directly, without the interference of plot, setting, and so on. By stripping away fiction's stock devices, Beckett focused on consciousness. He could animate the intentionality at the heart of awareness. "Nothing to be done," Gogo says. Standing around, vainly antic.i.p.ating some purpose, is "awful," yet, as Pozzo says, we "don't seem to be able to depart"-that is, to get out of our chattering heads. When nothing matters, and nothing's to be done, consciousness will find something to do anyway in order to keep itself busy. showed Don that philosophy could become drama, almost directly, without the interference of plot, setting, and so on. By stripping away fiction's stock devices, Beckett focused on consciousness. He could animate the intentionality at the heart of awareness. "Nothing to be done," Gogo says. Standing around, vainly antic.i.p.ating some purpose, is "awful," yet, as Pozzo says, we "don't seem to be able to depart"-that is, to get out of our chattering heads. When nothing matters, and nothing's to be done, consciousness will find something to do anyway in order to keep itself busy.

Gogo and Didi, bored senseless, argue for no apparent reason. "That's the idea, let's contradict each other!" Gogo says. "It will pa.s.s the time."

The audience waits with Didi and Gogo; then the cycle of waiting repeats, an interminable expectation of-what? We don't know any more than the characters do. The play wraps us in the boredom of routine, then unexpectedly shifts to reveal objects and bodies as they are as they are, stripped of our trained perceptions of them. They stand starkly in all their wonder and terror-the "essential," Beckett wrote, "the extra-temporal."

Friends of Beckett said that the dialogues between Didi and Gogo resembled the exchanges Beckett had with his wife: I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't have been better off alone, each one for himself. We weren't made for the same road.It's not certain.No, nothing is certain.We can still part, if you think it would be better.It's not worth while now.No, it's not worth while now.

Two more of the many faces of love.