~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I sometimes wonder if writers in our post-WWII generation– old codgers that we now are– will be the last to produce volumes of collected letters. Throughout the library here in our home, as in any standard literary library, there are dozens of volumes of letters — not just biographies or collected works containing letters — but complete volumes made up of nothing but letters.
A quick run-through of our shelves yields volumes of collected letters by the following writers (and a few artists): Cowper, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Emerson, Thoreau, Carlyle, the Brownings, Gaugin, Wilde, Rilke, Kafka, Proust, Gibran, Robinson, Frost, Brooke, Gurney, Owen, TE Lawrence, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, MacLeish, CS Lewis, Tolkien, Toklas, Nin, Henry Miller, Brassai, Dylan Thomas, Jarrell, Merton, and Ginsberg.
In times past, all writers wrote letters – they were an essential part of their literary corpus, perhaps not quite on a level with essays, novels or poems, but very nearly so.
But all that is now apparently a thing of the past. These days we have computers, and those irritating little hand-helds, . . . Somehow I can’t quite see sturdily-bound volumes of So-and-so’s Collected Emails (let alone texts or tweets) ever taking their place proudly on library shelves.
Some days ago I came across several old binders, and discovered they were full of my old literary correspondence — actual hand- and type-written letters from the inconceivably distant past, before the advent of desktops. There are letters to and from a number of poets, all written during a two-year period, 1993-95. Some thirty letters are from Dana Gioia, together with half a dozen telephone conversations (jotted down afterwards from memory), and a stack of articles, essays and poems which he sent. In addition there are letters, essays and poems from other poets during the same period, David Mason, RS Gwynn, Felix Stephanile, Michael Heffernan, and Jared Carter, brief notes from Charles Martin and Wendell Berry, and a small stack of letters from editors — not to mention the rather taller stack of unsigned rejection slips.
All those letters over a relatively brief period amounted to a crash course in the literary issues of the day. I lived and breathed poetry during those two years, published more essays and poems than I ever had before — though the actual writing of poems fell off considerably. (I cannot help but contrast those two years to the several weeks I had spent a few years earlier in Oxford and Paris, and the dozens of poems and many hundreds of lines that resulted).
For better or worse I had committed myself to the literary life. In addition to maintaining a correspondence (the point of which was the hashing out of ideas with fellow practitioners of the ‘trade’) and the crystallizing of those ideas into finished essays – I had made the decision to “go professional” by entering a writing program, acquiring credentials & contacts, publishing a book and becoming a professor.
In other words I was heading straight for the crossroads, looking for the devil, hoping to bargain away my soul.
I was filled with misgivings. My devil’s bargain wasn’t for inspiration or ability but for something more modest — meagre even – a profession: a position with security and salary. How Faustian is that?
I was tired of being poor. More to the point, I had responsibilities. But I feared in my gut that this devil’s bargain would cost me my muse. Nevertheless I sucked it up and got down to business. I applied to the writing program at the University of Arkansas and was accepted with a full assistantship. I corresponded with Michael Heffernan and liked everything he had to say. Marian and I drove out to Arkansas and spent an afternoon driving around Fayetteville with James Whitehead, to whom I warmed at once. My course seemed set.
In the end what occured was completely out of my control. An elderly family member with Alzheimer’s came to live with us, remaining until her death five years later. The effect on our lives was like entering a tunnel into the underworld, with no idea when we would see the sun again. Anyone who has been through this experience will know what I mean. Caring for an Alzheimer’s patient — without a penny of support from our vaunted health-care system — was a round-the-clock, seven-day-a-week ordeal for both of us. They call it the “48-hour day”. It was very like dying to the world. As time went on, we lost touch with all but a few stalwart family & friends, and even these we saw less and less frequently. Entertaining was impossible, and even getting out together for just an early evening was increasingly difficult to arrange. Much more seriously, Marian was forced to relinquish a tenure-track position in a major state university to assume full-time caretaking responsibilities and, once the ordeal was over, she had to begin all over again as a part-time adjunct in a small teaching college. For my part, I gave up entering the writing program and struggled to launch an online bookselling business, while helping with household and nursing duties. Very soon I was too exhausted and discouraged to write, correspond, or even read very much. We both lost touch with the world generally. The effect of Alzheimer’s on our household and our psyches was so ruinous that everything was reduced to a raw struggle for survival. Even after the ordeal had ended, there were residual effects that would last for years to come.
As I read back through the letters now, especially the acerbic commentaries on literary matters & manners from Dana Gioia, including wickedly funny portraits of his poetic peers, it is impossible not to regret that I allowed it all to lapse. Years later I would try — perhaps half-heartedly — to revive some of the old contacts. But the moment was past. Everyone had moved on.
And yet I have the letters, which possess a peculiar life of their own. I have been renewing an acquaintenceship with them, with the ideas they contain. Ideas perhaps worthy of bringing once more into the light.
