Coach – Mary Robison

Mary Robison January 14, 1949

I found it interesting that as I read about Robison, I discovered that she had a severe case of writers block during the 1990s.

I’m not a writer – well, I guess I am in a sort of way – but it’s not my profession, and I have trouble with my writing from time to time.

One good thing about this project is that it almost forces me to get something down on “paper”. I do have a handwritten journal –I’ve been struggling through several physical journals that could be grouped together and read as one document, for about 7 years now. I find time to write in it about once a week.

I’ll have short bursts of writing that can last a few days and then...nothing, pretty much the pattern that I have here on this blog.

There are so many things going on in my life right now. Some of which I wish to commit to paper and others that I’m not comfortable with sharing just yet. I have a marathon on Sunday, and my morning reading and writing time has been taken over by my training for that. I’ll take an extended break after the race (about a week) and I’ll be able to finish off this volume and hopefully finish my posting.

Currently, my step-father is pretty sick and my head has been distracted with everything surrounding his illness. Well, illness and the fact that he is just really old and things aren’t going too well for him right now. My mother is having difficulties adjusting to her new life with him, and we (the rest of the family) are attempting to help her along this journey.

That’s about all I wish to share as far as my excuses go for my inability to focus on this project.

It’s funny, because as soon as I opened this document and started to get words down on the screen, things started to flow.

So, “Coach”.

I enjoyed this story. Robison’s skill as a writer has spanned the years since she wrote this and Gardner recognized her talent early.

There were so many ways to look at the different situations that arose in this story that it’s a bit difficult to decide on just one to see as a lesson.

I suppose the one lesson that I would take away is the one that reinforces my nature of being cautious.

I have developed over the years the habit of not taking someone’s word for anything. I have to see physical proof or hear something directly form someone (rather than secondhand) in order to believe it.

I don’t think that I developed this through being turned down or being denied a position that I was seeking, I just think that I am cautious by nature. Perhaps I have seen others burned before and vowed to myself that I would suffer their pain.

Does this hinder me in my pursuits in life?

I don’t think so.

I think that I have a pretty good measure of what I think is realistic and I know when to jump and when to hold back.

Right now, in my life, I’m half-way through a jump...I’m suspended in midair - I can see where I’m going to land, and it looks wonderful.

Shelter the Pilgrim - Fred Licht

Fred Licht - June 9, 1928

I can still remember his name –

Brian.

It still chokes me up. I can see the incident repeat itself over and over again.

I don’t remember the exact age that I was – or the grade but, my best guess was the 4^th grade.

I attended one of the crappiest public schools in Norfolk during the early 1980s. Grades 3-6.

Third grade wasn’t that bad – I had a decent teacher Mrs. Clark(e). I was very happy with the class, and even had a little girlfriend – Jenny London. It was a good year.

Forth grade was where the problems began. Fifth grade was a disaster and 6^th grade was the icing on top of the shit cake.

The school was a physical mess. Dark halls, paint (lead), chipping off the radiators – broken wooden chairs and desks – just a general nightmare.

I attended this school, JEB Stuart (yes named after the Civil War Confederate General) with a group of students that entered public school with me in kindergarten, and graduated high school with in 1990. We were black, white, yellow and green kids.

I was a little guy back then (well... still am) and being such, the bigger kids didn’t see me as a threat – so I was spared the beatings that others received. Beating me down wouldn’t move them up in the social ladder in any way.

Everyone pretty much left me alone. I was different, but not that different.

Now that I have sufficiently wasted your time with nonsensical memories of my inadequate education -

Back to the incident I started this post off with –

His name was Brian, and he was VERY different.

In the 1980s, there was an educational movement to place children with physical disabilities into a normal classroom setting.

He resembled – as best as I can describe – a baby bird –

He drooled, he walked with a limp, had brown hair, held his hands up next to his chest in two clutched fists, like a praying mantis – like he was constantly ready to strike out at the world.

He wore brown corduroys and a red and white striped shirt - that day – and there was a constant stream of snot hanging from his nose and plenty of crusty dried snot around his mouth - most days.

He spoke...but we couldn’t understand what he said – or we didn’t want to – most of his speech was accompanied by a spray of saliva and snot.

That day, I was lined up with half of my class on one side of the hallway.

It was after lunch.

Brian was with the other half of the class directly across from me.

Because of his disability, he aroused curiosity in some of us, and when he was around, we usually would hold him in a stare – as you would expect most children to do.

There was some sunlight coming through the window of a door just behind me and shining on the wall just to the left of Brian- he was slightly outside of the spotlight in a dim hallway.

The other children were all chattering with each other so I have no idea what Brian said to the boy beside him as I held him in my obvious stare.

The boy struck Brian directly in the center of his chest with a quick hard fist and laughed and Brian collapsed.

Right in his heart – if Brian’s heart didn’t stop, mine did. Brian crumbled to his knees, and fell over - the boy laughed and stood over him...I just froze.

Brian inhaled – I was sure I heard it. He glanced up with his twisted face, snot, saliva dripping from a painful - smile – and looked right at me.

I wanted to rush over to him and place my hand on his heart – to protect him, to take away the pain.

It was the cruelest thing I had ever witnessed up to that point in my life – and ranks at the top of the cruelest things I have ever seen.

As I write this the lump in my throat has grown, and yes, I’m holding back tears.

Why did that boy hit Brian?

I’ll never know.

I do know that I went home that night and cried as my mother held me. I explained to her what I witnessed, and she did her best to explain to me the cruelty of others. It was senseless- she said – but something that humans do to one another.

What happened to Brian?

Is he a 38 year old man now? Does he have a family? Is he even alive?

I know it is so cliché, but the fact that a story like “Shelter the Pilgrim”, can bring the memory of Brian back means that yes, someplace he is still alive. Brian will always be alive for me – to remind me of a bitter truth – of the cruelty that we all can inflict on each other.

The courtship of widow Sobeck - Joanna Higgins

Joanna Higgins- February 20, 1945

In an interview with Contemporary Authors – Higgins describes how she rediscovered writing, and in the excerpt below, her relationship with John Gardner.

A few months later, I learned that John Gardner, the writer, critic, and medieval scholar, was teaching writing at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where I'd done my doctoral work. My husband and I had been renting out our hillside farmhouse near there and were lonesome for those windy hills, the woods, the 'seasons.' I gave up a tenure-track teaching position, and we came back to start over again. When I overcame my fears enough to send a story to John Gardner and to ask to sit in on one of his fiction workshops, he--unfailingly, unstintingly generous with all young writers--consented. I studied informally with him for the next three years, eventually helping with the literary magazine, MSS, he'd started up again. John Gardner died in a motorcycle accident on September 14, 1982, on a warm, brilliant fall afternoon. The horror of that day nearly broke us--his students and friends. The only thing that helped at all, then, was knowing that we had to keep writing, to prove that his faith in us had not been misplaced.”

So we see once again Gardner using his position as the editor to push forward one of his students/friends.

I would think back in 1982, that the greater reading public would not have a clue that the two were friends – but to those in “the know”, I wonder what they made of the selection of this story.

I read this story before I knew of the relationship, and honestly, it didn’t do much for me. It was pleasant enough, but as a story to educate...well, perhaps I will have to wait a bit longer for the lesson to appear.

Dancing Ducks and Talking Anus – James Ferry

James Ferry – ???

It was observed by reviewers of this collection that John Gardner picked authors for this collection that were not necessarily “known”.

Well- second story in, and I have a nobody!

I can’t find ANYTHING about James Ferry.

In the bio section located at the rear of the book, Ferry’s bio indicates that this was his first published story.

I have to wonder if it was his only published story.

In the intro, Gardner claims that he almost set this story aside into the “not chosen” pile based on the title alone. Then after the first sentence, again, he felt a stronger inclination to toss it away.

The first sentence reads:

“I suppose you’ve heard that Renée douched herself with sulfuric acid.”

Gardner pushed into the story a bit further and discovered a beautiful piece of art. I’m glad he decided to include it.

What did I get out of this story?

Well- it’s difficult.

-It caused me to think about love and the lengths we’ll go for it. It caused me to think about how it alters our perception of the world – both for the positive and the negative.

-Our positions in various stages of our lives – and the various lives we all lead throughout our time on earth.

-Just as it is thought that our taste buds change every seven or eight years, I feel that we make changes in life – of course, sometimes not of our own will.

Travel, changes in cultures, births, deaths, marriages, divorces, career paths, addictions – so many factors that can cause our little ship in this violent ocean to be swept under.

With everything I’ve been through in my life, I’m lucky – I’ve never felt the need to douche with sulfuric acid-so to speak.

Now, a mental douching from time to time can be healthy – perhaps not with something as strong as sulfuric acid – but close.

Ingest thoughts and ideas, music and visions that shake you up. Reset your mind from time to time.

These stories do that for me - The words, sentences and stories that pass through my brain – traveling across all the lightening fast connectors – forming new ideas and actually growing my brain – swelling it, I envision a bit fat pulsating mind.

-good stuff in here – really good stuff.

Cathedral – Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver - May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988

I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat myself here – one of the most important gifts that I am receiving from this project is the introduction to some of America’s best writers. Writers who were once “just names” in the table of contents now seem like close friends. I spend time after each story doing a bit of research on the author, and I feel that this enhances and opens new doors to their stories.

Researching Carver for “Cathedral” is one of those times where I have found a new favorite. Gardner did a fine job of placing him first in this collection, and and in doing so, his selection was even approved of by Updike – “Cathedral” was chosen for inclusion in “The Best American Short Stories of the Century” by Updike.

Gardner uses his position as the editor of BASS 1982 and places Carver in the prime position for readers. One must wonder if the personal relationship between the two had any influence on the choice.

I’m not doubting or disputing that Carver was a master of the Short Story and the fact that ‘Cathedral” was so widely recognized as a wonderful story buttresses the choice...but, man Gardner...put the guy in second or third – don’t be so transparent.

Here are a few paragraphs from interviews or bios. concerning the relationship between Gardner and Carver.

Carver became interested in writing in California, where he had moved with his family - his wife's parents had a home in Paradise. Carver attended a creative-writing course, and was taught by John Gardner. Later he said that all his writing life "he had felt Gardner looking over his shoulder when he wrote, approving or disapproving of certain words, phrases and strategies." (Carver's former student Jay McInerney in The New York Times, August 6, 1989)

Carver wrote thankfully of Gardner "giving me the key to his office so I would have a place to write on weekends," or explaining "the difference between saying something like, for example, 'wing of a meadow lark' and 'meadow lark's wing,'" or "drumming at me the importance of using -- I don't know how else to say it -- common language, the language of normal discourse, the language we speak to each other in."

Carver was the son of a craftsman, and his writerly development followed the stages of a craftsman’s training. After moving his family from Yakima to Paradise, California, in 1958, he enrolled at Chico State College. There, he began an apprenticeship under the soon-to-be-famous John Gardner, the first "real writer" he had ever met. "He offered me the key to his office," Carver recalled in his preface to Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (1983). "I see that gift now as a turning point." In addition, Gardner gave his student "close, line-by-line criticism" and taught him a set of values that was "not negotiable." Among these values were convictions that Carver held until his death. Like Gardner, whose On Moral Fiction (1978) decried the "nihilism" of postmodern formalism, Carver maintained that great literature is life-connected, life-affirming, and life-changing. "In the best fiction," he wrote "the central character, the hero or heroine, is also the ‘moved’ character, the one to whom something happens in the story that makes a difference. Something happens that changes the way that character looks at himself and hence the world." Through the 1960s and 1970s he steered wide of the metafictional "funhouse" erected by Barth, Barthelme and Company, concentrating instead on what he called "those basics of old-fashioned storytelling: plot, character, and action." Like Gardner and Chekhov, Carver declared himself a humanist. "Art is not self-expression," he insisted, "it’s communication."

When John Gardner died at forty-nine in a 1982 motorcycle accident, Carver termed the loss to literature "beyond figuring."

And finally, the story “Cathedral” and others collected in a collection bearing the same name were thought by Carver to be:

“a watershed in his career, in its shift towards a more optimistic and confidently poetic style.”

- What did I get out of this story?

Well, it really is a wonderful story. A good ‘ol fashioned story.

It reminded me of the need to welcome new experiences – new ideas – to be open to opinions of others. Not to shy away from what is unknown or what could be frightening to me. Take it all in as a learning experience.

You never know what someone could teach you. And once again, apply that newly developed knowledge into learning a bit about yourself – question where those former beliefs came from, where the attitude developed that caused to be afraid, or hesitant - to be open to what frightened you.

Introduction – John Gardner

 

John Gardner July 21, 1933 – September 14, 1982

Never have I spent so much time researching an author. The time I have spent has almost gone beyond what I seem to think is necessary, and is becoming an obsession that is interfering with the reading of the short stories.

I’m not sure what it is about Gardner that has attracted me to him. I’ve listened to interviews conducted with Don Swaim, I’ve read countless interviews, read portions of books by him and about him off of Google Books, sifted through the journal of Joyce Carol Oates to read her thoughts of him, sought out photos of him, read archived newspaper articles about him...I just need to stop and get what I have about him down here and get along with reading the shorts.

The closest thing that I can narrow down as to the reason for the attraction, is the fact that he wrote a very controversial book, heaped praise on one of my favorite writers, drank to excess, smoked and then died in a motorcycle accident. His death occurred shortly after he finished pulling together his selections for this volume. He selected stories published in magazines from 1981 – selection process must have been done early in ’81 and the anthology must have come out in mid to late ’82 – just before his death in September.

I’d like to point out the contents of this volume. He made the decision not to order them in the book alphabetically by the last name of the author. I’d be interested to know what his placement reasons were...or if, during my reading, I can discover a pattern.
Also, it should be noted and I’ll quote him below, that he only selected one story from The New Yorker. –

That’s my man!

He did select two stories from his own literary publication MSS – I can’t help but feel that this was a bit selfish.

Below, are portions from the introduction that I feel will give a better insight to the selections he made as well as show why I am so excited to read the stories.

From the introduction:
...but I can’t believe anyone with nay sense would deny that these are extremely good stories, or that the richness and variety of the whole makes this an unusually readable, abundantly satisfying collection.
In short this collection is a result of choices, but I would not like to be forced to defend those choices in front of a serious Board of Inquisition.
But of the hundred and twenty stories she passed on to me, I like only ten enough to consider for this collection, and in the end I included only six- some of those partly because my wife, another experienced reader of (in my opinion) unimpeachable taste, argued me around to them.

Gardner goes into further detail at this point in the introduction as to how he, Shannon and his wife Liz chose the stories for this book. He mentions that he started reading for these selections about a week before his deadline. He cites being frantically busy. Gardner had Shannon send him “her truckload of magazines”. He and his wife read themselves blind. 

The only New Yorker story Liz would divorce me for not including is Mary Robinson’s “Coach,” which is one reason (though not the only one) that it’s here. On the whole my taste has never been partial to New Yorker stories. The New Yorker publishes more fiction than anybody else, some of it excellent, but in general I find the magazine all knife-flash, no blood. I like even less imitation New Yorker stories- increasingly common in the so-called little magazines. 

-Wonderful I was so happy to read the above paragraph.
The selection of these stories was not solely mine, in other words, though I’m finally responsible and proud to be so.
The three-way collaboration did not force my choices, like a dully compromising committee vote; instead, like tarot cards, it enabled me to see things I might otherwise have missed. In the end, I give you my word; I’m stubborn as a mule. 

...-I favor, on the one hand (as I’ve suggested), metaphysical stories, maybe gentled by humor, or at the very least heavy, thoughtful pieces...and I favor on the other hand, brilliant lighter stories, comic or quasi comic, seriously conceived, surprisingly imaginative, stories hinting at depths of meaning below the facile surface-...Fiction more smooth and sophisticated than I would care to write myself, or indeed, know how to write, is also represented...
If one were really to choose the “best” short stories of a given year, one might conceivably end up with a half dozen stories by one author.

At present the heavyweight is Joyce Carol Oates. Though her work is even more uneven than was Faulkner’s, she’s notoriously prolific, and of the numerous stories she published in 1981 at least three or four are as powerful, original, and moving as “Theft,” the story I’ve chosen. In selecting only one, I implicitly acknowledge that this anthology is representative, not absolute.
Nineteen eighty-one saw the publication of interesting stories by John Updike, Donald Barthelme, Ann Beattie, William Gass, Bary Targan, and at least one superb story by Frederick Barthelme; but none of these stories seems to me to hold up beside the work of relative newcomers represented here, or even to some of the work of other newcomers I’ve read and liked,...
-Looks like he is still seeking the forgiveness of the writers he shanked in “On Moral Fiction”.
...the 1981 stories of the famous writers I’ve mentioned all seem to me a bit too casual, too safe.
A new seriousness seems to have settled over North American short fiction. I don’t know for sure what the reasons are. I suspect our culture, or at least a segment of it may finally be tiring of the self-consciously trivial artistic practice Americans favored in the age when we wanted to seem as wearily elegant and intelligent as post –World War I Europeans-...

I’d also like to draw attention to some observations by Joyce Carol Oates. These are from her journal. 

May 26, 1977
Gave an impromptu dinner party for John Gardner, who breezed into town unannounced. He was sweet, outrageous, charming in a strange way subdued, possibly a little tired; drank mainly wine all evening and consequently wasn’t as difficult to deal with as the last time we met; seemed genuinely affectionate to Ray and me. His marriage is ended. He is living with a young woman, a girl really, twenty-one or twenty-two, in Cambridge NY, in what he describes as a hunter’s cabin, He appears to be in need of money, which is ironic, since he has had several best sellers and has sold paperback rights for large sums...It was good to see him. I like him very much; far better than I recall. (Our last meeting was some sort of disaster. He was stupefied with drink.) His hands were filthy, amazingly dirty!...He spoke of also of carrying a gun everywhere with him. charming brilliant man, a delight to know. I’m really pleased with the success he’s had in recent years. He deserves it.

March1, 1978
...Skimmed through John Gardner’s Moral Fiction. Cranky, careless, inaccurate, mean spirited. I wonder – why did he do it? Why attack his (former?) friends Bob Coover and John Barth like that? So cruelly pointless. So self-serving. He’s jealous of the, and of Barthelme, and Updike; why not admit it? I am one of the few people he singles out for praise (however faint, however dim) yet I still feel the sting of the book, its silly complacent didactic self-righteousness. He’s been physically ill, of course – yet I almost wonder whether he hasn’t been somewhat emotionally ill as well.

----And finally, some more insight to Gardner from a couple of reviewers.
“Gardner's own curriculum vitae was quite impressive. Author of 15 books and recipient of abundant critical acclaim, he had even sought to define art. In a collection of essays, On Moral Fiction, he wrote: “... true art is moral; it seeks to improve life, not debase it. It seeks to hold off, at least for a while, the twilight of the gods and us.... We recognize true art by its careful, thoroughly honest search for an analysis of values. It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach ... moral art tests values and rouses trustworthy feelings about the better and the worse in human action.”

Rodman, Selden. "Gardner's Last Novel." The New Leader 65.18 (4 Oct. 1982): 18. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jean C. Stine and Bridget Broderick. Vol. 28. Detroit

Gardner's confidence that he's an originator of ideas has gotten him into trouble. He was accused of “borrowing passages” from scholars in his The Life and Times of Chaucer; he admitted to “paraphrasing.” On the defensive, he writes in this novel's acknowledgments that he has “borrowed ideas and good lines” from Martin Luther, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Norman O. Brown, Martin Heidegger, and— if that's not enough to cover himself—from “acquaintances, friends, and loved ones.” He's also effectively hidden them.

Harris, Robert R. "What's So Moral about John Gardner's Fiction?" Saturday Review 9.6 (June 1982): 70-71. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jean C. Stine and Bridget Broderick. Vol. 28

John Gardner's On Moral Fiction has been criticized supposedly because it is moral criticism similar to that of Irving Babbitt, which we seemingly have gone beyond. In addition to the furor caused by Gardner's thesis, that “art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy,” the writers under Gardner's attack may have caused On Moral Fiction to be attacked in turn—Bellow, Porter , Coover , Gaddis, Pynchon , Updike , and Barth , to name only a few, as readers wish to rescue their favorites from Gardner's Judgment, Wrath, and Doom. But aside from the wish to defend one's favorites, Gardner's thesis causes intellectual difficulties of many sorts, a liberal wish not to censor anything and limit the free play of ideas and the problem of whose morality is right.

Gardner has subsequently, in interviews and essays, qualified his views. Over two years ago, he said that true art is invariably affirmative, soft pedaling censorship, by saying that great fiction provides readers vicarious experience, helping “us know what we believe” and reenforcing “those qualities which are noblest in us” and leading us “to feel uneasy about our failings and limitations.” In the recently published, “Learning From Disney and Dickens,” Gardner retreats still further, saying, “I've come to see that fiction simply dramatizes.” Gardner furthers this position in On Becoming a Novelist by asking the following question, “Does the twenty—or twenty-five year old writer really have brilliant insights that the intelligent reading public (doctors, lawyers, professors, skilled machinists, businessmen) has never thought of? If the young novelist's answer is an emphatic yes, he would do the world a favor by entering the ministry or the Communist party.” Still later in the same book, Gardner says, “One cannot argue that the writer's purpose should be the creation of moral fiction, or any other kind; one cannot even argue that his purpose should be to create something beautiful or pleasing or even honest or universally interesting” (86).

Barrow, Craig. "On a Moral Fiction Writer's Last Novel: Gardner's Mickelsson's Ghosts." Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction 26.2 (Winter 1985): 49-56. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism Select
Gardner died in a motorcycle accident on September 14, 1982. One can only wonder if it was death that could have been prevented. Was he driving drunk? Was he driving recklessly? Did he as one blogger suggests – commit suicide?

I can’t help but feel his presence as I read these stories. The weight he carried, and still carries for me, is enormous.
I’m really looking forward to reading these selections. I can’t wait to see what they bring forth in me.