I was invited to give the keynote address (whatever that is) at a convocation of librarians. It was to be held at one of those resort/honeymoon palaces that they used to advertise on television. Just as people were getting seated an excited librarian whispered to me that there was a surprise guest. Kurt Vonnegut’s then girlfriend was getting an award for a children’s book, and Vonnegut would be joining us at the speakers table. I switched the place cards around. (“No, no! It has to be boy-girl-boy girl!” the librarian complained. I ignored her.) Vonnegut made my night by mentioning a fan letter I had sent him years before. We settled down to some serious brother-novelist chitchat…and drinking. I hardly drink at all. Vonnegut drank rather a lot. The waiters were all fans, and hovered around him. Every so often he would order a different mixed drink—for each of us. I got to experience a sloe gin fizz, a Manhattan, a crème de menthe frappe, and a zombie; I forget what the others were. I was not going to appear to be a sissy in the company of one of my heroes. I drank my drinks. “Oh, look!” Vonnegut said, moving a finger unsteadily down the program. “You are the distinguished speaker.” “Thash right…Kurt,” I said. “If I had known that, I wouldn’t have gotten you drunk,” the great author said. “S’all right…Kurt,” I said. “What you gonna talkaboud?” “Dunno.” “Dunno? Diddin’ you prepare?” “Nope, Kurt. I will wing it.” “Wing it? I prepare a week ahead for one of these.” At that moment I felt a twinge of fear, but for some reason it wore off in the next moment. I am told my talk lasted three minutes. I don’t remember what I said. The librarians seemed angry at me for some reason, and it was 18 years before any librarians anywhere invited me to speak again. Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a literary icon, and a great man, said it was the best damned speech he’d ever heard.
Daniel Pinkwater is an author and illustrator responsible for more than 80 books, most of them excruciatingly funny. He is a mainstay of National Public Radio.
While I was a student at the University of Michigan, Robert Frost was invited to give a reading on campus. Twelve students, mostly writers, were invited to a dinner in his honor. Picture this: a long table set with fine linen and candles. Frost sits at one end. Awe has silenced us; nobody says a word. Five minutes pass. At last, Anne Stevenson, seated at the opposite end of the table, says, “Mr. Frost, what do you think of Pound’s latest canto?”
Frost could not hear the question; could we repeat it? Could we! It went up one side of the table like a game of telephone. Six times we heard it. What do you think of Pound’s latest canto?
“Never read it,” he said.
From then on, to our great relief, he told stories about himself.
Nancy Willard is the author of many books of poetry, fiction, and essays, and a winner of the 1982 Newbery Medal for A Visit to William Blake’s Inn.
I was an undergrad who loved to write fiction, but my parents were giving me the college education they’d never had and I was supposed to go to medical school. Then, one day, my writing professor took our class to hear Grace Paley read. The first thing I noticed was the silver hair that swirled atop her head like a halo. And she looked exactly like my bubbe, short and tough and wise. Then she started to read from Enormous Changes at the Last Minute and she sounded almost exactly like my bubbe. She read a handful of stories that day and I was enchanted throughout, drawn to her completely original yet strangely familiar voice. After the reading a few of us went up to meet her and she hugged me. I can’t remember why she hugged me and not the other kids standing around—did I say something? Did I remind her of her grandson the way she reminded me of my bubbe?—but her embrace was powerful, and it made me realize I wouldn’t be going to medical school after all.
Edward Schwarzschild’s books include a new story collection, The Family Diamond, and the novel Responsible Men, both from Algonquin.
Gail Godwin’s reputation as formidable—in multiple connotations—came to mind in 2004 when Chronogram assigned me to profile the writer and she invited me to her Woodstock home. To prepare, I read roughly a third of this bestselling novelist’s output (nearly two dozen books), studying the pages for lessons in gentility, a favored Godwin motif.
Falling sick, my subject rescheduled our visit. On the newly appointed day, she graciously answered my knock, despite repressing sniffles. I proffered hostess gifts, explaining, “For your cold.”
In her sun-splashed kitchen, Godwin opened the first parcel. “Lapsang souchong tea!” she gushed. “Mother’s favorite! How did you know?” Seeming not to hear my reply—“From your fiction, of course”—she next uncovered a tray of cucumber sandwiches. I apologized for lack of watercress, the recipe otherwise lifted straight from Godwin’s A Mother and Two Daughters (1982). Disarmed, the author granted a two-hour interview.
Pauline Uchmanowicz is the author of Sand and Traffic (Codhill Press, 2006).
When I was acting in New York, I went to an address where Maria Irene Fornes was holding auditions for her new play. I was impossibly young for the role, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to get my picture-and-rez in her files. She was reading people in her Lower East Side apartment. At the appointed time, I knocked. There was no answer, but I smelled smoke. The door was ajar. I went in. When Ms. Fornes returned with her sandwich, I was dousing a pot that had been burning on her stove in a kitchen now as full of steam as smoke. I didn’t get the part, but the next year, in other people’s plays that she produced, she cast me twice.
Amlin Gray is the Obie-winning author of How I Got That Story.
Frank Pierson, the author of Dog Day Afternoon, directed my cable television film, Soldier’s Girl. Both films feature transgender characters and ours required actor Lee Pace to wear false breasts. Frank—famous for his love of beautiful women—supervised the building and testing of the prosthesis, criticizing early attempts for being too stiff or too much like Jell-O. At one point during a test run he said, “That reminds me of a story about Marlene Dietrich’s nipples.” And he told me a story about Dietrich’s controversially pointed nipples as they appeared in the shimmering gown she wore for her concert comeback in the 1960s. The source of those points? Peanut shells. Frank refused to say how he had learned the secret, but his smile suggested a pleasant hour backstage with Marlene between shows.
Ron Nyswaner was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay Philadelphia, and won the National Board of Review Award for The Painted Veil.
I saw Joyce Carol Oates at Ulster County Community College in 2004. She had giant eyes, a receding chin, suspiciously brown hair with reddish highlights. Her face slightly resembled James Baldwin’s.
Joyce grew up near Niagara Falls, she explained, and was familiar with towns like Horseheads, New York—“which you probably never heard of.” After she finished autographing books, I approached her in the reception room. “May I tell you something?,” I asked. “Yes,” she answered, looking frightened. “I went to Cornell University, and I made a vow that I would only listen to country and western music,” I said. “The radio station I listened to was in Horseheads, New York.”
She looked mystified. Perhaps she had forgotten mentioning Horseheads. “Do you like bluegrass, also?” she asked, shyly. “I didn’t really like country and western music,” I answered. “I only listened because I made my vow.” Joyce Carol Oates looked disappointed.
Sparrow is the author of America, a Prophecy. His poetry and his articles have appeared in the New Yorker, the Sun, the New York Times, and other publications.
As a mystery writer, I’ve been to a lot of mystery writers conferences. When they’re at conferences, most mystery writers like to drink. At one such conference, in Madison, Wisconsin, I had the honor of meeting Ken Bruen, the critically acclaimed Irish noir writer. Bruen is very thin and silver-haired, with sharp, intense features and a penetrating gaze. His prose is dark and soulful, and I expected his personality to be the same—a sort of crime-fiction James Joyce. We were introduced by my friend Jason Starr, who has collaborated with Bruen on the novels Bust and Slide. We ran into each other at a bar (of course). Someone shouted, “Let’s go to another bar!” and Bruen said, “Yes!” And so we did.
Somehow, at around 3:30am, Jason, author Megan Abbott, Bruen, and I all wound up at a gay sports bar, where Bruen got up onstage beside the DJ and danced, very enthusiastically, to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” as footage from the Packers game played on the big-screen TV overhead. It was very surreal, to say the least. And I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard, ever. I still love Ken Bruen’s brooding prose, but now, I smile a little when I read it.
Alison Gaylin’s Trashed was just published by Obsidian Books. Her Samantha Leiffer mysteries include the Edgar Award nominee Hide Your Eyes and You Kill Me.
Back in 1994, Ed Sanders issued an invitation to a hundred or so poets, requesting new verses to that noblest of hymns, “Amazing Grace.” That November, a gospel choir performed a selection of the verses at St. Mark’s Church in the East Village, with solo turns by several of the contributing poets, who warbled their lines to the backing of a sanctified ensemble on organ, guitar, and bass. I made the trip down from Woodstock with Ed’s wife, Miriam, and got to croon my own contribution. But the star of the show was Allen Ginsberg, who had written not merely a new stanza, but a whole new set of lyrics to the tune.
After the gig, as we piled into my car for the short hop over to Allen’s apartment, I mentioned that Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” scanned perfectly to the tune of “Amazing Grace,” and started to demonstrate: “Be-cause, I could, not stop, for Death, he kind-, -ly stopped, for me-eeee…” By the third line, Allen’s rich, shaggy baritone had joined in, and for two minutes in Eternity, we sang the poem together. It was a tiny bond, but I treasure it. Less than three years later, Death paid Allen the same courtesy as Emily, kindly stopping for him at 2:39am on April 5, 1997.
Poet/performance artist Mikhail Horowitz’s most recent book is Rafting into the Afterlife (Codhill Press, 2007).
This article appears in November 2007.
