A Basketball Memory

Yesterday, I was having lunch with an old college friend (Don Bartlett), and we were sharing stories about playing on the freshman basketball team decades ago at Hiram College. Don, a year younger than I, was a much better player, and, deservedly, got more court time than I'd had in my freshman year..

I had arrived at Hiram with Delusions of Athletic Grandeur. I had played on the Hiram High School varsity team for three years ("We are the Huskies, the mighty, mighty Huskies ..."), had been named to the All-Portage County Team (2nd team) in 1962, and thought--daffily--that I was going to star for Hiram College. It took only a practice or two to disabuse me of that notion. I played a few disastrous minutes early in the season, but by the end of all I was moving down the bench, farther and farther away from the coach, and eventually--as I've written elsewhere--became kind of a transitional figure, part player, part crowd member.

But the talk with Don reminded me of one of the moments in my high school career. We were playing Atwater (a southern Portage County school, which now, like Hiram High, no longer exists, having been absorbed into consolidation), a team with a superstar, Chick Campbell (who went on to star for Mount Union; we held him to 57 that night). The date: January 13, 1962. (I still have our schedule--see photo.)

I should say that the Huskies, in my era, did not win too many games, principally because, well, we sucked. (That changed in the the next few years, once I was gone.)  Anyway, about that game ...

In the first half, I missed my first shot (no surprise) but then made nine straight (surprise--big surprise). I don't think any of those shots even touched the rim. Once--to my embarrassment--I cried out "Short!" as I released the ball, then watched it nearly tear the net off as it passed through. (No one, so far as I can recall, laughed.)

I was dazzled at halftime. I'd already scored more points than my end-of-the-year average (17), and I was having dreams of 30 or so (see what a team player I was!).

It was not to be. Things changed in the second half, things I'd rather not get into. I made only one more basket.

Hiram High Huskies
Bob Waller--on the far left, #23

But there was a moment--a single moment--that remains to be told. One of my good high school friends was Bob Waller (who went on to get a Ph.D. in chemistry at CWRU). Bob didn't get to play much, but he was in the game near the end at Atwater that night. I was still obsessed with points and wanted more but hadn't had many opportunities to shoot (I'd rather not get into it), but near the very end, I knocked the ball loose from an Atwater guy, and started dribbling to the other end, envisioning an easy lay-up. Points.

But then I saw Bob Waller on my right, a little ahead of me, sprinting for the basket. Uh, oh. Pass? Or ignore him and take the easy lay-up and the points!?

Bob and I used to laugh about "getting your name in the paper"--i.e., scoring even a single point would get you into the box score (right term for basketball?) in the local Kent-Ravenna Evening Record-Courier. Yes ... name in the paper.

I kept dribbling. But also remembering Bob was my good friend. Who wanted to see his name in the paper. I was seventeen years old, profoundly self-absorbed, wanted points.

But there was Bob, on my right, nearing the hoop ...

And ...

I passed the ball.

And Bob scored.

Got his name in the paper.

Flash forward fifty years. I saw Bob Waller at our 50th high school reunion in the summer of 2012. I'd not seen him in a long, long time. I reminded him of that pass. And he smiled, said he remembered it too.

If you enlarge, you can see the box score.

Frankenstein Sundae, 79

Not one word did I say in reply to her request for suggestions for her syllabus. Each letter of that previous sentence humiliates me. Was I truly so self-absorbed in 2001? I was fifty-seven years old.

Betty didn’t reply—unlike her, but I can’t say that I blame her, either. Early in December I sent her a little note—with an article I’d found online. How are you doing? I asked in my three-sentence email.

On December 2 she wrote to say that she’d seen the fairly recent New York Times review of Miranda Seymour’s biography of Mary Shelley (October 7, 2001) and had a couple of comments about reviewers (I was a reviewer!) who don’t really know much about what they’re reviewing. (If she only knew!)

And then she dropped this tasty little appetizer on my plate: I am already thinking in terms of what extremely loyal friends will be willing to read through the very (& I mean rough) draft (after I have done some sandpapering first & spackling first) …

She didn’t really ask me, did she? But I leaped at the bait like a starving rainbow trout. A couple of days later I wrote: I hope your remark about “extremely loyal friends” looking at your early MWS draft includes me! I would be honored …. But if I’ve overstepped … let me know that, too. I have a pretty rough-bark ego and will understand. (Actually, I have a fragile ego, but I will STILL understand!) I went on and wrote a bit about her point concerning ignorant reviewers—then told her about some travel plans: another trip out to Oregon and a planned visit to Massachusetts to visit family.

Then … nearly six months of silence.

On May 31, 2002, Betty wrote this: It has been so long since we were last in touch. My reasons: I had a biopsy that was positive [lung cancer]. I am doing very well indeed—chemo plus lots of alternative treatments just about daily—to get the intruder out! And it is vanishing!! … I hope and trust your silence was not caused by any event similar …

No, Betty, my silence was caused not by a cancer diagnosis but by pure inattentiveness—perhaps even selfishness. And, of course, just about three years after Betty’s note I would have my own cancer diagnosis, would undergo my own surgery, radiation, chemical treatment. But that was in the future, and I was continuing to live and act as if I were immortal.

Oh, and Betty never did reply to my offer to read her draft. As I would learn, she had her reasons, and they were dark ones.

Joyce Carol Oates' THE ACCURSED

Yesterday, I finished read Joyce Carol Oates' 2013 novel, The Accursed, a Gothic thriller taking place (mostly) in and around Princeton, NJ, in 1905 and afterwards. (Oates herself now adorns the Princeton faculty.) She interweaves the stories of fictional characters with many notables from political and literary history--Woodrow Wilson (who was president of Princeton at the time), Grover Cleveland (the former US president was living in Princeton), Mark Twain (who has a rowdy, randy presence in some scenes in Bermuda), Upton Sinclair (living in penury in Princeton, but about to hit the big time with The Jungle), and (of significance to me) Jack and Charmian London, who appear in a long chapter later on called "The Nordic Soul"; Jack comes off as arrogant, drunken, racist, pugnacious, peremptory, etc. (choose your own unpleasant adjectives). We see most of the London stuff from the point of view of Upton Sinclair, who has idolized London--but now, seeing him Up Close and Personal, revises his opinion.

The story involves a "curse" that appears to have hit the town. Demons? Vampires?  Ugly deaths. Mysterious doings. There are some startling scenes--including a bride of about fifty seconds who's seduced by the voice of a mysterious character (clearly an Evil One) to flee the church and soar off with him to his dark kingdom while her groom and the congregation look on in dismay/horror.

Oates employs all her narrative magic in the telling of the tale. Her narrator is a later Princeton grad (1927) who was born about the time the events were unfolding (too mild a word for what's happening). The narrator gives us documents, the voices of others, periodic pauses to talk about the evidence, mini-lectures on the problems of storytelling (how do you narrate events occurring in different venues, she wonders--events that are simultaneous with one another?).

She also follows (as I've suggested above) the stories of multiple characters, most prominently Wilson, Sinclair, and some members of families whom the Curse most profoundly affects.

Very familiar with the devices of Gothic fiction, Oates both innovates here and revisits techniques used in other Gothic works--and even in fantasy/sci-fi fiction. For example, fans of C. S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe will not be surprised when a young (and very troubled) lad named Todd Slade removes some bricks in a fireplace and steps into another world. (Where he will meet the ultimate challenge in the novel--a game with the Evil One ... winner takes all, including the head of the loser ... I ain't tellin' who wins--and how.)

I'm not a big fan of Gothic fiction, but I most certainly am an Oates fan. I first began reading her in 1970 (her 1969 novel them had won the 1970 National Book Award for Fiction--until then I'd not heard of her), and I've (pretty much) kept up with her novels (though not necessarily everything else she has written in the ensuing years--collections of stories, essays, plays, memoir). As I wrote in a Plain Dealer review some years ago, she has the dazzling ability to inhabit the minds of a vast array of people--and to make them not only credible but achingly real.  As I've also written in the PD, she (richly) deserves the Nobel Prize. No question.

Oh, and during the years I taught "Writing in the Liberal Arts" at Hiram College's Weekend College, I always used her great story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" a story available on Oates' website (link to story). I would often show the 1986 film based on that story--Smooth Talk (link to trailer for the film). (Film starred young Laura Dern, Treat Williams, and Mary Kay Place.) And I loved (and reviewed) her wonderful 2008 story collection, Wild Nights, a collection comprising tales about various actual literary figures (Poe, Dickinson, Henry James, and Twain among them).

Anyway, my pattern with reading her has remained the same. I don't necessarily read each new novel as it appears, but I buy it, and, pretty soon, I'll settle down and read the two or three (or four or five) that I've not read since the last one. (And so it is that in the past few weeks I've read both The Accursed and her later one, Carthage. I'm now caught up again!)

She's an American treasure, Joyce Carol Oates, and I'm grateful I've been alive to witness and enjoy her creations as they spill from her limitless imagination.

Joyce Carol Oates

Frankenstein Sundae, 78

Two months would pass before our next communication. A pattern was forming.

I didn’t write again till mid-October. I know now—as I knew then (didn’t I?)—that in any correspondence there’s generally one person who is (or ought to be) the one who initiates. I knew that Betty—the most noted Mary Shelley scholar in the world—would probably not be the one to play that role, although she did, from time to time, drop a note to (unconscionably) silent me to see what was going on. But for the most part it was I who initiated things—from the very beginning. A question. A comment. A request.

So, when our correspondence began to lag—as it did in the fall of 2001—there was only one person to blame, really. Yes, I was incredibly busy with my return to the classroom. I’d not taught in four years—and I had not taught American literature in a high school for more than twenty years. Also, Western Reserve Academy, a boarding school, requires all sorts of other activities of its faculty: dormitory duty (one long evening a week), committees, coaching (I taught an extra class instead), dining hall supervision, and on and on.

But was I busier than Betty Bennett in the fall of 2001? (This question does not even merit an answer.)

So, anyway, in mid-October I wrote, apologizing in this fashion: I’ve been more than dilatory about correspondence this fall—all due, I fear, to my racing ahead of the boulder that’s chasing me down the hill. I’m sure I had a good reason to return to teaching, but it escapes me right now.

That carries, as I see now, the aroma—no, the odor—of disingenuousness. Yes, I was busy, but I knew perfectly well why I’d returned to teaching: I loved it; I needed the money. (Should those two reasons be reversed?)

I told her, too, that I’d sent out a draft of my Shelley biography to a literary agent—but had no news.

Betty replied right away with a note much longer than mine—details of her various doings in various venues. Most notable? She’d been to New York City for some of the 9/11 memorials (the attack had occurred only a month before) and had been enormously affected.

She also told me about a new course she was planning (Literature and War). Which occasioned one of the most surprising things she ever wrote to me. I tell you all this, she said, because I would like to ask you for suggestions. You read widely, and this is going be a bear to pare down to a manageable, meaningful syllabus …

Betty Bennett … asking me for suggestions for her syllabus.

What did I think when I read that in October 2001? Was I flattered? Humbled? Or (surely not!) did I sigh and think, Oh, more work to do!

And, to my enduring shame, I did not reply, not for a month. And when I did, I began with this: Boy, have I been a lousy correspondent! To say the least. The rest of the note is almost entirely about me, how busy I am. Though I did ask her if she was finding time to work on her biography.

Not one word did I say in reply to her request for suggestions for her syllabus. Each letter of that previous sentence humiliates me. Was I truly so self-absorbed in 2001? I was fifty-seven years old.

So, What Do We Want?

We've always been divided, those who've lived here in North America. When the first nomads wandered across the land bridge from Asia, 14-20,000 years ago, tribes soon formed--alliances and rivalries and prejudices and wars and more ensued.

And, as poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (her family and friends called her "Vincent") wrote in another context, "So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind."

There was no period of perfect unanimity in this country. During our Revolution there were many opposed to a war with England--and, later, there was that little thing--the Civil War? We did not go eagerly into World War I or II. Opposition here was fierce for both conflicts. We did not, in concert, rise up to support women's suffrage, Civil Rights, voting rights, workers' rights, etc. 9/11 did not unify us, make us all want to rush off to the Middle East--just look back at the op-ed pages those days.

These days the divisions seem sharper, though I'm not sure they really are. But the mass and social media seem to have exacerbated our differences, that's for sure. Deepened them. Made them more evident. (We all know about the news media we can watch/listen to, the ones that will not contradict anything we already think or believe.) On Facebook, for example, I see fiery exchanges on political and social issues; I see memes featuring tendentious and partisan slogans. I see--so often--isolated (or uncommon) incidents presented as definitive evidence--all in the not-very-persuasive category of the old "I-knew-a-guy-once-who ...."

It's a difficult thing to do--to look at an incident (perhaps heinous, egregious; perhaps merely annoying) and to say to yourself--and ask yourself: Yes, this is awful ... but is it anomalous? Or is it truly representative of anything? It's difficult because our outrage lies very close to the surface now--fanned as it is by news and social media.

We seem incapable, too, of placing ourselves in other people's situations. In fact, we don't even seem to think that doing this is even important. I've written here before about this dangerous failure of imagination. We need to think, if we can, what it's like to send our children to some of the worst schools in the country? To be unable to find a job. To work full-time for minimum wage and still qualify for public assistance. To live in--or patrol--a high-crime area. To be a disdained minority. To try to live on Social Security. To have no health insurance, even though you're working full time. And on and on.

The question I think we must all ask ourselves--if we ever even hope to have any unanimity--is this: What kind of country do we want to live in? And, of course, the consequent question: What do we have to do to get there?

Here are just a few things I'd like to see--a few answers. There are many more, of course. I'd like to live in a country where ...

• all public schools offer kids an equal chance to succeed (obviously not true today)
• all full-time workers can earn enough to provide for themselves and their families
• all races and ethnicities can feel safe and equal with one another
• all religions (or lack of same) co-exist peacefully and respectfully
• no one ever falls through the "safety net" ("to promote the common welfare" is right in our Constitution)
• we don't judge all by the actions of a few 
• we try to understand before we judge--if, indeed, we judge at all
• we avoid putting people in categories
• we work hard to inform ourselves on public issues

Of course, there are countless other things--like, oh, having news media that educate rather than frighten or polarize, like having politicians who kick Big Money out of bed, like having ...

And, personally, I'd like to see the liberal arts return to prominence in undergraduate education; I'd like to see people with learning revered rather than disdained (elitist!); I'd like to ...

Some of these things just ain't gonna happen, I know ... but most of all? I'd like us to start asking questions and considering answers. Probably won't happen, I fear.. It's easier--and maybe even more fun--to spew invective and blame and judge.

"So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind." Oh, Vincent ...

Frankenstein Sundae, 77

On August 18, 2001, Betty wrote to tell me that she’d returned from London—mostly, she said, she’d spent long hours at the libraries. She also offered me a very odd question: She wanted to buy my copy of the diary of Dr. John Polidori, Lord Byron’s personal physician who was present that Frankenstein summer in Geneva, 1816, a young man who later wrote The Vampyre (1819), a book that has given us Dracula and Edward Cullen and Bunnicula and innumerable other Undead “heroes.”

I wrote back about an hour later—a long email about our trip to Memphis and the Nashoba site. I told her, too, that while we were there, we visited the National Civil Rights Museum, a facility that includes the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr., fell to his assassin on April 4, 1968. It was a private museum, I wrote, and one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever had. Virtually everyone else visiting was black, and as we slowly proceeded by displays on the KKK, on Selma and fire-hoses and police dogs, etc., I have to say I felt powerfully ashamed.

I told her I’d keep an eye out for the Polidori book—and then segued into a little report on our recent visit to Stratford, Ontario, to see the Henry plays of Shakespeare. (We are still going to Stratford, every summer.)

I also shared with her this bit of news: I think I told you [did I?] I will be back in the classroom this year—and we start the year with Hamlet! I don’t have any classes until after Labor Day (we’re a boarding school …, but I have meetings starting soon, and I’ve already been … gasp! … working on lessons.

Yes, in the fall of 2001 I would start teaching full-time again. Although I’d retired from public education in January 1997, I’d done some teaching at Hiram College’s Weekend College (enjoyed it a lot—but adjunct pay is pitiful), and now—with all my Shelley research debts piling up like tailings outside a mine, I figured it was time to head back to earn back a little of the bread I’d cast upon the waters of scholarship.

And so I returned to Western Reserve Academy—just about three blocks from our home—where, long ago, I’d taught for two years (1979–1981). The school was close enough that I could walk (which I did) or bike (which I did). I would quickly fall in love with my students and my colleagues and ended up staying not just for a year or two. But ten. Only failing health drove me home again to stay.

In my file I do not have a reply about this announcement from Betty (was there one? did I fail to print it out?), and the next exchange I have is from a few days later (the 21^st), and it comprises only some perfunctory business about Mary’s original elopement with Bysshe and Claire Clairmont in 1814.

Two months would pass before our next communication. A pattern was forming.

Sunday Sundries, 27

1.I had a funny (and somewhat embarrassing memory) just recently. Here goes ... Back in the spring of 1999 I was chasing Mary Shelley all over Europe. I left home on April 11 and arrived back at Cleveland Hopkins Airport on May 6. I'd been through England and Wales, Switzerland and Germany (Castle Frankenstein!), and on April 27 I was in Naples, Italy, where the Shelleys had lived for a while at the end of 1819. While they were there, they climbed Mt. Vesuvius. (As they'd arrived in Naples about 6 o'clock in the evening of December 1, Mary wrote in her journal "we see the flame of Vesuvius as we drive along" (242). And on the 16th, up they went. (I'll be writing more about this later in a Frankenstein Sundae installment.)

Well, that meant that I had to climb the mountain, too. I had done some climbing in Alaska a few years earlier (the Chilkoot Pass--see earlier posts on this site for a description of that), so I'd prepared for a hike up the mountain. I'd brought some shorts and hiking books for the task.

That morning--April 27,1999--I headed out early to catch the train to the stop nearby the starting point, and as I was walking along (and, indeed, later as I was sitting on the train), I felt Italian words bouncing off of me. (I knew very little Italian--just enough to find the right train and the restroom and the hotel.) But as I was walking (and sitting), I was realizing that Italian men were talking about me--and not in a, uh, respectful manner.

I figured out quickly what it was (I'm swift, you know?): my shorts. Fingers were pointing; men were laughing; and I realized I'd seen no other Italian men in shorts along the walk--or on the train.

I didn't need a translator, of course--not for this. And for the first time I was profoundly glad I did not know much Italian.

As I said, more about the climb in a subsequent post.


2. This week was Documentary Week with us. We finished (via Netflix) two good ones--one about Johnny Carson, the other about Robert Altman (both of these we streamed). And now we have started two others--one about Philip Roth (DVD) and another a series called Your Inner Fish, a series (streaming) based on a book I recently finished, a book about the similarities in all animals with skeletons.

3. Words-of-the-Week that I've liked recently but haven't gotten around to posting on Facebook (which is my wont):

Dictionary.com

famulous = a servant or attendant, especially of a scholar or a magician

clairaudience = the power to hear sounds said to exist beyond the reach of ordinary experience or capacity, as the voices of the dead

nostomania = an irresistible compulsion to return home; intense homesickness

bovarism = an exaggerated, especially glamorized, estimate of oneself; conceit

panivorous = subsisting on bread; bread-eating

Oxford English Dictionary

oorie = dismal, gloomy; cheerless; miserable as a result of cold, illness, etc

mogigraphia = writer's cramp

adnubliated = darkened by clouds, clouded

pauciloquent = that uses few words in speech or conversation; laconic

knavigation = a statement or story that is characteristic of a knave, esp. in being dishonest or fraudulent