If you think this sounds fascinating, my case is already lost. Indeed, the young writer's fellow students worshiped this story and the young genius who wrote it; they regarded my all-too-apparent indifference to the fork story as an insult not only to the author but to all of them. Ah, to almost all of them, for I was saved by a most unlikely and usually most silent member of the class. He was an Indian from Kerala, a devout Christian, and his accent and word order caused him to be treated dismissively -- as someone who was struggling with English as a second language, although this was not the case. English was his first language, and he spoke and wrote it very well; the unfamiliarity of his accent and the cadence, even of his written sentences, made the other students regard him lightly.
Into the sea of approval that the fork story was receiving, and while my "but..." was repeatedly drowned out by the boisterous air of celebration in the class, the Indian Christian from Kerala said, "Excuse me, but perhaps I would have been moved if I were a fork. Unfortunately, I am merely a human being."
That day, and perhaps forever after, he should have been the teacher and I should have given my complete attention to him. He is not a writer these days, except on the faithful Christmas cards he sends from India, where he is a doctor. Under the usual holiday greetings, and the annual photograph of his increasing family, he writes in a firm, readable hand: "Still merely a human being."
On my Christmas cards to him, I write: "Not yet a fork."
(I used to say this to my students in Creative Writing: the wonderful and terrifying thing about the first page of paper that awaits the first sentence of your next book is that this clean piece of paper is completely unimpressed by your reputation, or lack thereof; that blank page has not read your previous work -- it is neither comparing you to its favorite among your earlier novels nor is it sneering in memory of your past failures. That is the absolutely exhilarating and totally frightening thing about beginning-- I mean each and every new beginning. That is when even the most experienced teacher becomes a student again and again.)
And what about the fork author -- where is he today? In Boston, I believe; more pertinent, he's a published novelist -- and a good one. I much admired his first novel, and was overall relieved to see that the characters in it were human beings -- no cutlery among them.
Alas, these generally pleasant memories should not conceal the fact that I must have played the Nelson Algren role to more than one of my writing students. I'm certain that I've hurt the feelings of young writers who were more serious and gifted than I judged them to be. But just as Mr. Algren didn't harm me by his blunt and (I think) unfair assessment, I doubt that I have harmed any real writers; real writers, after all, had better get used to bei
ng misunderstood.
When it happens to me, I just remind myself of what Ted Seabrooke told me: "That you're not very talented needn't be the end of it."
The Imaginary Girlfriend (1995)
AUTHOR'S NOTES
A few pages of this memoir were written as a letter to John Baker, Editorial Director at Publishers Weekly; John published parts of my letter to him in an article he wrote for PW (June 5, 1995). Portions of my remembrance of Don Hendrie were published in the form of an obituary for Hendrie that I wrote for The Exeter Bulletin (Fall 1995). And an excerpt from "The Imaginary Girlfriend" appeared in a fall '95 issue of The New Yorker
I am grateful to Deborah Garrison at The New Yorker and to my wife, Janet, for their editorial response to an earlier draft of this autobiography, which was called "Mentors" and (believe it or not) contained fewer than 10 pages about wrestling. Deb and Janet ganged up on me; they said, in effect, "Are you kidding? Where's the wrestling?"
The reason this memoir was written at all is because I had shoulder surgery a week before Christmas, 1994. I was completely unprepared for how many hours a day, and for how many months, I would be rehabilitating my shoulder; I had anticipated an easier recovery. I knew there would be a little bone sawing in the area of the acromion-clavical joint, and I knew I had a torn rotator-cuff tendon; I didn }t know that the tendon was detached from the humerus -- nor did the surgeon, until he got in there.
With four hours of physical therapy a day, for four months, I didn't feel the time was right for me to begin a new novel, which I'd planned to begin after Christmas; I had about 200 pages of notes for the novel, and a halfway-decent first sentence, but the shoulder rehabilitation was too distracting.
One day in January of '95 I was making a nuisance of myself in my wife's office; I was aimlessly bothering Janet and her assistant -- poking my nose into the pile of manuscripts that are always waiting to be read in the office of a literary agent. The stitches had only recently been removed from my shoulder and I had just begun the requisite physical therapy; I was still wearing a sling, and I was bored.
Janet doesn't like it when I hang around her office. "Why don't you get out of here?" she said. "Go write a novel."
Summoning my most self-pitying voice, I said, "I can't write a novel with one arm and four hours a day of rehabilitation."
"Then go write a memoir, or something," Janet said. "Just get out of here."
My goal was to write an autobiography of 100 pages in four months. It took five months, and the finished manuscript was 101 pages -- not counting the photographs.
And so the winter of '95 was one of recovery (April counts as a winter month in Vermont). I would see the physical therapist first thing in the morning; she would "manipulate" my shoulder and prescribe the stretching exercises and the weight lifting that she wanted me to do in the afternoon. I would write my memoir in the middle of the day; in the late afternoon or early evening I would go to my wrestling room and follow the orders of the physical therapist.
To explain "my" wrestling room -- it is about 25 feet from my office in the Vermont house. (Between the office and the wrestling room is a small locker room: a toilet, three sinks, two showers, a sauna.) My wrestling mat is equivalent to the in-bounds area of a regulation mat. About a dozen jump ropes, of varying lengths, hang from pegs at one end of the room; at the other end is an area for weight lifting -- a couple of weight benches and two racks of free weights. There's also a stationary bike and a treadmill, and lots of shelves for knee pads, elbow pads, head gear, spools of tape -- and about a dozen pairs of wrestling shoes, in a somewhat limited range of sizes. (Brendan's feet are only a little bigger than mine; Colin's are only a little bigger than Brendan's.)
There are over 300 photographs on the walls; there aren't many of me, and even fewer of Everett -- and not a lot of room remaining for the photos of Everett, which I presume will come. Most of the pictures are of Colin and Brendan, together with the bracket sheets from the tournaments they won. There are twelve medals, five trophies, and one plaque; only the plaque is mine. I never won any medals or trophies, because I never won a wrestling tournament.
I didn't really "win" the plaque. In 1992,1 was selected as one of the first 10 members in the Hall of Outstanding Americans by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. These "Outstanding Americans" were not necessarily outstanding wrestlers, although a few of them were; we were all chosen for being outstanding at something else, and for having also (in our fashion) wrestled.
I am honored to be a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, although I'm embarrassed to have gained entry through the back door -- meaning for my other accomplishments, not my wrestling or my coaching. I feel privileged to have been in the same wrestling room with some of the wrestling and coaching members of the Hall of Fame -- George Martin, Dave McCuskey, Rex Peery, Dan Gable.
You may be surprised to learn of a couple of other "Outstanding Americans" whom the National Wrestling Hall of Fame has honored: Kirk Douglas and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. I'm surprised that, as of this writing, my fellow novelist Ken Kesey hasn't been selected as a member; Mr. Kesey's wrestling credentials are a whole lot better than mine. He is still ranked as one of the top 10 wrestlers (most career wins) at the University of Oregon, where he graduated in '57. And in '82, at the age of 47, Kesey won the AAU Masters Championships at 198 pounds.
I suspect that after the Senate confirms General Charles C. ("Brute") Krulak's promotion to four-star rank, and General Krulak is officially serving on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the new Commandant of the Marines will also become a member in the Hall of Outstanding Americans at Stillwater. Described by The New York Times as "a diminutive dynamo of a man" -- he was a 121-pounder at Exeter and a 123-pounder at Navy -- Chuck was a platoon leader and company commander during two tours of duty in the Vietnam War, and later served as commander of the counterguerrilla-warfare school in Okinawa. Thereafter, General Krulak was commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Virginia, and -- just prior to President Clinton's nominating him as the next Commandant of the Marines -- Krulak commanded 82,000 marines and
600 combat aircraft in the Pacific. (In the event of war in Korea or the Persian Gulf, General Krulak would have commanded all the marines there.) But as a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, which I assume he will be, Chuck Krulak will probably feel as I do: namely, that the honor is undeserved.
Thus my plaque from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame occupies the far corner of a shelf in my wrestling room, where it stands a little sheepishly, looking unearned beside the hardware and the ribbons that Colin and Brendan won outright. I go to such lengths to describe the territory of my wrestling room and its proximity to my office because I want you to understand that the distance between my writing and my wrestling is never great; indeed, in the winter I was writing "The Imaginary Girlfriend," the distance was only 25 feet.
For four months, I didn't venture farther than that 25-foot path -- with two exceptions. The first was a trip to Aspen in the middle of March. I spent less than a week with Colin and Brendan in Colorado. I couldn't ski; I went to the gym and repeated the rehabilitation exercises that my physical therapist in Vermont had given me, and I paddled around in the heated pool and the hot tub with Everett. I had some very pleasant dinners with the Salters, Kay and Jim, and then it was back to Vermont to finish the "Girlfriend" -- only I couldn't finish it; not before leaving for France in April, for the French translation of A Son of the Circus.