Mentor: A Memoir (24 page)
Authors: Tom Grimes
A mixed review that, nonetheless, provided advertising quotes: “[A]n engrossing novel, written in a supple and elegant prose. . . . Conroy’s depiction of a young boy’s discovery of music, the awakening of his sensibility and the flowering of his genius are brilliant.”
Kirkus Reviews
’ assessment was similar: “From rags to riches—by way of musical genius—in this alluringly atmospheric first novel by Conroy of
Stop-Time
(1967) fame. . . . Claude’s awakening to music is splendidly, rivetingly, described, and the Horatio Alger-esque clichés and coincidences are readily forgiven. . . . [But] once Claude is grown and launched, Conroy fills out his novel with more and more soap-opera turns. . . . Still, especially for the first two-thirds: a masterful coming-of-ager set in a now-vanished New York. 75,000 first printing (not 125,000); film rights to Spring Creek Productions.”
’ assessment was similar: “From rags to riches—by way of musical genius—in this alluringly atmospheric first novel by Conroy of
Stop-Time
(1967) fame. . . . Claude’s awakening to music is splendidly, rivetingly, described, and the Horatio Alger-esque clichés and coincidences are readily forgiven. . . . [But] once Claude is grown and launched, Conroy fills out his novel with more and more soap-opera turns. . . . Still, especially for the first two-thirds: a masterful coming-of-ager set in a now-vanished New York. 75,000 first printing (not 125,000); film rights to Spring Creek Productions.”
Again mixed, but quotable: “[A] masterful coming-of-ager set in a now-vanished New York.”
Not great reviews, but not damaging, although, unintentionally, the reviews exposed every publisher’s exaggeration regarding the size of a book’s first printing—more copies, more faith in the book; the totals differed by fifty thousand copies. In either case, Sam Lawrence anticipated a major success.
Before he left for Nantucket, Frank gave me an advance reader’s copy. On its front cover, the novel’s title and Frank’s name appear in one-inch-high dusky gold letters. An elegant red cleft note separates the words
Body
and
Soul
. A slim line of type reads: A Novel by the Author of
Stop-Time
. On the back, above his bio, Frank is seated on a black bench, one arm resting against a black grand piano. He wears charcoal gray slacks and a black pullover turtleneck sweater, which fuse with the photograph’s grayish-black background. His hair is silvery white, his skin flawless and light gray. He looks neither happy nor dour, but elegant, and eerily handsome. Without glasses, his eyes are impenetrably black. And he stares at me—I know this is impossible—as if he’s certain I will study this photograph many years later. And, he’s right, I do. But while I imagine our perpetual, metaphysical bond, his expression seems to say, “
Your
memoir, Tom, is about
me
. Don’t fuck it up.” Then he laughs. I know he isn’t serious. But here I am having a conversation with a seventeen-year-old photograph taken prior to Frank’s need for insulin injections to control his diabetes and, later, his use of a cane. Yet the photograph perfectly encapsulates my relationship to Frank. For years, he has existed more as a psychological rather than as a physical presence for me. And this memoir, I now see, binds
and
separates us for a simple reason: it’s told in my voice, not his.
Body
and
Soul
. A slim line of type reads: A Novel by the Author of
Stop-Time
. On the back, above his bio, Frank is seated on a black bench, one arm resting against a black grand piano. He wears charcoal gray slacks and a black pullover turtleneck sweater, which fuse with the photograph’s grayish-black background. His hair is silvery white, his skin flawless and light gray. He looks neither happy nor dour, but elegant, and eerily handsome. Without glasses, his eyes are impenetrably black. And he stares at me—I know this is impossible—as if he’s certain I will study this photograph many years later. And, he’s right, I do. But while I imagine our perpetual, metaphysical bond, his expression seems to say, “
Your
memoir, Tom, is about
me
. Don’t fuck it up.” Then he laughs. I know he isn’t serious. But here I am having a conversation with a seventeen-year-old photograph taken prior to Frank’s need for insulin injections to control his diabetes and, later, his use of a cane. Yet the photograph perfectly encapsulates my relationship to Frank. For years, he has existed more as a psychological rather than as a physical presence for me. And this memoir, I now see, binds
and
separates us for a simple reason: it’s told in my voice, not his.
Still, I often embodied Frank’s absence. I worked in his office. I taught in his classroom. I lived in his house. I slept in his bed. I played his piano. And I wrote in his study, although I deliberately avoided sitting on the mattress where he’d written
Body & Soul
. Instead, I used the small desk near the window that overlooked the driveway. As summer blossomed, the speed and clarity of my writing not only returned, it also increased. I produced a page to a page and a half a day, the prose (to me) virtually flawless. At times, it seemed words appeared on the page before I’d even thought of them. However, a muse didn’t enthrall me; neurons zipping from projectors to receptors did. Images flashed across the hemispheres of my brain, and Jody began to ask why I was talking so fast. Every evening, after two tumblers of bourbon, my speech slowed. But every afternoon my thoughts accelerated, racing from swift to scattered, and my actions became impulsive. Once I’d finished reading a galley copy of
Body & Soul
, I knew the novel’s latter half could be improved, and, as someone who idolized Frank, I felt compelled to tell him. He would expect no less of me. So I composed a letter, and quoted passages to support my argument.
Body & Soul
. Instead, I used the small desk near the window that overlooked the driveway. As summer blossomed, the speed and clarity of my writing not only returned, it also increased. I produced a page to a page and a half a day, the prose (to me) virtually flawless. At times, it seemed words appeared on the page before I’d even thought of them. However, a muse didn’t enthrall me; neurons zipping from projectors to receptors did. Images flashed across the hemispheres of my brain, and Jody began to ask why I was talking so fast. Every evening, after two tumblers of bourbon, my speech slowed. But every afternoon my thoughts accelerated, racing from swift to scattered, and my actions became impulsive. Once I’d finished reading a galley copy of
Body & Soul
, I knew the novel’s latter half could be improved, and, as someone who idolized Frank, I felt compelled to tell him. He would expect no less of me. So I composed a letter, and quoted passages to support my argument.
For instance
, I wrote,
take this paragraph with Claude and Catherine and consider its lack of specificity
:
, I wrote,
take this paragraph with Claude and Catherine and consider its lack of specificity
:
Passion was a force to be fed, eagerly and gratefully fed like some hungry angel with them in the room possessed of the power to lift them out of themselves. Out of the body, out of the world to some deep blue otherness where their souls would join, in and with the blue. Sailing along together in the blue, the blue insupportable to a soul alone.
You use the word blue four times, and I count nine prepositional phrases. Also, are the words otherness and insupportable precise? And the adverbs: eagerly, gratefully, hungry. Do you rely on them too much? Think about it.
Convinced I’d done the right thing, I ignored the obvious. Who would shout, “Wait, Tom says don’t print 75 to 125,000 copies?!” Before I dropped the letter into a mailbox, I showed it Jody. As she read it, her expression changed from attentive to astonished. “You can’t send this,” she said.
“Why not? I’m trying to help.”
“This won’t help, believe me.”
We debated the letter’s merits. (It had none.) But for every rational point Jody made, I made an irrational one.
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Like when you try to force me to agree with you until you drive me out of my mind.” Knowing I wouldn’t listen to her, she said, “Go talk to Connie. Ask
her
if she thinks you should send it.”
her
if she thinks you should send it.”
Skimming the letter, Connie said, “Oh God, no. Please, please,
please
don’t mail this.” She may have said, “Are you okay? You seem a little frantic.” I can’t remember. But I believe she did say, “Listen, Frank knows you want only what’s best for him. Okay? And this isn’t what’s best for him right now. He needs you to be happy for him. Okay?”
please
don’t mail this.” She may have said, “Are you okay? You seem a little frantic.” I can’t remember. But I believe she did say, “Listen, Frank knows you want only what’s best for him. Okay? And this isn’t what’s best for him right now. He needs you to be happy for him. Okay?”
She repeated the word
okay
the way a mother assures her child that everything is all right. My energy spent, I nodded. Whether I left the letter with Connie or destroyed it myself, I can’t say. Most likely, once my confidence turned to guilt with the ease of a coin turning from heads to tails, I obliterated the letter, tearing it into postage-stamp-sized pieces and then scattering them, a few scraps at a time, into Iowa City’s downtown sewers.
okay
the way a mother assures her child that everything is all right. My energy spent, I nodded. Whether I left the letter with Connie or destroyed it myself, I can’t say. Most likely, once my confidence turned to guilt with the ease of a coin turning from heads to tails, I obliterated the letter, tearing it into postage-stamp-sized pieces and then scattering them, a few scraps at a time, into Iowa City’s downtown sewers.
One evening, a week later, the phone rang. Sam Lawrence was looking for Frank. As I said, “Hi,” I pictured myself serving him dinner in Key West. His voice sounded gruffer than I remembered.
“He’s on Nantucket,” I said, calm and terrified. “But I know the number.” Once he’d made sure he had written it down correctly I said, “My name’s Tom Grimes. I used to live in Key West. A couple of years ago, you wanted to buy my novel.”
He paused. Then he yelled, “The waiter! You wrote the baseball book. Whatever happened to that thing?”
“It was a disaster.”
“Who published it?”
“Little, Brown.”
“Why the hell did you go with them? Why didn’t you come with me?”
I said, “I made a mistake. I had only fifteen minutes to make up my mind.”
“Who told you that?”
“My agent.”
“Listen,” he said, “the next time someone tells you that you have fifteen minutes to decide what to do with a book you spent two years writing, you tell him to go fuck himself. You hear me?”
“Yes.”
“What are you working on?”
“A novel.”
“Well, you send it to me when it’s done.”
“Okay,” I said. “I will.”
Several days later, I wrote a tactful letter. This one I did mail.
Dear Mr. Lawrence,It was nice speaking with you last week—about Season’s End, about Key West, and other things. And I do appreciate your generous offer to take a look at my new novel when it’s complete at the end of the year. I will have the manuscript sent your way at that time. I hope to have a good book for you, and this time I won’t get, as you say, ‘distracted.’Thanks for the advice, and all the good writing you’ve published over the years. I will be in touch.Sincerely yours,Tom Grimes
On July 16, 1993, he replied:
Dear Tom,Many thanks for your friendly letter of June 22. We look forward to reading your new novel with great pleasure.Best wishes in your work ahead.Cordially as ever,Sam
Frank’s
People
magazine photograph shows him dressed in black and stretched across the closed lid of his Yamaha grand piano, comically reaching for the keyboard as he smiles at the camera. The full-page
New York Times Book Review
’s ad simply reprinted his book-jacket image. But
Time
magazine’s snapshot of Frank, seated, dressed in a striped shirt, one palm pressed against his forehead, captures his irritated expression, as if Frank suspects the tenor of the forthcoming review. And he’s correct. The reviewer’s tone, which is typical for him—he’s an obscure, mediocre novelist who likes to ridicule famous writers—is snide and envious. Titled “Great Expectations, No Satisfaction,” the review begins, “
Body & Soul
isn’t a minor let-down but a major disappointment. No one could help rooting for this 57-year-old first novelist (even if he is the head of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop), whose 1967 memoir
Stop-Time
remains much admired.” But “Conroy’s characters are well-worn stencils, like the sexy, snooty rich girl (Estella meets Daisy Buchanan) and the gluttonous Italian violin virtuoso (Paganini meets Zorba meets the cartoon chef on the pizza box.” Something other than the review, however, must have bothered Frank while the photographer snapped his picture—the heat, perhaps, requests for another pose—because he later said to me, “I was laughing so hard by the time I reached the ‘pizza man’ line I had to stop reading. I mean, the guy’s an idiot!”
People
magazine photograph shows him dressed in black and stretched across the closed lid of his Yamaha grand piano, comically reaching for the keyboard as he smiles at the camera. The full-page
New York Times Book Review
’s ad simply reprinted his book-jacket image. But
Time
magazine’s snapshot of Frank, seated, dressed in a striped shirt, one palm pressed against his forehead, captures his irritated expression, as if Frank suspects the tenor of the forthcoming review. And he’s correct. The reviewer’s tone, which is typical for him—he’s an obscure, mediocre novelist who likes to ridicule famous writers—is snide and envious. Titled “Great Expectations, No Satisfaction,” the review begins, “
Body & Soul
isn’t a minor let-down but a major disappointment. No one could help rooting for this 57-year-old first novelist (even if he is the head of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop), whose 1967 memoir
Stop-Time
remains much admired.” But “Conroy’s characters are well-worn stencils, like the sexy, snooty rich girl (Estella meets Daisy Buchanan) and the gluttonous Italian violin virtuoso (Paganini meets Zorba meets the cartoon chef on the pizza box.” Something other than the review, however, must have bothered Frank while the photographer snapped his picture—the heat, perhaps, requests for another pose—because he later said to me, “I was laughing so hard by the time I reached the ‘pizza man’ line I had to stop reading. I mean, the guy’s an idiot!”
As Frank ’s book tour began, other reviews followed, and the array of conflicting opinions echoed workshop discussions.
Vanity Fair
: “Beautifully written, and hypnotically readable, the best story I know of in a long, long time.”
: “Beautifully written, and hypnotically readable, the best story I know of in a long, long time.”
The
Boston Globe
: “The novel is a gesture back to those great, wonderful, fat books with character and plot. It also heralds the return of a gritty writer who has kept a low profile for 25 years.”
Boston Globe
: “The novel is a gesture back to those great, wonderful, fat books with character and plot. It also heralds the return of a gritty writer who has kept a low profile for 25 years.”
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