Read Butterfly in the Typewriter Online

Authors: Cory MacLauchlin

Butterfly in the Typewriter (24 page)

Chapter 9
A Writer Emerges
A
t Fort Buchanan, Toole fell back into the lull of lazy afternoons. But the “inertia” of his holiday visit to New Orleans would give way to a tide of motivation. New Orleans would have its bard yet. He carried with him the seeds of inspiration; the essence of the Crescent City that he knew deserved expression. In late January, he writes to Fletcher,
Back to the Caribbean again after New Orleans and all that it stands for. My holidays were very pleasant and very relaxing and, physically, New Orleans looked wonderful, as it always does. It is certainly one of the most beautiful cities in the world, although how the people who live there managed to make it so remains a mystery to me.
Toole was well aware that Fletcher lived within meters of countless Italian masterpieces of art. Certainly Florence was far more renowned for its beauty than was New Orleans. But for a New Orleanian, the majesty of Saint Louis Cathedral rivals
Il Duomo
, the intricacy of the ironwork in the French Quarter compares to the gilded Gates of Paradise on the Baptistery of St. John, and the estates of Uptown are the Medici palaces of the American South. For the native son, New Orleans is the center of the world.
Keeping one eye toward his city, Toole restarted the familiar routine in Puerto Rico of managing instructors and preparing for company inspections. In another letter to Fletcher dated February 9, Toole appears relaxed and contemplative:
A fairly cool period here seems to have succumbed to Puerto Rico's traditional warmth. Today has been warm, sunny, completely enervating. I ended the afternoon with several rums with lemon and water and lay beneath my mosquito net to contemplate the universe and my position in it. The results of this contemplation were negligible at best.
Emilie Dietrich Griffin detected such contemplation when she came to Puerto Rico in 1962 and spent a day with him. She deemed that he was “walking insanely along the far edges of experience not so much wanting to take reckless chances but wanting to confront the universe, to pierce through to the meaning of things.” A year later, he returned to this meditation.
And one Sunday afternoon in 1963 he found the meaning for which he had searched for years. Sometime in late February or early March he realized he was in an ideal place for writing. He had a room of his own, substantial periods of free time, and a regular paycheck. Seizing the opportunity at hand, he decided to put his assets to good use and try once again to fulfill his dream of authorship. He lacked only the necessary accouterment of any serious novelist. But his good friend David Kubach was aptly equipped. Toole asked Kubach if he could borrow his typewriter, and Kubach agreed.
Toole placed the small portable typewriter on his desk. He rolled a piece of paper into position. His fingers settled into the shallow cups of the typewriter keys. With the first percussive smack of a keystroke, he broke the contemplative silence of his room. He recalled Humphrey Wildblood, the character he created while in New York, renamed him Ignatius Reilly, and set the beginning of his tale under the clock at the D. H. Holmes department store on Canal Street. And as his fingers started their fluttering dance across the keys, the world of Fort Buchanan and Puerto Rico, just outside his window, faded
away. And from the recesses of memory, that immense catalog of personalities he had gathered over the past two decades opened. There Bobby Byrne preached the gospel of Boethius and psychoanalyzed his own obsession with hot dogs. Irene Reilly screamed and cursed, her voice carrying through the bathroom vents into the house next door, while the gum-smacking Irish Channel gal with large hoop earrings smiled coyly at her beefy Italian boyfriend. Hunter College girls scowled at those conservatives breeding in the vast lands west of Manhattan, while the poor mother on Elysian Fields whacked her son over the head with a plank. And sweaty, colored workers labored in the back of the suit factory, while flamboyant merrymakers exchanged witty flirtations at a party in the French Quarter. The sun was setting on the Mississippi River as the clock at D. H. Holmes neared the hour of five and a middle-aged son waited for his elderly mother with the wine cake she promised him before they headed home in their old Plymouth. From this vast parade, Toole selected, merged, refined, and wove characters together with all the absurdities that form the human condition. And there on the once blank sheet of paper in his private room in Puerto Rico emerged the city he had known all his life, his New Orleans.
It all sounds like a myth of the artist struck by genius one day, but for Toole this was the wave that had been building, and now it had unleashed with consuming urgency. For nearly ten years he had tried to muster his muse, ever since he wrote
The Neon Bible
. Since then, his attempted poems and short stories flopped. But this time everything aligned for him; he had an almost unwavering energy. Instructors in all three companies could hear the clacking of the typewriter at all hours of the day and night when they walked by his private room. Chatter circulated that he was writing a humorous novel about a fat medievalist in New Orleans. He shared bits and pieces to a select few, primarily his friend Kubach, and they praised his work.
Toole was well aware of the change that had come over him. He fancied himself in the midst of literary history when he writes in a letter to his parents, “In my private room with the fan, easy chair, book case and plant, I settle down with a borrowed typewriter . . . and grind out my deathless prose.” Through his writing, he once again found purpose and place in his world; he had direction. On March 23 he writes home,
I am trying to leave this place with something to show for the time I have vegetated here. Lately, I have been doing a great deal of writing, and what I am working on—one of my perennial “novels”—is very good—and that criticism comes from a most reliable source whom I permitted to read one (the first chapter). It is rolling along smoothly and is giving me a maximum of detachment and release from a routine which had long ago become a somewhat stale second nature. I hope that nothing develops which will slow my pace of writing or turn me from the particular goal. The book is amusing and well paced; however, it is unwise to make comments upon a work which is so far from completion—and it is not my duty to judge it.
He relinquishes his critical eye, dedicating his energies to the creative process, hoping his motivation would not wane. Almost two weeks later, Toole writes home again reporting the value of his writing to his own disposition.
I am writing with great regularity. It seems to be the only thing that keeps my mind occupied; I have never found writing to be so relaxing or so tranquilizing, and I still like what I am working on. Quite a bit has been completed already. Some of it, I think is very funny.
The pace at which he wrote pleased and surprised him, although he began to doubt the finished quality of the prose, recognizing the need for revision. And he remained wary that his muse could desert him at any moment, as it had in the past. On April 10 he writes,
Writing feverishly, I have completed three chapters and am deep into the fourth. I only hope that my inspiration and dedication last long enough to preclude abandonment of the project. I want to come out of this experience with something to show for my time. What I
am doing will require a great amount of revision, editing, and rewriting, I imagine, but I should have a basis at least.
For several weeks, occupied with his novel, Toole expressed pleasure with his situation at Fort Buchanan. “All is still going very well . . . ” he writes, “and, surprisingly, for me, I am more or less content.” The end of April brought a potential threat to his progress. Kubach was again transferred to Salinas, taking his typewriter with him. Perhaps in private Toole expressed disappointment about his closest friend moving miles away, but to his parents he voiced his concerns about accessing a typewriter. He writes,
Unfortunately, PFC Kubach is being sent to the Salinas Training Area for the summer this Sunday. Therefore, I will have to find another typewriter on which to work, for it is his which I have been using to type my writing. The writing, incidentally, is now over 100 pages and is still going strong.
His writing was paramount; it was worthy of a substantial investment. In early May he bought a new typewriter, which he would use to finish his novel. He details this purchase to his parents:
This letter is written on the new Underwood-Olivetti typewriter I bought yesterday. It is a rather large portable that retails for something like $135.00. However, I bought it in the PX for only $69.00; the Olivetti name has become world famous, especially for portables, and this seems to be a fine machine. It is something that I have needed for some time, and I do not regret the outlay of carefully saved dollars.
As he continued to write, he fixed his eye on the end of his service. The uncertainty of life after the army, which had loomed in the distance during his trip home in January, now pressed upon him. And his writing project was such that he prepared to dedicate the next step of his life
to its publication. Hunter had offered him an instructor position for the upcoming academic year, but he declined it. He informs his parents that
At the moment, I want to spend some time in New Orleans, at least until I can decide or return to some semblance of civilian behavior . . . I am preoccupied with this writing project at the moment and feel that with some time in New Orleans, I might be able to wrap it up and polish it. Therefore, the plans [sic] to return to the city.
He requests his mother to send him contact information for private schools and colleges in New Orleans, as he planned to teach while finishing the novel. And despite all things going well for him, he ends the letter with a surprisingly spiteful description of an evening spent with the parents of fellow instructor Dave Farr. The disdainful voice of Ignatius shines through in this account. However funny, the humor came at the expense of two people who were welcoming and generous:
I can not attempt to describe these people; it sounds unpleasant I know, to say that they are appalling, but I can say nothing else. They look like two skinny haystacks, burr-like r's rolling from their thin lips. About them there is no hint of social grace, civilization, etc. Hillbillies are bad, but these people were worse. The mother, emaciated to almost skeletal proportions wore a hair net, a house dress, and white Keds with socks, smoking continually and assuming frontiersman poses on chairs and tables. The father is indescribable simply because I doubt whether he exists.... For dinner I was served boiled chicken served in its own broth, a lettuce salad with Kraft French dressing, a slice of pineapple (fresh Puerto Rican variety, the tastiest thing on the menu), and pan bread and butter. That was it; however, as we were finishing our silent meal, a Tastee Freez truck jingled outside and the mother ran down in her keds to buy four sundaes for us. . . . I have never seen
such gray-white, sandy, freckled, powdery skins in my life. These people were almost inhuman and gave me at least a glimpse of what is lurking on the plains of the great central area of our nation.
During dinner, Toole likely maintained his Southern charm and social graces in front of the parents of his friend. Even after their time in the army, Dave Farr kept in contact with Toole, eagerly wishing to keep his friendship. But Toole's comments speak to the razor-sharp cruelty of which he was capable. The letter also illustrates the degree to which he invested himself into his characters and the toll it took on him. Years later, looking back on this time, he explained, “In the unreality of my Puerto Rican experience, this book became more real to me than what was happening around me; I was beginning to talk and act like Ignatius.” At least in letters, this Ignatian voice was reserved for his mother. In letters to friends like Fletcher, his witty remarks are far less sharp and not nearly as mean.
However regretful his comments, his process worked. On May 15 he documents his progression and begins to take stock in his accomplishment, recognizing both its personal and professional value.
The “creative writing” to which I turned about three months ago in an attempt to seek some perspective upon the situation has turned out to have been more than simple psychic therapy. I am now well over one hundred pages and feel that the story shows no signs of bogging or faltering . . . . My most immediate hope is that I will at least be able to complete the first draft before I am released from the Army; at the rate of my current progress, this may be possible. You both know that my greatest desire is to be a writer and since I finally feel that I am doing something that is more than barely readable, I am very concerned about a civilian situation which will make completion and revision of this particular work possible. That is why I am planning on New Orleans for a while at least . . . If this thing can be worked upon, I am almost certain that a publisher would
accept it and so do one or two others to whom I have shown excerpts.
Toole writes with confidence but tempers his arrogance when he handwrites into the typed letter, “I must not set my hopes too high.” Throughout his letters during this period, he claims certainty of the novel's success and then restrains his certitude with expressions of doubt. Toole understood he was investing in a project that would make him vulnerable to rejection. For a person whose natural talents propelled him to extraordinary heights, rejection would strike a devastating blow. The failure of
The Neon Bible
to win the writing contest may have cast a long shadow over his successive attempts to write fiction. Accordingly, he may have taken measures to protect himself against the feelings of failure.
But in Puerto Rico, his inner critic did not stifle his motivation. Day by day, he progressed toward another completed chapter, another step closer to his discharge. It was not until the tenor of Fort Buchanan changed that his motivation lagged. As surprise inspections became more common and the trainees far more disruptive, Toole found it difficult to write. At the end of May, he finished a training cycle that left him exhausted. His one place of refuge was his private room:
Heat, wild trainees, and inspections combine to make conditions more unpleasant than they have ever been here; but I am still in my white room with my fan and bookcase, having survived somehow through it all. Writing comes only with great difficulty these days.

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