John Barth - Where Three Roads Meet

Courteous and discreet like Junie's, not to embarrass its recipient with past history in her present position. But relaxed, good-humored, and friendly: the voice of a flesh-and-blood human being. Nobody who didn't happen to know that item of our résumé could've guessed it from his letter. Which, by the way, he signed Fred over his typewritten Manfred F. Dickson. An inside joke, we learned later.

Anybody reading that letter would've thought at most that we four must have known one another from college days. And inasmuch as "Fred'"s project-in-the-works had to do with that particular time and place — post — World War Two America, the age of the A-bomb, the wearing out of Modernism, et cet — he had reason to believe that an interview or two with the former Grace Mason (and perhaps with her lively sister-graces "Aglaia" and "Thalia" as well, if I would kindly direct him to them) could be of considerable value to his researches. Might we meet, at any time and place of my convenience? Just say the word, he said, and he would quote "drop everything" unquote …

"Another Manny-tease, obviously. But only a tease, Junior, because when Gracie met your dad for lunch not long after, at what passed for a faculty club in those days at ASC — and then when I did some interview sessions with him a while later, and Aggie some time after that — the Manfred F. Dickson that we re-met was not about to drop his pants, for example, for any of us. Not even when Aggie and I, for old times' sake, as much as invited him to."

Which wouldn't've bothered Thelma's open-minded, open-marriage hubby—

"Don't forget open- flied— "

— which her open-armed and open-ended gynecologist hubby wouldn't've minded at all…

"Sammy mind? He'd've applauded! He knew my whole story and loved me for it, bless him."

And Yours Truly, the Porn Pro, sad to say, had nobody to be unfaithful to. Our point being that while the author of The Fates has been called, with some justice, both an erotomane and an egomane — are those the right terms, Teach?

They'll serve, and I have more to say on that subject. After you.

…he never once, in the seven years of our reconnection, made improper advances to any of the three of us; not even when one or two of us suggested same. And those suggesters never included Mrs. Ned Stuffed-Shirt Forester. Tell it, Grace.

Well: What Junior needs to know (likewise Mason-Dixon U. and Arundel U. and the Library of Congress, to all of whom I'll be sending copies of my transcriptions of these tapes for their M. F. Dickson Archives, present or future, in case Junior tosses or edits the originals) is that his dad's egomania, narcissism, whatever bad name it's called by, was in my humble opinion not self -love at all, but a particular kind of self -absorption fairly common among artist types, though not a vocational prerequisite. Even "self-absorption" and "self-centeredness" are only half accurate (as my daughter will testify from her own experience), since what Manny's "self" was absorbed with and centered on — what for better or worse took precedence over his marriage and family and academic responsibilities, not to mention over friends and community and the wider world — wasn't his ego, in any vain sense of that term: It was his work.

"His fucking work."

Another misleading adjective, Thelm, if Bernbridge Manor's resident authority on that activity may put in a word here about that word. Somebody mentioned erotomania a while ago — me, probably, because what's on my mind is either Gracie's or Manny's reminding us, way back then, that since Erato was the Greeks' muse of love poetry, capital-E Erato-mania can mean being hooked on that muse and her medium, not necessarily on sex per se. Am I being too literary for an ex-pornie?

Maybe, but not for an Arundel State cum laude and ex — Severn Day drama coach. It was the idea of women and their bodies that obsessed Manny: all our little nooks and crannies, what could be done with them and said about them, and what they could be made to stand for—

Or to put up with…

— of which our actual PTTs — pussies, tits, and tushies? — were just inspiring reminders.

"Right on. What it used to remind me of, changes changed, was a certain husband of mine's endless fascination with every aspect of female plumbing, wiring, and the rest: a professional fascination, I was going to say, but it wasn't merely professional, by a long shot. Sammy used to say that he became a gynecologist because he'd liked playing doctor with his little-girl classmates in first grade. So he becomes a top-flight gynecologist who can't keep his fly zipped with any willing, uninfected chick who's not one of his patients. Who's to say what's cause and what's effect?"

While Manny, on the contrary, did keep his fly zipped the whole time we were working together on The Fates. He wasn't interested in committing adultery, either of the Passionate Extramarital Love Affair kind or Doc Sam's General Screw- ing Around. It was the concept of Sexual Infidelity, like the concept of Love, that turned his imagination on. Don't think of him as whacking off with his left hand while scribbling sentences with his right, Junior, or as fantasizing about his fictional heroines while humping your mom—

Which is not to say he mightn't have done both, at least now and then…

"But Gracie's right, as usual: The point is that literal sex was never his point. "

Never his whole point, and seldom his main point. Manny just couldn't get over the ingenuity of Evolution, coming up after millions of years not only with sperm and eggs and cocks and cunts, but with peacock tails and seventeen-year-cicada mating swarms, along with love poems, wedding ceremonies, G-strings, and string bikinis—

Named after a certain South Pacific atoll, our younger listeners may need reminding, where the US of A tested nuclear weapons from 1946 right up to the year when Manny published Clotho. You could say that The Fates are a kind of literary fallout from that radioactive period.

"Or that sister Aggie could've been a fine English teach like her twin."

Our point being that there's a shitload more than S-E-X in that trilogy of his.

Amen to that. The great ones in any medium get to the bottom of things through some unlikely doors indeed: Monet's haystacks, Joyce's Bloomsday, Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon—

"And M. F. Dickson's Gracious Masons, who lent him their et ceteras."

Meaning truly our ears, Listener, this time around. Especially Gracie's — who'll now maybe homestretch this oral history?

"A-u-r-a-l history? Sorry there, guys…"

Here we go: It's been said already that Manny and I worked closely together from '55 through '62/'63, first while he was part-timing at ASC and then while he was happily doing the same back at his alma mater, on the strength of Clotho's acceptance for publication in '57 but before it became a succès de scandale. I want to get it on record that he did all the composing — in his nearly illegible ballpoint-penmanship on stacks of white legal pads, which I then deciphered as best I could and typed up for him to revise and rewrite: draft after draft, year after year—

With a fair amount of editing by his frustrated-writer typist, over and above her quote-unquote deciphering of his hieroglyphics—

"Not to mention the raw material, excuse the expression, that the three of us filled his eager ears with. We all did our bit."