Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

With Mom pretty much bedridden, Bud had to chuck the fantasies of her falling, instead imagining death from bedsore infection or pulmonary embolism due to inactivity.

. .

Bud was feeling vulnerable and a little sorry for himself when the envelope from CAA arrived by messenger, to cheer him — the Ooh Baby contract. He scanned the pages. Ooh Baby and even CAA took it for granted Bud was an artist: beside each place that required his signature was written Bud Wiggins (“artist”) , which gave him a pang of pride as well as one of doubt that he’d ever be worthy of the appellation. What would it take to fulfill that promise?

Lydia Davis, the author Michael and Wendy Tolkin threw a dinner party for, was at Barnes & Noble signing a new trade paperback edition of her acclaimed translation of Madame Bovary . She was in the middle of a 27-city tour and Bud thought he’d stop by; it was either that or the Central Library where David Ulin had undertaken interviewing the undertaker Joan Didion. Whereas authors like James Salter and Barry Hannah had been certified by academia as “writer’s writers” (i.e. doomed to nyrb classic status), Davis was considered to be that rara avis, a writer’s writer’s writer. Apart from translating Flaubert, Blanchot and Proust, she had tried her hand at the art of the novel and short story, efforts, critics duly noted, for which the world was a better, more perfect place.

A lot of her followers were comfortable in asserting that her Madame Bovary translation was best approached as a novel by Lydia Davis , not Flaubert. In her own fiction, her stories were “famously short.” In one essay Bud read, a reviewer excerpted in its entirety what he called “one of her more famous stories, ‘Collaboration With Fly’”:

I put that word on the page, but he added the apostrophe.

The MacArthur Foundation gave her the genius grant.

Her famously short stories… one of her more famous stories… famous to whom? Bud ruminated that all things must be famous in their own way to someone or other, a notion which had the comforting effect of making his dream of achieving fame as a novelist closer to becoming a reality than he thought. Based on Davis’s example, Bud took heart that it might be feasible to release a book of exceedingly short stories of his own culled from the work-in-progress that was currently giving him such a headache. He’d call it Some Extremely Short Stories — A Pop-Up Book, by Bud Wiggins , and sell it out of a pop-up bookshop on Melrose funded by his inheritance. Maybe Barnes & Noble would carry it too, one of those little “humor” items on sale next to the cash register. A Book of Short Torys, by Bud Wiggins (with illustrations by the author). He’d take a little trip to the UK for research on Dolly’s dime.*

During the Q&A, a witty Davis groupie stood up and said, “Do you think it’s possible Flaubert’s book is actually a French translation of a novel by Lydia Davis called Madame Bovary ?”

Hilarity ensued.

. .

He took long walks in the evenings now. He began at dusk, looping down Gregory to Rexford, then over to Charleville, back up to Reeves.

The turnaround point was Horace Mann, his old elementary school.

As he passed the various houses where he spent much of his childhood, he thought of all the sons and daughters who had lived in them, the progeny of the famous, crushed beneath their legacies. A good friend from those days was Eric Douglas. A sad case — the obits said handsome Eric was 300 lbs when the police found him, dead of an overdose in his hotel room. He was Kirk’s firstborn… Kirk had a new book out, a memoir. He’d written a bunch of other memoirs, novels as well. Bud thought he should probably have a look. You never know, maybe there’s something to be learned. Michael Douglas told Brando Brainard that the stroke finally gave his father peace. Bud thought, I wouldn’t mind a stroke, though it’d probably be better to publish first. Brando said Kirk had a second bar mitzvah when he was 83, something having to do with the biblical lifespan of 70. Thus far, the strokeless Bud had only been bar mitzvah’d once. He felt like a sluggard.

Someone forgot to lock one of the playground gates. Bud sat in the well-worn leather strop of a swing and propelled himself, letting his thoughts wander. Things were looking up. True, he’d been staying with his mother in the same room where he lived as a boy, but his days there were numbered. He was Bud Wiggins (“artist”), a working writer again. His novel would either come together or not, and Bud had surrendered to both outcomes. He was having a little trouble with the Antigone script though wasn’t too worried; Michael said they could get together again soon to shoot the shit. Also, the pressure was off because Biggie, bless his soul, was preparing to have surgery to remove the tumor that’d been affecting his memory. Brando was completely caught up in that. No one would be breathing down Bud’s neck. It gave him more time to work on the script and his novel.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a swing. 50 years? He was never a daredevil like the other kids. In fact, swings scared him. No doubt those fears could be traced back to the days when his father installed a set in the backyard of their first house. Morris, a sadistic drunk, gave his son powerful push-offs and refused to stop, even when Bud screamed and cried and the swings shook, partially breaking free of their foundation — — — — — — — — — — — — — of an instant, he was on the asphalt. What? Confused. What happened… how silly! — the swing had broken. Well of course it did, it was old, and made for 100 lb kids. Bud fell hard on his ass and it hurt like hell. What a fool. Dad was probably laughing his ass off, or at least the rotting coccyx it was once attached to.

. .

Bud was invited to a Sunday brunch at Michael and Wendy’s.

The house in Hancock Park was beautifully done. He was a bit rusty on the social side so when Michael’s wife playfully chided him for being a wallflower, Bud forced himself to mix. He wound up talking to the writer Scott Berg and his partner Kevin. Bud hadn’t read any of Berg’s work but knew he’d gotten the Pulitzer for a bio having something to do with Scott Fitzgerald. He also knew that his brother Jeff was the bookish head of ICM.

Michael came over and asked Berg if he enjoyed teaching at Princeton. The conversation led to the great Dante scholar Robert Hollander, a professor emeritus there. Though in pain from his fall and higher on oxycodone than usual, Bud wanted to join in. He had more than a passing knowledge of the Italian poet. In the last few years, he’d pushed himself through a pastiche of different Infernos— Pinsky, Mandelbaum, Longfellow — and read most of the SparkNotes to Purgatorio and Paradiso .

The conversation was heady and he held his own.

“I’ve read the Hollander translation,” Bud lied. Though it probably was true he at least owned the volume. Whenever a new translation of La Commedia appeared, he OCD- one-clicked . “It’s always been a dream of mine to give a Dante lecture.”

Bud made it clear he was being wry, but not entirely. Why not? Why couldn’t he one day lecture on Dante? And why shouldn’t they take such an aspiration seriously? Michael was an esteemed novelist, Berg, an honored author of nonfiction. While not as celebrated, Bud was a working writer — a journeyman peer.

Berg twitched. It was only the discreet, gently admonitory touch of his partner that softened his scowl.