Remembering Barber Bancroft

Obama was elected yesterday marking a new dawn for America. And that is a good thing. It not only raises the hopes of all American children, but the entire world.

Sadly, though, today is the fourth anniversary of the death of my good friend, Barber Bancroft. That morning, November 5th, 2004, he went to teach his eight o'clock English class at Auburn University. In ten minutes, while writing on the blackboard he said, "Oh, my God..." and his students thought he was beginning to recite a poem. Then he slumped on the floor, dead of a massive heart attack at 48.

He had written five novels but had not published any of them. I urged him to concentrate more on the business side of things and he urged me to concentrate more on my writing. We had come from two different worlds but I knew we would always be friends.

Here's what I wrote at the time:

"I met Barber over drinks at Monaghan's Erin Irish Rose pub in the French Quarter (see pic above - that's him smiling across the bar). He was a native Southerner teaching English at Auburn University and would come to New Orleans to get away and work on his novels. We had two things in common: drinking and writing, and we wiled away the hours talking, laughing, arguing and sipping.

The first time I met him he loaned me a book of short stories by Carson McCullers. I read it that night and met him the following day to return it, but he insisted I keep it. We talked about her incredible prose. We argued over Faulkner, Hemingway and the rest. He gave me lists of books to read and movies to see. Then he offered to read and critique a manuscript of mine, telling me it was "very kind" of me to allow him to do so.

Of course, I thought the reverse.

We swapped manuscripts a couple of times over the next two years. Although I'd never had a writing class, he was never condescending. If you wanted to learn, he would teach. And he was just as eager to learn from you. When we weren't discussing serious things, we were laughing most of the time. He was the one who came up with the name for my debut novel, "Jackson Squared."

One of the last things he told me was to read (Russian author) Dostoyevsky. A few weeks later, on another fateful Saturday, his wife called to say he'd collapsed and died doing what he loved most: teaching a class. My heart sunk into my belly and began to ache, as I gazed out over the carefree tourists from my French Quarter balcony.

I am grateful that he came into my life, and I will press on, missing him every day - and the world will too."

Here's what Stacy Jones, one of his students from a writing retreat wrote (on Southern-Drawl.com):

On a Sunday afternoon in June 2004, I arrive at the Hambidge Center, a retreat for artists and writers in the mountains of North Georgia. A small group of people—fiction writers, nonfiction writers, and poets alike—are gathered at this place to meet other like-minded individuals and to hone their respective crafts in workshops during the week.

After I take a seat near the back for the opening remarks, I notice only a handful of men present. Two of them stand out. Both look to be in their late 30s or early 40s; one black and the other white. The black man sports dreadlocks and the white man has pulled his dark hair into a ponytail that hangs down his back...

The man with the dark ponytail is Barber Bancroft. He teaches English at Auburn University and is a novelist. I come to know him because he is my fiction teacher. He ends up in a classroom with five females: me and two other twenty-somethings, a woman in her 50s, and another woman in her 70s....

After we return to the Hambidge Center, Barber invites the three of us to his studio. We sit talking about writing and life well into the night, listening to Barber's blues CDs...

After I have been accepted into the MFA program in fiction writing at The University of Memphis, I e-mail Barber to let him know, considering how he was so encouraging to me, and I tell him he is one of the best fiction teachers I have ever had.

He writes back to thank and congratulate me. Then he signs off by offering what may well be the most simple but important writing advice I have ever received: "Don't stop thinking about it. Keep filling up the pages."

...I wondered, too, if Barber would be teaching any workshops this summer, so I looked online to find his contact information at Auburn. The first thing I located, however, was an article in the "Auburn Plainsman," the campus newspaper, the headline of which read, "English Teacher Dies at 48."

Accordingly, on the morning of last November 5, Barber had just started teaching his 8 a.m. world literature class. At 8:10, he collapsed, and although his students tried to save him by doing CPR, he was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

I then found his obituary, which began, "William Barber Bancroft, of Auburn, born Aug. 9, 1956, died Nov. 5, 2004. The Lord took him home to be with Him while teaching his World Literature class at Auburn University."

There was no explanation for his death. He evidently went into cardiac arrest and died. When I last saw him, he looked healthy. It was scary to think that anyone, absolutely anyone, could share a similar fate. I'm sure the day seemed to Barber like any other; he didn't know he was going to die when he went to teach that morning.

And in that moment everything felt full circle: here, again, more than ever, surged the lesson of not waiting until it is too late.

A Day with F. Scott Fitzgerald and "Gatsby"

Yesterday I walked to a small Mexican cafe and had "huevos Mexicana" with beans and potatoes, sitting next to two Mexican police. I had a book with me so I figured they'd think me harmless.

Then I walked to the local coffee shop and and read a couple of chapters of "The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald (he was named after his famous relative, Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner," but he was called only "Scott"). Turning each page I was just awed by his lyrical prose. It's so deft and smart and pleasant to read that "lyrical prose" doesn't do it justice. And Fitzgerald wrote this in his twenties! He died at 44 and I just kept thinking how far behind I am, how I will never catch up, and how, maybe, I should just forget about writing at all.

Walking home I thought that if I work at it hard, things will be different in 10 years.

Most people don't know that Fitzgerald lived in New Orleans for a while. In 1920, he took a room at a cheap boarding house on Prytania Street, in the historic and grandiose Garden District. With $600 from winning the O. Henry Prize (by the way, short story writer O. Henry fled to New Orleans to avoid embezzlement charges from a bank in Texas) he bought his future wife Zelda a platinum and diamond watch and went to Montgomery to propose. But she wouldn't marry him until, "This Side of Paradise" was published the following spring.

Fitzgerald and Hemingway were ex-pat friends in Paris, and Hem had great respect for Scott's writing. But they argued, as writers do. I heard a story that after Fitzgerald wrote a long written critique of a new Hemingway novel, Hem scrawled, "Kiss my ass," after it. But I'll bet he re-read the critique and took it to heart and improved his writing.

Later Hem wrote elegantly about how natural and effortless Fitzgerald's talent was. He wrote this in the preface to, "A Moveable Feast" one of my all-time favorite books:

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

Fitzgerald was destroyed by drink and his crazy wife Zelda, who was in and out of mental institutions, and who encouraged him to drink and write short stories for fast money, rather than to focus on novels (a source of contention between Hem and Scott). Zelda was a Southern Belle, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge, but a real firecracker who later was recognized as a leader for women's rights. Scott called her the"golden girl," and "the original flapper."

Scott and Zelda were always drinking and fighting. Tennessee Williams wrote the play, "Clothes for a Summer Hotel," about Scott and Zelda's tumultuous relationship. It takes place when Scott takes a visit to see Zelda at a mental institution in North Carolina, where she later burned to death after Fitzgerald's untimely death of a heart attack. It was Tennessee's last play to debut on Broadway but was a critical and financial failure (although it sounds interesting, doesn't it?)


Back to my day: After a stop at the grocery, and few glances from Mexican housewives, I walked home and took a short nap.

My neighbor, a defrocked lawyer (who is just another one of the miscreants who have landed in Tijuana), stopped by and brought a quart of beer so we split it. We talked about how he's been working hard on his Spanish and meeting a lot of girls and that I should learn more, and he taught me a new word. Then we talked about how crazy it is that they caught the leader of the big drug cartel, and that 150 people had been killed in TJ in the last 2 months. But that it doesn't affect us here at the beach. In fact, it doesn't affect anyone unless they are in the drug or police business, except that fewer people go out to nice restaurants after a recent slaughter (of drug runners) at one.

He headed back to cook dinner for his roommate, and I went over to the local seafood restaurant to watch the sun set over the ocean and return to "Gatsby." I read while I drank a few more Tecate beers and ate three shrimp tacos. I didn't bother with telling them that I prefer them not to be fried, since I was pretty hungry. I read as much as I could, between glimpses of the salmon-pink sunset and shimmering waves, and then I just closed the book and thought.

After a short stop at home I walked up to a little smoky dive bar, had a couple more beers with limes, ate some peanuts and looked over at the two incredibly cute and young senoritas.

"I really gotta learn Spanish," I thought.

Leaving Las Vegas--and Hunter S. Thompson

Last week I was in Vegas. I could've been anywhere, since I didn't do much of the Vegas scene, except for the free drinks at Happy Hour and the one-armed bandit at the airport. But whenever I'm in Vegas I think of Hunter Thompson, you know, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

My take: Hunter wrote a few wild, all-out "gonzo" books early on, then he named everything, "Fear and Loathing xxx" after that. Sort of took the originality out of it. But he does get credit for pioneering the term and style, Gonzo journalism.

When things were good in New Orleans, before Katrina around the end of 2004, Hunter was there and went for drinks with his "literary executor" Doug Brinkley, at Lucky's Bar on St. Charles Avenue. Lucky's is a 24-hour dive with a pool table, fried food, and a new bartender every other week. I've spent many a night there, but usually I was at Igor's or Avenue Pub up the street. Lucky's is certainly a misnomer, since it's usually half-full of losers (other than that night I spent with a talented Cajun gal who lived upstairs).

Brinkley was a New Orleans writer, known as a very serious sort, even if he did migrate to Houston by way of Rice University. I've met Doug a few times at New Orleans literary events, before he made a million bucks on his Katrina book. I even sent him an advance copy of my manuscript (for a blurb) not knowing he was penning his own story. He was teaching at U. of New Orleans, evacuated to Houston and then taught at Tulane for a year or so. He's a very busy guy, and he cranks out books and spits out facts like a machine.

This comes from Wikipedia:

During the early 1990s, Brinkley taught American Arts and Politics out of Hofstra University aboard the Majic Bus, a roving, transcontinental classroom, from which emerged the book, The Majic Bus: an American Odyssey, published in 1993. In 1993, he left Hofstra University to teach at the University of New Orleans and taught this class again, using a natural-gas bus. He also worked with Stephen Ambrose, then Director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans. Ambrose chose Brinkley to become Director of the Eisenhower Center for five years before going to Tulane.

Brinkley is the literary executor for his friend, the journalist Hunter S. Thompson. He is also the editor of a three-volume collection of Thompson's letters:

• Volume 1: The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967. Published April 7, 1998.
• Volume 2: Fear And Loathing In America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist. Published December 13, 2000.
• Volume 3: The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop, 1977-2005. Schedule delayed until February, 2009.

As well, Brinkley is the authorized biographer for Beat generation author Jack Kerouac, having edited Kerouac's diaries as Windblown World. He has also written profiles of Kurt Vonnegut^[9], Norman Mailer, and Ken Kesey for Rolling Stone Magazine.

Anyway, Brinkley invited Andrei Codrescu to come along to Lucky's, and as Andrei tells it, Hunter Thompson's utterances that night were barely understandable, then a couple of months later he blew his own brains out declaring that he'd lived "17 years past 50" and that was long enough. He never wanted to be that old. I'm just hoping to make it there (next year).

As a Tijuana ex-pat who runs a cancer clinic (one of many) tells it, they propped up Hunter for one last party before his cremation. I doubt that, since he was in pieces by then, but then again, this guy cures cancer. Oh, late note--the clinic closed last week since the founder has dementia.

But Brinkley tells the story of Thompson's funeral elegantly in an article for Rolling Stone, which is a great tribute:

Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of "the rat race" is not yet final.
-- HUNTER S. THOMPSON, 1937-2005

February was always the cruelest month for Hunter S. Thompson. An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year. February, by contrast, was doldrums time. Nothing but monstrous blizzards, bad colds and the lackluster Denver Nuggets. This past February, with his health failing, Hunter was even more glum than usual. "This child's getting old," he muttered with stark regularity, an old-timey refrain that mountainmen used to utter when their trailblazing days were over. Depressed and in physical pain from hip-replacement surgery, he started talking openly about suicide, polishing his .45-caliber pistol, his weapon of choice. He was trying to muster the courage to end it all.

Then, on February 16th, Hunter decided to leave a goodbye note. Scrawled in black marker, it was appropriately titled "Football Season Is Over." Although he left the grim missive for Anita, his young wife, Hunter was really talking to himself. Here, published for the first time, are perhaps his final written words:

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt.

At the bottom of the page, Hunter drew a happy heart, the kind found on Valentine's cards. Four days later, on February 20th, he committed suicide by firing his pistol into his mouth.

You can read the rest of it here:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7605448/football_season_is_over

New York, New York

I arrived in New York a few days ago. In the van on the way to the hotel, an Austrian lady was talking about how she got stuck in Havana since her credit cards were from US banks. She said they ate breakfast rolls and drank wine, "We were starving!" and barely made it out of the Hotel Nacional, with just enough cash to pay the hotel incidentals and get to the airport. I told her I'd stayed at the same hotel and had that problem last March--for two days I ended up eating boiled eggs that I stuffed into my coat pocket from the breakfast buffet until things got resolved and I scurried off to the airport. Funny, staying at the historic Hotel Nacional and starving!

Last night I went to see Arthur Miller's, "All My Sons" on Broadway. John Lithgow was incredible, and Katie Holmes was pretty good.

I grabbed a $10 vodka on the rocks, downed it, and took my seat. The play started out OK, but soon got real intense, with line after line of great dialog. By the end of the first act I was completely drawn in and wiping some tears while my body overheated.

It got better and better and I began to get a little depressed. I thought, "How can I ever write that well?" Usually, when I read a book by a notable writer I think, "I could probably do that. " Maybe I'd even make some changes to make it better. What a pompous ass I am. But this script totally overwhelmed me. I was sitting in an aisle seat, about 20 rows back, next to two youngish women. I noticed the attractive girl next to me adjusting her position when I would sit up or cross the other leg. I would wipe my brow, trying to hide that I was wiping away tears, and she would wipe her brow too. So I felt there was some nonverbal communication there. It was almost like a date, but I couldn't bring myself to speak to her. I was mostly focused on the play.

I left during the ovation to hide my flowing eyes. What a script, what a performance.

At the bar upstairs at Sardi's, I ordered an Absolute martini, wet, and scanned the brimming crowd. Soon, a seat opened in the middle of the bar--so I grabbed it. I overheard some man say he was from New Orleans and that started a conversation, and his wife joined in. Then, it turned out the girl next to him was from New Orleans too! So there were four New Orleanians there on that particular night at that particular time. We talked and laughed and drank away.

A tall, 50-something blonde woman breezed in and ordered a martini. She has a restaurant in L.A. and also a place in NYC. We had a nice chat, but couldn't help but notice the fuzz growing on her neck. The light hit it just right.

I excused myself around midnight since I had to be in Jersey in the morning for business.

Drinking with Codrescu

In New Orleans when I decided to get serious about writing I started hanging out at the Goldmine Saloon in the French Quarter. Every Thursday night Dave Brinks hosts the "17 Poets" poetry readings. Sometimes it's spoken word, sometimes it's performance art and sometimes a musician will accompany a reading, which can make for a dreamy experience. You should go, it's great, and there's a surprising amount of talent.

That's where I met Andrei Codrescu, the Romanian-transplant poet who comments on NPR in his inimitable tone. He also teaches at LSU. His readings are riveting, and when he's in the audience he's about the most enthusiastic supporter of the artists, especially if it's one of his students.

Over the next 3 or 4 years I'd run into Andrei in the Quarter, we'd chat a bit, maybe have a coffee or a drink or two if we were at Molly's (probably his favorite bar). I used to get some cache by introducing literary wannabe women to him. He'd humor them and they'd fawn and giggle.

When I was in San Miguel de Allende a few weeks ago at the Tom Robbins workshop I ended up relaying messages between Andrei and Robbins in between workshop sessions. "We used to run around together a little," Robbins said. "His essays on NPR are great. I love listening to them. Does he still drink J&B?"

Robbins eyesight is going -- he can only stand to read or write for about 20 minutes at a time now -- so Andrei is sending Tom a DVD of his latest work.

Andrei's real funny in person, and, of course, real smart and witty, and his dry humor cuts through the syrupy New Orleans air like a cleaver.

And he's a lot of fun to drink with.

Mr. Henry, James Dean & Tennessee Williams

A few years back in New Orleans, probably five now, I was at Harry's bar in the French Quarter working on my book (novel) manuscript. It was pouring down rain outside, and I was sitting at a table by an open window for inspiration. A man came over and started reading it and then offering his suggestions on edits. He turned out to be a PhD who oversaw many doctoral projects at Tulane. He invited me to come to his house for a little party--he was just stopping in to grab a couple of six-packs.

We stopped at Verti Mart on Royal for some vodka and went to his place on the lower end of Royal Street. There were a few old men there. We started drinking vodka on the rocks and they were telling stories. One old man was terribly drunk and he was going on and on about "Tennessee." I faded into drunkenness as he droned on. Was he talking about Tennessee Williams?

The next day I tried to re-hash the conversation. If he was really talking about Tennessee Williams, then I needed to hear his stories with a clearer head!

So I went back to the place that afternoon and the old men were at it again. This time I listened to Mr. Henry carefully. It seems he was a Barrymore on his mother's side and he'd done a fair bit of acting and directing in his day. His wife was Miss Lily, who used to play the piano and sing requests nightly at LaFitte's Blacksmith Shop on Bourbon Street. And Tennessee just adored Miss Lily.

Henry went to New York when he was 18 and did some off-Broadway shows. He said he and James Dean used to meet at Jim Downey's and drink 15 cent beers. "I never saw it, I never thought Jimmy was anything extraordinary. He would sit and complain about how much they'd cut his part. He wore glasses, and wasn't particularly good-looking, so he seemed unremarkable to me -- just another struggling actor. But when I saw him on the silver screen I knew Christ had walked on water! Oh, Jimmy! He was magnificent up there on the screen--and Kazan, Elia Kazan the director was an absolute genius who saw it in him! But poor Jimmy, he left us so young, and he had so much more life in him."

Then the man who I'd originally met started telling his Capote story. It seems he was at a dinner with a group along Cannery Row. "And Truman just kept going on and on about Marlon Brando's sex life, and the men they both had slept with, and heads were turning and he was getting louder and drunker and it was just embarrassing, so I stood up and slapped him across the face to shut him up. Later, I was driving him back to his hotel and he thanked me for that. Then he got out a picture of James Dean he kept in his wallet. He was obsessed with him, and he wanted me to take him to the scene of the crash. He threw a fit, so I took him there. Of course, there's really nothing there, just a plain intersection."

I got this from an AOL discussion site:

California State Highway 46 streaks eastward from the city of Paso Robles, near the northern edge of San Luis Obispo County, and cuts across gentle rolling hills and sweeping fields dotted with an occasional ranch.

It is a desolate, windblown vista, broken only by the squatty, weather-beaten buildings that make up the hamlets of Whitley Gardens, Shandon, and Cholame.

Almost twenty-five miles from Paso Robles, and less than a mile east of Cholame, the highway cuts through a gap in the Temblor Mountains, so named because the San Andreas Fault runs at their base.

Here the highway splits: 46 continues eastward to Bakersfield, and its branch, Highway 41, turns northeast toward Fresno.

This junction near Cholame was the epicenter for a shock that reverberated around the world over two decades ago, but not because of the constantly shifting San Andreas Fault.

Actor James Dean, idol to millions of moviegoers, was killed in a violent automobile accident at the junction.

Cholame, population five, consisting of a Chevron gas station, a small store, and a tiny post office, changed for all time since Dean’s death on Friday, September 30, 1955.

Tijuana Bullfights

I went to the bullfights yesterday at Tijuana's bullring-by-the-sea. I like the sport of it, the cheering fans, the showy matadors, but I'm not crazy about what inevitably happens to the poor bull. He almost never stands a chance. But yesterday was different.

Gabriel-the-Tequila-Man (he has a tequila factory in Guadalajara) brought a fresh bottle and we all drank up (Jaime, Yolanda, Luis, Isabella and me). Problem was, I'd just had two beers and an overtopped vodka martini. So I was well on my way when we got there. We bought Cuban cigars to smoke while we watched the action from about four rows back.

The bull comes charging out, crazed and powerful, snorting and balls swinging, greeted by cheering fans and taunts of matadors. He's a beautiful half-ton of muscle, soon to become a heap of dead flesh. They just keep sticking him and sticking him in the back until he's worn out and bleeding to death, then a sword is thrust fully into him, between the shoulder blades. Usually the bull runs and bucks a little more, then his legs give out and just as he is succumbing to death, a knife is jabbed into the base of his skull. Then there's a last kick or two and he goes stiff. The vaqueros tie him up and three harnessed horses are whipped and slapped as they drag the carcass out, leaving a blood trail. Groundskeepers come out and rake dirt over the blood and they start fresh again.

But yesterday was different: The last bull gave such a fight that they let him live. At one point, he stopped and stared directly at me. Jaime was joking that he was going to come at me, like Pajarito (see below). We all laughed. I cheered wildly as they let the wounded and battered bull back into a gate.

Finally, a fair fight.

One of the coolest things I have ever seen is the video of "Pajarito" or "little bird" the flying bull. You should see him fly up into the stands! This was only a year or so ago, in Mexico City. The bull landed in a lady's seat -- the only fight she'd missed in years. He ended up breaking his legs in the stands and they killed him right there.






In 1930 Hemingway published a knowing essay on bullfighting in Fortune magazine, which two years later became the amazing Death in the Afternoon. The critics hated it but it was a huge success. In 1959, just as I was being born, Hemingway returned to Spain with, as Michener puts it, "two handsome and charismatic young matadors" who were about to go mano a mano, They were also brothers-in-law. Evenly matched, they battled all summer and put on a show of skill and bravery. Hemingway later used these events for his series, A Dangerous Summer.