An Update, on Connell’s Birthday

FIrst posted on my FB page:

Today, Aug. 17, 2020, happens to be the birthday of the writer Evan S. Connell. He would have been 96. After more than three years of research and writing, I happen to be immersed in my manuscript about Connell (1924-2013) and his work, manipulating the scalpel through another round of revisions, corrections, insertions, and cuts.

As I read through a couple of chapters yesterday, I began compiling what will become the index. It reminded me of the extraordinary range of literati who intersected with Connell in one way or another. From Alice Adams and James Baldwin to John Updike and William Carlos Williams. I've got a fairly humorous (I hope) tale about Connell and Allen Ginsberg--Connell was no fan of the Beats. The Western writers Wallace Stegner and Walter Van Tilburg Clark play large roles in Connell's development. George Plimpton was an early champion. Connell was friends with a menagerie of San Francisco Bay Area writers, some better known than others, including Don Carpenter, Calvin Kentfield, Curt Gentry, Herbert Gold, Kenneth Lamott, and Lamott's daughter, Annie.

Baldwin and Connell appeared together in a short fiction anthology, and yesterday I came across this quote again that I'm using from Baldwin: “What the times demand, and in an unprecedented fashion, is that one be—not seem—outrageous, independent, anarchical.” So, decades later, it all seems so up-to-date. As anyone who has read "Mrs. Bridge" and "Mr. Bridge" knows, Connell was quite astute when it came to the subject of race, especially in the social strata of his hometown, Kansas City. So there's that, too.

I'm currently in a kind of limbo, awaiting feedback from my editor who is taking an early look at my manuscript. If she's not appalled, there's a chance I can wrap this thing up in the not too distant future and perhaps be on track for a book late next year. We shall see.

Of the photos here: Connell grew up in this Colonial house on 66th Street in Brookside, less than a mile from where I'm writing this now. We got to know this house well, because our late friend, Joann Riordan, lived there for many years and hosted many a gathering of local literati. Below that, it's not well known, even here in Kansas City, that Connell was a Jayhawk, a graduate of the University of Kansas over in Lawrence. He started college at Dartmouth, spent a few years training in the Navy Air Corps, and got a B.A. after three semesters at Kansas, where his flight jacket and suave mustache may have impressed the ladies. I've got juicy stuff to share about that period. Please stay tuned.

On the Way to a Biography: Downtime Progress and Productivity

A version of this first appeared in the May 2020 TBC, the newsletter of Biographers International Organization.

By Steve Paul

(c) 2020

The hunkering down, the trip cancellations, and then the lockdown of the last two months has meant that I've been able to devote quality time and focus to my book about the writer Evan Connell ("Mrs. Bridge," "Mr. Bridge," "Son of the Morning Star," etc.). I've finished drafting seven or eight more chapters since the first of the year and am currently into the last chapter of the manuscript. After revisions and permissions, I'm expecting to deliver a manuscript (to the University of Missouri Press) ahead of schedule by, I hope, several months.

Given the question I saw on BIO’s FB page about the ability of conducting archival research during the pandemic shutdowns, I was lucky in that I'd previously gathered much of the available archival material in library visits over the last three years. And online archives such as newspapers.com, the New York Times and others continue to be readily available.

As recently as early March, though, I was able to retrieve a really helpful batch of new special-collections material via long distance from the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. (I assume the library has closed since then.) Maybe the fact that I'd researched there in person a year and a half ago helped to expedite, but in any case, the new stuff allowed me to enrich and expand one section of a chapter I'd already mostly written. I'm currently making a run at another archive (Stanford) to revisit one folder of material I looked at three years ago and obtain one or two other new things. It's unclear, however, when the library will reopen with on-site staff able to get to my request, but at least I'm in line. (Pro tip: It doesn't hurt to get in touch to see what is possible even as libraries are physically closed.) But if we get anywhere near back to normal in coming months, I just might take a road trip to California to revisit the library and spend more time with sources I've already spoken with in person or at least on the phone or via email.  

And one more thing, sort of in the category of Robert Caro's "turn every page." When I set out on this project, I tried to locate someone who I thought would be a good source, if still alive, because I knew he and Connell had become friends and that he'd written about Connell and his work over decades. He was an editor by trade and a freelance book critic for many years. I failed to track down him or his archives and I set him aside. Then, early this year, I happened to arrive at a point where this fellow entered into the picture again, and that set me off to try again to find him. This was in February, just before the pandemic craziness set in. Lo and behold, there he was, alive and well, at 92, and living about 30 minutes away from me. We had two long conversations at his house. He shared a batch of Connell's letters and clippings and other material he had saved. He got me in touch via phone with another mutual friend in Santa Fe, though, sadly, she died just a couple weeks after I spoke with her. And now that we're both in lockdown, we speak on the phone.

I sent him the first chapter of my manuscript and waited a bit anxiously for his response. When I finally heard from him, he'd read it closely more than once, and he thanked me for giving him a new understanding of his friend. He'd known Connell for more than sixty years, and he knew how difficult it was to fully understand Connell's life of self-imposed loneliness and near anonymity.

I can't tell you how moved I was to hear him pronounce my project "terrific," even as he shared a few eagle-eyed questions, corrections and thoughts about a confusing line here or there. He said I should proceed with confidence.

Of course, I sent him four subsequent chapters—again, they were well received—and then five more.  

Now let's hope my publisher survives the economic assault on university budgets, etc. Who knows what we're in for from here on out.