So with the sketches of Humphrey Wildblood either in hand or mind, and perhaps some inspiration for Myrna Minkoff, he returned to New Orleans. He had until August before reporting for basic training at Fort Gordon, Georgia. Early in the summer, Fletcher had invited Toole to come visit him in San Francisco. Toole declined, explaining, “I’m finally getting around to doing the writing I’ve postponed for so long. Whatever comes of the creative endeavor, I will now at least be able to say I’ve tried.”
Since his undergraduate days, Toole had pondered the role of the writer in society. But critiquing a story or a poem is quite different from actually writing one. Therein lay the rub. As a master of mimicry with exceptional control over written and spoken language, he still struggled with the development of a narrative sustained over the course of hundreds of pages. When Emilie Dietrich returned to New Orleans for a visit, they spoke about writing. They exchanged some ideas as they tried to crack the code of composition, sharing in their ultimate dream of becoming fiction writers. After her return to New York, she wrote Toole excitedly, confessing that she had begun a promising writing project. In her letter she offers Toole advice, perhaps alluding to their previous conversations about the writing process. “I think it must be just that you have to be saying something that you really mean . . . not just dredging characters and situations up because they are charming.” She strikes at the heart of his struggles as an aspiring fiction writer. He had a knack to quickly identify the absurd and to mimic it. But how does one bring it all together to form a cohesive story with true meaning? This question would hound Toole for years.
His summer was not nearly as productive as he had hoped. Before long, he was packing his belongings for basic training. After weeks of marching, firing weapons, and learning survival skills, Toole lined up to get his orders. Most of the recruits received the typical assignments—Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Fort Eustis, Virginia; and, least desirable, Berlin, Germany, in the midst of a Cold War crisis. Toole opened his papers: Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, English Instructor, Company A.
Chapter 8
The Army and Puerto Rico
What a mad universe I am in at the moment.
However, the politics and intrigue are
fascinating in their way—and I have intelligent
and very witty friends with whom the evening
can often be spent savoring all of this....
—Letter to parents, 1962
Once again Toole assumed the role of teacher, although he traded in his professorial tweed jacket and slim tie for an army uniform. Considering the other possible assignments he could have received, his orders to teach English in Puerto Rico were fortunate. And his position, which inherently held rank over the students, necessitated an immediate promotion once he arrived at Fort Buchanan. This came with the benefit of access to the officer’s club, a privileged gathering spot on base. Furthermore, he had access to beautiful beaches and other tropical islands in the region. While he regretted the draft intruding on his career, he could certainly endure the Caribbean for two years.
And according to David Kubach, his close friend at Fort Buchanan, Toole actually lived a charmed life in the army. He was liked by his students, and he enjoyed remarkable success, earning the rank of sergeant in less than two years. Most importantly, Toole faced challenges and moments of loneliness in Puerto Rico, but he also achieved his long-standing ambition to write the quintessential New Orleans novel. While stationed at Fort Buchanan, he wrote A Confederacy of Dunces. Quite unexpectedly, his experience in the army proved crucial to both his personal and artistic development. As Joel Fletcher explains, “It was the best time of Ken’s life, though he didn’t know it.”
He arrived in Puerto Rico in late November of 1961, the beginning of the dry season, before the torrential downpours of the summer months. On the grounds of Fort Buchanan, palm trees with whitewashed trunks swayed over well-manicured lawns. Boxwood hedges lined the roads and pathways. And at the far end of the base, Monte de Santa Ana marked the beginning of the mountainous island interior. The barracks were a series of white, single-level, A-frame structures with louvered windows, akin to the shotgun houses of New Orleans, only longer. Inside the building marked Company A, dark green cots with footlockers lined the walls, creating a long, narrow aisle down the length of the room. Small desks and steel wall lockers stood between each cot. And a track of bare lightbulbs ran the length of the ceiling.
As he settled into his new residence, unpacking his books, his uniform, and his favorite gray suit, Toole met his fellow instructors. There was the charismatic socialite Bob Young. There was Joseph Clein, a Harvard graduate from Alabama. Tony Moore hailed from New Jersey and, fondly embracing Puerto Rico, met his wife on the island. Bob Schnobel, with his plastic-rimmed glasses and baby face, seemed unusually young, especially in contrast to older instructors like the blond-haired, slightly balding Jerry Alpaugh. And Bob Morter was a good-humored man who seemed awkward and troubled at times, especially in the culture of the army. He devotedly inserted a picture of a male instructor he admired into a small copy of the Mona Lisa on the inside of his locker door. They were a collection of unlikely suspects for the army: recently graduated English majors, intellectuals grounded in the liberal arts, hopeful writers, and aspiring college professors. They all shared an appreciation for literature, music, and film. They discussed books and movies with witty repartee. And each personality added dimension to their social dynamic: dandies and dilettantes, urbane conversationalists and daredevils. Toole described them as “a hilarious group. All college graduates (some with advanced degrees), they exist here in an alien society.”
Introducing himself as John (reserving Ken for his Louisiana friends), Toole took his place among the personalities of the group. As typical, he kept a certain distance from the social center. He participated in the impromptu soirees of Company A, but he rarely craved an audience like some of the other more loquacious instructors. Candid pictures from the time depict him socializing at parties and dinners but never as the center of attention. In one picture he stands and smiles contemplatively, tapping his cigarette over an ashtray, as the other instructors, drinking at small, circular tables, cheer the arrival of a new guest. In another picture taken at the Officer’s Club Christmas dinner a few weeks after his arrival, Toole holds back laughter as he looks at Bob Young, who appears to have just made an amusing comment. A momentary enthusiasm shines in Toole’s eyes. He appears on the verge of offering some hilarity to complement Young’s joke. He likely interjected with his trademark wit, the guests probably laughed, and Young would once again take center stage of the dinner conversation.
The poise that Toole maintained offered him that slight distance he preferred to keep. From that distance, he observed, critiqued, and offered hilarious commentary, the same process Fletcher had witnessed as they watched a mother whack her child over the head that hot summer day in New Orleans in 1960. It was this approach that characterized Toole’s first interaction with David Kubach. Soon after Toole arrived, Kubach came down with tonsillitis. One night as the instructors slept in the Company A barracks, Kubach, overcome with the pain in his throat, periodically called out in raspy agony, “Oh my God!” Toole heard the suffering but remained silent. The next morning Toole asked what was wrong. When Kubach told him he had a sore throat, Toole appeared disappointed. “Oh, I thought you might be having a dark night of the soul.” They both laughed heartily.
Toole and Kubach discovered that they shared an appreciation for satirical humor, a talent Toole had mastered at least in conversation. And Kubach appreciated Toole’s talent for delivering acerbic one-liners. As Kubach remembers, “It seemed his range of satire had no limit.” Tony Moore, a self-described third wheel to the Toole-Kubach relationship, made similar observations of Toole. “His satiric gifts were enormous . . . and he could be amazing in his observations.” Moore recalls one evening after watching a Sofia Loren film and noticing her glistening plump lips, Toole commented, “She looked
like she had been smacked in the mouth with a ripe tomato.” It struck Moore as a unique way to express what he observed. On another occasion, Toole parodied a recently televised White House tour, impersonating Jacqueline Kennedy as if she were giving a tour of one of the Puerto Rican barracks. Pointing to grotesque graffiti of the male anatomy and using Puerto Rican slang, Toole said in the soft and dignified voice of the First Lady, “And here we see a picture of a bicho.” He went on to describe the artistic merit of the image, much to the enjoyment of Company A.
Like his friends in Lafayette, his fellow instructors in Puerto Rico soon learned that his humor usually came at the expense of others in their circle. As Kubach remembers, “Everything was funny to John. We made fun of a lot of people.... He had a take-no-prisoners attitude when it came to humor.” The other instructors recognized his uncanny ability to observe and comment on human behavior. But like several of his acquaintances in Louisiana, some instructors found his sharp wit worrisome; it seemed anyone could land in his crosshairs. Moore recalls Toole “wanted to poke fun at everybody.” In retrospect, Toole reminded Moore of Thersites in Troilus and Cressida. Much like Thersites who mocks demi-god warriors and damns homosexuality, Toole’s witticisms could sting, embarrass, and hurt. But his fellow instructors also recognized him as brilliantly perceptive and often considerate. He defended the instructors when they came under scrutiny, gaining their respect. Despite his tendency to make insensitive comments, they acknowledged his intelligence, his self-discipline and ability to mediate between them and Puerto Rican officers.
Of course, the social dynamic in Company A was only one aspect of Toole’s life in Puerto Rico. Like the other instructors, he spent most of his days teaching phonetic English—for six hours a day, in seven-week intervals. He would dictate, and the Puerto Rican students would repeat simple English phrases. Eventually, he asked them basic questions, and they attempted to answer in English.
He humorously illustrates the maddening effects of the dull Fort Buchanan teaching method in a letter to his parents:As I was looking out of the office a few minutes ago, I saw an ambulance drive up to one of the Co. B classrooms. The instructor of the class, whom I know, is a very passive, scholarly Yale graduate, and I suspected that he had finally passed out from asking, “What is this?”; “Who are you?” “Do you like to eat fried chicken?”
Much to the frustration of the highly educated instructors, the program offered no intellectual challenge. But the program was not developed around a liberal arts value of cultivating ideas or refining thought processes. It aimed at successful test scores. With tensions rising in Cuba and Vietnam, the U.S. Army wanted the recruits ready for the frontline. They needed to know how to follow orders on the battlefield, not weigh the ethics of war. But they first needed to pass the exam. Companies A, B, and C at Fort Buchanan efficiently achieved this goal. In March of 1962 an article in the San Juan Star describes the program: “Fort Buchanan crams 189 hours of English into an extensive seven-week instruction . . . that has no parallel elsewhere in the Army.” The leadership at Fort Buchanan was quite proud of the program, as is evident when Toole’s superior Captain Gil de LaMadrid, writes, “The English Language Program of the U.S. Army Training Center, Caribbean is the only program of its type in the worldwide scope of Army operations.” But however unique or cutting edge they made it appear, at times it was despairingly oppressive for the instructors and the students. While several instructors, including Toole, could speak Spanish, which is likely one of the reasons they were assigned to Puerto Rico, they were not permitted to use that language in the classroom, although many of them did in secret. As the San Juan Star article describes,English instructors . . . do not teach English by comparing the language with Spanish . . . The use of English is so stressed in Training Company “A” that no Spanish language magazines or newspapers are available for the recruits . . . And “Think in English” signs have been conspicuously placed throughout the company buildings.
While Toole had felt elevated from Lafayette upon returning to Columbia and teaching at Hunter, he now taught in a situation that seemed far below his level, although present-day institutions would label what they were doing as teaching English as a second language, and would carry out instruction with far more cultural sensitivity. For Toole the whole experience must have taken some painful adjustment. And perhaps that is what Emilie Griffin saw troubling him when she came to Puerto Rico in January of 1962 and spent a day with Toole. They walked on the beach, ate lunch, and visited El Morro, where the waves of the Atlantic crashed below the walls of the old colonial fortress. She recalls seeing a “dark streak” that was “persistent” and “disabling” in her friend. It was the last time she ever saw him.
Eventually Toole found some degree of pleasure in his efforts at Fort Buchanan. Despite the intellectual sterility of his duties, he thrived as a teacher in Puerto Rico, as he did everyplace else he taught. In a commendation letter to Toole, Captain Gil de La Madrid writes, “Shortly after your assignment to this unit in November 1961 as an English Instructor, I observed that you would become one of the most outstanding men ever to serve in this program. This proved to be true.” The San Juan Star article features a photograph of Toole in the classroom. He smiles as he paces with the gait of a lecturer, punctuating his annunciation with his baton; the students appear attentive and entertained. The caption reads, “Cpl. Toole’s class is a top one at Ft. Buchanan.” Somehow, Toole made the repetition of elementary English phrases engaging and innovative. His superiors took notice. They often exhibited Toole’s classroom as an exemplar of the training program.
Unhampered by the shortcomings of the immersion-style instruction, Toole remained dedicated to his classes for the first six months of 1962. In one of several of his commendations, his superior observes that Toole exhibited “sincere and personal interest in the welfare and education of the Trainees.” Toole always felt responsible for the success of his students. And occasionally he recognized the conditions from which they came and the adversity they faced. On May 22, 1962, he describes his students in a letter to his parents:We are in the middle (almost) of a cycle now. Fortunately, my current group of recruits is as pleasant as the others were. As I perhaps wrote before, these recruits are almost all volunteers, victims of unemployment in the mountains.
But as the rainy season took hold, Toole grew discontent. The cool sea breezes stilled, heat and humidity saturated the air, and “the red clay of the island . . . turned to paste.” So, too, his classes became sluggish, and as a teacher he became tired of life on the island. On June 24 he writes home:Of the three cycles in which I have taught, this last was the most burdensome, for the recruits were almost all very young mountaineers with very limited education and backgrounds—generally—of almost abject poverty. I wonder whether they have absorbed any English; we certainly wrestled with that language six hours a day for seven weeks. After the last class, a recruit said to me of another, “El se va tan bruts como vino” (“He goes away as brutish as he came.”).
With a tinge of humor, Toole begins to question the success of his classes. A few months later, after another cycle of recruits, he expresses utter exhaustion with teaching at Fort Buchanan. “I don’t feel even vaguely like launching into teaching so soon again.... At the moment I don’t think I could ask a class ‘What is this?’ and hear ‘Ees a weendow!’ without falling on my face. Dios Mio!” After four cycles of trainees, he had reached the end of his wits.
Fortunately, the summer months offered him a break from teaching. With the decline of incoming trainees, most of Company A, including Toole’s close friend Kubach, was temporarily assigned to help prepare Salinas, a national guard training area on the southern coast. The remaining instructors taught under Company B. But having impressed his superior officers, Toole secured a clerical job within the Co. A office. Thus, he was free from the classroom, and he avoided the drudgery of clearing brush and living in tents during the summer months.
Initially, he considered
himself lucky. His pursuit to excel secured him a privileged seat. He spent his days in the Company A office, performing the miscellany of office work, sometimes enjoying the luxury of cold grape juice with ice cubes. While never enduring the physical trials of Salinas, he missed the casual atmosphere of convivial evenings drinking rum and gin under the stars. Eventually, loneliness crept into his quiet office and a sadness cast its shadow over his days.
He had time and a typewriter at his disposal, so he turned to writing his parents more frequently. They replied with dire reports from New Orleans; once again the Tooles were in financial straits. As had happened throughout his life, lack of money loomed, and Thelma confided her anxieties to her son. Penury was a consistent specter; and while never destitute, the threat of such a condition darkened Toole’s demeanor.
Had he been in New Orleans, he would have helped. In Puerto Rico, he had few options. Initially, his inability to aid his parents exempted him from his typical sense of obligation. He encouraged his mother’s attempts to earn extra income. On June 24 he writes, “I hope that ‘Operation Alert’ at home is working. During the summer, I know one must be more alert to search for ways and means.” As an independent elocutionist, piano teacher, and pageant director, Thelma’s work tended to slow in the summer months. The schools were out of session, and many of her clients took holidays, fleeing the heat of the city. This dearth in employment coupled with her husband’s wavering car sales apparently made the summer of 1962 especially difficult. “Operation Alert” was a call for “all hands on deck.” In his absence, he offers her optimism and reassurance.
Butterfly in the Typewriter Page 15
