Butterfly in the Typewriter

by Cory MacLauchlin

  Toole also reports to Fletcher a meeting he had with several other friends from SLI. In early January, he met with professors J. C. Broussard and Lottie Ziegler, along with Polites and a couple visiting from the Netherlands, whom he referred to as the Dutch Couple. The group gathered at the Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel, the same establishment Huey Long favored for his favorite cocktail, Ramos Gin Fizz. They conversed over drinks as they sat under the vibrant Paul Ninas murals that adorned the walls, scenes of New Orleans life, depicting black laborers working fields of cotton and unloading cargo at the docks, while white proprietors watch and affluent tourists mill about Jackson Square.

  Toole, Broussard, and Polites all wrote letters to Fletcher about the evening. Fletcher received the letters on the same day at his apartment in Florence, Italy. He refers to them as the Roosevelt Hotel Triptych—three varied depictions of the same event. In Toole’s letter, he surveys the group and dishes slight jabs to both Broussard and Polites. He writes,I spent a few hours with [J. C. Broussard and Lottie Ziegler] and “the Dutch couple” at the Roosevelt. The Dutch were quite pleasant, wise, and politic in the face of J. C.’s enthusiasms and Lottie’s twitching. Also present was N[ick] Polites who contributed a few of the extravagances for which he is famous and which effectively silence tables for a few minutes while everyone stares at the floor. We must have appeared a dubious group in the bar, and I’m afraid that I made my departure rather rapidly . . . before the house detective took us all away.

  For Fletcher, who knew each member of this cast, from Ziegler’s periodic ticks to the unassuming Dutch couple visiting New Orleans, the group was certainly unique and, with the addition of a few potent cocktails, potentially hilarious. They formed a confederacy of sorts. And the meeting held true to a tenet of Toole’s novel: where three or more characters convene, a rumpus will ensue.

  Toole walked away from the evening, shrugging off Broussard and Polites with indifference. From all three letters it seems the old friends from Lafayette found little cheer in the reunion. But Broussard and Polites provide the other two pictures in this triptych, offering an insightful account of Toole’s behavior that evening. Broussard describes Toole asso enwrapped in his own ego, [he] responds and vibrates to one string which an acquaintance must pluck continually—his almost pathetic desire for being admired, his only conversation being his award for “best soldier of the month,” the letters that Wieler from Hunter writes him imploring his return there, and the response I wrung from him by telling of former colleagues’ desires to see him.

  Granted, Broussard tended to exaggerate. In his letters to Fletcher, everything from meals to personalities was either the best or the worst he had ever experienced. Unsurprisingly, a negative impression quickly escalated to an indictment. But Broussard’s comments still hold significance. Toole often mentioned his achievements with a nonchalance that lacked humility, especially around Polites, whom he always seemed eager to impress. His inflated ego and nonchalant manner may have caused some eyes to roll; however, in the early days of 1963, it likely served as a veneer to his anxieties over the future. While he exhibited pride in his success in the army, he took little stock in it, as he had no intention of becoming a career soldier. Someone probably asked him about his plans after the army: the inevitable question that hung like fire over his head. If he gave the impression that Wieler begged for him to return to Hunter, then, like Broussard, he embellished the truth. Wieler eagerly offered Toole a position, but his letters do not suggest he was “imploring his return.” In fact, it appears from Wieler’s responses that Toole sent inquires to him about returning to Hunter. Here again, Toole distorted the truth for his own self-aggrandizement. Like any young man making his way into his unsure future, perhaps unnerved by the unknown, recognition, praise, and a sense of being desired soothed those anxieties.

  Unlike Broussard, Polites was accustomed to Toole’s occasional arrogance. In his letter to Fletcher, Polites observes, “The army is spoiling him, as all people and all institutions spoil him by flattery.” From Tulane to SLI, Polites had watched institutions dole out accolades to his friend. However, Polites suspected Toole’s swagger belied a less confident state of mind. He writes, “Ken looked healthy and tanned, but perhaps beneath the bronzed surface he is dissipated. I really don’t know, except that perhaps he may be impervious to alcohol.” While Polites detected the psychological toll of hedonism underneath Toole’s exterior, he may have seen a man performing to his own social expectations, as an exemplar of accomplishment, but secretly struggling over the uncertainty of his future, what Toole would vaguely term months later in a letter to his parents, “the situation.”

  While on leave, Toole also intended to visit the Rickelses in Lafayette, but spent all his time in New Orleans instead. Once he was back in Puerto Rico, he felt compelled to write, especially after Byrne told him that Milton Rickels, whom Toole called Rick, had an accident, a particularly threatening event for his frail body. Toole writes to his surrogate Lafayette family,Dear Pat, Rick and Gordon,

  Unfortunately I did not see you during the holidays—although I doubt whether this greatly affected your Christmas either way. I had no access to an automobile. The prospect of traveling via Greyhound stopped me in the planning stage.

  I am writing especially because Bobby Byrne told me of Rick’s accident—and I send my sincere hopes for a quick and comfortable recuperation. The three of you were extremely good to me during my year in Lafayette; the thought of misfortune involving any one of you is something that I would feel very personally.

  Rick, I hope that all goes well for you, that the new year brings about a rapid convalescence. In a faculty composed of “fiends and madmen,” your presence—as a stabilizing agent—is very necessary.

  Sincerely,

  Ken

  In a self-conscious moment, he appears to believe the Rickelses might be indifferent to his visits. Patricia maintained they always loved his company, and they let him know it. Contrary to his performance at the Sazerac Bar, this letter offers another rare moment of Toole with his mask off, similar to the sincere letter to his father when he suffered from shingles. He expresses concern for his friend with no need for wit or reports of his accomplishments. Had he gone to Lafayette, he may have been momentarily relieved from his compulsion toward an elevated status of success, perhaps reminded of what he saw in the Rickelses that gave him such comfort during his days at SLI. But he seemed to be transfixed by a contemplation of what he would make of his future. His friend Nick Polites made an astute, albeit cynical, observation of Toole during this winter holiday. Reporting to Fletcher, Polites suggests that Toole was “developing his tendency toward inertia to a point of absolute self-realization.” Indeed, the burgeoning author sat in stillness on the verge of becoming a novelist.

  After twelve days of relaxation, Toole bid farewell to his parents and reluctantly boarded a plane bound for Puerto Rico.

  It happens ever so quietly. The caterpillar scuttles about here and there, eating and growing, until he can no longer bear the confines of his own skin. So he finds a place all his own. He cocoons himself in a protective sheath, suspended in stillness. And inside, where no one else can see, he undergoes a remarkable transformation.

  Chapter 9

  A Writer Emerges

  At Fort Buchanan, Toole fell back into the lull of lazy afternoons. But the “inertia” of his holiday visit to New Orleans would give way to a tide of motivation. New Orleans would have its bard yet. He carried with him the seeds of inspiration; the essence of the Crescent City that he knew deserved expression. In late January, he writes to Fletcher,Back to the Caribbean again after New Orleans and all that it stands for. My holidays were very pleasant and very relaxing and, physically, New Orleans looked wonderful, as it always does. It is certainly one of the most beautiful cities in the world, although how the people who live there managed to make it so remains a mystery to me.

  Toole was well aware that Fletcher lived within meters of countle
ss Italian masterpieces of art. Certainly Florence was far more renowned for its beauty than was New Orleans. But for a New Orleanian, the majesty of Saint Louis Cathedral rivals Il Duomo, the intricacy of the ironwork in the French Quarter compares to the gilded Gates of Paradise on the Baptistery of St. John, and the estates of Uptown are the Medici palaces of the American South. For the native son, New Orleans is the center of the world.

  Keeping one eye toward his city, Toole restarted the familiar routine in Puerto Rico of managing instructors and preparing for company inspections. In another letter to Fletcher dated February 9, Toole appears relaxed and contemplative:A fairly cool period here seems to have succumbed to Puerto Rico’s traditional warmth. Today has been warm, sunny, completely enervating. I ended the afternoon with several rums with lemon and water and lay beneath my mosquito net to contemplate the universe and my position in it. The results of this contemplation were negligible at best.

  Emilie Dietrich Griffin detected such contemplation when she came to Puerto Rico in 1962 and spent a day with him. She deemed that he was “walking insanely along the far edges of experience not so much wanting to take reckless chances but wanting to confront the universe, to pierce through to the meaning of things.” A year later, he returned to this meditation.

  And one Sunday afternoon in 1963 he found the meaning for which he had searched for years. Sometime in late February or early March he realized he was in an ideal place for writing. He had a room of his own, substantial periods of free time, and a regular paycheck. Seizing the opportunity at hand, he decided to put his assets to good use and try once again to fulfill his dream of authorship. He lacked only the necessary accouterment of any serious novelist. But his good friend David Kubach was aptly equipped. Toole asked Kubach if he could borrow his typewriter, and Kubach agreed.

  Toole placed the small portable typewriter on his desk. He rolled a piece of paper into position. His fingers settled into the shallow cups of the typewriter keys. With the first percussive smack of a keystroke, he broke the contemplative silence of his room. He recalled Humphrey Wildblood, the character he created while in New York, renamed him Ignatius Reilly, and set the beginning of his tale under the clock at the D. H. Holmes department store on Canal Street. And as his fingers started their fluttering dance across the keys, the world of Fort Buchanan and Puerto Rico, just outside his window, faded away. And from the recesses of memory, that immense catalog of personalities he had gathered over the past two decades opened. There Bobby Byrne preached the gospel of Boethius and psychoanalyzed his own obsession with hot dogs. Irene Reilly screamed and cursed, her voice carrying through the bathroom vents into the house next door, while the gum-smacking Irish Channel gal with large hoop earrings smiled coyly at her beefy Italian boyfriend. Hunter College girls scowled at those conservatives breeding in the vast lands west of Manhattan, while the poor mother on Elysian Fields whacked her son over the head with a plank. And sweaty, colored workers labored in the back of the suit factory, while flamboyant merrymakers exchanged witty flirtations at a party in the French Quarter. The sun was setting on the Mississippi River as the clock at D. H. Holmes neared the hour of five and a middle-aged son waited for his elderly mother with the wine cake she promised him before they headed home in their old Plymouth. From this vast parade, Toole selected, merged, refined, and wove characters together with all the absurdities that form the human condition. And there on the once blank sheet of paper in his private room in Puerto Rico emerged the city he had known all his life, his New Orleans.

  It all sounds like a myth of the artist struck by genius one day, but for Toole this was the wave that had been building, and now it had unleashed with consuming urgency. For nearly ten years he had tried to muster his muse, ever since he wrote The Neon Bible. Since then, his attempted poems and short stories flopped. But this time everything aligned for him; he had an almost unwavering energy. Instructors in all three companies could hear the clacking of the typewriter at all hours of the day and night when they walked by his private room. Chatter circulated that he was writing a humorous novel about a fat medievalist in New Orleans. He shared bits and pieces to a select few, primarily his friend Kubach, and they praised his work.

  Toole was well aware of the change that had come over him. He fancied himself in the midst of literary history when he writes in a letter to his parents, “In my private room with the fan, easy chair, book case and plant, I settle down with a borrowed typewriter . . . and grind out my deathless prose.” Through his writing, he once again found purpose and place in his world; he had direction. On March 23 he writes home, I am trying to leave this place with something to show for the time I have vegetated here. Lately, I have been doing a great deal of writing, and what I am working on—one of my perennial “novels”—is very good—and that criticism comes from a most reliable source whom I permitted to read one (the first chapter). It is rolling along smoothly and is giving me a maximum of detachment and release from a routine which had long ago become a somewhat stale second nature. I hope that nothing develops which will slow my pace of writing or turn me from the particular goal. The book is amusing and well paced; however, it is unwise to make comments upon a work which is so far from completion—and it is not my duty to judge it.

  He relinquishes his critical eye, dedicating his energies to the creative process, hoping his motivation would not wane. Almost two weeks later, Toole writes home again reporting the value of his writing to his own disposition.

  I am writing with great regularity. It seems to be the only thing that keeps my mind occupied; I have never found writing to be so relaxing or so tranquilizing, and I still like what I am working on. Quite a bit has been completed already. Some of it, I think is very funny.

  The pace at which he wrote pleased and surprised him, although he began to doubt the finished quality of the prose, recognizing the need for revision. And he remained wary that his muse could desert him at any moment, as it had in the past. On April 10 he writes,Writing feverishly, I have completed three chapters and am deep into the fourth. I only hope that my inspiration and dedication last long enough to preclude abandonment of the project. I want to come out of this experience with something to show for my time. What I am doing will require a great amount of revision, editing, and rewriting, I imagine, but I should have a basis at least.

  For several weeks, occupied with his novel, Toole expressed pleasure with his situation at Fort Buchanan. “All is still going very well . . . ” he writes, “and, surprisingly, for me, I am more or less content.” The end of April brought a potential threat to his progress. Kubach was again transferred to Salinas, taking his typewriter with him. Perhaps in private Toole expressed disappointment about his closest friend moving miles away, but to his parents he voiced his concerns about accessing a typewriter. He writes,Unfortunately, PFC Kubach is being sent to the Salinas Training Area for the summer this Sunday. Therefore, I will have to find another typewriter on which to work, for it is his which I have been using to type my writing. The writing, incidentally, is now over 100 pages and is still going strong.

  His writing was paramount; it was worthy of a substantial investment. In early May he bought a new typewriter, which he would use to finish his novel. He details this purchase to his parents:This letter is written on the new Underwood-Olivetti typewriter I bought yesterday. It is a rather large portable that retails for something like $135.00. However, I bought it in the PX for only $69.00; the Olivetti name has become world famous, especially for portables, and this seems to be a fine machine. It is something that I have needed for some time, and I do not regret the outlay of carefully saved dollars.

  As he continued to write, he fixed his eye on the end of his service. The uncertainty of life after the army, which had loomed in the distance during his trip home in January, now pressed upon him. And his writing project was such that he prepared to dedicate the next step of his life to its publication. Hunter had offered him an instructor position for the upcoming academic year, but
he declined it. He informs his parents thatAt the moment, I want to spend some time in New Orleans, at least until I can decide or return to some semblance of civilian behavior . . . I am preoccupied with this writing project at the moment and feel that with some time in New Orleans, I might be able to wrap it up and polish it. Therefore, the plans [sic] to return to the city.

  He requests his mother to send him contact information for private schools and colleges in New Orleans, as he planned to teach while finishing the novel. And despite all things going well for him, he ends the letter with a surprisingly spiteful description of an evening spent with the parents of fellow instructor Dave Farr. The disdainful voice of Ignatius shines through in this account. However funny, the humor came at the expense of two people who were welcoming and generous:I can not attempt to describe these people; it sounds unpleasant I know, to say that they are appalling, but I can say nothing else. They look like two skinny haystacks, burr-like r’s rolling from their thin lips. About them there is no hint of social grace, civilization, etc. Hillbillies are bad, but these people were worse. The mother, emaciated to almost skeletal proportions wore a hair net, a house dress, and white Keds with socks, smoking continually and assuming frontiersman poses on chairs and tables. The father is indescribable simply because I doubt whether he exists.... For dinner I was served boiled chicken served in its own broth, a lettuce salad with Kraft French dressing, a slice of pineapple (fresh Puerto Rican variety, the tastiest thing on the menu), and pan bread and butter. That was it; however, as we were finishing our silent meal, a Tastee Freez truck jingled outside and the mother ran down in her keds to buy four sundaes for us. . . . I have never seen such gray-white, sandy, freckled, powdery skins in my life. These people were almost inhuman and gave me at least a glimpse of what is lurking on the plains of the great central area of our nation.