A Writer's Tale

Later, aunt Emma got married for the first time at the age of eighty to her childhood sweetheart, Fred Hendrickson. She moved to Florida with Fred. We moved to a new house in a nice suburban area north of Chicago called Northbrook. (Fictional versions of Northbrook are portrayed in lots of my fiction, probably most accurately in, “A Good, Secret Place.”)

My whole family was active in Scouting. We often went camping in the woods. Nearly every summer, we drove to Wisconsin where we stayed in a cabin, went boating, fishing and swimming. I have great memories of those times, and much of my fiction takes place in areas similar to the places where we had such summer adventures.

Oddly enough, my first published work appeared in the newsletter of the Northbrook Methodist Church. Starting in September, 1962, I wrote a regular column “The MYF News” in which I briefed readers about the activities of our Methodist Youth Fellow-ship group. I wrote fourteen such articles.

For two years, I attended Glenbrook High School. There, I played Sousaphone in the marching band, ran cross-country and participated in track meets, running the 880 and sometimes the mile. I also submitted material to the school’s literary magazine. In 1962, the magazine, Helicon, published my poems, “He Never Lost His Head” and “Ode to a Wayfaring Sousaphone,” and my short story, “365 Days a Year.”

In a hint of things to come, the “powers that be” made me tone down the end of my short story. The revision was found acceptable.

I won a $5.00 prize for the story. My English teacher called me “the most prolific writer in the school.” I was honored by the compliment, especially before learning the definition of “prolific.”

1963-65

In March, 1963, I received my first rejection slip for a piece of fiction that I submitted to the magazine, Bluebook for Men. My piece, “The Great War,” was a crummy imitation of those vignettes that can be found in Hemingway’s In Our Time.

After my brother’s graduation from Glenbrook High School in June, 1963, we had a garage sale, packed up our belongings, hopped into a couple of cars and drove across the country to California where Dad started a business venture. We settled in Tiburon, in Marin County. We lived in a house with a spectacular view of San Francisco Bay, and I received my last two years of secondary education at Redwood High School in Larkspur.

At Redwood, I took two years of creative writing classes, edited a book review newsletter, worked on the staff of the school literary magazine, and hung out with “intellectuals” at least one of whom got busted during the Berkley “free speech movement.” I spent a lot of time with my friends, the Gronbecks. I went to a lot of plays. I spent much of my spare time exploring bookstores all over San Francisco, Sausalito, Mill Valley and San Rafael.

I wrote for Bookmark, the Redwood High School’s monthly book review periodical, from January through June, 1964.

After doing reviews of such books as All Quiet on the Western Front, For Whom the Bell Tolls and Battle Cry, I inaugurated a column called “The Bookstore Browser” in which I wrote about new paperbacks appearing at the Redwood student bookstore.

The 1964 issue of the Redwood High School literary magazine, Orpheus, contained my poem, “Memories” and my short story, “The Contemplator.”

From October, 1964 through March,. 1965 I was editor of Bookmark, seeing it through six issues. I wrote essays about several authors who turned out to be major influences on my own writing: Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, Nathaniel Hawthorne and J.D.

Salinger. (Also one about Ford Madox Ford, but I don’t think he had much effect on me.) The 1965 issue of Orpheus contained my poems, “Man We Gotta Make Music,” “Nothing,” “Running Away,” “A Prayer,” “Eternity,” “Road With a Sharp Turn,” “Kite,” my haiku “Sea Gull,” and my short stories, “Beyond the Streetlights” and “Lillies Die in Rough Wind.”

During that period, I was extremely self-conscious, weird, arrogant and annoying especially to my parents. I moped. I pined. And I continued to write. I fancied myself to be a sort of hybrid Dylan Thomas/Jack Kerouac/Ernest Hemingway/William Goldman/Edgar Allan Poe.

I also started taking backpacking trips into the High Sierra mountains with my brother, some explorer scouts, and various other friends. Sometimes, I camped and took driving trips into dangerous places with my friend, Chris Gronbeck. It is a wonder we survived.

But I got a lot of material that would later turn up in my fiction.

1965-69

Upon being graduated from Redwood, I headed north for Willamette University in Salem, Oregon to begin my days as a college student. Willamette is the inspiration for the fictional university, Belmore, which appears in some of my novels. I majored in English, wrote a lot, and had stories and poetry published in the university literary magazine.