There is Only One Misfortune  

12

 

The book wasn’t so much written as it coalesced from hundreds of pages of notes taken during Dan’s rummaging through literature and the sciences, fairy tales and mythology, religion and philosophy for concepts and images to express his vision. While managing his father-in-law’s language school, he spent afternoons and evenings devouring about a book a day, with notes. Late nights, he tried to unwind by drinking, carousing, and whoring all over Tokyo . Eventually he was stung awake by guilt for betraying his loyal wife. He had been her lapdog since.

Eventually he discovered Norman O. Brown and adopted Brown’s aphorisitic style and condensed the thousands of pages of notes into a hundred and forty-six pages of dense aphorisms, written in a spare, plain, utilitarian style, all message. He titled it The Creative Advance: From History to Mystery.

He sent sections to various writers of philosophy and religion. Brown had responded favorably and Alan Watts requested a meeting. Watts was responsible for the introduction of Zen into American culture and was able to fill auditoriums for his lectures. Dan decided within minutes that Watts was a huckster (I met Watts also, when he visited the mental hospital, and had a similar reaction). Dan barely kept himself from walking out of the bar where they met. It was just that touchy impulsiveness that had me concerned as Dan drove us out to San Francisco State to meet Newman.

“I’m not going to have my name put on a book,” he said abruptly breaking a long silence.

“Why not?”

“Too much satisfaction for Ego-Dan. I don’t want to be tempted into defending something I might not believe tomorrow.” He shifted in his seat and took a hand from the steeringwheel to make a point. “At all costs, I’ve got to stay open. The apocalypse is imminent, and the only way to get through it is to stay open, deny no possibility.”

For days I had noticed his growing tension over this meeting. He was in an octopus-wrestle with his ego: ashamed of his desire for recognition, then accepting of it, then overwhelmed by it, and then again rejecting it. With Bernie, he had been poised, detached, and imperturbable. But Newman, or rather what he represented, instilled alarm, even panic.

When we arrived at the coffeeshop adjacent to the student cafeteria, Newman was waiting alone, tea steaming in front of him, in one of the semicircular padded booths. I introduced them. They shook hands. Dan and I sat and slid squeaking along the vinyl upholstery.

“I like your book very much,” Newman opened. He was tall and thickly built with a cherubic face. His wavy brown hair ended in a flip on his collar, daringly long for a man in his mid-thirties in 1970.

Where there should have been a thank you or, at least, a nod, Dan stared, taking a reading of him. But Newman didn’t seem to notice. He immediately launched into the first of some stored up questions. His genuine interest and enthusiasm for Dan’s vision and philosophy started softening Dan, who gradually became the cordial salesman. We wended our way to what I was most anxious to talk about: publishing the book. Newman could see this and went mercifully to the point.

“With your permission,” he said. “I’d like to send the manuscript to my publisher.”

There it was: Newman’s commitment and the answer to the question that had been gnawing at Dan and I for weeks. I was excited. I looked over at Dan and saw troubled ambivalence.

“But I can’t make any promises,” Newman continued. “For one thing, I can’t publish it in my own series. It just doesn’t fit in with what we’re doing. So I wouldn’t be the editor. But I’ll give it the strongest recommendation.”

The whole time Newman talked, I watched Dan go through wariness and now arrive at alarm. The offer was as threatening as it was attractive, and the more attractive, the more threatening. Dan squirmed in his seat and radiated a stifled annoyance. I looked over and saw that Newman saw it too, and, not knowing Dan, he was, of course, confused. Here he was bestowing a great favor and showing great faith in the man and getting resentment for it.

I knew the battle going on inside Dan, and I sympathized. But then I remembered how he was with Alan Watts and started to fear something irrational, like the tirades I tolerated.

In response to Newman’s sober, reasonable explanation of what could be expected, Dan blurted out defensively, “But I won’t put my name on it.”

But I didn’t have to worry. Most of the time I had spent around Newman was in a classroom and it wasn’t until that night that I noticed his immense charm and tact, his poise. Far from being the unworldly philosophy professor, this was a man with total control of the worldly social arts.

He was taken aback a moment by Dan, but then he said with perfect equanimity, “Well, that shouldn’t be a problem. But we don’t know that there is a book . . . yet.”

As we were leaving I looked down and noticed that Newman hadn’t touched his tea, which was cold now. Dan and I hadn’t ordered anything.

I was relieved and excited, feeling that the book was launched. Dan was fretful for a few weeks, but in time he was seduced enough to start to look forward to it. But the book was never published, inspite of Newman’s best efforts.