Self-Defence

5

After she was gone, I thought about the dream.

Somnambulism. Bedwetting.

Fragmented sleep patterns were often displayed as multiple symptoms- persistent nightmares, insomnia, even narcolepsy. But the sudden onset of her symptoms implied a reaction to some kind of stress: the trial material or something the trial had evoked.

Her allusion to an incubus was interesting.

Sexual intrusion.

Daddy abducting a maiden. Grinding noises.

A Freudian would have loved it: unresolved erotic feelings toward the abandoning parent coming back to haunt her.

Feelings awakened because the trial had battered her defenses.

She was right about one thing: This father was different.

And relevant.

I drove down toward the city, taking the coast highway to Sunset and heading east to the University campus.

At the Research Library, I looked up M. Bayard Lowell in the computer index. Page after page of citations beginning in 1939- the year he'd published his landmark first novel, The Morning Cry-and encompassing his other novels, collections of poems, and art exhibitions.

Covering all of it would take a semester. I decided to start with the time period that corresponded to Lucy's dream, roughly twenty-two years ago.

The first reference was a book of poems entitled Command: Shed the Light, published on New Year's Day. The rest were reviews. I climbed up to the stacks and began my refresher course in American Lit.

In the poetry shelves, I found the book, a thin gray-jacketed volume published by one of the prestige New York houses. The circulation slip showed it hadn't been checked out in three years. I went to the periodicals section and lugged volume after volume of bound magazines to an empty carrel. When my arms grew sore, I sat down to read.

Command: Shed the Light turned out to be Lowell's first book in ten years, its predecessor an anthology of previously published short stories. The New Year's release date was also Lowell's fiftieth birthday. The book had attracted a lot of attention: six-figure advance, main selection by one of the book clubs, foreign rights sold in twenty-three countries, even a film option by an independent production company in Hollywood, which seemed odd for poetry.

Then came the critics. One major newspaper called the work "self-consciously gloomy and stunningly amateurish and, this writer suspects, a calculated effort on the part of Mr. Lowell to snare the youth market." Another, describing Lowell's career as "glorious, lusty, and historically indelible," gave him credit for taking risks but labeled his verse "only very occasionally pungent, more frequently vapid and sickening, morose and incoherent. Glory has yielded to vainglory."

Lots more in that key, with one exception: A Columbia University doctoral student named Denton Mellors, writing in the Manhattan Book Review, rhapsodized "darkly enchanting, rich with lyric texture."

From what I could tell, Lowell hadn't reacted to the debacle publicly. A bottom-of-the-page paragraph in the January twenty-fourth Publishers Journal noted that sales of the book were "significantly below expectations." Similar articles appeared in other magazines, ruminating on the death of contemporary poetry and speculating as to where M. Bayard Lowell had gone wrong.

In March, the Manhattan Book Review noted that Lowell was rumored to have left the country, destination unknown. In June, a cheeky British glossy reported his presence in a small village in the Cotswolds.

Having confirmed that the sweatered-and-capped personage meandering among the sheep was indeed the once-touted American, we tried to approach but were accosted by two rather formidable mastiffs who showed no interest in our bangers-and-chips and convinced us by dint of grease-and-growl to beat a hasty retreat. What has happened, we wonder, to Mr. Lowell's once insatiable Yankish appetite for attention? Ah, fleeting fame!

Other foreign sightings followed throughout that summer: Italy, Greece, Morocco, Japan. Then, in September, the Los Angeles Times Book Review announced that "Pulitzer prize-winning author M. Bayard Lowell" would be relocating to Southern California and contributing occasional essays to the supplement. In December, the Hot Property column in the Times Real Estate section reported that Lowell had just closed escrow on fifty acres in Topanga Canyon.

Sources say it is a heavily wooded, rustic campsite in need of repair. Last utilized as a nudist colony, it is off the beaten track and seems perfect for Lowell's new Salingeresque identity. Or maybe the author-cum-artist is simply traveling West for the weather.

May: Lowell attended a PEN benefit for political prisoners, a "star-studded gala" at the Malibu home of Curtis App, a film producer. Two more westside parties in April, one in Beverly Hills, one in Pacific Palisades. Lowell, newly bearded and wearing a blue denim suit, was spotted talking to the current Playmate of the Month. When approached by a reporter, he walked away.

In June, he delivered a keynote speech at a literacy fund-raiser where he announced the creation of an artists' and writers' retreat on his Topanga land.

"It will be a sanctum," he said, "and it will be called Sanctum. A blank palette upon which the gifted human will be free to struggle, squiggle, squirt, splotch, deviate, divert, digress, dig in the dirt, and howsoever indulge the Great Id. Art pushes through the hymen of banality only when the nerves are allowed to twang unfettered. Those in the know, know that the true luxuries are those of synapse and spark."

A September piece in the L.A. Times entertainment section reported that a grant from film producer App was financing construction of new lodgings at Sanctum. The architect: a twenty-four-year-old Japanese-American prodigy named Claude Hiroshima, whose last project had been the refurbishment of all the lavatories in a Madrid hotel.

"At Sanctum," he said, "my goal is to be true to the essential consciousness of the locus, selecting materials that provide a synthesis with the prevailing mental and physical geometry. There are several log structures already on the property, and I want the new buildings to be indistinguishable from them."

Log structures.

Either Lucy had read about the retreat or her brother had told her about it.

December, another Publishers Journal squib: Paperback publication of Command: Shed the Light was canceled and sales of Lowell's backlist- his previously published books- had bottomed, as had prices for his canvases.

March: The Village Voice ran a highly unfavorable retrospective of Lowell's body of work, suggesting that his place in history be reassessed. Three weeks later, a letter from someone named Terrence Trafficant of Rahway, New Jersey, attacked the article, labeling the author a "bloodsucking, motherfucking nematode" and hailing M. Bayard Lowell as "the dark Jesus of twentieth-century American thought- all of you are just too fucking blocked and preternaturally dense to realize it, you asshole-fucking New York Jew revisionist Pharisees."

July: Completion of construction at Sanctum was announced by Lowell in the L.A. Times Book Review. The first crop of Sanctum fellows was introduced:

Christopher Graydon-Jones, 27, sculptor in iron and "found objects," Newcastle, England.

Denton Mellors, 28, former doctoral candidate in American Literature at Columbia University and critic for the Manhattan Book Review; "Mr. Mellors will complete work on his first novel, The Bride."

Joachim Sprentzel, 25, electronic music composer from Munich.

Terrence Gary Trafficant, 41, essayist and former inmate at the New Jersey State Prison at Rahway, where he had been serving a thirteen-year sentence for manslaughter.

Next day's paper cared only about Trafficant, describing how acceptance as a Sanctum Fellow had hastened the ex-con's parole and detailing Trafficant's criminal history: robbery, assault, narcotics use, attempted rape.

Jailed almost continuously since the age of seventeen, Lowell's protégé had earned a reputation as a combative prisoner. With the exception of a prison diary, he'd never produced anything remotely artistic. A photo showed him in his cell, tattooed hands gripping the bars: skinny and fair, with long, limp hair, bad teeth, sunken cheeks, a devilish goatee.

Questioned about the appropriateness of Trafficant's selection, Lowell said, "Terry is excruciatingly authentic on smooth-muscle issues of freedom and will. He's also an anarchist, and that will be an exhilarating influence."

Mid-August: Sanctum's opening was celebrated by an all-night party at the former nudist colony. Catering by Chef Sandor Nunez of Scones Restaurant, music by four rock bands and a contingent from the L.A. Philharmonic, ambience by M. Bayard Lowell "in a long white caftan, drinking and delivering monologues, surrounded by admirers."

Among the sighted guests: a psychology professor turned LSD high priest, an Arab arms dealer, a cosmetics tycoon, actors, directors, agents, producers, and a buzzing swarm of journalists.

Terry Trafficant was spotted holding forth to his own group of fans. His prison diary, From Hunger to Rage, had just been bought by Lowell's publisher. His editor called it "an intravenous shot of poison and beauty. One of the most important books to emerge this century."

The New York police lieutenant who'd arrested Trafficant on the manslaughter charge was quoted, too: "This guy is serious bad news. They might as well light a stick of dynamite and wait for it to blow."

The next few citations on Lowell turned out to be cross-referenced interviews with Trafficant. Describing himself as "Scum made good, an urban aborigine exploring a new world," the ex-con quoted from the classics, Marxist theory, and postwar avant-garde literature. When asked about his crimes, he said, "That's all dead and I'm not an undertaker." Crediting Buck Lowell for his freedom, he called his mentor "one of the four greatest men who ever lived, the other three being Jesus Christ, Krishnamurti, and Peter Kurten." When asked who Peter Kurten was, he said, "Look it up, Jack," and ended the interview.

The article went on to identify Kurten as a German mass murderer, nicknamed the Däusseldorf Monster, who'd sadistically raped and butchered dozens of men, women, and children between 1915 and 1930. Kurten had other quirks, too, enjoying coitus with a variety of farm animals and going to his execution hoping he could hear his own blood bubble at the precise moment of death.

When recontacted and asked how he could term that kind of thing "greatness," Trafficant replied, "It's all a matter of context, friend," and hung up.

A storm of outraged letters ensued. Several religious leaders condemned Lowell in their Sunday sermons. Lowell and Trafficant refused further interviews, and after a week or so the fuss died down. In May, From Hunger to Rage was published to uniformly strong reviews, went into a second printing, and made it to Number 10 on The New York Times best-seller list. A scheduled book tour for Trafficant was canceled, however, when the author didn't show up for an interview on a national morning talk show.

When questioned about Trafficant's whereabouts, Buck Lowell said, "Terry walked out on us a couple of weeks ago. Right after all the sturmdrang idiocy about Kurten. Words mean different things to a man like that. He was wounded deeply."

A sensitive soul? asked the reporter.

"It's all a matter of context," said Lowell.

Over the next two decades, coverage of Lowell diminished steadily, and by the end of the period nothing was left but a few doctoral theses, inflicting upon him that peculiar gleeful viciousness that passes for wit in the academic world. Command: Shed the Light went out of print, and no further books or paintings materialized. No mention at all of Terry Trafficant, though his book did go into paperback.

Checking out the gray volume, I drove home. When I passed Topanga Canyon, I wondered if the great man was still living there.