Being a Writer in Iowa City

Editor’s Note: This is a draft of the opening chapter of Part II of my memoir. Its purpose is to introduce some major themes in the narrative and stand alone as a story. It is also a work in progress. I removed the full names of people I know for this post.

After my post-master’s degree tour of racism in America, I stayed in Iowa City. The reasons were not complicated.

I had to decide whether to be in a relationship with someone, and Iowa City was a regional social hub offering a large pool of potential friends and mates. The rest of the state seemed a primitive agricultural landscape, desolate and barren of intellectual engagement. As a young Iowan possessing two degrees, and aspiration to do better than merely survive, of course I chose to live in Iowa City.

Iowa City seemed an excellent place for a writer. It offered a broad intellectual life, not to mention, was the home of multiple writers’ workshops and groups. I expected to find other writers of varied skills, along with what it took to support a writing community. Nowhere else in Iowa could I find that.

In the pre-internet days, relationships were in person or they were difficult. A long-distance relationship involved telephone calls, letters, and the occasional audio cassette. We made our life where we lived and it took a year for me to discover what was in Iowa City and what was possible. The year beginning in summer 1981, became my year of being a writer.

I knew how to live in Iowa City as a writer. Writers came and went at the shared house on Gilbert Court during my undergraduate studies. The pattern was simple. Find a place to live and write, find income and resources to pay bills, and then go on living with a view toward producing poetry or prose. It was no different when I finished graduate school.

When I moved out of JG’s basement, I found a small apartment with a kitchen in a divided single-family dwelling. My apartment search benefited from most students being out of town on summer break.

On a pre-rental tour, a tenant still lived there. I deduced she was a writer of some kind. “A writer’s workshop type,” I noted. She had photographs of writers on the walls, and many books by workshop alumni in a living room pier cabinet. My quick analysis of her book shelves was she displayed the kinds of books I avoided. My future landlady had had a run in with her and described her as “a little backward.” I didn’t care that much about the drama. I was ready to move in and get started with the next iteration of my life.

The second-floor apartment at 721 Market Street had six windows. It helped me feel more in touch with the world after living in a windowless basement. It literally gave me perspective on quotidian affairs on the street. I felt included with events going on around me in the vibrant county seat. I also felt power in the old part of the city. It took me two days to settle in.

If I had an idea about being an Iowa City writer, it was modeled on John Irving’s time there in the 1960s and ‘70s. He began his first book, Setting Free the Bears, as part of his Master of Fine Arts thesis at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. His second book, The Water-Method Man, was set in Iowa City and contained settings one can easily recognize. I carried this model of Irving with me throughout my life. Eventually, John Irving displaced Joan Didion as my favorite writer, although that will be much later in this story. I read The World According to Garp while living on Market Street.

More than anything, I sought to define my writing life as unique in a society of sameness. I had no intention of applying to the Writer’s Workshop, carrying a bit of residual skepticism about it from my days living with Pat Dooley, Darrell Gray, Pat O’Donnell, and other Actualist writers and artists I met in 1973 and ‘74. Gray described his time at the workshop as a “two years of duty on the U.S.S. Prairie Schooner which houses the Famous Poets School, a singularly enigmatic vessel that always seems on the verge of ‘going somewhere.’” I sought to enable my native, if somewhat naive impulses and culture. I hoped to discover what that meant, yet not in the context of the writers’ workshop.

I had three main accomplishments during 1981. By describing myself as a “non-academic Americanist,” I hoped to distance myself from formal structures of creativity. If I didn’t produce much writing beyond my journal, I neither wanted to be pinned down by ideas of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or other categories of writing. As I read an 1855 facsimile edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, I felt I could embrace Whitman, who wrote, “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” I felt just below the roof line at the Market Street apartment because I was.

In furtherance of putting my recent life in the past, I culled writings from my archives and produced a self-published book Institutional Writings. It was intended to be about the bonds that connect us to our common humanity yet it was more than that. It represented work I had done in institutional settings and was also my departure from institutions to seek a new creative path. I printed and distributed about a dozen copies to friends and family.

Finally, after settling in and suffering what I described in my journal as depression, I pieced together a life and was filled with the desire to do things. Throughout this year, old and new friends were supportive of what I sought to do, even if none of us fully understood it.

From a logistics viewpoint, the pieces were coming together. What I realized now, and didn’t then, was I needed something to write about. That gap made it difficult to get words down on paper in the time with most of my future ahead of me.

I kept a journal that recorded movies I saw, books read, and people I encountered. I described parts of my search for paid work. That journal was the primary work-product of the period from May 1981 until July 1982.

It was my time to be a writer, especially after I moved to my own apartment. The need to pay bills to support my new lifestyle emerged as a dominant force. Work was available. The money I banked in the military would eventually run out, so I needed income to pay monthly bills. I had no idea of supporting myself beyond the next rent payment. I could live paycheck to paycheck indefinitely, working a job that would leave enough energy each day for writing. The chance of long-term employment with decent benefits had already begun to fade from American society as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president that year.

I looked for work that would pay bills to stay in Johnson County. It was tough to find work after graduate school, mostly because I hadn’t looked for any job since I enlisted in the military in 1975. I made a conscious decision to stop moving from place to place, from activity to activity, and settle down. I began the job search with what I knew. Buying every local newspaper, I marked each job in the help wanted pages with an “X” after contacting the company. The work environment had changed from a decade previously when all a person had to do was make the rounds of major employers to find a good paying, union job. No more.

My application for work got extra points for consideration at the university because of my military service. That led to more job offers. In July 1981 I took a job as a clerk at the College of Dentistry because it was offered. At the University of Iowa there was a small retirement plan, no pension, and no health benefits. The income resolved my immediate needs.

About a month later, on Aug. 3, 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) went on strike. President Ronald Reagan ordered them back to work and on Aug. 5, he fired 11,345 workers who did not cross the picket line, breaking, and ultimately decertifying the union. While on a later business trip to Philadelphia, I met one of Reagan’s attorneys in the PATCO action. We discussed the strike and Reagan’s handling of these government employees. My understanding of the action was confirmed. It was political.

What started in 1981 with the PATCO strike continues, without apology, as part of Reagan’s legacy of breaking unions. The unintended and maybe less considered consequence of Reagan’s union policy was to make life harder for middle class workers like me.

Beginning that July, I had a year to see if I could be a writer.

During my young life, several residences stood out as hubs of personal creativity: my apartment on Mississippi Avenue in Davenport, my bachelor officer quarters in Mainz, Germany, and my apartment at Five Points in Davenport. The apartment on Market Street in Iowa City was my last stand in creative endeavor. The coming year would either make or break my effort to write a book. During that time, I acclimatized to living in Iowa City and did many things. Starting a book was not one of them.

One of JG’s friends was MAM, a nurse who was studying printmaking at the University of Iowa College of Art. She maintained an apartment not far from Market Street. During that year, I felt welcomed to stop by after a run or enroute somewhere else. She and her artist friends provided an ad hoc forum to discuss creative ideas. I got several ideas about how to live and be creative in Iowa City from her. While I wanted more than a creative dialogue with her, I accepted the relationship for what it was and moved forward. I repeated this familiar pattern with other female artists I had known.

MAM encouraged me to purchase a bicycle, which I did. I bought a Puch Cavalier, one of the last of their bicycles made in Austria. She would give me maps of places to ride, including a route south through Sharon Center. I rode a lot, and eventually rode a century organized by the Bicyclists of Iowa City. The two of us met at the finish line and had something to eat at the Sanctuary Pub afterward.

The Century was the first time I experienced glycogen burn-out. My legs were shaking so badly, I didn’t know what to do. I stopped and rested at the side of the road until the shaking abated. I slowly made my way, first walking, and then riding, to the next rest stop where I ate fresh fruit to replenish my glucose supply. I spent a lot of time on my bicycle, mostly riding by myself.

MAM also encouraged me to keep running, which I did… for long distances. I would run out Prairie du Chien Road to the Coralville Reservoir and back. There was only so much to do in my apartment, so exercise helped me be constructive and feel stronger. That summer I ran the Bix 7 in Davenport, a road race that attracted international participants during the Bix Beiderbecke jazz festival weekend. Some of my Iowa City artistic friends, including MAM, came along to make it a fun day.

When I began work at the Dental College, I met a new group of people. Occasionally we got together and did things like seeing the movies Return of the Secaucus 7 and Gallipoli. Because we got to know each other at work, social activities seemed to fit. Mostly, though, we had one-on-one relationships.

MC worked in the records department in the lower level of the Dental Science Building. She followed her husband from Ohio to Iowa where he worked on his graduate degree in art. During my breaks I would often hang out with her. Eventually I helped her make a Super 8 film called “One Hundred Years in Iowa City.” In addition to exposing film for the project, we had many meet ups and conversations about cinema as an art form. We took advantage of Iowa City’s vibrant film scene. Our friendship was valuable to my creative life.

I continued to play music with JP who I met in graduate school. JP and MP were from California. MP worked at the Cancer Registry while he finished his master’s degree. They expressed a self-defined idea of being Californians. He was a fan of Stan Rogers and played many of his songs. From time to time, he would play at the Mill Restaurant Open Mike. We often played together. He was more talented at guitar-playing and singing than I.

My high school friends and former college roommates DB and DC were constantly in each other’s orbits through letters, telephone calls, and in-person visits. Both of them visited me in Iowa City, and DC brought his spouse TC. We continued our practice of talking about creative matters then, and for many additional years. My military friend from Mainz, LP, sent me an audio cassette in which he admonished me to re-join the military. I did not. Apparently, I was complaining about a lack of female companionship to my high school friend GG. During a phone call, he passed along the advice to “just fall in love.” Communication with old friends was constant during my time on Market Street. I didn’t always take their advice.

There were plenty of significant events in Iowa City. I heard Toni Morrison read at Old Brick, Chaim Potok at the Iowa Memorial Union, and James Laughlin, founding publisher of New Directions, at the Lindquist Center. The Morisson event was notable for a bat circling above the author as she read. I noted the Potok lecture was almost identical to the one he gave in 1975 when I lived on Mississippi Avenue in Davenport. I wrote in my journal about a Laughlin event:

On James Laughlin: Tonight in deteriorating body the consciousness that went in and out of the lives of so many of the 20^th Century’s “great” writers lectured on William Carlos Williams. Full of memories, reading poems from a text prepared by many, he spoke of his view of Williams. He read poems and almost came to tears. And this is what remains of those like Williams. The stories of a friend who has survived, to tell of poems and flowers and love, engaged in humanity. (Personal Journal, Iowa City, Iowa, April 22, 1982).

I saw one or two films each week that year. I had been deprived of most films while serving in the military. I wasn’t sure what they meant to me, other than another form of intellectual engagement in which to find nourishment. The New German Cinema was in vogue in Iowa City. I saw several films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder who died on June 10, 1982, of a drug overdose/suicide. His work had a lasting impact on me.

A writer must eat. My journal includes an early discussion of gardening and cooking. I lived within walking distance of the HyVee Grocery Store on North Dodge Street and John’s Grocery at Market and Linn Streets. I became more aware of buying ingredients for cooking. Among the dishes I described in my journal were soup, chili, souffle, and Sergeant Juan San Miguel’s hot sauce. I wrote about the importance of growing my own food as soon as I had sufficient resources to buy a house on a plot big enough for a vegetable garden. I enjoyed cooking.

In the kitchen – I’ve got a pot of bean soup cooking, a cultural heritage to be sure, a family tradition, a piece of ethnicity. I’ll enjoy cooking and eating that soup and really, this gives me a lot of satisfaction – cooking. But I have little desire to make a living or an income from my interest in cooking. It is a source of satisfaction, yet I like doing it here in the privacy of my kitchen, where I’m busy writing and thinking. (Personal Journal, Iowa City, Iowa Jan. 10, 1982).

Cooking was part of living a good life. I believed cooking and eating was not for mere nourishment. We created a meal of each repast, seeking to please our palate, and soothe our souls. Contentment with our diet is equated to soothing our souls. “Before we commence anything else, we must first of all get our kitchens in order,” I wrote.

“If I could but learn to cook chicken well, I believe my troubles would be over.” (Personal Journal, Iowa City, Iowa, March 21, 1982).

In May 1982 I went on an extended weekend getaway to Northeast Iowa. I stayed at the Guttenberg Inn and visited Galena, the Vinegar Hill Lead Mine, Harper’s Ferry, Gays Mills, Wisconsin, and other places. I remember a walk I took from the motel to town on May 13:

I walked down the hill to town, along the river and through town – I noticed people in their homes, shades up, in the kitchen, or watching television. How it distresses me to see those televisions going. I admit I like to watch certain T.V. shows, but the engagement of a Thursday night: Television – ugh! Here, as in so many other things, this national, institutionalized force captivates the people. They seem to have no will of their own.

In their tidy houses, with well-trimmed lawns, and groomed gardens, life goes on, but there is something missing here. (Personal Journal, Guttenberg, Iowa, May 13, 1982.)

The time alone in Northwest Iowa served me well. I had to make something better from my life.

On April 16, 1982, President Ronald Reagan issued a proclamation that designated Memorial Day, May 31, 1982, as a day of prayer for permanent peace. Beginning at 11 a.m. local time, Americans were to unite in prayer. I don’t recall participating in this event. That weekend I did write at length about being a writer when I returned to Iowa City.

Shall I go on writing? There are so many things in the world to be done, yet I go on writing.

I think a majority of people in my generation would “like to be a writer.” That is, they would like to deal with images. But a writer cannot deal solely with images. He must address the realities of his and all the people’s situation. The writer must be socialized into the culture of which he writes. As a member of a culture, a writer has a vested interest in his culture. He seeks the continuance and survival of the vital elements of his culture.

Too, he seeks change. Not only change that is the essence of a day’s spontaneity but change in terms of his conception of both the past and the present. Although a person can have misconceptions about the nature of the world, the meaning of the world, he is required to act based on this knowledge.

In every case, this is far less than a science of action. In fact, the notion of science we share is obsolete. There is science only insofar as we can all agree on what that is.

But shall I go on writing? Yes, at least in the pages of this journal. For it is one of the things that has sustained me for so long I cannot give it up yet. Nor shall I. Yes. I will go on writing. I’ll fill the pages of this and many another book like it. For this is the path I’ve chosen. (Personal Journal, Iowa City, Iowa, May 30, 1982.)

Though committed to writing, the journal posts ended abruptly after the July 11, 1982, entry. JC and I began dating and became more than work acquaintances.