You might be surprised to learn that the fabled “life of the mind” that comes with a Ph.D. in literature isn’t restricted to all the scholarly stuff you probably imagine. While I was on the faculty at the University of Oklahoma, I quickly discovered that there were various committee responsibilities, as well. My favorite and, as time has proven, most rewarding duty at OU was serving on the committee that managed the Contemporary Authors Series which, as the name implies, brought mostly living authors to campus to perform before and meet with students and faculty. Steven King came, I remember, although I didn’t teach his work and have never read any of it, and Susan Brownmiller, and Arnost Lustig, and Tillie Olsen. And so did Nora Ephron whom I had read and whose work Crazy Salad I did include in a class. Unfairly, certainly, I disliked Ms. Ephron personally so much that I have never again knowingly read anything she’s written. It’s a commonplace, I think, that there is a real danger in meeting and visiting with someone whose work one admires. Just because an individual possesses the skills and talent to capture one’s imagination and make immeasurable impact on one’s thinking does not mean that that skillful and talented person will be pleasant or likeable or engaging to any degree. It’s hard, sometimes, to separate the artist from the art.
On the other hand, it was through that same Series that I first met and was fortunate enough to establish long and rewarding relationships with authors among whom I longed to run. Among them Leslie Marmon Silko, who at the time had just received a McArthur genius grant; Pulitzer Prize recipient N. Scott Momaday, who had been the commencement speaker at the University of New Mexico in 1975 when I received my doctorate and whose beautiful, booming voice has never left my head; Larry McMurtry, who was just then, he told me, working on a novel about two former Texas Rangers who were driving cattle from Texas to Montana, Lonesome Dove, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986; and, most notably, Larry L. King, whose smash Broadway musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas had only recently closed after four years or, to be precise, 1,578 performances on the Great White Way.
In the summer of 1981 I was spending most of my time doing the regular kind of college professor stuff: Drinking beer in the outdoor garden of some Campus Corner burger joint, attending chile cook-offs, and watching rugby matches. A handsome graduate student was my companion that summer and when she made noises about doing something a little more more cultural I scored us two tickets to see an Oklahoma City road production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. I’d read some of Larry King’s works and figured it would surely be less painful than, say, watching a company of tutu-clad toe-dancers twirl about a stage or trying to stay awake during a fiddle recital.
I was right. The play was marvelous and funny and I purchased the vinyl recording of the music the very next day and had soon committed all the tunes to memory. I confess that I raised a few Oklahoma eyebrows with my incessant talk of Broadway show tunes at first, but I was secure enough in my manly demeanor not to let the occasional rude remark deter me all that much.
When classes started and those of us on the Contemporary Authors Series began to meet to discuss whom to invite that year, I was quick to suggest Larry L. King. Once I got across to the couple of pointy heads on the committee that I was not suggesting the suspendered radio talk-show host of the same name (minus the middle initial), I was roundly discouraged from pursuing King on account of even if they hadn’t seen the play, other committee members knew about Whorehouse and figured that its author would be too “hot” for OU and that getting him to come and pontificate about his well-known success would likely use up all the monies that had been allocated for the Series. When I persisted with fairly impassioned tales of King’s long-standing successes in journalism and the usefulness and appreciation for his short pieces among student writers, I was finally given the green light to approach him with the understanding that we couldn’t blow our budget.
I decided the stodgy, scholarly approach was probably not what I needed for a man who wrote unabashedly about his own drinking and carousing and dope-smoking while peppering his prose with rude and colorful expletives.
On November 14, 1981, I wrote to King in-care-of his publisher in New York. The following is taken from that letter:
Dear Mr. King:
From the time I first “found” you in Texas Monthly and went on to other of your articles and collections, I have been a great admirer of your work. I enjoyed tremendously the stage production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas when it came to Oklahoma City this past summer (so much so, in fact, that my shower-stall renditions of “Twenty Fans Were Turnin’” and “Hard Candy Christmas” have reached the state of near-legend in my home—if not in my neighborhood). I require my students of Southwest Literature and composition to read, discuss and write about selections from Of Outlaws, Con-Men, Whores, Politicians and Other Artists. A number of other faculty and certainly many students here are very interested in your work, and all of us would be eager to have you visit our campus sometime this year . . .
. . . we are particularly interested in your visit because much of your work is informed by this region. Oklahoma students sometimes see themselves as outside the mainstream of American culture—as though art, culture and literature take place elsewhere. We believe your work is powerful testimony to the contrary . . . .
Very truly yours,
Ron Querry
King’s hand-written response, dated November 24, 1981, follows:
Dear Doctor/Professor and/or Chairman Querry:
Thanks for your good letter. I’m pleased and flattered by everything you say and am particularly gratified that you inflict my work on your helpless students. I did the same thing myself when I taught.
I’d truly like to accept your invitation to come to O.U. at a later date. Right now I’m up to my ass in complications—moving into a new home next week & settling in, facing holidays and familys and a work schedule that would discourage a coal miner. How about the spring? I can’t see my way clear before then. If that suffices, drop a line to my soon-to-be new address . . . and suggest a date. I’ll be doing a book tour in Texas in March or April, and if we can work it around that trip it would be easier on me and better for your pocketbook. I hesitate to name a fee—I’ve spoken for as much as $3,000 and for as little as $300; on the average I try for about $1,000 and expenses—especially if it’s an overnight and involves meeting a class as well as the main speech. If that’s in the ball park, let me know.
Best,
Larry L. King
King’s visit was set for April 1-2, 1982. In the meantime, I read everything I could find by and about the man. I encouraged fellow faculty to use his essays in their courses. I tried, that is, to create a buzz about the event.
I also underwent surgery for a couple of herniated discs.
In fact, I was in St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City up until the day before King was to arrive. While in hospital, I had seen the then-current issue of People Magazine—not something I would likely have seen had it not been for the cheerful Candy Stripe Volunteer who stopped by my room and offered newspapers and magazines. My recollection of that issue puts Larry L. King on the cover. It may not have been the cover, but there was an article about him in the issue illustrated with a good photograph of King in jeans and a vest and a cowboy hat. He was smoking a cigarette.
The thing I most remember about the article is that King made a big point of bragging how, at the insistence of his wife, he’d been to a Maryland de-tox program because of his excessive drinking—“Whiskey School” he called it. Understand, I had never personally met the man, but I had read his essays and a truckload of his letters and I knew that King was never one to shy away from the fact that he enjoyed strong drink. It was less than a week until he was to arrive on campus and I had arranged everything—dinners, parties, lunches—to include plenty of alcohol. I wanted to make King feel at home, and now I was reading that he was imbibing only iced tea and Donald Duck orange juice. Luckily, there was a telephone in my hospital room and Norman was considered a local call.
I frantically called everyone involved. I told them what I’d learned and insisted that we had to hide all the hard stuff and serve up nothing but soft drinks and iced tea. I did not want to be responsible for any celebrity back-sliding on my watch.
On the other hand, it was through that same Series that I first met and was fortunate enough to establish long and rewarding relationships with authors among whom I longed to run. Among them Leslie Marmon Silko, who at the time had just received a McArthur genius grant; Pulitzer Prize recipient N. Scott Momaday, who had been the commencement speaker at the University of New Mexico in 1975 when I received my doctorate and whose beautiful, booming voice has never left my head; Larry McMurtry, who was just then, he told me, working on a novel about two former Texas Rangers who were driving cattle from Texas to Montana, Lonesome Dove, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986; and, most notably, Larry L. King, whose smash Broadway musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas had only recently closed after four years or, to be precise, 1,578 performances on the Great White Way.
In the summer of 1981 I was spending most of my time doing the regular kind of college professor stuff: Drinking beer in the outdoor garden of some Campus Corner burger joint, attending chile cook-offs, and watching rugby matches. A handsome graduate student was my companion that summer and when she made noises about doing something a little more more cultural I scored us two tickets to see an Oklahoma City road production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. I’d read some of Larry King’s works and figured it would surely be less painful than, say, watching a company of tutu-clad toe-dancers twirl about a stage or trying to stay awake during a fiddle recital.
I was right. The play was marvelous and funny and I purchased the vinyl recording of the music the very next day and had soon committed all the tunes to memory. I confess that I raised a few Oklahoma eyebrows with my incessant talk of Broadway show tunes at first, but I was secure enough in my manly demeanor not to let the occasional rude remark deter me all that much.
When classes started and those of us on the Contemporary Authors Series began to meet to discuss whom to invite that year, I was quick to suggest Larry L. King. Once I got across to the couple of pointy heads on the committee that I was not suggesting the suspendered radio talk-show host of the same name (minus the middle initial), I was roundly discouraged from pursuing King on account of even if they hadn’t seen the play, other committee members knew about Whorehouse and figured that its author would be too “hot” for OU and that getting him to come and pontificate about his well-known success would likely use up all the monies that had been allocated for the Series. When I persisted with fairly impassioned tales of King’s long-standing successes in journalism and the usefulness and appreciation for his short pieces among student writers, I was finally given the green light to approach him with the understanding that we couldn’t blow our budget.
I decided the stodgy, scholarly approach was probably not what I needed for a man who wrote unabashedly about his own drinking and carousing and dope-smoking while peppering his prose with rude and colorful expletives.
On November 14, 1981, I wrote to King in-care-of his publisher in New York. The following is taken from that letter:
Dear Mr. King:
From the time I first “found” you in Texas Monthly and went on to other of your articles and collections, I have been a great admirer of your work. I enjoyed tremendously the stage production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas when it came to Oklahoma City this past summer (so much so, in fact, that my shower-stall renditions of “Twenty Fans Were Turnin’” and “Hard Candy Christmas” have reached the state of near-legend in my home—if not in my neighborhood). I require my students of Southwest Literature and composition to read, discuss and write about selections from Of Outlaws, Con-Men, Whores, Politicians and Other Artists. A number of other faculty and certainly many students here are very interested in your work, and all of us would be eager to have you visit our campus sometime this year . . .
. . . we are particularly interested in your visit because much of your work is informed by this region. Oklahoma students sometimes see themselves as outside the mainstream of American culture—as though art, culture and literature take place elsewhere. We believe your work is powerful testimony to the contrary . . . .
Very truly yours,
Ron Querry
King’s hand-written response, dated November 24, 1981, follows:
Dear Doctor/Professor and/or Chairman Querry:
Thanks for your good letter. I’m pleased and flattered by everything you say and am particularly gratified that you inflict my work on your helpless students. I did the same thing myself when I taught.
I’d truly like to accept your invitation to come to O.U. at a later date. Right now I’m up to my ass in complications—moving into a new home next week & settling in, facing holidays and familys and a work schedule that would discourage a coal miner. How about the spring? I can’t see my way clear before then. If that suffices, drop a line to my soon-to-be new address . . . and suggest a date. I’ll be doing a book tour in Texas in March or April, and if we can work it around that trip it would be easier on me and better for your pocketbook. I hesitate to name a fee—I’ve spoken for as much as $3,000 and for as little as $300; on the average I try for about $1,000 and expenses—especially if it’s an overnight and involves meeting a class as well as the main speech. If that’s in the ball park, let me know.
Best,
Larry L. King
King’s visit was set for April 1-2, 1982. In the meantime, I read everything I could find by and about the man. I encouraged fellow faculty to use his essays in their courses. I tried, that is, to create a buzz about the event.
I also underwent surgery for a couple of herniated discs.
In fact, I was in St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City up until the day before King was to arrive. While in hospital, I had seen the then-current issue of People Magazine—not something I would likely have seen had it not been for the cheerful Candy Stripe Volunteer who stopped by my room and offered newspapers and magazines. My recollection of that issue puts Larry L. King on the cover. It may not have been the cover, but there was an article about him in the issue illustrated with a good photograph of King in jeans and a vest and a cowboy hat. He was smoking a cigarette.
The thing I most remember about the article is that King made a big point of bragging how, at the insistence of his wife, he’d been to a Maryland de-tox program because of his excessive drinking—“Whiskey School” he called it. Understand, I had never personally met the man, but I had read his essays and a truckload of his letters and I knew that King was never one to shy away from the fact that he enjoyed strong drink. It was less than a week until he was to arrive on campus and I had arranged everything—dinners, parties, lunches—to include plenty of alcohol. I wanted to make King feel at home, and now I was reading that he was imbibing only iced tea and Donald Duck orange juice. Luckily, there was a telephone in my hospital room and Norman was considered a local call.
I frantically called everyone involved. I told them what I’d learned and insisted that we had to hide all the hard stuff and serve up nothing but soft drinks and iced tea. I did not want to be responsible for any celebrity back-sliding on my watch.
