The Making of a Writer

by Gail Godwin

  85. Lawrence Durrell had originally published The Dark Labyrinth under the title Cefalù in 1947. “Cefalù” refers to a labyrinth of caves in which had dwelled the legendary Minotaur. Durrell’s characters go on an archaeological tour of the site and become trapped by a cave-in.

  86. On December 10, 1960, Godwin had married Douglas Kennedy in Miami.

  87. B. was Gail’s friend, beau, and mentor in Asheville, an attorney who kept her library and had power of attorney over such matters as the sale of her car.

  88. Some of Your Blood, Theodore Sturgeon’s novel about a soldier’s horrific obsession— revealed slowly by an army psychiatrist—was published in 1950.

  89. Robert Schumann’s virtuoso piano composition features several balletlike themes representing characters who elude and confound the tempo of a stately waltz.

  90. Det Lille Apotec (The Little Pharmacy), established in 1720, is the oldest restaurant in Copenhagen and had numbered among its regular guests Hans Christian Andersen. Among other things, it is famous for the prodigious amount of beer it serves.

  91. Among young intellectuals, Thomas Wolfe and J. D. Salinger were gods, equally revered, representing different stances. In The Web and the Rock (1939), Wolfe re-created his personal mythology to make it more of a social commentary, whereas Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1951) is antiheroic, its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, cast as an existentialist, beloved because of his irony and unself-conscious self-examination.

  92. Magasin du Nord, built in 1893, is Denmark’s oldest and most famous department store. The “Fat Boy” is Hartley, an acquaintance who sponged off other people.

  93. Eric and Martin are fictional characters based on Palle and Gaert. The story has been lost.

  94. Thomas Wolfe’s Of Time and the River, published in 1935, is a gargantuan novel, in which the hero casts himself as “young Faustus,” contends with the million faces of a city, pursues a love affair with a “Helen,” and ends up at a drink-fest and fight in Munich. The book is subtitled “A Legend of Man’s Hunger in His Youth.”

  95. Eugene Cole, father of Gail’s stepfather, Frank Cole, had been a classmate of Thomas Wolfe’s at Claxton Elementary School in Asheville.

  96. Godwin is echoing the opening movements of Justine. Durrell’s narrator removes himself to a Greek island in order to reconstruct the romance of his Alexandria and “rebuild the city in [his] brain,” whereas Godwin, having lived for a month in her most foreign city so far, is trying to “hear” it even as she is living it. Gail lived with the Høiaases from mid-November 1961 until January 20, 1962.

  97. Hygge means “companionability.”

  98. Til ikke-rygere means “No smoking.”

  99. Tivoli is a huge amusement park in the heart of Copenhagen. Established in 1843, it has grown to include Tivoli Gardens, rides, stage entertainments, and more.

  100. Christian IV ruled Denmark and Norway from 1588 to 1648. He is known as the Builder King. Fires and wars have eradicated most of Christian IV’s projects, but the Børsen (Stock Exchange), Rundetårn (Round Tower), and the Palace of Rosenborg survive, as do the medieval foundations of the streets.

  101. Strøget is a chain of five streets—a pedestrian mall—that emanates from the northern corner of the Tivoli and features shops, restaurants, and entertainments.

  102. Aarhus was Godwin’s fictional name, at this time, for the Høiaas family.

  103. “I had always intended to go to Spain,” Gail recalls, “to see the Goya at the Prado, to practice my advanced Spanish, which wasn’t quite as good as I’d thought, and to GET WARM before going to England.”

  104. The reference to Niels as the “mad youth” shows empathy and love as well as a distancing. Niels’s attractiveness had to do not only with his manliness but also with his being troubled. After his father’s death in a concentration camp, Niels had been left under the care and scrutiny of a stepfather.

  105. The book, the second volume in Durrell’s tetralogy, was delivered by the local bookshop in Klampenborg.

  106. “The Fog Horn” is the first story in Ray Bradbury’s collection The Golden Apples of the Sun.

  107. Gail had met Sven, a young man from a well-established family, at a party that one of her shipmates, Kamma Rode, had thrown for her.

  108. Two of Frowsy’s “explosives”—expletives—were called “For Satan” and “Satan’s Ass.”

  109. Copenhagen is famous for its cleanliness and its antipollution laws. Dinesen contracted syphilis from her husband in 1914, while she was in Africa. Doctors administered to her the then-current cures, which involved intake of mercury and arsenic. The effects of the cleansing medicines did her more harm than the disease.

  110. Frowsy had told Gail how the Danes had hated it when Danny Kaye lay down on Hans Christian Andersen’s bed.

  111. Hartley was the American whom Gail characterized as a “fat boy” as much for his spoiled behavior—he sponged on others despite having a good income—as for anything else.

  112. Klaus had traveled with Gail to Berlin in November.

  113. Gaert was lying down and he thought Gail was having too much fun with Palle and his friends in the next room. Gail was supposed to be his date, he had thought, and should have come and cheered him up.

  114. Gail’s room at the Høiaases’ was the former workroom of the late Mrs. Høiaas, a well-known Danish illustrator of magazine stories. Gail is noting down some of the contents of the room.

  115. Mrs. Høiaas’s art materials were behind this curtain.

  116. Gail had found a dictionary of nautical terms among Frowsy’s books, which he kept in his late mother’s room. She compiled a list of those terms that would be useful to her in writing her Halcyone story.

  117. Frowsy—aka Lars or Lasse—is wishing Gail a merry Christmas and naming two classic Danish works of humor. “Svikmollen” was a syndicated cartoon feature by the graphic artist and social commentator Haakon Hesselager, who was awarded Danish cartoonists’ and journalists’ highest honor in 1962. Blaeksprutten was an 1896 book of Danish wit, the cover of which featured a picture of dancing polar bears.

  118. When Gail’s mother and stepfather moved to the Beverly Apartments (see page 90), Gail would walk up the hill to sit on the bank of Memorial Mission Hospital and look across the Biltmore Avenue cut to the tower of St. Genevieve’s Preparatory School. She would hear the bell for prayers ring and feel connected to her teacher.

  119. Gail is inscribing lines that have to do with the passing of Arthur (from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, “The Passing of Arthur,” lines 407–417) from memory, evidently, for the actual poem reads:

  And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:

  “The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

  And God fulfills himself in many ways,

  Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

  Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?

  I have lived my life, and that which I have done

  May He within himself make pure! but thou,

  If thou shouldst never see my face again,

  Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer

  Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

  Rise like a fountain for me night and day.”

  120. The religious thought that Gail received from Mother Winters, her teacher and mentor at St. Genevieve’s Preparatory School in Asheville, merged with Gail’s literary and romantic thoughts.

  121. Stranahan Park in Fort Lauderdale was one of many neighborhood parks in the city that featured a variety of recreational facilities.

  122. Keith was the bureau chief in Fort Lauderdale who had given up on Gail.

  123. “I am very tired and my feet hurt.”

  124. From 1820 to 1824 Francisco Goya created a series of paintings that expressed his horror at the reign of terror perpetrated by Fernando VII, King of Spain. Saturn Devouring His Son is perhaps the most horrifying: placed against a purely black background, a naked
giant, his eyes wide with maddened lust, engorges himself with a half-devoured human figure.

  125. Torremolinos was a sleepy fishing village in the early 1960s, when it had begun to be developed as the first of the Costa del Sol resorts.

  126. The Slaters, old friends of Doug Kennedy, were visiting him for the first time since he had married Gail. They may have sensed his and Gail’s dissatisfaction with their marriage. The visit went so poorly, it precipitated Gail’s departure from the house.

  127. Bud Koster had been Gail’s neighbor when she was married to Kennedy. Discussing personal and marital callings, Koster had confessed he’d once considered running away to Tahiti, as the artist Paul Gauguin had done.

  128. The Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco, is composed of ten islands, which fall into two provinces, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas. Las Palmas is also the name of the capital of the Las Palmas province. It is located on the island Gran Canaria, and should not be confused with La Palma, an island in the Santa Cruz de Tenerife province.

  129. Gail had stopped in Seville before going to the Canaries. It was a short hop. The next day, she reflects on her highlights tour while ensconced in Las Palmas. The Giralda and the Palacio del Reyes are famous landmarks in Seville, the Giralda tower being a twelfth-century Moorish minaret, and the Alcázar Palace, built in 913, the home of many kings.

  130. The hotel manager—the “little manager”—was planning on taking Gail to the island of Fuerteventura, whose southern part forms the Peninsula de Jandia, known for its miles of golden sand. Fuerteventura lies fifty miles to the east of Gran Canaria.

  131. La Llegado un Ángel ( An Angel Has Arrived) was a new, feature-length Spanish musical comedy about an orphaned girl who moves in with her uncle’s troubled family and lifts their spirits.

  132. Gran Canaria is a volcanic island and features mountainous terrain. Teror sits on a plateau a third of a mile above sea level. After the island had been colonized by Christopher Columbus, Teror developed as a cattle center. The big church, Our Lady of the Pine Basilica, is located on a site where locals had experienced a visitation by the Virgin Mary.

  133. Arucas is on the northwest coast of Gran Canaria at the foot of the volcano.

  134. Gail says of that time that she was tempted to accept Antonio Ramirez-Suarez’s offer. “He was upbeat,” she acknowledges. “He had said to me, ‘You’re twenty-five years old— it’s a good offer!’” Although her ambition to be a writer had drawn her away from Antonio, she admits, “If I hadn’t had all that studying, he wouldn’t have wanted me. There haven’t been many people in my life who learned who I was quickly, as he had. Then we had to withdraw. It was hard.” Years later, Gail would attach Antonio Ramirez-Suarez’s name to the hotel manager in The Perfectionists and the courtly professor in The Good Husband.

  135. Mr. Wilmot was staying at Hostal Concha for a while. Gail had in hand Aldous Huxley’s novels Chrome Yellow and Point Counter Point (noted February 20), which drew their inspiration from the conversations and interaction of eccentric, seasonally migratory guests at boardinghouses.

  136. Varon Dandy is a fancy Spanish cologne for men.

  137. El día de los queridos is “the day of the lovers,” or Valentine’s Day.

  138. Alberto Moravia, the Italian fiction writer most famous for his 1957 novel Two Women (made into a movie starring Sophia Loren in 1961), published The Wayward Wife and Other Stories in 1960. In the short stories that Gail was reading, characters find themselves in two settings: the vestiges of aristocracy, in which the lowborn seek the luxury of the high, and all are soulless; and an industrialized, consumerist society, in which participants lose the ability to communicate.

  139. Point Counter Point, published in 1928, represents Huxley’s attempt to place his characters’ preoccupations and ideas into a musical design.

  140. Gail describes Mr. Wilmot as a crazy old man. One day, she recalls, he went wild and threw pots down from his balcony, smashing them. The “forth-coming immigrant” to whom he alludes is himself as a newborn; he had evidently not done so well by his “hostess,” that is, his mother.

  141. Rosenbaum was another guest at Hostal Concha. Gail describes him as having been a cynical, saturnine Englishman of her age. He took walks with Gail and offered constructive criticism.

  142. The exact quote is, “Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”

  143. For one year, 1952–1953, Gail had lived in Anderson, South Carolina, where her stepfather, Frank Cole, had taken a job. She attended a girls’ public high school and made many friends. Thinking back to that time, she recalls how she had passed as one of the girls, and she wonders where her peers’ life choices have taken them. “It was the first time I had gone to public high school,” Gail reflects again in 2004, “and I was elected vice president of the class and was extremely popular. I spent the last two months living with the Calhouns, as Frank had gotten transferred again to Norfolk. Mary Calhoun had been my best friend.” Despite their friendliness, the Calhouns’ social status—they had a butler and maids who helped Mrs. Calhoun manage her mansion—caused Gail to feel self-conscious about her limited economic background.

  144. Las Canteras is an attractive beach in Las Palmas along which runs a promenade.

  145. “Mrs. Exeter” referred to the icon for “outfits for the more mature woman, with a blue-haired lady modeling the fashion,” as Vogue photographer Helmut Newton put it.

  146. Roth’s “Very Happy Poems” was published in the January 1962 issue of Esquire. It tells the story of a woman who falls apart when questioned by a Jewish Children’s League representative investigating her and her husband’s application to adopt a child. Her inability to know herself apart from what she imagines people’s opinions of her are is her downfall.

  147. Marcia Davenport, daughter of opera singer Alma Gluck, inaugurated her writing career in 1932, at age twenty-nine, with a biography of Mozart. She subsequently wrote five novels, including her best known, Of Lena Geyer. The Constant Image, published in 1960, enfolds a love story with many pages of observations about Milan.

  148. Lisa was an early choice for the name of the heroine of Godwin’s unpublished novel “Gull Key.” Gail eventually named the heroine Bentley.

  149. Moravia’s novella “The Wayward Wife,” which Gail had just read, provides one of the variations on the unhappy-wife story. The story has gothic, class-conscious, fairy-tale similarities to Isak Dinesen’s “The Caryatids.”

  150. The manuscript for the unpublished novel “Gull Key” is part of the Gail Godwin Papers, held by the Manuscripts Department of the Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  151. Gail’s lodgings at 31 Tregunter Road were at what she called a “good” address in a letter to her mother. “Douglas Fairbanks Jr. lives across the street,” she noted.

  152. Luther, John Osborne’s play about Martin Luther and the glories and failures of the Catholic Church, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London, July 27, 1961, with Albert Finney playing the lead.

  153. A Long and Happy Life was twenty-nine-year-old Reynolds Price’s debut novel. Price shared Godwin’s North Carolina home soil (although his was in the piedmont, not the mountains). A Long and Happy Life portrays a country girl trapped in a marriage to an unsuitable mate, who had impregnated her.

  154. In order to connect herself to an important inspiration, Gail splurges on a Ronald Searle drawing of a Durrell character.

  155. The Prospect of Whitby pub is located on the Thames River in a building constructed in the 1520s. Nautical features and bric-a-brac overwhelm the décor, which also boasts references to famous patrons (such as Charles Dickens) and public hangings.

  156. The Wests had just received word from their landlord, Michael Heseltine, that he wanted to remodel his houses, leaving the Wests and their family of tenants with one month to vacate. Thus began the Wests’ search for a
nother “youth brothel.” Heseltine was just beginning to chart his career as a controversial Conservative politician and urban renewer. He eventually rose to the position of deputy prime minister, but his greatest success ended up being in publishing (with Haymarket Group), by which he became a multimillionaire.

  157. Gail’s bed ran parallel to a double window, which practically embraced the bed. When she sat on it at her worktable, her back was to the sun.

  158. One of Gail’s jobs was to answer letters from English people planning trips to the United States. At the beginning, there were a lot of ads for the U.S. Travel Service, and a huge volume of mail—maybe seventy queries a day.

  159. WH and AF were two men whom Gail had known and whom she’d thought were inherently unavailable as partners.

  160. James Montgomerie was a thirty-eight-year-old barrister with the Rank Organisation on his way to becoming a vice president. He had been very kind toward Gail and protective of her.

  161. At Gail’s encouragement, Colonel West had begun writing his memoirs. He had received a DSO in World War II for blowing up a Greek train.

  162. Frank Crowther, a friend from Chapel Hill, had been at the U.S. Travel Service in Washington.

  163. James also was writing stories and plays, but had had no luck publishing.

  164. Pictures at an Exhibition is Modest Mussorgsky’s famous piano composition that connects musical interpretations of artworks by Victor A. Hartmann with a promenade theme.

  165. William was James’s roommate.

  166. The Rank Organisation, founded in the 1930s, grew to monopolize the British film industry through its ownership of studios and movie theaters. In 1956, it branched out, through a venture with Xerox, into the manufacture of business machines, and then into the development of hotels and vacation centers.

  167. Blitz! opened at the Adelphi Theatre on May 8, 1962. It was a musical about Jewish and Protestant stall owners at an East End market. Their children fall in love during World War II—as bombs are hitting London.