by John Irving
One day in January of '95 I was making a nuisance of myself in my wife's office; I was aimlessly bothering Janet and her assistant -- poking my nose into the pile of manuscripts that are always waiting to be read in the office of a literary agent. The stitches had only recently been removed from my shoulder and I had just begun the requisite physical therapy; I was still wearing a sling, and I was bored.
Janet doesn't like it when I hang around her office. "Why don't you get out of here?" she said. "Go write a novel."
Summoning my most self-pitying voice, I said, "I can't write a novel with one arm and four hours a day of rehabilitation."
"Then go write a memoir, or something," Janet said. "Just get out of here."
My goal was to write an autobiography of 100 pages in four months. It took five months, and the finished manuscript was 101 pages -- not counting the photographs.
And so the winter of '95 was one of recovery (April counts as a winter month in Vermont). I would see the physical therapist first thing in the morning; she would "manipulate" my shoulder and prescribe the stretching exercises and the weight lifting that she wanted me to do in the afternoon. I would write my memoir in the middle of the day; in the late afternoon or early evening I would go to my wrestling room and follow the orders of the physical therapist.
To explain "my" wrestling room -- it is about 25 feet from my office in the Vermont house. (Between the office and the wrestling room is a small locker room: a toilet, three sinks, two showers, a sauna.) My wrestling mat is equivalent to the in-bounds area of a regulation mat. About a dozen jump ropes, of varying lengths, hang from pegs at one end of the room; at the other end is an area for weight lifting -- a couple of weight benches and two racks of free weights. There's also a stationary bike and a treadmill, and lots of shelves for knee pads, elbow pads, head gear, spools of tape -- and about a dozen pairs of wrestling shoes, in a somewhat limited range of sizes. (Brendan's feet are only a little bigger than mine; Colin's are only a little bigger than Brendan's.)
There are over 300 photographs on the walls; there aren't many of me, and even fewer of Everett -- and not a lot of room remaining for the photos of Everett, which I presume will come. Most of the pictures are of Colin and Brendan, together with the bracket sheets from the tournaments they won. There are twelve medals, five trophies, and one plaque; only the plaque is mine. I never won any medals or trophies, because I never won a wrestling tournament.
I didn't really "win" the plaque. In 1992,1 was selected as one of the first 10 members in the Hall of Outstanding Americans by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. These "Outstanding Americans" were not necessarily outstanding wrestlers, although a few of them were; we were all chosen for being outstanding at something else, and for having also (in our fashion) wrestled.
I am honored to be a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, although I'm embarrassed to have gained entry through the back door -- meaning for my other accomplishments, not my wrestling or my coaching. I feel privileged to have been in the same wrestling room with some of the wrestling and coaching members of the Hall of Fame -- George Martin, Dave McCuskey, Rex Peery, Dan Gable.
You may be surprised to learn of a couple of other "Outstanding Americans" whom the National Wrestling Hall of Fame has honored: Kirk Douglas and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. I'm surprised that, as of this writing, my fellow novelist Ken Kesey hasn't been selected as a member; Mr. Kesey's wrestling credentials are a whole lot better than mine. He is still ranked as one of the top 10 wrestlers (most career wins) at the University of Oregon, where he graduated in '57. And in '82, at the age of 47, Kesey won the AAU Masters Championships at 198 pounds.
I suspect that after the Senate confirms General Charles C. ("Brute") Krulak's promotion to four-star rank, and General Krulak is officially serving on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the new Commandant of the Marines will also become a member in the Hall of Outstanding Americans at Stillwater. Described by The New York Times as "a diminutive dynamo of a man" -- he was a 121-pounder at Exeter and a 123-pounder at Navy -- Chuck was a platoon leader and company commander during two tours of duty in the Vietnam War, and later served as commander of the counterguerrilla-warfare school in Okinawa. Thereafter, General Krulak was commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Virginia, and -- just prior to President Clinton's nominating him as the next Commandant of the Marines -- Krulak commanded 82,000 marines and
600 combat aircraft in the Pacific. (In the event of war in Korea or the Persian Gulf, General Krulak would have commanded all the marines there.) But as a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, which I assume he will be, Chuck Krulak will probably feel as I do: namely, that the honor is undeserved.
Thus my plaque from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame occupies the far corner of a shelf in my wrestling room, where it stands a little sheepishly, looking unearned beside the hardware and the ribbons that Colin and Brendan won outright. I go to such lengths to describe the territory of my wrestling room and its proximity to my office because I want you to understand that the distance between my writing and my wrestling is never great; indeed, in the winter I was writing "The Imaginary Girlfriend," the distance was only 25 feet.
For four months, I didn't venture farther than that 25-foot path -- with two exceptions. The first was a trip to Aspen in the middle of March. I spent less than a week with Colin and Brendan in Colorado. I couldn't ski; I went to the gym and repeated the rehabilitation exercises that my physical therapist in Vermont had given me, and I paddled around in the heated pool and the hot tub with Everett. I had some very pleasant dinners with the Salters, Kay and Jim, and then it was back to Vermont to finish the "Girlfriend" -- only I couldn't finish it; not before leaving for France in April, for the French translation of A Son of the Circus.
After most of my interviews in Paris, in the lobby of the Hotel Lutetia, a photographer would drag me to a small plot of greenery (less than a park) off the boulevard Raspail and attempt to position me beside a statue of the French novelist Francois Mauriac. I refused to be photographed beside the statue of Mauriac, largely because the statue is 15 feet tall -- you may recall that I'm only five feet eight -- but also because I thought that Mauriac looked extremely undernourished and depressed. Possibly he was mortified to be photographed alongside every visiting author who was staying at the Lutetia.
That was Paris: I was brooding about not having finished "The Imaginary Girlfriend" before I had to leave for France, and I was constantly and unsubtly being compared to Mauriac. One of his critics once said that God surely disapproved of what Mauriac had written, to which Mauriac admirably responded: "God doesn't care at all -- what we write -- but when we do it right, He can use it." (I kept telling one photographer after another that God couldn't possibly find a use for a photograph of John Irving with Francois Mauriac, but the photographers were uncomprehending; one of them misinterpreted my refusal to be photographed with Mauriac as a sure sign of religious zealotry.)
Back in Vermont, April dragged on -- so did the "Girlfriend." In May I spent less than a week with Colin and Brendan in California. By then, my rehabilitation exercises were only two hours a day, and I discovered that I could once again carry Everett on my shoulders; we took him to Disneyland, where, admittedly, Colin and Brendan carried him around more often and more easily than I did. On the plane back East from L.A., I was still revising "The Imaginary Girlfriend," which I wouldn't finish before June.
An intractable phenomenon of writing an autobiography is that you begin to miss the people you are writing about; I don't ever miss the characters in my novels, although some of my readers have told me that they miss them. I found myself wanting to call up people I hadn't seen or spoken to in more than 30 years. In most cases, the motivation was more than nostalgia; I couldn't remember all the details -- what was so-and-so's weight class, and did he win a Big 10 title, or did he even place?
I called Kay Gallagher, Cliff's widow, a couple of
times. Cliff had done so many things I couldn't keep them all straight. It was nice to talk to Kay, but it made me miss Cliff.
As for coincidence, the novelist's companion, Don Hendrie's death (in March) coincided precisely with that point in my autobiography where Hendrie was to make his first appearance. My friend Phillip Borsos also died last winter; he was the movie director who made The Grey Fox, and with whom I'd been trying to make the film of The Cider House Rules -- for almost 10 years. Phillip was only 41; his death (cancer), in addition to its own sadness, called back to mind the death of Tony Richardson. (Tony directed The Hotel New Hampshire -- he died of AIDS in 1991. My friend George Roy Hill, now debilitated with Parkinson's, directed The World According to Garp?) Tony used to call me rather late at night and ask me if I'd read anything good lately; he was a voracious reader. Thinking of Tony often puts me in a mood to call people, too. As I was coming to the end of "The Imaginary Girlfriend," I was calling people left and right.
On Memorial Day weekend, I called my old friend Eric Ross in Crested Butte. While I'd been in France, avoiding the Mauriac photo opportunities, Eric had been golfing in Ireland with a bad case of gout. I have never golfed, nor had gout, but the combination struck me as a cruel and comedic affliction.
Thus inspired, I decided to call Vincent Buonomano. I speculated, stupidly, that after Buonomano had graduated from Mount Pleasant High School, he'd never left the Providence area. I called information in Rhode Island and was informed that there was only one Vincent Buonomano in the environs of Providence; actually, he lived in Warwick. I made the call.
A girl answered; she sounded like a teenager. I asked for Vincent Buonomano. The girl said, "Who's calling?"
"He probably doesn't remember me," I said. "I haven't seen him since he was in high school."
She went off screaming for him. "Dad!" Or maybe she said, "Daddy!" I had the impression of a large house and a large family.
Mr. Buonomano was very friendly to me on the phone, but he wasn't the same Vincent Buonomano who'd pinned me in the pit -- with less than a minute remaining in the third period. The nice man on the phone said that he occasionally got calls for the other Buonomano, the wrestler, and once some bills for "the wrestler" had been sent to the wrong Buonomano's address. The Mr. Buonomano who talked to me told me that he thought the Buonomano I was looking for had gone to college and was now a physician -- because one of the bills was seeking repayment of a student loan, and because one of the bills was addressed to a Dr. Vincent Buonomano. (I speculated that he specialized in necks.) But I couldn't find him. He had slipped away, surely never remembering me.
It made me so sad I simply had to call Anthony Pieranunzi. There was a greater likelihood that Pieranunzi would remember me, I thought: our matches had been close. But the operator told me that there was no Anthony Pieranunzi in East Providence, and only one in Providence; it had to be him, I was certain-- I called immediately. An extremely likable woman answered the phone. I instantly remembered Pieranunzi's girlfriend. (It's possible she was his sister-- she was a knockout, anyway.) I imagined I was talking to the high-school sweetheart of my archrival -- now a devoted wife of some 30-plus years.
I said something truly stupid, like: "Is this the home of Anthony Pieranunzi, the wrestler?"
The woman laughed. "Lord, no," she said. She'd heard of the wrestler; there had been other phone calls -- and, of course, bills sent to the wrong address. (Bills had become a common theme -- they were perpetually being sent to the wrong address.) The woman told me that someone had once called her husband and asked him if he was the Anthony Pieranunzi. It was the Anthony Pieranunzi I was looking for, of course. But he had slipped away with Vincent Buonomano, neither of them ever knowing how important they were to me.
I felt like talking to a friend.
Following a conversation with Sonny Greenhalgh, which deteriorated into a dispute concerning whether John Carr had wrestled at 147 pounds or at 157, I decided to call John Carr. The conversation with Sonny, as with most conversations with Sonny, entailed a fair amount of Sherman Moyer. To this day, it stands as an outrage in Sonny's life that he lost twice, in the same season, to Moyer -- although this was 33 years ago. (Sonny was an All-American;
Moyer wasn't. I'm guessing that this is what makes the losses unacceptable to Sonny.) To this day, my sympathy for Sonny is moderated by the fact that, at the time, I was cheering for Moyer, who was my teammate; I didn't know Sonny then, except that I knew he was a highly regarded 130-pounder at Syracuse. My sympathy for Sonny's two losses to Moyer is also lessened by the fact that I wrestled Moyer every day for an entire wrestling season; as such, I lost to him every day -- a mere two defeats at the hands of Moyer seems like no disgrace and no special hardship to me. Sonny and I always talk about this, notwithstanding the fact that we have other things in common to talk about. (I coached Sonny Greenhalgh's son, Jon, when Jon was a teammate of Brendan's at Vermont Academy; Jon Greenhalgh won a New England title in 1989.)
But this time my conversation with Sonny concerned John Carr -- was he a 147-pounder or a 157-pounder? What turned the talk to Carr was that Sonny had heard that Carr's dad had died, and I remembered Mr. Carr fondly -- from the time he'd enthusiastically stepped in and coached me at West Point. By the time I got off the phone with Sonny, there was another thing I wanted to talk to John Carr about: I knew he'd won a New England title the year before we both went to Pittsburgh, but I couldn't remember if he'd been a PG at Andover or at Cheshire -- in both cases, in my memory, the uniforms were blue.
At the New England tournament that year, the Outstanding Wrestler award was given to Anthony Pieranunzi, the presently elusive East Providence standout, who'd kept me from winning a New England title; John Carr arguably deserved the award.
Pieranunzi was good, but the talk in the locker room suggested that Carr was better; I don't really know, because I never wrestled Carr. And that was why I believed Carr had wrestled at 157 pounds: if he'd wrestled at 147, I would have wrestled him -- he would have been a workout partner, at least a few times. (As a 130-pounder, I used to work out with the 147-pounders occasionally, but the 157-pounders were too big.)
When I called information, the operator informed me that there were seven guys named John Carr in the Wilkes-Barre area of Pennsylvania, but it didn't take long to track him down. I talked to the wife of the wrong John Carr, and to four or five other wrong John Carrs, too; they all said, Oh, you want the wrestler." Or: "You want the coach."
By the time I got him, it was all over town that I was looking for him; he was expecting my call. Carr remembered me, but not my face; he couldn't put me with a face, he said. I'm not surprised; in fact, I was surprised he remembered me at all -- as I said, we never wrestled each other and my wrestling was hardly anything worth watching. If John Carr had had a minute to watch the other wrestlers in the Pitt wrestling room, there were a lot of better guys to watch than me.
I was right: Carr had been a 157-pounder, and he told me he'd been a PG at Cheshire when he won the New England's -- not at Andover. I told him I was sorry to hear about his dad. Carr wasn't coaching anymore; he complained that the influence of freestyle (international) wrestling had hurt high-school and collegiate (or folkstyle) wrestling. For one thing, there was not enough pinning -- wrestling wasn't as aggressive as it used to be, John Carr said. I share his view. I was never a fan of freestyle. As I once heard Dan Gable say of collegiate wrestling: "If you can't get off the bottom, you can't win." (In freestyle, you don't have to be able to get off the bottom; the referee blows his whistle and lets you off the bottom -- you can spend almost the whole match in the neutral position, on your feet. And so I knew what John Carr was thinking: he was thinking, How tough is that? In a freestyle match, I might have been able to beat Sherman Moyer; it was when I was on the bottom that Moyer killed me.)
Carr told me that Mike Johnson was still coaching at Du Bois, and that Warnick's kid -- or one of Warnick's kids -- had been pretty successful on the mat at West Point. I r
emembered seeing the name Warnick in the Army lineup and wondering if this was a child of the Warnick who'd arm-dragged me to death in my one winter at Pittsburgh. After John Carr and I said goodnight, and I hung up the phone, I realized that I'd not asked him if Warnick's kid had learned his father's killer arm-drag. I almost called Carr back. But when I start the phone calls, especially at night, I have to stop somewhere. If I keep going, I get in a mood to call everybody.
Of course I'd like to call Cliff Gallagher -- if only to hear him say, "Not even a zebra, Johnny." And I often think about calling Ted Seabrooke, before I remember that I can't. Ted wasn't a big talker -- not compared to Cliff -- but Ted was insightful at interrupting me, and at contradicting me, too. I'd be saying something and he'd say, "That sounds pretty stupid to me." Or: "Why would you want to do that?" And: "Do what you know how to do." Or: "What's worked for you before?" Cliff used to say that Ted could clear the air.
It still seems unacceptable that both Ted and Cliff are dead, although Cliff (given normal life expectancy) would almost surely be dead by now -- Cliff was born in 1897, which would make him all of 98, if he were alive today. I think it broke Cliff's heart that Ted died first -- Ted died young. And Ted fooled us: after the diabetes, which he got control of, he had some healthy years; then the cancer came and killed him in the fall of 1980. He was 59.
For Coach Seabrooke's memorial service in Phillips Church, there were more wrestlers than I ever saw in the Exeter wrestling room. Bobby Thompson, one of Exeter's ex-heavyweights -- and arguably the biggest-ever New England Class A Champion in the Unlimited class -- sang "Amazing Grace." (Bobby is the school minister at Exeter today.)
It was an outrage to all his wrestlers that Ted was dead. He'd seemed indomitable to us. He had twice been struck by lightning, while playing golf; both times he'd survived. Both times he'd said, "It's just one of those things."
After Ted's memorial service, I remember Cliff Gallagher grabbing me with a Russian arm-tie and whispering in my ear: "It should have been me, Johnny -- it should have been me." My arm was sore for days. Cliff had a nasty Russian arm-tie. At the time, Cliff was 83.