Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard (4 page)

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Authors: Roger Austen

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Literary Criticism, #Gay & Lesbian, #test

BOOK: Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard
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Page xvii
Roger worried that his poor hearing would be an impediment in the classroom. Certainly, some of the courses he took were stimulating, and he performed well for the professors he thought were sympathetic to his work and his peculiarities. Still, having expected far more personal attention than came his way, he felt aggrieved and neglected; and his off-campus life in a squalid Los Angeles apartment was extremely depressing. Roger considered leaving USC after his first semester but then resigned himself to sticking out the year. Over the holidays, probably on Christmas itself, he reread
A Confederacy of Dunces
to soothe his "troubled psyche": "If only I could rise to Toole's capacity to smile at capricious Fortuna!" (26 December 1982).
In January, Roger's stability seemed again to be wobbly. He told me of semi-delirious dreams, induced by the medicine he was taking for a cold that had blocked what was left of his hearing:
On top of which is the inversion of the winds and weather known here as the Santa Anas: the wind blows in from the desert and yet all is still and tremulous, about 85 degrees, and to my weak, sick eyes yesterday, as I sat eating my sandwich at noon, all appeared to be in a lurid, garish Technicolor, with everyone walking around in shorts and whole months appearing to me to have been lost in a weird sort of way, as if it were suddenly June. I felt zonked by the Contac and further zonked by the strange, surrealistic ebb and flow of people, so nonchalant and mindless, as they walked by in their shorts. It was not until on last night's news that I heard a Santa Ana was in effect that I felt a bit comforted, knowing that the strangeness was not all a figment of my imagination. (12 January 1983)
This mood passed as Roger buried himself in work, producing one long paper on Lawrence and another on Jack London for his spring courses. His letters about these projects, so full of life and intellectual engagement, lulled me into thinking he was coping well enough.
Then I received another of those picture postcards from a resort hotel, this time from Puerto Vallarta. "Interesting news is coming your way. All is delightful here in the penthouse" (14 June 1983). I knew what that meant, and I urgently called my friend at USC to alert him to Roger's intentions. I hoped that since he had tipped us off to his whereabouts, he might be found in time.
The shock of this suicidal drama was less profound for me, inured by earlier experience, than for a friend I had put in contact with Roger a couple of years before. They had established an independent epistolary relationship, and to this now mutual friend Roger sent not merely a
 
Page xviii
postcard but a voluminous diary that charted his final days in harrowing detail. The diary was quite bizarre but so "composed" (in a literary sense) that the two of us were suspended between dread and suspicious disbelief. Only when I heard from Roger directly did I fully comprehend that this latest attempt to kill himself had not been an elaborate hoax, that Roger had beenand still wasdeadly serious.
He had truly taken another overdose, laced with Chivas Regal. Having booked a penthouse room with a small pool, he had swallowed the drugs, sipped the scotch, and, after removing his hearing aid, slipped into the water, expecting to drown when the pills and whiskey knocked him out. He was rescued literally at the last minute by the Mexican police, who were summoned by an old friend who had agreed at first to assist Roger's suicide and then had blown the whistle. Roger never forgave him for this "treachery."
Afterwards he wrote to explain that he had wanted to spare
me
a farewell letter, "since what is there to be said a second time when it is so difficult to think of anything to say the first time round?" He had redrawn his will, he added, to name me his heir and literary executor. (From reading the diary, I was already aware of this decision, but far from at ease with it.) "The $ is simply a way of saying thanks, that the Stoddard ms reverts to you or to Syracuse, as you choose, and there is of course no connection between the $ and getting the ms published, for instance, by a vanity press or some such" (27 June 1985). He hated to think that all his research might go to waste; there were cartons of Stoddardiana that ought to be saved for some scholar's future reference.
Roger had obtained more pills, Dalmane and codeine, and he was going to take them after the Fourth of July, wishing not "to detract from the celebration of our nation's birthday next week." Like Mishima, his model, he believed he had a right to die in his own fashion. without the misguided interference of supposed friends:
Mind you, it has been most difficult to these last few weeks begin again and try to carve and craft out yet one more finale, especially since I had put so much care in having everything work out to a "T" in Puerto Vallarta. Longing to escape empty days, I am forced now for awhile to slog through them in a tiresome and languid and dull way, thanks to those who have presumed to play God. Whose life is it, anyway? . . .
It all boils down to what I define as life on acceptable terms. I have found life to be increasingly unacceptable since about 1977 or 1978. That is all that need be said. (27 June 1985)
 
Page xix
But the letter went on and on. There was a postscript dated "July
4
th" and another, handwritten and marked simply "Wednesday," that ended: "I am just basically impatient to get everything over with & hopeful that, this time, there is no snag." He was holding back this letter so that it would be sure to reach me too late for any intervention.
I heard nothing again until 5 August 1983: "I have now concluded that it is my destiny to live: I have no heart to make further attempts, as each one takes an enormous emotional toll, and the huge, almost unbearable chagrin which follows takes a further toll until I am reduced to jelly. Amazingly, I seem to have a strange, strong capacity to bounce back, at least to some degree." Buoyed by his turnabout, Roger vowed to return to USC and pursue his Lawrence project. There was even some hope now for
Genteel Pagan:
"Yesterday I had a long chat at
[sic]
the people of One institute, subsidized by a gay millionaire from New Orleans, and they are interested in reading the Stoddard and perhaps seeing it into print. So I am cheered" (12 August 1983).
Then, after a long silence, I received what was to be the last letter from Roger: "I've decided to sell all my books & return to Washington, and give up all further research and writing & reviewing on gay lit subjects, since it so obviously has not been worthwhile" (26 November 1983). In what was to be my final reply, I tried, as always, to be encouraging. "I hope that Washington will not prove to be worse than LA," I concluded, "and I hope also that you will let me know how you are doing" (11 December 1983).
I think I sensed at the time that he would not. Roger had been telling our mutual friend that he felt too embarrassed to write me any longer, having "failed" me by dropping out of USC after I had gone to so much trouble to get him accepted. I knew, however, that his admission had depended finally on the strength not of my recommendation but of his own merits; and it did not really matter to me if he stayed or left, as long as he lived.
I kept track of Roger now at second hand; I received occasional updates from our mutual friend, to whom he was still writing. Since returning to Washington, Roger had become purposefully inert: he did no reading or writing except an occasional letter; he spent most of his waking hours spinning the television dial, seeking the most inane programs he could find.
Early in August 1984, I was notified by a Seattle lawyer that Roger had died, leaving me his estate of roughly three thousand dollars. Later

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