NP RIP Michael Dorris (long and sad)

[davemarc]

The following tribute to the late Michael Dorris appeared on the digest of
the Vin Scelsa mailing list.  Scelsa is a garrulous NYC DJ who hosts a show
called Idiot's Delight.  

The post has nothing to do with Pynchon, but it's worthy, if sad, piece of
writing.

From: Imill at aol.com
Subject: Remembering A Friend
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 01:16:37 -0400 (EDT)

There has been much Digest discussion of late concerning the depths,
lengths
and boundaries of friendship.  Tonight, I'm thinking of what Stella wrote,
via Buddha.  "One must draw one's friends very close."

Tonight I'm mourning the untimely passage of my friend, Michael Dorris, who
at age 52, and despondent over the breakup of his marriage, committed
suicide
last Friday.  And even most of those closest to him weren't aware of the
acuteness of his emotional state.

Perhaps you read the obituaries in the Times, the News or the Post today. 
Or
other regional newspapers, reaching as far as London, I've heard.  Some of
the accounts were lurid.  Michael was not a lurid man.

Michael Dorris.  Author of the novel, "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water," one of
the most remarkable novels about women -- written by a man -- I've ever
read.
 Stella remarked today that someone said that about Fitzgerald.  Apt.
 Michael participated in Prairie Home Companion's salute to Fitzgerald in
Minneapolis in October.

If you liked, or are interested in, "Yellow Raft," you ought to read its
sequel, "The Cloud Chamber," published just three months ago.  Michael also
authored three of the most splendid, open-eyed and literate children's
books
available.  (Find them and teach your children.  Please E-mail me privately
if you'd like.)

One of the first single men in this country to adopt a child on his own (in
1969), Michael was also the author of "The Broken Cord," a nonfiction
account
of his adopted son, Abel's, battle with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.  Notice
those
signs on liquor bottles and in bars exhorting pregnant women to abstain?
 Michael.  His testimony before a Senate sub-House Committee in the early
90s
was largely responsible for the posting of those warnings.  Michael won the
National Book Award for Broken Cord.  He'd probably want me to mention
it....

Michael was married to Louise Erdrich, the shortlisted-for-Pulitzer author
of
Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, et al.  Soulmates, they wrote together,
worked
together, raised six children together -- three adopted and three
biological.
 Seemingly they had it all.

I used to think they did, anyway.  

But let me tell you a little bit about Michael Dorris, the human being.
 Singularly the most extraordinary, large-spirited person it has ever been
my
privilege and honor to know.  Michael had a quick and prescient
intelligence,
an overwhelming enthusiasm for life, a wicked cool sense of humor, a taste
for bon mots and bad puns, equally bad limericks and general tomfoolery. 
He
wrote maudlin country songs as a hobby and was thrilled when a few friends
performed them at the Opry.  Michael flowed with life.  He had a heart as
big
as Hale-Bopp..  Not only was he one of the very best writers of his
generation -- with his best work yet to come -- he was also a real mensch.
 He would have been right at home here on the Digest.

He dug Vin.  I'd sent him tapes.  Actually, his personal writing style
is/was
(sigh -- was) very similar to Vin's.  That off-the-cuff enthusiasm, you
know.

Michael, who I got to know through my six-year stint as assistant to his
literary agent, became my spiritual big brother over the years. 
Confidante,
advisor, cheerleader.  I loved him.

If I could have chosen anyone in the world for a literal brother, Michael
would have been the first and only choice (well, Toby, too, but this isn't
about Toby).  He encouraged me in my career.  Michael insisted, though he
held a proverbial portfolio of degrees, that my lack of a college education
didn't mean I was deficient.  (In publishing, the lack of degree was a real
sore point.)   This from the man who started the Native American Studies
Program at Dartmouth College (Michael was part Modoc), lectured at every
Ivy-League institution you could name and lived in the halls of lofty and
pretentious academia for years.

Michael had enough faith to allow me to negotiate the fees for, and
arrange,
his numerous lecture tours.  We spoke every day.  We laughed, real
rolling-on-the-floor laughter.  We plotted and schemed and planned and
organized, and it worked.

Once, when my then-husband, Alex, lost his job, Michael called and asked if
we needed money....

Michael's Fetal-Alcohol Syndrome son, Abel, died in a side-of-the-road car
accident in 1992, a few weeks before the movie, "The Broken Cord," was
completed.  Michael was never quite the same afterwards.

This was in September 1992.  At the end of January, Louise threw Michael a
surprise birthday party.  An intimate dinner for 26.  She invited me, and I
got to eat dinner across from John Sayles.  So frightened that I could
barely
swallow, never mind actually SPEAK to Sayles, Michael saved the day.  You
see, he recognized that "tharn," deer-in-the-headlights look, kind as he
was.
 Thanks to Michael, I was actually capable of eating dinner while talking
with Sayles and other luminaries.  We all gave him joke gifts.  Alex's and
my
present was a six-pack of drumsticks and a cool sleeveless tee-shirt in
anticipation of his percussion gig with Stephen King's ill-fated Rock
Bottom
Remainders. (Michael dropped out after two gigs.  A combination of musical
stage-fright and general embarrassment.  But we still got to hoot him at
The
Bottom Line.  Pretty cool for a writer-guy.)

In 1996, his marriage to Louise broke up.  By that time, we were solely
personal friends, I having left the agency some time before.  He was
despondent, bereft, immersing himself in copious amounts of writing that
just
kept exceeding his previous efforts in talent and depth.  Simultaneously
working on three books while caretaking three daughters.  He was a
wonderful
dad.  Some months later, my marriage also broke up, under similar
circumstances, and this amazing man made time to commiserate via e-mail and
phone, opened that gigantic heart to my turmoil and pain while sharing his
own.  

Michael Dorris was instrumental in dragging me through the worst thing that
ever happened to me.  A quote from a letter he wrote during that time. 
"Know
that, without recourse to another human being, you are a whole and complete
individual, answerable to no one.  There is a 'there' there."  Wise words.
 Very wise words.

Why didn't I know what Michael would choose as his "there"?

His friends thought he was getting better, getting on with his life.  And
in
February, he lost contact.  Very busy.  I last spoke with him in late
January.  E-mail sent in Feburary went unanswered.  "Well, he's on tour," I
assumed.  Gradually he cancelled a plethora of speaking engagements and a
visiting professorship.  

And last Friday, returning to New Hampshire, the place where he'd been
happiest, he checked into a motel room under an assumed name, put a plastic
bag over his head, and smothered himself.  Left a note that, mercifully,
the
papers will not disclose the contents of.  But I'll bet it was straight
from
the heart and beautifully written.  I'm glad that its contents are
private....  Michael was a real stand-up guy, extremely protective of his
private life.   He would have hated that note's being published.

Lost in my own Private Idaho of a stupidly too-busy job,  an equally
stupid,
 trepidatious new life, and a recent move, I'd lost touch.  Lost touch
entirely with our few mutual friends.  Writing or phoning Michael was on my
"to-do" list, but I didn't.  I should have, even though it wouldn't have
changed anything....

Michael, big brother that he was, would be alright, I thought.  Michael's
tough.  He'll get through.  He's solid.  While busying myself with
quotidian
concerns.

And part of the price of losing touch with our mutual friends is that I
discovered that my beloved brother had taken himself out of the game by
reading it in the Times this morning....

You know, this piece should be eloquent.  Something befitting Michael;
something that makes real his essence.  I lack the words; this is none of
that.  This is grief.

And tonight, I agree with Stella and Buddha.  One should draw one's friends
very close....

Go, talk to a friend you haven't been in touch with for awhile.  Tell them
what they mean to you.

All best,
Ivy
np:  Jackson Browne.  "For A Dancer."   Michael Dorris was a helluva dancer.