Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners

The Case of the Undone Novel

178 Rich­ ard ­ McCann Some­ times, but not often, he would work on his novel, my now ­ long-dead ­ father. Those even­ ings, he set up a ­ wooden step stool in the liv­ ing room of our small sub­ ur­ ban ranch house and then ­ placed his bat­ tered Under­ wood atop it, so he could watch his fa­ vor­ ite TV shows as he typed—Gun­ smoke and Perry Mason. I knew his novel was about his child­ hood grow­ ing up in a min­ ing town in cen­ tral Penn­ syl­ va­ nia, ­ between John­ stown and Alto­ ona, and even ­ though I never read it, at least not back then, when he was still alive, I knew from his hav­ ing de­ scribed it to my ­ brother and me that he had in­ cluded ­ within it real­ things from his own life: how his fam­ ily had been so poor when he was a child, for in­ stance, that ­ they’d some­ times had to eat for din­ ner only what they ­ called “cof­ fee soup,” made from break­ ing up stale bread­ crusts into the black cof­ fee left­ over from break­ fast. How he’d seen his first plane when it flew over a ­ thicket where he was pick­ ing black­ ber­ ries with his ­ father, a rail­ road en­ gi­ neer who al­ ways ­ called him “hon­ ey­ bunch.” How when he was ten a pot of boil­ ing laun­ dry water had ­ tipped over from his ­ mother’s wood­ stove and ­ burned him so badly he was­ scarred all down his left side, from his rib cage to his ankle. Af­ ter­ ward, he was kept in bed for over a year, so long he’d had to learn how to walk again, he said. The Case of the Un­ done Novel The Case of the Undone Novel 179 As for the rest of his lit­ er­ ary life: he ad­ mired the poems of Walt Whit­ man, or so I ­ learned long after his death, when I came ­ across the love let­ ters he’d writ­ ten to my ­ mother in the ­ months fol­ low­ ing their first meet­ ing, crib­ bing long pas­ sages from “Song of My­ self ” and “I Sing the Body ­ Electric” and mix­ ing into them his own de­ scrip­ tions of my­ mother’s ­ breasts and gen­ i­ tals. I know he loved Erle Stan­ ley Gard­ ner and oc­ ca­ sion­ ally ­ boasted of hav­ ing read over fifty of ­ Gardner’s Perry Mason nov­ els, in­ clud­ ing The Case of the Per­ jured Par­ rot, The Case of the Du­ pli­ cate Daugh­ ter, The Case of the Lucky Legs, The Case of the Ter­ rified Typ­ ist, and The Case of the Counter­ feit Eye. I know that his novel was im­ por­ tant to him, be­ cause when­ ever he in­ serted a new page into the type­ writer, feed­ ing the paper into the pla­ ten and turn­ ing the knob, that page was al­ ways ac­ com­ pa­ nied by four ­ sheets of car­ bon paper sand­ wiched ­ between four ­ sheets of del­ i­ cate on­ ion­ skin, so that he al­ ways made a total of five cop­ ies on which he then pen­ ciled his me­ tic­ u­ lous re­ vi­ sions. I know that in the late 1940s, a few years be­ fore I was born, he wrote a let­ ter to my ma­ ter­ nal grand­ mother, ask­ ing her for a loan suf­ fi­ cient to a ­ year’s pay, so he could leave the job he hated—in those years, until he re­ en­ listed in the army, where he even­ tu­ ally ­ achieved the rank of lieu­ ten­ ant colo­ nel, he was a repo man for Com­ mer­ cial­ Credit. He felt he ­ needed to work in­ stead, he told my grand­ mother, on com­ plet­ ing what he de­ scribed in his let­ ter as a “great ­ American novel.” My grand­ mother de­ clined his re­ quest by re­ turn mail, writ­ ing that she would be glad to send as her gift in­ stead a ­ brand-new 1948 Du­ mont tele­ vi­ sion—a “12-inch Tele­ set in a Mea­ dow­ brook con­ sole cab­ i­ net”— that cost $525, a sum equiv­ a­ lent to $4,919.25 today. It was on this tele­ vi­ sion that...