THE REAL WONDER BOY
Dennis Loy Johnson Talks To Chuck Kinder

I first learned of Chuck Kinder's fabled manuscript at a party he'd thrown at his house in Pittsburgh for writer Tobias Wolff. Wolff was giving a reading at the college where I taught, and I was there to ferry him back. But Kinder insisted I join the party. His wife, Diane, gave me a beer, and then he took me on a tour of his house that ended in front of several fat notebooks book-ended on a table.

"There it is," he said cheerfully. "That's my novel."

My first guess — wrong, as it turned out, by two–thirds — was that I was looking at 1,000 pages. "It's the saga of me and my buddy Ray," he explained.

"Ray" was the late, great short story writer Raymond Carver, Kinder's closest friend. By then, Kinder had toiled on their "saga" for almost fifteen years — he'd published two novels in the 70s, but nothing since — and the long–term project would eventually inspire one of his students at the University of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon, to write Wonder Boys, a novel with a protaganist bearing a strong resembling Kinder. Ten years later still, Kinder's Honeymooners has finally arrived, albeit trimmed to 358 pages.


DJ: When did you start the book?

CK: We were gonna have a surprise birthday party for Carver. He knew people were coming over, but ostensibly not for his birthday. He wanted us to keep that a secret. Well, then Diane and I pretended like we got in a fight about what we were gonna cook. Neither of us were cooking dinner or doing a thing, and Ray kept getting more nervous, and he'd say, "Well, people are coming! Don't you care? Don't you have any class?" And we kept arguing, and I said, "No. Screw it, man. We're ordering pizza." And Ray said, "You're ordering pizza? It's a sit-down dinner party!" We had him all aghast. And the trick was everyone showed up with TV dinners. We had a rotten turkey TV dinner for him. So that was the first gag.
The next thing was everyone had written either a poem or a little piece that parodied his work. So I wrote about an evening that my first wife and I had spent with Ray and [Carver's wife] Mary Ann on their seventeenth anniversary, when we went to this Greek restaurant, and after dinner and everyone getting kind of loaded, we, uh, decided to walk the check. In fact, that's a chapter in the book that's called "They're Not Your Characters," I think.
Anyway, I read it and he laughed and wagged his old wooly head. And that was the start of it.

DJ: So it began as a short story?

CK: Yeah, and then it evolved into a larger chapter and then a smaller chapter and back and forth over the years. But that's what started it. It began, in essence, with a prank on the running dog, Ray Carver.

DJ: When was this?

CK: Seventy–seven, seventy–eight, maybe.

DJ: How did you two meet?

CK: At Stanford. We were both in the writing program. I'd seen him, sitting around in class He always wore shades, he had these big chopped–up sideburns, and dressed like a big goofy guy, like some kind of nerd, you know, courderoy pants and plaid shirts.
But one day I needed a ride down to where I lived, and asked if anyone was going in that direction. And Ray piped up, "I am! I am!" And I said, "Oh, God."
So we got out to his old Mercury convertible, an old rattletrap that looked like if we got in it would collapse around us. We got in, and he got it started, and it hopped a couple of times, and this bottle slid out from under the driver's seat. It was a bottle of cheap Scotch. And he looked at it like he'd never seen that before in his life. He said, "Whoa! Look, look at this here, what do you what do you know – Maybe we should have us a little drink." I said, "Okay. Let's have us a little drink." And it tasted like hair tonic, whatvever Scotch it was. And we bounced down the road. I made him let me out at the Taco Bell at the corner because I didn't want him to know where I lived.
Then the next morning, I heard a rap rap rap on my door, and I peeked out and there's old Carver. He had two sacks in his arms, and one of 'em had books — some of the literary magazines that had published his poems and stories up to that date. The other had some more cheap booze. And that was it. By the end of the day we were best buddies.

DJ: You started the book in 1977 or so. Then what?

CK: I really got off track, man. I was too influenced by academia, trying to be artsy fartsy and write metafiction and one thing and another. And at one point I looked at it and I thought, God, what is this? It's sort of "Ulysses" meets "Dune" — I even had science fiction in there — meets "On the Road" meets "Remembrance of Things Past." And I said, What am I doing? And when Ray died in '88, I simply put it away. And I didn't look at it again for a long, long time.

DJ: How long was it then?

CK: At its longest it was really three volumes, and each of 'em were pushing over 900 pages.

DJ: So you cut the more experimental stuff?

CK: I did. But it's not like everything I cut is gone forever. It's like, down home, in front of their double–wides they always have a big old car, like a big old Buick, up on cinderblocks, that they use for parts. And that book — it's just like a big old Buick to me. I can pick it for parts. I can go out and I can lift the hood and I can pull me out a poem or a story or a novel, or three novels. So it's not like all gone.

DJ: Exactly how close to the bone is it?

CK: Well, the plotline kind of unfolds pretty much, I guess, as our lifelines. But I still consider it a work of imagination. I go back into my memory and shave here and cut a little bit here and collapse characters and events and combine them, and so it's not literal, it's sort of not fact and it's not fiction, it's faction. People call it a roman a clef — you know, I had to look that word up at some point. I swear, for years I thought they were saying "roman a chef." I thought it was something about Italian cooking.

DJ: I wonder if you were after setting the record straight at all. Were you upset about things that have been said about Carver?

CK: I can't think of anything. You know, Ray is worshipped now. If anything, it's St. Ray, you know? It amuses me. I'm sure anyone from the old days will tell you that he was never a saint. Anyone can tell you even after he quit drinking he was still the same old Ray. It cracks me up, but I don't have any record to set straight.

DJ: Let's go on to Michael Chabon. Was he actually one of your students?

CK: Yeah, Michael took a bunch of classes from me. I gave him special permission to to sit in on graduate classes because he was clearly one of the most brilliant young writers I've ever been around.

DJ: Did you receive word from him about the book before it came out?

CK: I received word, but not from Michael.

DJ: Then from who?

CK: Oh, just a mutual friend . . . telling me, early on, that Michael's writing a book that — well, I don't want to get specific, but that it's an interesting book about a professor in Pittsburgh. So I'd heard about it earlier.

DJ: Did that make you nervous?

CK: Oh, I didn't care. I don't much go through life much caring what folks think.

DJ: So how did you feel about "TheWonder Boys"?

CK: It's a good book, and I've seen the movie. And I enjoyed it. I'm just pretty much amused by the whole thing.

DJ: Are you?

CK: Yeah. That, and the character of Grady Trip — the way I look at it, he's a much more generous and nice character than I am a person. I mean, it's Michael in that character. There's really not that much I can say. I just have nothing but respect and love for him. The only thing I've said for quotation is that Michael Douglas is not nearly cute enough to play Grady Trip.

DJ: Let's get back to your book. How did you finally get it done?

CK: I don't know what got me back to it. But I did, basically just cutting stuff out. I got it down to, oh, I don't know, about 900 pages or so. And my old friend Scott Turow read it and gave me advice. And I took his advice and cut it more. And he kind of opened that Farrar Straus door for me. You know, kind of persuaded them to look at it. And lo and behold, one day I was setting out to go teach and there's a registered letter waiting for me behind my screen door, saying that they'd like to take it, if I thought that was a good idea. And I dropped everything on the floor, my books, and ran for the telephone to say, Yes, yes, yes!




Syndicated columnist Dennis Loy Johnson runs the literary website MobyLives.com and is a frequent contributor to The Idler.