Mr. Natural in Medford

Mr. Natural in Medford

My relationship with Alan started without much fanfare in 1976. It was my sophomore year at Tufts and I was a student in his creative writing class. I don’t remember much about the early stages of the first semester other than we students sat around a long conference table and smoked cigarettes while critiquing each other’s stories. For the most part we had that smart ass, know it all, everybody’s full of shit thing going. Alan charted a higher path, presiding over us with bemused humanism.

Everything with Alan changed in a big way around the time I was supposed to present a story to the class. At this point in my college life I was flirting with the idea that I could possibly one day become a fiction writer. I specialized in miniature vignettes that I waited to pour out of me just in time to meet class deadlines. It probably wasn’t Hemingway’s method.

As the big day approached and I performed my writer like rituals, chugging coffee and chain smoking, slumped over my trusty composition book while awaiting inspiration, I was completely flattened by a phone call from back home. A close childhood friend, who only months before had accompanied me to school and made a nice home on my dorm room floor, had recently left to travel the world, “Kerouac style.” Somehow he ended up dead in Thailand. There was no telling exactly what happened but drugs were certainly involved.

The prospect of summoning up any kind of creative energy seemed impossible. There was no way I was going to be able to write a short story. I was a wreck. I became consumed with trying to construct an excuse to present Alan. Somehow telling the truth didn’t seem like an option. I don’t remember how I ended up at Alan’s house. All I remember is that I had prepared an elaborate variation on “the dog ate my homework” that I had carefully rehearsed. I stood unsteadily in his front hallway and launched into my spiel. Alan watched as I started to fall apart. I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe. I started to cry. I hardly knew Alan and probably hadn’t cried since second grade but there I was.

Of course Alan was wonderful. He got me talking about my friend. He patiently listened and responded with authentic concern. Needless to say, he wasn’t worried about my writing assignment. I left his house feeling that a tremendous burden had been lifted. I also felt that I had made an important friend.

From that point on I took every class I possibly could with Alan. I learned about Hemingway and Mailer. Poe, Melville and Hawthorne. Most of all, I learned about Faulkner and his “little postage stamp of native soil” that was so worth writing and reading about.

We also spent a lot of time together out of class. I remember wonderful conversations about our shared enthusiasm for jazz music and movies. Especially movies. After it became clear that my brilliant future wasn’t going to be found as a fiction writer, I started to imagine myself with a career in film. Alan was always encouraging.

Around this time I started babysitting for Alan’s son Michael. Michael must have been 8 at the time. He was pretty adorable with all sorts of teeth missing, giving him that carved out pumpkin look. I shamelessly exploited Michael by using him in all my student films and broadcasting the fact that I babysat to show the ladies my sensitivity. It wasn’t beneath me to parade Michael in front of girl’s I was courting.

During my years at Tufts, I learned a great deal from Alan about writers working through their central concerns, creating their own worlds that they returned to over and over again. But most importantly Alan opened his world to me. He allowed me to feel like I was part of his family. For all my lone wolf posturing, I have to admit that I was essentially a scared and insecure kid. I’m forever indebted to Alan for teaching me so much and helping me through that time.

Over the years I’ve been able to come back and visit Alan. I’ve gotten to know Nan. It was fantastic to reconnect with Michael and meet Stacey. It has also has meant the world to me that Alan has gotten to meet my kids and wife.

The last time I saw Alan and Nan I was actually taking my son Ethan on that iconic east coast college tour. After a rainy Saturday morning visit to Tufts, we all went to lunch. Alan and Nan were questioning Ethan about which schools he liked. Ethan confessed that he was overwhelmed. Alan gave his characteristic bemused crocked smile and pronounced that once Ethan got to any college he would realize in the words of R Crumb’s philosopher king, Mr. Natural “it don’t mean shit.” Ethan smiled back, comforted. This was clearly wisdom coming from a great man. And it was funny.

Thanks for everything, Alan.

Alan is my hero

Dear Alan,

I wish you many years of good health and good fortune after your retirement. I believe you know what you have meant to me over the past forty years. And I hope you don’t find my memories that I am recounting from our more youthful years embarrassing. But, I want Nan, Michael, your friends, your colleagues and your students to know what a wonderful force you have been in my life as a mentor and dear friend.

Best wishes and much love,
Marion

Dear loved ones and friends of Alan Lebowitz,

Alan is my hero. I met him in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. The summer of ’64 was dubbed, “Mississippi Freedom Summer”, because many political activists, scholars, artists, and free spirits converged in Mississippi that summer to be involved in the civil rights movement. Alan was one of a group of Harvard professors, instructors, students and alumni who had come down to run a summer program at Tougaloo College, a predominantly African American school where I was a student.

It was amazing to me that these people had come down to Mississippi knowing that earlier that summer three civil rights activists, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, had been murdered. The previous summer the NAACP Field Secretary, Medgar Evers, had been assassinated. Coming to Mississippi in those days was a serious and dangerous undertaking. Yet, this group from Harvard seemed undaunted by the situation. They seemed oblivious to the likelihood that Klansmen might drive by the Tougaloo campus at any time to fire off a few gunshot rounds. They had come down armed with books, musical instruments, great ideas, senses of humor, and a focused determination to share a more enlightened view of how lives can be lived. It was an impressive group of people.

Alan Lebowitz, Monroe Engel and Bill Alfred team-taught a class. Each came down for a few weeks to teach a literary work. Bill Alfred taught Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, Monroe Engel taught Faulkner’s “Light in August”, and Alan taught Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”. However, the class turned out to be a remedial reading class. The Tougaloo freshmen, who were required to take the class, and the public school teachers from Jackson, who were there to get professional development points to be able to keep their teaching jobs, were not responding to the teachers’ efforts to engage the class in discussion about the reading assignments. So, we read the great works aloud in class. I liked that; it gave me an opportunity to see how much the Harvard instructors loved the literature they were teaching. Before that experience I had never seen teachers so enthusiastic about the subjects they were teaching. I had never seen anyone so passionate about literature.

Until this day I can still say the summer of ‘64 was the most exciting time of my life. It was also a defining period of my life. My sense of myself began to change dramatically. I remember the moment my new awareness began. It came as an epiphany in Alan’s class while we read “The Metamorphosis”. It was an incredible coincidence that my own metamorphosis began while reading Kafka’s story. During our discussion Alan noticed that I kept pulling for Gregor Samus to emerge from the bug to become himself again. He asked me with an “it’s-time-to-face-reality” but sensitive tone, “What do you think is going to happen?” And before I could answer, he added, “He’s going to die.” His words hit me hard. I was use to “they lived happily ever after”, and “they rode off into the sunset” endings.

Also, Alan didn’t realize that in my mind Gregor Samus’s condition had become symbolic of my mother’s illness. She was in an advanced stage of breast cancer. Over the previous months I had seen her deteriorate from a healthy extremely active individual to a very sick person who couldn’t get out of bed without help. But, I hadn’t given up hope that she would get better. It was at that moment in Alan’s class that I accepted the fact that my mother was dying. I had to fight back the tears. But, I will never forget the compassion that Alan showed me and the lesson that I had learned. There is something liberating and empowering about facing your reality, no matter how cruel a reality it is.

After the class we walked across the campus to the dining hall. Other than comments about the Spanish moss that hangs from the trees on the Tougaloo campus, I can’t remember what we talked about. But, I remember feeling that it was a new day. I had never had a teacher who was so approachable and who seemed to understand me. Already I felt comfortable being with him and free to say what was on my mind without wondering if I would be misunderstood. I could hardly wait to get to know him better.

One evening Alan took my friend, Eddie, and me to Jackson for dinner. I had gone into Jackson as part of an interracial group before, and I knew that anytime an interracial group went into Jackson that it was considered a demonstration against the status quo. Before going into town we would make sure that someone knew where we were going and what time we expected to be back on campus. Sometimes we would contact the NAACP legal office to see if there was bail money available, just in case we were arrested. But, with Alan it was different. I can’t remember what the drive in town was like. But, I remember the restaurant and the dinner. There was no apprehension. It didn’t feel like a demonstration; it was more like three friends out for dinner. Alan seemed relaxed and not at all concerned about being the only white person in the restaurant. Eddie and I were just excited to be there, feeling like adults. It was our first time eating in a restaurant.

I spent as much time as I could with the Harvard group. I sensed that by spending time with them and learning from them that I could make my life different. But, I had no idea then how different it would become. As the end of summer approached, knowing that I would not be returning to Tougaloo, Alan and others from Harvard suggested I move to Cambridge.

I arrived in Cambridge that fall with seventeen dollars and three telephone numbers, Alan’s, Bill Alfred’s, and Monroe Engel’s. The kindness that the Harvard group showed me then and has shown me over the years is monumental. Within a week after getting to Cambridge, I had an apartment and a job at Widener Library. A whole new world had opened up for me, and I went into it with the enthusiasm of a country boy who had been let loose in the city. Cambridge was an exciting place in the sixties with the peace and love movement budding. It truly felt like the hub of the universe. There were so many places to go, so much to do, so much to learn, and so many people to meet.

Alan provided me a safe harbor. One night each week he and his wife, Joyce, would have me over for dinner. I looked forward to seeing them and telling them all the things that I was doing and about all the people I was meeting. Alan was my life coach. He would listen intently to my recent adventures to see how I was adjusting to my new life. Then, he would give me a pep talk. Sometimes he would say, “Be careful. It sounds like you might be spreading yourself too thin”. By the time I knew what he meant by that, many years later, I was suffering the consequence of not following his advice.

My mother died that winter, and for the first time that I can remember I felt lonely. This was the most painful moment I had ever experienced. I called Alan. He picked me up and took me to his house for the night. I don’t know what I would have done without him that night. I’m just thankful he was there, and didn’t have to go through that alone.

The list of the things that Alan has done for me is long, including getting me into Harvard, taking me to my first football game, taking me to my first musical, listening to my stories, being my mentor, giving me my first dress jackets, being my friend, and forgiving me for my faults. In my mind he is among the greatest individuals to ever walk on planet earth.

Peace and love,
Marion

a note and a novel from Dan Paisner

I majored in Alan. I took his Hemingway & Mailer course, his Hawthorne & Melville course, his 20th Century American Literature course, and perhaps another survey course as well. Also, I took his wonderful creative writing course -- four times, for credit! If he offered a course in writing out a shopping list, I would have signed on for that as well, and some of my fondest Jumbo memories are rooted in his living room, around that great coffee table he had set out in front of a fireplace (yes?). Alan usually sat on the floor, and it was a special thrill to read from a new piece and look up to catch his eyes dancing with delight, with a smile so wide I sometimes worried it would reach all the way around. It didn't happen that way all the time, but when you got it right Alan let you know. Yes, that was his great strong suit, the delight he would find in his students' work, every here and there. And it was infectious. His students followed his lead and became great champions of each other's work, and gentle critics free to offer valid note and comment. To this day, when I write something I really, really like, I catch myself longing for one of Alan's workshops, so I can bounce it off a group of like-minded someones, so I can read Alan's face and tell whether my stuff is any good.

A grateful tip of the pen, Alan, for laying such a strong foundation, and for being the first one to introduce me to the simple joy to be found in a turn of phrase. You might recall your note to me after I sent you a copy of my latest novel. You said, "Write another one." Same to you, my friend. Good luck and good cheer and all that... Dan Paisner

What If?
I expected nothing, and everything, all at once.

I worked the equation in my head. Nothing plus everything equals anything. Anything… There was no cap on my imagination, no end to where things might lead. It smelled more than a little like buying one of those scratch-off lottery tickets at the newsstand. When the notion hits, and the loose change in your pocket makes the argument against long odds and rational thought, there is no holding back, and in the tug and pull between impulse and reason there is a small, sweet voice...What if? That’s all I ever need to hear. What if? What if the ticket I am meant to buy, the one at the top of the pile, or the one at the in-use end of the roll, or however it is they dispense these things... what if that’s thee one? What if the road not taken turns out to have been the path to glory? Yes, absolutely, the next one could always be mine. It’s always someone’s, and it might as well be mine. Anyway, you never know, right? You never expect the stars to truly align and smile on your affairs, but you are ever mindful that they might, they just might, and you don’t want to be caught not believing. What if? Stay open, or keep closed. One day, and soon, your number will be called, and you will be pulled from the not-so-swift currents of your existence and set down upon the unbelievably treacherous whitewaters of uncertainty. Or, not... but that's not the point. That's never the point. The point, always, is to step to the plate and take your cuts. Roll the dice. Expect nothing, and everything, all at once. Believe.

Anything can happen.

-- "Sure Shot" (novel in progress)
Daniel Paisner

from Jonathan

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