Contemplating this moment in which a heartfelt compliment was the spark of a complicated friendship, I thought of my friend, the writer Robert Bingham, who died of a heroin overdose in 1999. At a gallery show in New York in the early 1990s, Rob, then a stranger, came up to me and told me he’d read a short story of mine and liked it very much. The story was about a young man whose father died young. I would later discover that Rob was a guy whose father died young, as had mine, though this affinity was something we never actually acknowledged in words. Rob later got involved in a literary magazine I’d started and we had various adventures at home and abroad; he got married and then he died. Now it all seems to have taken place in the blink of an eye, though the exact span, gallery to funeral, was about seven years. In the spring of 2000, we both published novels, his posthumous.
We had a strange dynamic with our writing: outwardly supportive but not involved in the particulars. We talked about literature all the time but we didn’t read each other’s work or offer notes. We were each a source of anxiety for the other, but also of confidence, in equal if fluctuating measures. To say we were competitive is surely true, but it would miss something more interesting: Rob and I wholeheartedly wanted the best for each other, while also feeling stressed out by the prospect of being exceeded by the other.
Vivid in my memory is an answering-machine message he once left that starts with the exultant but gently delivered news that he had placed a story at a magazine of note, where I had also published, suggesting we get together to celebrate. Then, as though he had run out of things to say but didn’t want to put the phone down, he concluded with what almost felt at the time like a taunt: “How about that, Jack?”
Rob’s death was so abrupt that I still remain stunned: the swearing off drugs, the drunken relapse, the overdose, the discovered body, and suddenly, the groomsmen at his wedding reassembling six months later to be ushers at his funeral. These days, my friendships with other writers are more cordial, even delicate, as though we have seen enough people burst into flames and then go up in smoke that we appreciate the fragility of the other person’s presence. I have never been able to write properly about my friend Rob or that time in my life. Instead, I smuggle mentions of him into various pieces of writing, as I am doing here, as though I can only see him in memory through eclipse glasses.
It might be this dynamic, above all, that prompted my visceral response and repeat visits to “Manet/Degas.” The mysteries of the artists’ friendship were most conspicuous in a gallery devoted to two paintings, side by side, one by Manet and one by Degas. They are variations on a theme: In each, a woman is seen in profile playing the piano.
