A Healing Takes Place by the Laying On of Words

Saturday Night at San Marcos by William Packard (Thunder Mouth Press: $14.95)

Eliot Morrison is a writer like many other writers, and as he starts to tell you his story, beginning in his girlfriend Cindy’s Manhattan apartment sometime in the middle of the night, he sounds familiar, like our friends, like us: “ . . . she went to sleep and I just lay there wide awake and I began to think about how I was a writing teacher who was not really writing and it felt like my whole life was a lie as if I had some sort of dehydration of the heart or polio of the soul or cancer of the understanding and it felt as if my insides had been taken out and set aside because I thought ah God here I am 39 years old and I’ve only published one lousy novel seven years ago . . . and after that first novel had been out for a couple of years and it didn’t seem to be really going anywhere then I sort of drifted into teaching and I taught a lot of student writers how to write their own writing and . . . then when summers would come around I’d always be so broke that I’d have to go teach at a lot of writers conferences. . . . “

Madly in Love and Dead Broke

Poor Eliot is stuck, madly in love with the beautiful but dumb Cindy, whose analyst is earnestly abjuring her to get rid of failed-writer Eliot, and he’s tormented unceasingly by Clara, his furious ex-wife, who taunts him about his bad work habits and womanizing ways, and he’s dead broke, of course, in the depressing way of most writers, and worst of all, he’s tormented by envy of Ted Wylie, a vicious, vindictive, devilishly successful best-selling writer who’s made a fortune fictionalizing his truly gross sadomasochistic fantasies.

This is why Eliot Morrison is leaving Cindy and Clara for a week--as well as his dead-game lady agent, who despairs for him--and traveling to the San Marcos Writers Conference, where he will be playing second banana to the odious Ted Wylie. Because he’s broke, he can’t seem to start writing again, he’s spinning his wheels, and he can’t think of another alternative.

It’s possible to find great pleasure, fun and interest in “Saturday Night at San Marcos” by reading it as a roman a clef about the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, because, yes, the conference is set on the California coast in an antique hotel that bears a powerful resemblance to the Miramar, and the sweet geezer who runs the event seems mightily like Barnaby Conrad, and anyone who has ever enrolled in or lectured at a writing conference of any kind will recognize the gentle insanity and utter futility that seems to prevail.

Memories That Linger

The reader will laugh, giggle, hum, whistle and read parts of this aloud to his friends, but here’s the important thing: A month after he’s read “Saturday Night at San Marcos,” the reader will still be remembering scenes and thinking about what William Packard was saying in this novel, which goes far beyond any conference, no matter how failing or successful. Writing heals all wounds , Packard is saying. Writing heals. And far more important, for those among us who are not geniuses, even bad writing heals all wounds.

Sure, Eliot is a mass of desperate affectation. He knows as well as we do that his author’s photograph on the back of his first novel is just plain silly (even as William Packard’s own on the flap of this book): “ . . . There was this photo staring right back at me showing my shaggy hair and my crumpled coat and the dislocated look in my eye. . . . “ And that’s about the time the odious Ted Wylie comes up behind him and tosses Morrison’s precious first novel to the floor, announcing, “That’s really nothing but a tedious piece of non-writing, Morrison,” and goes on to say he’s going to use Morrison as the subject for his own next novel, and not only that, he’s got low designs on the beautiful but dumb Cindy back in New York, so Eliot Morrison is in despair.

Literary Life Goes On

But the wonderful thing about writing conferences is that they go on, day after day, in spite of any or everyone’s personal despair, in spite of atrocious writing--and even more atrocious speaking. The “insipid iced tea” gets poured and drunk, tuna sandwiches made and eaten; the beginning and ending parties come off more or less on time, and Morrison meets several of his “students” each afternoon--all of whom have paid good money and traveled from all over the country, simply to have their stories read by an interested professional.

While Ted Wylie, in another room, is metaphorically murdering his students, Morrison gamely critiques the worst stories in the entire world. Because the human mind is pathetic and hilarious in its yearnings, the synopses of these stories alone are stunning in their perfection. These students are crazy, of course, as is anyone who dips into his or her unconscious and scoops up the junk that swims around in there.

But there is one good writer, a real one, and she really is crazy; the angels who send her perfect poems also keep whispering in her ear that she should walk into the ocean forever. Morrison’s advice to her brought tears to my eyes, as did the final explication of why poor villainous Ted Wylie is as villainous as he is.

And guess what? As a result (partly) of this execrable writing conference, Eliot actually begins writing again, “ . . . and I knew I was really writing because it was the easiest thing in the universe because it felt as if I were listening to a distant brook that was babbling to itself about itself or else it felt like the bright light of childhood when I was so alive with life. . . . “

And yes, the whole novel has not one comma, but it has more good will and wit and spooky knowledge than you can shake a stick at.