he and i sat down together and became friends

Roy R. Behrens, Montage (detail)

Kurt Vonnegut, in William Rodney Allen, ed., Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988), p. 68—

The most pleasant author I might see socially is John Updike. First time I met Updike, incidentally, which was very funny, was on the Boston shuttle down to New York. The plane was not crowded, and as I walked down the aisle, this voice came from a seat saying, "Are you really him?" And so I turned to see who said it and it was John Updike, and we sat down together and became friends.

Apache | Excerpts from an ethnographer's diary

Digital montage © Roy R. Behrens

Keith H. Basso, "Strong Songs: Excerpts from an Ethnographer's Journal" in Daniel Halpern, ed., Antaeus. No. 61, Autumn 1988, pp. 26-37. These are fragments from a diary kept by a Yale anthropologist while living on the Apache reservation in Arizona during the summer of 1960—

July 11. I spent most of the afternoon practicing my meager Apache vocabulary. It has grown a bit during the last two weeks but my confidence to use it has not. This morning, while Dudley and Ernest [Apache friends] were here, a grasshopper crawled across the floor. I pointed to it and spoke the word for "insect." Dudley burst into laughter. What I had said, he informed me, was "vagina."  He went on to point out that the difference between grasshoppers and vaginas was quite considerable, an astute observation which prompted a broadly grinning Ernest to ask me if I were a virgin.

July 16.…I will attend the ceremony [an Apache healing ritual] with Dudley Patterson and Ernest Murphy. Although I am eager to see what happens, I know [as a White outsider] I will feel conspicuous and self-conscious. When I asked Dudley how I should conduct myself, a quizzical expression crossed his face. "Show respect," he said. Then he grinned. "And don't talk to nobody about grasshoppers."

July 17. Today, I produced my first comprehensible sentence in Western Apache. Sitting outside with Alvin Quay [an Apache boy], I pointed to my horse and said, "That horse eats grass." Alvin, who turned six last week, glanced at the animal, fixed me with a disbelieving stare, and responded in his own language, "Horses always eat grass."  Although my observation failed to impress Alvin, I thought the fact of its delivery—and of his responding to it in Apache—was nothing short of astonishing. Perhaps there is hope for me after all.

Walter SH Hamady | Perishable Press | RIP

Walter SH Hamady

Collections Poster | Aaron Van Fossen

Poster © Aaron Van Fossen, UNI student designer (2014)

John Hersey (recalling his summer as a secretarial assistant to American novelist Sinclair Lewis) in "My Summer with Sinclair Lewis" in Kai Erikson, ed., Encounters. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, p. 51—

Lewis's life was in a mess. But I was to have a marvelous summer, oblivious of his suffering. He never took a single drink while I worked for him; I remained in total ignorance of his history [of alcoholism]. I saw a surface that was gentle, kindly, boyish, and vividly entertaining. He treated me as a young friend, insisting that I call him Red. My work was fun. Taking his rapid dictation and reading it back to type it was like doing a crossword puzzle: I caught every fourth word with a squiggle of Gregg [shorthand] and had to figure out what went between. "If you want my autograph," he would dictate in a note to a fan, "you must send me a self-addressed envelope with a postage stamp on it"—chuckling at the idea that I would have to address an envelope and put a stamp on it to send the note.

What Company Is For

From Mark Van Doren (recalling his friendship with Joseph Wood Krutch), The Autobiography of Mark Van Doren. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968—

The important thing was that we had a great deal to say to each other, and that each was really interested in what the other said; also, that each was eager to speak when it came to his turn, and was confident that what he said would be worth hearing. We like those who inspire us to talk well, to talk indeed our best, which in their presence becomes something better than it ever was before, so that it surprises and delights us too. We like least those persons in whose presence we are dull. For we can be either, and company brings it out; this is what company is for.