Introduction
to
THE COUNTERPOINT OF VIEW
Introducing a "keynote entry" is the sheerest Newcastle-coaling. By its very nature, the piece is intended to set the tone and mood for what is to follow. And yet, symmetry is much to be desired; a certain reliability of order; and why should John Heidenry get jobbed out of a few words of introduction just because he wrote a surreal set-piece that somewhichway cornerstones the intent and attitude of the book? Surely we can't begrudge him such a miniscule pleasure; his due, in fact.
Heidenry came to me late in the assemblage of this book via Larry Ashmead of Doubleday.
The chain of goodword put in for Heidenry illustrates the incestuous nature of the New York publishing daisy-chain. Mr. Heidenry was Managing Editor of Herder and Herder in New York, publishers of weighty tomes on theology and philosophy. He writes various stuff on the side. Not the least stuff are three novels he describes as "a lovely dream-flecked pastoral romance, another (for practice) on the black days of fear and trembling, and a third on which I am still receiving mystical revelations." In some arcane manner beyond explication, Mr. Heidenry came to the attention of Miss Elizabeth Bartelme at Doubleday; and though Heidenry had no contract for the books—he says he doesn't want to submit outlines or sample chapters, the fool—Miss Bartelme took an interest in his work and mentioned him to Ashmead. So Ashmead looked at some of it and wrote to me, suggesting Heidenry might be a good bet. So when Mr. Heidenry sent me "The Counterpoint of View" I knew who he was. I was enthused about the piece, and wanted to include it, but the money had run out.
So I let Larry know the sad state of affairs, and he suggested the cost of buying the story might be equivalent to a good meal bought by him, as my editor, for me, as his author, at one of the posher watering-holes in Manhattan. So he put Heidenry on the expense account as a lunch date with me, and sent me his personal check, and now I've spilled it all and Nelson Doubleday will fire Larry, which serves him right for pushing me on deadlines.
But that's how Heidenry came to lead off this book.
"The Counterpoint of View" is his first actual story, though he tells me he has always considered himself a writer, in the manner of Andre Gide who expected others to know from a mere glance at his eyes that he was an artist. (He is allegedly working on a second short story, however, working-titled "Yaw, Dizzy," which, to use a sort of metaphor, is about "the time Arthur Rimbaud used to play right field for the old St. Louis Browns.")
Though I have not pressed Heidenry on this last—discretion being next to cleanliness, which as we all know lives next door to godliness, thereby depreciating the land values in the neighborhood—I feel it incumbent on me to urge all readers who enjoy what follows to petition Doubleday to give him a contract or two, and some cash, without his having to submit some sample sides of beef.
Speaking of beef, here are John Heidenry's particulars: born in St. Louis, Missouri, on May 15, 1939; mediocre education; started reading books in nineteenth year; decided to study theology, and majored in same at St. Louis University; swears he never intended to be a priest (man who'd screw around with God like that can't be believed nohow); completed studies but declined degree; mediocre education; 1960–61, super-simultaneous editor of Social Justice Review, Catholic Women's Journal and The Call to Catholic Youth, three monthlies with a combined circulation of 3000; 1961, a charming change-of-pace, a breakdown and some time spent in New Orleans (having spent some time in New Orleans myself, on tour with Three Dog Night, I can assure you it is a fine and juicy town in which to recover from a breakdown while acquiring an altogether different and more debilitating breakdown); 1962–63, super-writer for St. Louis Review; wrote practically everything but the editorials (Heidenry assures me it is a generally good paper . . .except for the editorial page); 1971, finished a novel titled Dearly Beloved, became unemployed, and began accepting alms; married and father of three children, thereby helping to insure not only his status as a solid Catholic, but an expansion of the circulation of The Call to Catholic Youth.
The final entry necessary here to flesh out Heidenry for you is an excerpt from a marvelous Nabokovian analysis he wrote for The Commonweal in May of 1969. Titled "Vladimir in Dreamland," section one reads as follows:
Vla-di-mir: the tip of the tongue taking a trip down the palate to stop, at three, on the teeth: Vla. De. Mirror. You can always count on a Nabonut for a fancy prose style.
And quite apart from the utter fecundity of the keynote item you are about to read, so you shouldn't think this editor is merely trying to maintain the nepotism of the New York editorial ingroup, the editors of The Commonweal—light-years above and beyond the reach of corruption, as we all know—identified John in a one-line précis, as follows: "John Heidenry is at work on a famous novel."
More distinguished a keynote speaker we could not have found had we engaged the Pope himself.