Chris Offutt - My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir

ALSO BY CHRIS OFFUTT

The Same River Twice

No Heroes

Out of the Woods

The Good Brother

Kentucky Straight

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2016 by Chris Offutt

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Books hardcover edition February 2016

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Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe

Jacket design by Keenan

Jacket photographs Classicstock.com

Author photograph Sandra Dyas

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Offutt, Chris.

My father, the pornographer : a memoir / Chris Offutt.

pages cm

1. Offutt, Chris. 2. Offutt, ChrisFamily. 3. Novelists, American20th centuryFamily relationships. 4. Novelists, American20th centuryBiography. 5. Fathers and sonsUnited States. 6. PornographyUnited States. I. Title.

PS3565.F387Z474 2016

813'.54dc23

[B]

2015027503

ISBN 978-1-5011-1246-1

ISBN 978-1-5011-1248-5 (ebook)

Excerpts of this book have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, River Teeth, The Best American Essays, Zoetrope, and Jelly Bucket .

DEDICATED TO

Andrew Jefferson Offutt V

John Cleve

Turk Winter

Jeff Morehead

Jay Andrews

Opal Andrews

Drew Fowler

J. X. Williams

Jack Cory

Jeremy Crebb

John Denis

Alan Marshall

Jeff Woodson

Joe Brown

Jeff Douglas

Roscoe Hamlin

Camille Colben

Anonymous

As John Cleve, I will be famous in the next century. Bet on it.

ANDREW J. OFFUTT, 1978

If not for writing pornography, Id have been a serial killer.

ANDREW J. OFFUTT, 1986

MY FATHER grew up in a log cabin near Taylorsville, Kentucky. The house had twelve-inch walls with gun ports to defend against attackers, first Indians, then soldiers during the Civil War. At age twelve, Dad wrote a novel of the Old West. He taught himself to type with the Columbus methodfind it and land on itusing one finger on his left hand and two fingers on his right. Dad typed swiftly and with great passion. He eventually wrote and published more than four hundred books under eighteen different names. His novels included six science fiction, twenty-four fantasy, and one thriller. The rest was pornography.

When I was nine, Dad gave me his childhood copy of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. The old hardback was tattered, the boards held by fraying strips of fabric, the pages pliant and soft. It is a coming-of-age narrative about thirteen-year-old Jim Hawkins, who discovers a secret map, leaves England, and returns with a large share of pirate treasure. I loved the fast-paced story and the bravery of young Jim.

On paper cut from a brown grocery sack, I carefully drew an island with a coastline, water, and palm trees. A dotted line led to a large red X. My mother suggested I show the map to my father. Dad wiped coffee on the paper and wadded it up several times, which made it seem older. He used matches to ignite the edges of the map, then quickly extinguished the flame. This produced a charred and ragged border that enhanced the maps appearance, as if it had barely survived destruction. Because of the fire involved, we were alone outside, away from my younger siblings. Dad was selling insurance at the time, rarely home, his attention always focused elsewhere. I enjoyed the sense of closeness, a shared project.

Dad said that he drew maps for most of the books he wrote, and I resolved that if I ever published a book, Id include a map. Twenty years later I did. In 1990 I called my father with the news that Vintage Contemporaries was publishing Kentucky Straight, my first book. A long silence ensued as Dad digested the information.

Im sorry, he said.

What do you mean? I said.

I didnt know Id given you a childhood terrible enough to make you a writer.

His own father wrote short stories in the 1920s. During the Depression, my grandfather was forced to abandon his literary ambitions to save the family farm and pursue a more practical education in engineering. He died young, a year before my father published his first story. Dad never knew what it was like to have a proud father and didnt know how to be one himself.

After the publication of Kentucky Straight, people began asking Dad what he thought of my success. Buried in the question was the implication that the son had outdone the father. My work was regarded as serious literature, whereas he wrote porn and science fiction. Twice I witnessed someone insinuate that Dad should be envious. Invariably my father had the same response. His favorite adventure novel was The Three Musketeers, in which young DArtagnan wins respect through his magnificent swordplay, taught to him by his father. Every time someone asked Dad about my success as a writer, he said he was happy to be DArtagnans sword master, voicing pride in my accomplishments but taking credit for them, as well. It was as close as he ever came to telling me how he felt about my work.

MY FATHER was a brilliant man, a true iconoclast, fiercely self-reliant, a dark genius, cruel, selfish, and eternally optimistic. Early in his sales career, a boss called him an independent son of a bitch, which Dad took as the highest compliment hed ever received. He wanted me to be the same way.

Dad had no hobbies, no distractive activities. He didnt do household chores, wash the car, mow the grass, go shopping, or fix anything. He never changed a lightbulb. I never saw him hold a screwdriver, stand on a ladder, or consult a repair manual. His idea of cleaning was to spit on a tissue and wipe the object. He didnt sleep much. He drank. He rarely left the house. Dad was an old-school pulp writer, a machine who never stopped. In his home office hung a handmade sign that said: Writing Factory: Beware of Flying Participles.

The winter of 1968 was known in the hills as the year of the big snows, which closed my grade school for two weeks and trapped the family on our home hill in eastern Kentucky. For the first time in my fathers life, he could do what he always wantedwrite fourteen hours a day. He ran out of cigarettes and Mom sent me to the general store a couple of miles away. I followed a path through the woods, each leafless tree limb lined with a layer of white. Frozen deer saliva glistened at the ends of chewed branches.

I made good time by walking the iced-over creek, sliding my feet along the bright surface. Smoke from the stores wood stove rose to the top of the ridge, then flattened and began to dissipate in a long, low ribbon. Inside I sat by the fire until my wet pants legs were steaming and my feet had warmed. The proprietor, a kind man named George, gave me a piece of chocolate. Hed been in operation since the forties, the only business to survive the closing of the mines. He sold me cigarettes and I went home.