Ed McClanahan was watching the Bengals. He invited me into his study and the game was on, the sound turned off. He said he wasn't really watching the Bengals, they were just on. He said it apologetically almost. I sat myself on his couch and he sat in his chair, surrounded by pictures and posters, drawings on the wall, stuffed animals, things hanging from other things and half-obscuring whatever was behind them, broadsides and books and more books and poetry. And hiding amongst all this were a computer and a desk, a VCR, perhaps a CD player, a coffee table with magazines I'd never heard of. The Bengals game silently marched on beside us.
As we spoke, my eyes struggled to take it all in, to understand what each piece meant, flitting from picture to knick-knack and back again, distracted by the moving football players in the corner of my eye, I felt that every particle was a clue, that each picture or memento had its own McClanahan story just waiting to jump out and delight. His study was exactly as I would have guessed it to be, and there he was, talking to me, in the center of it all, nestled in his office chair, surrounded by his life. I felt as if I'd stepped into the middle of his brain, that I was living in one of his stories, a story about meeting an eccentric old acid-hippy writer.
Ed is one of Lexington's most recognizable literary figures. Known (by me, at least) as the local writer who infamously rode the bus with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, traveling the psychedelic '60s countryside. During this time he published writing in "Esquire," "Playboy" and "Rolling Stone" and he published a novel, "The Natural Man," in 1983. Set in Needmore, Ky., the novel's main character closely resembles a bookish young Ed growing up in a small backwater. Since then he's published books of memoir, short stories, novellas and non-fiction.
We talk about random topics, about his kids, and neighborhoods in Lexington, and about Al's Bar, where he gave a reading not too long ago amidst the rumbling of the regular Thursday night crowd. He tells me about two lesbian-lover prostitutes in Lexington who went on a killing spree and tried to buy bullets at Doodles Liquor Store on Third Street, who wouldn't sell the sketchy chicks the bullets, so they bought them at a liquor store just north of his house.
This is great except I am supposed to be talking to him about his new book, "O the Clear Moment."
But Ed is a storyteller, by profession, by recreation and by nature. "I love anecdote," he said. "Tellin' stories for me is my life's blood."
And it's true. Sitting in his study and listening to him tell stories is like being in the audience at one of his readings. Or maybe being in the audience at one of his readings is like sitting on his couch with your feet up on the coffee table. In fact that's how I find myself feeling as I read this new book. Halfway through one of the stories I realize that I recognize it; I've heard him tell it before, or maybe I've heard a different version at one of his readings. And as I keep reading the stories in "O the Clear Moment," I continue having this feeling that these are old practiced yarns, that he's telling them to me, his buddy, sitting at a bar with a beer, or sitting on the couch in his study. Ed is telling me about how he befriended a high-class-hooker in New Orleans, who was engaged to a one-arm man. A knee-slapper.
The physical book feels this way too. Its size, weight and design all feel like the stories inside. The first thing I noticed was Ralph Steadman's distinctive artwork on the cover. You recognize it immediately and it associates McClanahan with that other Kentucky writer, Hunter S. Thompson. I asked Ed how he'd gotten Steadman to do the art and he tells me this story about how his friend knew him, and how when they were introduced Ed said he loved his work. Steadman replied: "I don't know your work, but I like your face. It's an open, honest and intelligent face." And Ed says to me, "I'd take that above the work any day."
He points to an illustration above my head of a winged Hunter S. Thompson flying off to heaven, drawn by Steadman and given to Ed as a present.
"O the Clear Moment" follows McClanahan as he ages, from the young boy with a crush on his prom sweetheart to the old man with a crush on his prom sweetheart. The story progresses in a series of short memoir-fiction pieces that trace the arc of his life. As you make your way through his life, ease into the cushions of his couch, you start to get a feel for his language, you appreciate his voice, and slowly a picture emerges of the storyteller himself.
"I want the writing to be the motive power of the whole thing," he said. "I want the telling of the story to be the dynamic, not the narrative itself. I want the language to be the engine."
But if the language of the story is the engine, then the storyteller, McClanahan, is its conductor, and us listeners are the ticket holders strapped in behind him, holding on as he takes us along. And the conductor, without meaning it, becomes a character himself. He's part of the show. You like these stories because you like Ed, you like that he makes you feel comfortable and that he's still filled with wonder and you like him because he likes the people in his stories. He genuinely cares about them.
And so I find myself reading, wondering more about Ed. He mentions his daughters, a painful divorce, but rarely does he talk about his adult life. And I ask him about this, sitting on his couch - does he purposely keep part of himself back? He considers the question, and says yes, but doesn't really expand on the idea.
Perhaps he really doesn't think he's that interesting. Ed's stories, on the surface at least, are about the spectacular circus of characters he's known - people like Little Enis and Kesey. The prostitute and her one-armed-man. He doesn't make a big deal about himself, and what he does say is mostly self-deprecating. But the one constant of all these disparate stories and people is Ed's voice, his personality. Captain Kentucky. What he doesn't write about, but only hints at, is that he is the special, caring force that attracted the entire cast of characters. He's the honky-tonk-storyteller, the acid-trip-bard, the 14-year-old bench warmer who you'd rather talk to than the jock who just won the game.
Ed is currently working on, in his words, a "left-handed, latter day sequel to the Natural Man."