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Show THE. Adee YR/JUNE-JULY 2004 John Depuy is a long-time resident of New Mexico, an. exitdovdinary artist and one of Ed Abbey's best friends. They met in Taos, New Mexico in 1960 and remained close for almost 30 years, until Abbey's death in 1989. The Zephyr is honored to include John Depuy as a "regular feature." In issues to come, look for a variety of John's work and also excerpts from Abbey's "My Friend Debris," which first appeared in Down the River, published in 1982. For inquiries about John Depuy’s art, contact him at: PO Box 441 Ojo Caliente, NM 87549-0441 From "My Friend Debris" By Edward Abbey JOHN DEPUY We met one evening in the streets of Santa Fe (Holy Faith!), New Mexico, in the springtime of 1959. A good year that one, excelled—at least in my experience—only by 1960 and each succeeding year. My friend Debris was staggering down Palace Avenue, supported on the arms of an artistic woman named Rini Templeton, whom I had met a short time previously in the editorial offices of a Taos newspaper called El Crepiisculo de la Libertad. 1 had not yet learned how that name was translated into American but I did know that I was supposed to be the paper’s editor-inchief. As proof of my newfound dignity I carried in an inside pocket of my 1952 Sears Roebuck wino jacket (burgundy corduroy—threads of the king) a bona fide paycheck for one hundred dollars. A powerful sum of money in those subbohemian, underground-beatnik days. And all for only one week’s work. How this came about is a complicated story of confusion, misunderstanding, mistaken identity, extravagant hopes, exaggerated credentials, and general good will. One day I was a student of classical philosophy subsisting on Cheez-Its in a basement pad in the undergrad ghettos of Albuquerque; a week later I was dining on rack of lamb bougquetierre and rice pilaf and Chateauneuf-duPape or something at a five-star restaurant in Taos—I forget the name of the joint—where I paid the tab by scribbling my signature on a chit and walking out with a fat flaming cigar. It’s quite true, what I’d always heard: when you’re rich and important you don’t need money. You never touch it. One hundred dollars a week! I sang, as I walked along, to the tune of “Red Flag” and “O Tannenbaum,” an old song of the revolution, The working class Can kiss my ass, I’ve got the foreman’s job at last! As for Taos, New Mexico, there is little that need be added to the volumes already available on the subject. Nabokov described the town adequately in a letter to Edmund Wilson: “. . a dismal place inhabited by faded pansies and second-rate artists.” Nabokov was thinking of painters, not writers, but Taos and New Mexico as a whole suffered then and suffer still, despite pretensions, from a conspicuous lack of first-rate literary artists. D. H. Lawrence had died and been cremated nearly three decades earlier, and not in New Mexico; the gaseous essence of his mortal envelope had now become mere traces in the smog nuisance over southern France. John Nichols was a boy in New York City. William Eastlake, hidden from the world on his rancho near the village of Cuba, was more a part of Indian Country than of the “Land of Enchantment.” And he would not stay. Robert Creeley was another transient. Judson Crews would soon depart for Africa. Willa Cather was in Heaven, where she had always wanted to be. And, so—who was left? Frank Waters, the Hopi transcendentalist? Four names remain to be mentioned. Three of these, Apul H. Groan, Luap Nagroh, and the popular Nora P. Laugh, were even then collaborating on their Pulitzer Prize-winning book about New Mexico and the Rio Grande—Great Reefer: The Story of a Land and Its People. The fourth, the fiery and promethean poet Alphur Agon, had ceased to write, alas, and was now retired to deep seclusion on his estate in Espanola with his acolytes—the three furies, Frieda, Mabel, and Brett. There is nothing more to be said of the New Mexican literary scene. to be continued... wiz., = g PAGE7 "My Friend Debris." from Down the River. by Edward Abbey. copywrite 1982. permission to re-print from Clarke Abbey |
