Bits & pieces served with Coffey

As I recall, I was accepted into Exeter College, off Turl Street, around the corner from the Bodleian. The accommodations were Spartan, but I wasn’t there for the accommodations. I was there for the Oxford experience. I recall I took at least one class with Valentine Cunningham, who was a professor at Corpus Christi College. I think it was a course on Conrad, but that was neither here nor there nor important. What was important was meeting another student who hailed, I think, from Mississippi. For the life of me, I cannot remember his last name, his first was Wellyn I believe, but in the course of our conversations three things became prominent: Django Reinhardt, William Faulkner and Samuel Beckett. Wellyn was very fond of Reinhardt and coming from Mississippi it was axiomatic that he’d be fond of Faulkner. It was a bit like coming from Indiana and talking basketball. He talked about them all the time. As I recall, he certainly seemed more interested in Reinhardt and Faulkner than he did in Oxford and, I think, was there for the same reason I was; namely, the Oxford experience.

I can’t remember how Beckett’s name came up. I think it was because I had this preoccupation with his work and imagined what it might be like to meet him. Wellyn listened intently, but volunteered no information until at some point in our acquaintanceship when he felt as if volunteering some information would not be abused, said to me, “You should talk to my father-in-law.” Which prompted the obvious response, “And that would be?” “Brian Coffey.” I guess one could attribute that meeting to serendipity or to some kind of confluence of cosmic coincidences that a decade after discovering Brian Coffey in Bloomington, Indiana, I’d discover his son-in-law in Oxford. Be that as it may, the opportunity to talk with Coffey was one of those things I couldn’t ignore, especially since I reminded myself of the time, as a graduate student, I hadn’t the courage to introduce myself to Borges in an all-but-empty Bloomington café and tell him how much I admired his work. Carpe diem and all that jazz.

Wellyn actually set up a time when I could speak with Coffey on the phone. To say the least, I was frightfully anxious since Coffey was not only a brilliant translator and poet, but a brilliant mind. Perhaps he recognized my trepidation on the phone since he tried to move the conversation to things I might have been interested in. In that regard, he was much like Beckett. I told him how much I admired his work, how I especially delighted in what he did with Mallarmé, and how I’d like to read more about him. He suggested a correspondence and I thought that was a champion idea especially since it took me off the hook in trying to discuss something with someone who was light years beyond my intellect. In the end, I asked the question I had to ask and that was if he thought there was a way I might be able to meet Beckett sometime in the future (the future being 1980). To that question he merely said something to the effect that he’d send me his [Beckett’s] address and told me to use his name. Needless to say, I was moved and deeply appreciative and, in fact, it was because of Coffey’s graciousness that I eventually met Beckett.

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