A Tribute to James Crumley
At this time we would like to reprint more of the correspondence between us and Chuck Kinder. We round off our tribute with the beautiful words of Martha Elizabeth.
Dear Kris,
Martha Elizabeth, Jim Crumley's 5th wife & widow, sent my wife Diane & me
this message in response to some old pictures of Jim that we had sent her (I
believe I may have sent you the same photos at some point). I think her letter
is lovely, & I was very moved by it. I read it almost like a prose-poem, & it
didn't matter if you knew or not all the folks from the old days that she
references. It occurred to me that other of Jim's friends might like to read
it, so I asked Martha if it would be ok to send it around. It also
occurred to me that you folks might like to include it in your issue dedicated to Jim. I
asked Martha about this also & she said yes. I will forward you her other
email message right after I send you this.Chuck Kinder
From Martha Elizabeth:
Dear Chuck & Diane,
Thank you for the pictures of Jim, which gave me good tears. That first one--Diane, what a babe! The fourth one, with Kittredge in the doorway (is that in North Beach in San Francisco? I think Jim & I had a cocktail there sitting outside in the afternoon sun), he's pointing his finger and jokingly laying down the law just as he was the first time I ever saw him, up at Yellow Bay after Jim Welch's reading, a few days after my roommate and I had first moved to Missoula for graduate school--I remember he was wearing his brown leather vest over a white collarless shirt, his hair pulled back in a ponytail, his girlfriend clutching his arm and glaring like a bulldog--funny how my mind took that snapshot without knowing he would be my future, and in fact that evening armed me against him, because he was rather cold to my friend Mary, who was so looking forward to seeing him, as they had corresponded and he'd been such a good guy when they met, but his girlfriend was apparently so jealous that she couldn't believe he could enjoy Mary's letters so much without deeper involvement and he had to be indifferent to keep the peace--all I knew was that he'd hurt Mary's feelings--he didn't actually see me that evening, though Mary introduced us--he always said it wasn't his fault, that it was dark, which it wasn't--he said that when Lois Welch introduced us at the MFA party at Earl Ganz's house that he felt a bolt of fire when he touched my hand--I remember thinking, Oh, now he notices me--should have clued me in--he hid his attraction so well that I didn't glimpse it for three years--he was that guy I could always talk to at parties, whose work Mary admired so much, but with all the graduate school pressures I didn't get around to reading him until a summer party three years later when we had a great conversation in which he said he'd read an essay of mine that was in Kittredge's desk, which he was using to teach a class, in which I lamented not being able to write the essay I wanted to write about my family and he told me about not being able to write a story he wanted to write and how that led to writing "The Things She Cannot Write About, the Reasons Why," and I started to feel bad that I'd known this man for three years and never read his work, so went home and read the short story and was absolutely stunned--and before long our respective disastrous relationships came to their natural end and we went out a couple of times as friends, right about this time of year, so the transition to autumn and the World Series always makes me sentimental, and then we had one actual date the night before he had to drive to L.A. with Mike Koepf to work on a screenplay, and Jim wooed me long distance then brought me out to see him in December, after which we were a done deal--saw him again in January and he proposed long distance later in the month, and we were married in August, over sixteen years ago, and now he's gone and I just can't bear it, and part of me is convinced like a child that he's simply out of town, that he'll call soon, and I keep saving up things to tell him despite myself. Oh well, sorry, didn't mean to run on, write myself back into weeping, but I'm not going to start over and write a better letter. Thank you for the pictures. You know he loved you, loved to talk about visiting you in San Francisco, called you his parents. I haven't spent much time with you but fell for you right away. I'll see you again one of these days. Be good to yourselves.Love,
Martha