Happiness That Sleeps with Sadness

Abstract

More than twenty-five years ago when he did a reading in Sioux City, Iowa, I first met Jim Welch and his wife, Lois, and I have been grate ful to get to know them over the decades. Even during that first meal we shared in a cafe afterward, I felt a rare, confidential mix of chal lenge and affection from them both. It seemed to be their implicit challenge to meet the highest standards of expression and honesty, while they both gave their quiet approval and affection for whatever efforts I could make in that direction. They seemed perfectly matched to support each other that way, to encourage good writing and honest speaking. I hope we can all help Lois now. Jim always dodged superlatives, but I can say that he was one of the least sentimental and most sensible people I ever encountered. He was genuinely the least romantic and the most relentlessly realistic person, but at the same time he was so fully engaged and caring. Somehow he managed to be both penetratingly astute and nonjudgmental. His immediate warmth and chipmunk smile were driven by lion eyes that both sparkled and burned. He looked at the world and at suffering with so little self-pity and so much spontaneous feeling. His words, of course, were thus constantly surprising, concise, piercing. From the first line in his first book, his language shakes with a strength that, for lack of a better phrase, might be called hardheaded tenderness. It gives his lines a constant edge of polar ultimates, of life and death. And he faced even death with a straightforward clarity. A few weeks before he died, my wife, Kate, and I had Jim and Lois over for dinner, and I asked Jim what he was working on these days, whether he