The Realms of the Unreal

[an art encounter]

Today is the birthday of artist Henry Darger, so in his honor, here’s my Henry Darger story:

It would have been the spring of 1977, I think, and I was a student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and, for a few months, dating a rather older gentleman (so, like, in his thirties?): an artist of no distinguished talent or, as it turned out, personal integrity. Which of course means: He was good-looking and adept in the sack. My usual downfall.

One afternoon this artist—whose name was Henry, and in all these years, hand to You Know Whom, this is the first time I’ve connected those trivial, inadvertent dots—says: We’re going to go see this dead guy’s art.

Fine.

Why not.

Now, Henry lives in a loft in Wicker Park, which in those days struck little old suburban Long Island me as, more or less, a slum, and we drive east into Chicago proper (or at least Chicago less raffish), and I don’t yet know most of Chicago well, a few movie theaters and gay bars aside, so I have no idea where we’re going.

I realize only years later that we’ve driven to Lincoln Park, not far in fact from where, just a couple of years later, I live. And we get let into this apartment—I’m a bit fuzzy on those particulars: Like, I can’t remember by whom, but I’m reasonably sure now that it’s just Henry and me and the fellow with the keys.¹

Clearly, no one lives in the place anymore (I recall it as tidy and emptied-out, certainly no personal effects to be seen), but there are piles of paper and folders stacked on various tables and art on the walls, and this is what I remembered of the art: long works on paper (long from side to side, that is), with lots of repeated figures in candy colors, and writing all over them. Comic-book-type dialogue bubbles and captions, that is.

Eerie.

Cool.

No one, I think, mentions the artist’s name. Or if they do, I don’t remember it. But it’s all fascinating to me and, clearly, makes a lasting impression.

Cut to 1980 or 1981, so by now I’ve graduated. I’m dating a different artist: much nicer than (live, not dead) Henry,² vastly more talented.

And the different artist and I go one evening to a gallery show: a mixed bag of artwork by lots of artists who are (or were) Chicagoans. And there I see: a couple of long works on paper, with lots of repeated figures in candy colors, and writing all over them. And that’s when I first see the name Henry Darger.

It would still be a few years before Darger’s name and art became well known, I think, but the key thing for me is: I absolutely, in the moment, recognized that art in that gallery that evening as the art I’d seen in the dead guy’s apartment, so even though I came to think for a while in later years that it was all some sort of concocted memory, I am certain now that I was certainly in Henry Darger’s flat after his death.

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There’s no copyediting in this story at all, so I feel like I owe you one, but I may not get to it till next week. (I already know what it’s going to be, and it’s fun. I think.)

In the meantime, I’ve just achieved a thousand subscribers here at Substack, and I’m deeply grateful for your interest (though not humbled; oh, look, there’s a copyediting note: Please don’t say, when you’re as pleased as Punch,³ that you’re humbled, because you’re not, are you)⁴ and appreciative of your support. So: Thanks!

1. Presumably the fellow with the keys was Darger’s landlord, Nathan Lerner, but if so I can’t be certain, neither can I be certain of how he and (live, not dead) Henry would have been acquainted.

2. After-the-fact footnote: Yesterday, after publishing this piece, I went on a little Google spree to see if I could locate any information about (live, not dead) Henry, even to see whether or not he was indeed (live, not dead), which is never a given with anyone after a few decades, certainly not actively gay men of the 1970s and 1980s. Oddly enough, the sole relevant hit I could find was an online repository of his unmistakable art, hundreds of images and absolutely no further information besides his name. “I’m not sure why it’s there,” I said to a friend. “For you to find it, apparently,” she said. “Ha ha ha yikes,” I said.

3. Did you know that when you’re as pleased as Punch you’re as pleased as that rather vicious big-snouted wife-clobbering puppet named Punch, and not as pleased as that sweet something you might find yourself drinking at a cotillion or coming-out party? There: more copyediting.

4. Yet another copyediting note, it seems, because I’m clearly incorrigible: If you’re writing something that’s shaped like a question but isn’t really a question, I endorse concluding the question-shaped thing with a period (a full stop, east of the Big Water) rather than with a question mark. This is, I think, one of the very few copyediting dicta I adapted/adopted from Twitter.