Erik Donald France to Wallace Fowlie, October 24, 1987 (Part III)

[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's another one of them (typed), from when I lived just off Little River Church Road in Hurdle Mills, North Carolina. He was residing at 17D Valley Terrace Apartments, 2836 Chapel Hill Road, Durham, North Carolina. This is Part III of the October 24, 1987 epistle. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading. For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]

In 1982, I traveled with my sister [L] around the U.S., to San Francisco and New Orleans; in '83, I convinced [W] to try Mardi Gras; in May '83, I drove with [X] to Boulder, Colorado.

That summer I was quickly persuaded to travel to Europe -- on impulse [cherchez la femme = "D"]. I knew that if I didn't go then, I would despise myself forever. 

During the course of that journey, I wandered around freely, exploring Paris and Rome, Munich, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London & Zurich.

In Paris I met an entertaining German named Heinz who talked about Morrison over the latter's grave for hours until he bummed a Métro ticket from another visitor for destination unknown. This time Morrison's grave had a bust to mark the spot, along with a whole new set of graffiti inscriptions. 

[Y] & I . . . paid Jim a visit on May 1st, 1986, during communist, socialist & anarchist demonstrations in and around Père Lachaise. A knot of strange people sat around smoking, drinking and talking and looking at the latest inscriptions until gendarmes with rifles cleared us out. This time the bust was missing part of Jim's nose. 

The Doors seem to haunt everywhere I go. I remember hitch-hiking in Bavaria in '83 & being picked up by Germans who didn't say a word, just blasted "Riders on the Storm" and "When the Music's Over."

And in Toulouse, in May 1986, [Y] and I were put, at first, in the basement of a jazz club restaurant where speakers played, in eerie reverberation, the Doors. Upstairs only jazz played.

One final thing I wanted to mention. I was reading, a few weeks ago, Breton's Nadja. On one page I noted the photo of an unexplained manuscript in which is mentioned a Monsieur St. Bonnet. In a book full of subjective coincidence & mystical fates, I was struck by the fact that this is the surname of my mother's mother (Catherine St. Bonnet [1914-2009]); that only the week before, while reading Breton's poems in The Poetry of Surrealism, I lost a poem I wrote under the name of Alexander St. Bonnet!

                                             Very Sincerely Yours,
                                             Erik D. France

[Today, I received an email letting me know that my grandmother's brother Richard Nicholas St. Bonnet's (1910-1991) 1940 draft card had turned up in the historical record, and that his wife's middle name was the same as "Y's" first name. Catherine and Richard's father, Warren Nicholas St. Bonnet (1885-1918), died one hundred years ago this year in the Great Influenza Pandemic.]