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An Emotional Memoir of Franz Kline

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Dawson brings the stream-of-consciousness style with which he is associated to this brief reminiscence of painter Franz Kline. The 150-page volume, with 19 large-font lines per page, is actually more of a long essay than a book. At the time he fancied himself as a Frank O'Hara to Kline's Larry Rivers, but is willing half a decade later to write all the excruciating ways he was not a muse or soul-mate.

Some vivid scenarios and anecdotes about Kline are conveyed, but mostly this is a Sturm und Drang of a pansexual man's search for belonging, caught up in an intense, imaginary Oedipal triangle in which Jocasta is not the intended, but rather the surrogate Father is. The author conveys his developmental arrest, emotional age approximately 11, starting the tale as a grown ex-military man first enraptured by Kline during a semester at Black Mountain College in the mid50s when Kline visited as an instructor. It jumps to subsequent worshipping amidst heavy drinking at the Cedar Bar and other NY venues, and includes Dawson's awkward attempts to negotiate the young women on the scene who served as pesky distractions from his obsession with Kline.

De Kooning, Guston, and a couple of others from that era make brief appearances. The masters all project from their eyeballs beams of kindly, loving telepathy toward each other and toward him, Dawson believes, unless they take the extra step of placing an arm on his shoulders. His nipping-on-one's-heels puppy stance contrasts the solemnity of the painters (excepting Pollack's antics, which more closely resemble Dawson's insatiability for attention). He has difficulty differentiating drunken theatrics from genuine emotions, reading way too much into passing events. He ends the essay on a wistful note, resignedly marrying due to his reluctant awareness that he will never possess Kline, who died shortly after the early 60s nuptials.