Tom Clark lived, for decades, as his health declined, on a busy street in Berkeley, in a house with many steep stairs. Crossing, haltingly, one of those streets he was struck by a car and killed on August 17.
One of the last times I saw him he made fun of himself for his frailty at having to pause while walking in the neighborhood, and even more when he tried to get to his front door. But, although he could have, he refused to move. His surroundings – mainly an enormous trove of books, magazines, newspapers, and his own voluminous works and manuscripts would have been too hard, and time consuming, to go through alone. And aside from his wife, Angelica, he trusted no one to help.
I asked Tom if he would be interested in being interviewed. We both knew we didn’t have forever to think about it (I’m 81; he was 77). My pitch was: “You’re probably the least best known person in this country to have written, and published, over 40 books. There’s a great diversity in subject and mode in what you’ve written. And you keep up, obsessively, with the literary and political world around you. Got to be some wisdom to communicate, no?”
Tom was polite, but obviously totally uninterested. He listened to me, and without responding, said he had to go lie down. Some time later, when he hadn’t returned, Angelica – who I’d known since their first days together in Bolinas in the late Sixties – came and told me he was asleep, and there was no telling when he’d get up.
We e-mailed occasionally after that, but never saw each other again. I liked him a lot and had always felt a bond with him. In fact, as I write this, I sense how nice it would be to have him here, as we would be watching the A’s (to whose fate he was emotionally linked) about to achieve what was thought to be an impossible climb to first place.
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