He didn’t fit my mental template of the Southern Writer (for I then conceived authorship as a deadly serious, if not necessarily sober, affair), and I was perplexed by his roguish gleam. The critic Monroe Spears introduced us when I was barely 18, and I didn’t know what to make of George. He was my godfather, in the literary world, from when I first took his fiction workshop as a sophomore at Princeton up through and beyond the moment when I wrote him the aforesaid letter. Of course I’m not up to the job of being George Garrett, and it’s hard to imagine that anyone else would be either, but I believe it counts for something to try, and a lot of people who’ve been touched by him along the way do feel inspired to try.

They didn’t call him the Great Encourager for nothing. Already in poor health, with troubles aplenty of his own in those days, he sent a warm and charitable reply, along these lines: Of course you’re up to it. I’d be more ashamed of this missive now, except that it was in its twisted way a compliment to him. George Garrett had been sick for quite a while when he died May 25, at 78 - it was bad news but not a big surprise.įive or six years ago, in the course of a long, dark period when it seemed that I only heard from people who wanted something and that (still worse) I seldom could succeed in providing what they wanted, I wrote a desperate, plaintive letter to George, describing this predicament: I feel like I’ve applied for the job of being George Garrett, and got the job (hooray!) and then found out I’m not up to it. I think I knew it would be an elegy even when we started it.

So goes the first verse of a song Wyn Cooper and I have been working on for a year or so now. Hey George I just called to let you know That I needed a favor … And I hope that you won’t mind To oblige me one more time …

Death of the Fox by George Garrett