Thomas Sullivan

Pinch hitting for Frank Wydra is like stepping in for Babe Ruth.  And I wish I could tell you that it’s just an April Fool’s switch and that Frank will be back next month, but it isn’t and for the time being he won’t.  Since before Christmas Frank has been soldiering on with a great deal of pain and exhaustion.  He had some surgeries and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer, which – in his words – is nasty stuff.  He wanted to keep going on his column just as always but has come to feel that he cannot do it justice as he undergoes treatment, including chemo.  That’s pretty typical Frank…worried that he can’t do it justice.  Anyone who knows Flamingo Frank can think of better justice than what he’s contending with, but he doesn’t want me to go there and I’m honor bound to stick to the script.  

I can tell you that his plan was to do one last session of the Gonquin in which he conveyed the pleasure his association with all the posters on StorytellersUnplugged has brought him.  He thanks you one and all.  You’ll have to forgive my imperfect rendering if this list is incomplete, but he mentioned a number of people who have meant so much to this site and in his personal correspondence on the blog and in e-mails.  David Wilson, John Skipp, Richard Steinberg, Janet Berliner and Robert Jones come to mind at the moment. 

Maybe a couple of times in my life I’ve met someone like Frank who became an instant brother.  We recognized something – a spirit of open-mindedness, for lack of a better phrase – that put us into many adventures together, whether it was in the drawing room atmosphere of The Society of the Black Bull or on a shark-infested remote beach in the Bahamas one island away from where they filmed “Pirates of the Caribbean.”  Flamingo Frank all but kidnapped me and forced me out of my shell to drive together to Rhode Island when my novel THE MARTYRING was a finalist for Best Novel at World Fantasy Con.  No one sets a better table, throws a better party, or provides a more inspiring evening by the fire than the master host Frank Wydra.  Of course, he merely gets credit for what his wife does.  Karen Wydra, BTW, is one of America’s preeminent painters, and it is in her shadow that our beloved compatriot labors on his novels and short stories.  And columns.  The Gonquin table is one of those ready-made, obvious formats it took a genius to recognize and a double genius to pull off with such exacting research, transcendent imagination, grounded philosophy, and spot-on pastiches. 

I thought to present my stand-in role here in the Gonquin tradition, but that would be a travesty even if it somehow came off a fraction as good as what you’re used to seeing here.  I can tell you that Frank is not one to look backwards and his plan for this month’s column faced his challenges without flinching.  He is not a quitter, and he is very savvy about technology and progressive trials in medicine in particular, but he is also pragmatic about covering the bases.  Since he has always been the only living person at the Gonquin, it was his thought (“morbid thought,” he called it with a hint of apology) to cross over and become one of the others much as Father Damien on Molokai once acknowledged that he, too, was a leper.  As I said, he was keenly aware that this would have to be nuanced in the tradition of the Gonquin to avoid morbidity, and in his present state of exhaustion as he undergoes treatment he wasn’t sure he’d have the energy to do that. 

Notwithstanding the daunting honor I now have of filling in for him, I’m glad he didn’t write that column.  Even though I’m grateful that Frank faces all possible realities head-on, the bond between us is constructed of what I cited above: a spirit of open-mindedness, a receptivity which allows all things to succeed.  Much better to just leave the Gonquin in suspension.  That said, Frank has recently written this: “So it be understood, I’ve had a great life and have no regrets.  I may get a little more time, but in the scope of things, my bank account is full.  For that I have all the wonderful people who I have known and who have supported me to thank.  They are legion.”  You make everyone’s bank account full, Flamingo.

For the time being, the Gonquin table is adjourned…

– Thomas “Sully” Sullivan