Big Pete Edition

Incomplete thoughts, with links and a poem

Hi. It’s been a real heavy month, and on Sunday, my father, the esteemed and dapper and hilarious Peter Straub, finally died. Finally? What I mean by that, I guess, is that he had been so close to death so many times, and he had always escaped it, like Houdini getting out of handcuffs underwater. My dad was huge—we called him Big Pete for good reason—and for a very long time, it seemed like he was so big and so strong, his shoulders so broad and sturdy, that nothing could fell him. But bodies can only take so much, even strong ones from Wisconsin. Below you will find a rambling assortment of pictures and links and thoughts and one poem. Thank you for reading, and for loving him, or me, or both. The reaction to his death—the one coming from outside my body—has been overwhelming and beautiful. It’s really lovely to be reminded how many people read and loved his books, and how much art matters. So much of what I’m thinking right now is already in my book, so apologies for repeating myself, but in our family, art was the religion. Fiction, poetry, that’s the stuff. Love to everyone else who belongs to our church.

My children and husband wearing t-shirts promoting the fictional novel inside This Time Tomorrow.

My dad wearing a t-shirt promoting the office of two fictional characters from The Talisman. (Thank you to whoever took this photo in, I’m guessing 1983 or 1984.) The apple doesn’t fall, etc.

If you haven’t seen the obituary—Big Pete would have fucking LOVED being a NYT push alert, let me tell you—here is a link. There are obituaries all over the place, take your pick. NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian.

It has been overwhelming to read all the emails and texts and phone calls and tweets and Instagram comments, but it’s also been a goldmine.

Isn’t that wonderful?

I did a whole Twitter thread, complete with photos.

I’m working on writing something, something more coherent than this, but in the meantime, here is a poem that I read to him on his last day. I don’t have any kind of permission. Please don’t sue me, estate of Richard Wilbur. I share it with great gratitude.

The Writer

Richard Wilbur - 1921-2017

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back, 
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten.  I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.