INTERVIEWER

Did your father ever come around to showing interest?

GURGANUS

When I was twelve, I started selling paintings and he began offering advice. “Double, no, triple your asking price. You’ll sell twice as much in the end. There’s an art to this, I tell you.” Dad feared I would starve to death as a grown-up artist. To prevent that he tried disinheriting me of any stray respect. But this only made me trust art more, him less. Everything he withheld I found quadrupled in a sixty-nine-cent bottle of india ink. Pen and ink became my superpower. I didn’t think of aesthetics as aesthetics but as tactics for survival. When my first book sold, Dad told me he’d assured his golfing partners, “I never doubted it.” I thanked him, knowing better.