From Doris Betts - Memorial Service

    Max was a mere acquaintance on a day in the 1950’s when we met by accident in front of the old Post Office on Franklin Street, each of us  clutching a letter.  Max said: “They might want my book for a movie!”  and I broke in happily, “How about that! Me, too!”  We stared at each other.  Asked Max, “Is yours from Columbia Pictures?”  I nodded.“Is it signed by Jerry Wald?”  I held my letter alongside his.  They were identical form letters except for the name of the addressee.

         For one poised moment we could either have laughed or cried; but it was Max who laughed first, and we stood there roaring like fools at ourselves.

         His talent for laughter – to tease, to reduce tension, to deflate pomposity with rapier wit, is legendary; and this week   the Chapel Hill air has been swarming with examples and anecdotes. 

At Carolina he taught a famous course on humor with a syllabus that ranged from the  barroom belly laugh to exploring  the psychology thatcould sharpen  a witty remark on the thick skin of an opponent.  In person and in his fiction, Max often cast himself as the first person butt of the joke – as in that  story widely used  in high school texts, where a boy on his first date makes the mistake of washing  down Alka Seltzer with great gulps of Coca-Cola.  In much of his fiction a child or a childlike narrator learns that Life and sometimes Death  will always have the last laugh.

         Born in 1922, he used his Greenville, S.C. memories in fiction that could make readers laugh AND cry – Tears, for example, are shed reading  his compassionate but unsentimental  prize novel DEBBY – there follow  3 masterful story

collctions plus  recent new work that  has charmed a wide audience in the Washington Post.

The Mother in one of his stories, who like Max set a high value on manners and civility, would only attend  funerals for people she  had known for more than 20 years – many of us here tonight would qualify.  And

Max, too, nurtured and cherished those  friendships that ripened over  seven and eight decades.

A UNC graduate and Air Force veteran who also studied painting and French Literature in Paris, Max  helped found the Paris Review; always championed the short story asthe most artistic form of fiction and thus gave support to STORY magazine; taught at Bennington and Squaw Valley; received honorary degrees from Belmont Abbey andFurman University;  and during  22 years as director transformed

Carolina’s handful of occasional writing course into the finest undergraduate creative writing program in the country.  Fellow writers and wannabe writers crowded hisGreenlaw office with its big W.C. Fields poster; at his parties they tasted the saki he had fermented himself, broke the bread he baked in coffee cans, and talked about literature n the room that had a live tree growing in its  center and later in his Banbury apartment. Recently the  University called him back from retirement to excite and inspire a new generation of student  writers  

         For all the laughter that he engendered and led he was the most serious and dependable  help in trouble – rushing, by instinct to find Jessie Rehder dead in her chair,driving so many miles for so many weekends to comfort his sister’s terminal illness, encouraging the writing careers of others, rejoicing in the accomplishments of his

 students.  A superb teacher, he taught the rest of us on staff how to teach writing and, like

Miss Effie in “The Cat & the Coffeedrinkers,” his lessons were graceful and subtle. Perhaps he would have written even more fine stories if he had given  less generously of his time and energy to others. A few years back he considered formalizing his ethic by choosing a church, but when certain  pews rang with condemnation of gay people, he never went back.

         Academia gave him spiritual sons and daughters, but his pride in them was only exceeded by his admiration and love for his family.  He married Diana Whittinghill in 1960; she is the mother of his sons Kevin, now of Seattle; and Oliver, and he was

devoted to Oliver’s wife Margaret and two grandchildren Charlotte, 7, and Miles 11, all of whom

live in Amherst, Mass.

         It is fitting that they, and we, are saying farewell to Max in this place near the graves of Paul Green and Prof Koch, the two men he first came to Chapel Hill to study with, and especially near the resting place of his best friend, Robert Kirkpatrick, in whose memory  Max  spoke so well not long ago. 

         Another of his loyal affection went to  fellow writer Alice Adams, whose ashes  he brought cross country home  to this spot in  her native Chapel Hill.  Thinking ahead, Max had  his own name carved on a stone in readiness.  Naturally visitors who stroll this ground and spotted it would cry ,  “Max?  Is he dead?” and naturally these alarmed queries reached him, so he installed a granite footstone which read: HE’S NOT HERE.         Someone suggested that since there was a well known bar uptown called “He’s not Here” perhaps copyright infringement might be involved.

Of course Max  knew better but he loved the mischief of extending the story, so he phoned the manager to ask if he minded.  The man said: “I guess not, as long

as you don’t sell alcohol  in the cemetery.”  To which Max replied , “Well, I can’t promise that.”

He’s still not here, but he still IS here – in our memories, in our hearts.

May we join our memories in a moment of silence.