I don't usually hang out with other writers. I find them too dark, too driven and too self-possessed. David Westheimer was different.
Here was a guy so upbeat that it felt like he might bounce right out of his chair when we'd get into any kind of compelling conversation. Even after a stroke partially paralyzed him, he could still get worked up over the latest book, the latest war or the latest dumb politician.
We'd meet at the Casablanca in Venice, his favorite Mexican restaurant, and he'd usually want to know what I was doing rather than telling me what he'd been doing, which was usually a lot. I had to pry his accomplishments out of him, and it wasn't always easy.
When his wife, his beloved Dody, called the other day to say David had died, I experienced a moment of doubt. He was 88 years old and I should have realized he had to let go at some point, but he was still so full of life that to think of him as gone just didn't fit the story.
It was like that moment in Joan Didion's book, "The Year of Magical Thinking," when her husband of 40 years, John Gregory Dunne, died. She found herself not being able to give away his shoes because he'd need them when he returned. It's hard to let go.
I had David fixed in memory as he was, leaning toward me, making his point not like one of those table-pounding true believers, but in a slight Texas drawl so soft I had to lean forward to hear him. And he always had something to say worth hearing.
If you read his obit Saturday you already know that David was an accomplished writer. The novels "Von Ryan's Express" and "My Sweet Charlie" were his giant efforts, but there were a lot more, including "Delay En Route," published just three years ago.
He was writing poetry and essays almost right up until he died, in between sessions at the gym and e-mailing friends all over the globe. He also wrote scripts and columns, and would probably have written psalms if he'd had the time.
Going to reunions at Rice University, where he'd graduated in 1939, was a special treat for him. He told me once that he went just to see former classmates who were in worse shape than he was. He had an impish sense of humor and would delight in telling those who didn't know him that his agent gave him the new sport coat he was wearing. His agent was his son, Fred, with William Morris at the time.
