Donald Angelo Porter
Born in 1948
Only child. Though maybe he had a sibling that died when he was young and sub-consciously his family never came to terms.
Had a scholarship to The University of Chicago where he played baseball for one season before dropping out.
1966 was forced into enlisting because of an episode with a married woman. His feeling was resigned in that he believed that he would probably get drafted anyway. Everyone seemed to.
What happened in Vietnam?
We do know that he was in the same platoon with his future agent Martin. They were deep buddies and lucky to both have survived, but always looked out for each other after the war. Perhaps Martin was the only one who genuinely believed the love letters, sometimes eulogies, and simple notes that Don wrote for all the guys in the platoon, were actually quite funny, eloquent, and often profound. He called Don Thornton because of Dons unusual and lone fascination with Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and The Bridge of San Louis Rey – The former, a play that ponders whether human beings truly appreciate the precious nature of a transient life in light of the fact that humans are powerless to stem the advance of time. The Latter, a book about the impossible but perfect manner in which we all come to die: forever unpredictable and always linked to cosmos.
Like a lot of soldiers who returned unceremoniously after the war, Don struggled to “find” himself. His uneasy meanderings were in contrast to his buddy Martin who immediately went back to business school and thereafter into the world of publishing.
Don was a vagabond seeker. Spurred on by Martin and in the midst of his LSD fueled travels he penned in a blaze of other-worldly creative explosion the novel Song of the Leafbird.
He did have the clarity, at that time, and who knows how, to package and send the pages to his buddy Martin in Portland. He included a note that read, “Do whatever the fuck you want with this… T”
Martin took that to heart and not ever being able to find Don, edited the manuscript and got it published.
By 1976, it had become a cult classic appealing to both the counterculture who were drawn to its profound spiritual truths, but also the businessman who was able to leverage its message as a guidebook for effective leadership…
1976-1983 was all about Don and his sometimes excited, but often-hesitant portrayal as the voice of a generation and a worshiped hero. Of course, he liked the money, and the female attention, but there was also the deep seeded belief that he had cheated everyone – that an LSD fueled book he could almost not remember writing, “had changed the world…”
He tried to write, but never with the clarity or success of his one hit wonder.
In 1985 he was compelled to live back home in Chicago to take care of his ailing parents. At first, he believed it would be a short stay with him simply organizing and arranging for their care. It lasted 30 years. He never was satisfied with the quality-of-care strangers provided and more than that he wasn’t prepared for his own complete inability to watch both his parents die. First his father in 1998, and then his mom slowly from dementia in 2018. He had thought that by the time he had to face his parents’ death, having seen so many in the war, and his “understanding” of what he had “written”, certainly what Thornton Wilder espoused, that it wouldn’t be so brutal and leave him so lonely and vulnerable.
In 1995 his buddy Martin died. Nobody will admit that agent orange probably had a lot to do with it, but for Don there were too many events that pointed straight towards that reality.
Don was crushed, but activated a bit by an inner call to preserve his friends legacy. Of course he wrote the amazing eulogy that was even published in the New Yorker, but he even found himself speaking before congress advocating for legislature to provide better monies to research the effects of chemicals and warfare. Of course the bill goes nowhere, but these actions spur Don to begin considering his own legacy.
By now the book sales had plateaued and he was no longer a “hero”.
So, at the end of the decade, it was no surprise that he agreed to “listen” to Hollywood when via Martin’s son Mitch, they came calling with the interest to turn his book into a film.
Perhaps he believed that to revisit the book, dig into it’s meaning, he could finally connect to the person that wrote it. Also, the promise of money couldn’t hurt with his fondness for gambling. He didn’t have a problem per se, but a habit that helped him “feel something” for better or worse. It was how his dad and he stayed connected at the end, playing cards, and his sharp memory actually made him pretty successful at blackjack. It was also the perfect antidote from that time with his parents. wiping arse during the day, kicking ass at the table at night.
2002-2005 was the Hollywood odyssey. From meetings to deals to concepts to casting to re writes to ultimately being bought off the production, the film titled “Kill Zone” ended up being popular, but with very little resemblance to the book. Don was driven deeper towards a disassociation with his book. In time, people seemed to know him for the movie more than the book.
Is the book he wrote high on LSD, and the horrible movie spawned from it enough to leave behind a life?
From 2005 on he went back to a life distant and void of any direction or calling. He slept through these years in a coma of the mundane. Poker. Cubs games. He wasn’t unhappy, but he wasn’t happy either. He just was. In fact, perhaps it was this period, without knowing it, only considering it from the future, does he realize how peaceful this time was, just him and him mom up until her death.