A rare interview offers an abundance of insight into Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau--and some startlingly personal insight from Mrs. T

Since the subject seems to arouse no interest, and often startling hostility, I try to keep my admiration-bordering-on-awe for Garry Trudeau and Doonesbury under wraps. It has been awfully hard, though, in the case of the two-year-old recurring plot line involving erstwhile football hero B.D.'s loss of his leg in Iraq, and his continuing struggle to return to his life.

I do want to mention that yesterday's Washington Post Magazine carried a rare and outstanding profile of the publicity-phobic Trudeau by Washington Post humor columnist (and online chat host) Gene Weingarten, who followed up today with a terrific online chat session.

In the chat session, for example, Weingarten shared the gnarled history of the cover illustration (see above), drawn for the occasion by Trudeau:

One question many of you are asking involves the cover the magazine: Yes, Trudeau drew that specifically for The Post. The general idea was mine--having B.D., with his missing leg, ruminating on the nature of "The Creator." There's a funny story behind this.

Once my editor, Tom the Butcher had approved of the idea, I needed to broach it to Trudeau. We were together in Tucson at the Vietvet conference. But first, I phoned Tom to work out one final detail. Here is how the conversation went:

Me: So, how much can we pay him?

TtheB: Pay him?

Me: For the illustration.

TtheB: I don't think we can pay him anything. We can't pay the subjects of our stories. You know that.

Me: We're not paying for the story! We're paying a world-famous artist for a cover illustration.

TtheB: I know. But it looks like we're paying for the story. We can't do it.

Me:

TtheB:

Me: Okay, let's do a little thought experiment, shall we?

TtheB: Let's!

Me: Do you agree that an original illustration by Garry Trudeau is an item of some intrinsic value? Worth thousands of dollars, in fact?

TtheB: Sure.

Me: Okay, then. So, by asking him to do this illustration for free, we are in effect asking him to give us money.

TtheB:

Me: In other words, HE is paying US to write the story about him.

TtheB:

Me:

TtheB: Okay, this is above my pay grade.

So Tom the Butcher went to discuss this with great and powerful people at The Post. Scenarios were discussed. Options were weighed. And so forth. Finally, it was decided that we would not pay Trudeau for the art, but we would donate a substantial amount of money, in his name, to the charity of his choice.

So, that's what happened. I tell this story mostly because it illustrates the sometimes comical super-serious degrees to which this newspaper is willing to wrestle with issues of ethics and angels on pinheads and so forth--and also why I would not want to work for anyone else. Trudeau, by the way, took my idea for the cover and improved my wording hugely, giving it Mamet-like sparseness.

He's donating the money to Fisher House, which is a program to provide free or low-cost housing for the families who are visiting injured soldiers.

ALSO IN THE CHAT SESSION: A reader pointed out that the illustration is erroneous, since Trudeau draws the strips in pencil, and the pencil drawings are then turned over to an inker.

• • •

Well, there's one other thing I can't not mention, from the Post Magazine piece itself--especially in the interest of anyone who has been overwhelmed by the B.D. saga. No, make that two things:

(1) I had no idea of the extent to which Trudeau has immersed himself in the world of the wounded war returnees. So I also had no idea that it was made possible in large part by contact initiated from the Pentagon following publication of the strip in which B.D. was injured, offering cooperation that opened this whole world to him. This may, tragically, be the most caring thing the military has done for the veterans who have returned un-whole from our ill-advised military adventures.

(2) Trudeau's wife, Jane Pauley, thinks the B.D. story is the best work he's ever done, which is interesting, if unsurprising, but not the point I wanted to pass on, which is the special connection she feels to this story. I think this has to be told the way Weingarten himself tells it, near the end of his piece:

AT 55, JANE PAULEY IS STILL BEAUTIFUL, and she still projects frank vulnerability, or vulnerable frankness, or whatever is that subtle combination of qualities that made her America's preeminent morning-show host in the 1980s. We're meeting for breakfast because there is something Trudeau wouldn't really talk about, and Pauley will.

In 2001, Pauley nearly lost her mind. After receiving steroids to control a case of the hives, she began doing oddly intense things. How intense? She bought a house one day, for no good reason, on impulse, from an ad on the Web. Misdiagnosed with depression, she was hospitalized under an assumed name, to protect her privacy. Eventually, she was found to have a bipolar disorder--triggered but not caused by the steroids--for which she is still undergoing treatment. Pauley chronicled her struggle in a 2004 memoir, Skywriting.

Trudeau was largely absent from Skywriting, and he had been guarded with me about the effect of Pauley's illness on him and the family. He volunteered only two things: "I was told by a doctor that 40 percent of marriages just don't survive it, so from the beginning I knew we were up against something really significant"; and, "The disease subverts your basic survival instinct in the sense that the people who you need to help you survive are the same people you are attacking."

So that's what I ask Pauley about.

"Yes," she says, dryly, "there is a free-floating anger that needs a target and will find one."

For a year or so, Pauley says, before her symptoms were under control, Trudeau and the family lived with her irrational rages. The twins were hunting for colleges, Trudeau was pressed by deadline after deadline, and Mom was a fulminating piece of work--demanding, histrionic, impossible. ["The twins" are the two older of the couple's three children--daughter Rickie and older son Ross, now 22. They wound up at Yale and Brown, respectively, so that part seems to have worked out OK.] "It was just incredible torment for them," Pauley says. "Garry was keeping the house together. It has to have been the most painful part of his life."

Pauley has recovered with the help of lithium, a drug she says she will be on for the rest of her life. Things are mostly fine, she says, except for some side effects, such as a persistent tremor to the hands. She looks murderously at her coffee cup, which the waiter has overfilled, almost to the brim.

"For example, I can't risk trying to pick that up."

Pauley thinks the story of B.D. has been something special, the best work Trudeau has ever done. And then she says:

"I don't think he's consciously aware that it has anything to do with me."

With . . . her?

Pauley smiles. "Garry's mind is very compartmentalized. The department doing the strip in his brain is not directly connected to the husband part, but . . ."

Pauley takes a forkful of scrambled eggs.

". . . it defies credulity that on some level it is not present in his work. What is he writing about, really? He's writing about mental illness, and how it's possible to find a way out of it, with help. It's very hopeful."

I start to say that Trudeau has never made that connection to me, in fact denies that his private life ever intrudes into the strip. But Pauley is ahead of me.

"He'll want to say no, but it's hard to argue with. Isn't it?"