Chekhov’s Mistess

Regarding the Loss of Others

 

How can we be truly sad for the death of those we don’t know?

I question how I can feel for the thousands of people who died this week, lost in a moment’s shift of the earth’s surface, or those who violently died in Iraq or, perhaps unnoticed by all of us, those who met death quietly in some shanty town or slum somewhere. I saw a picture in the NY Times today of a woman kneeling over the bodies of her children killed in the tsunami. As a parent, that woman’s reality is my greatest fear. I wonder if the sadness evoked by this photograph is not just a recognition of my own fragility or ephemerality in an uncertain world.

A skeptic I am, of emotions and responses to them, so I probe here my own feelings more than our culture’s. Despite the horrific tragedy this week and the suffering that I can’t see but know is out there, I felt utterly sad in a way that I can’t explain for the death of one person who I am only barely acquainted with, Susan Sontag.

Not long ago I met Ms. Sontag, but only briefly. After a concert at Carnegie Hall, I nearly pushed her out of my way trying to get back stage. A few minutes later, she was there too in this cramped space where the artists greet their friends and fans after a performance. I didn’t say anything to her other than an awkward apology for breezing by her as she convinced the usher to let her in (I had a pass). Her sweeping streaked hair exaggerated her height and her weathered, intelligent face – actually quite young looking for her nearly seventy years – exuded an aura that I couldn’t escape. I looked at this mythical woman nearly the entire time we were in the same room together, trying to speak to her telepathically – my only alternative since I was too intimidated to talk to her by any other means. Having failed in establishing communication, I consoled myself by buying a book of her early essays the very next day.

Writers more than other public figures reveal themselves through their work. Just last week I read a transcript of Ms. Sontag talking with an old friend of hers, Richard Howard, about poetry ( “The Writer, The Work,” Pen America, Vol. 1 Issue 1, Winter 2000/01). Reading their reminiscences I was envious of her depth of intellect and devotion to literature. I was also impressed with her attitude toward promoting art and how that seemed to be ingrained into her every action. Salman Rushdie, author and president of Pen America, the writers’ organization, confirms my impression with his comments on Ms. Sontag (who herself was president from 1987 – ’89) in a press release issued today by the organization:

“She was a true friend in need. After the 1989 Khomeini fatwa against the author, publishers, and translators of The Satanic Verses, she led PEN in that battle for freedom of thought. Her resolute support, at a time when some wavered, helped to turn the tide against what she called ‘an act of terrorism against the life of the mind.’ I will always remember her determination with gratitude and admiration.


”Over the next fifteen years, Susan remained an active and stalwart PEN member and supporter, taking leading positions on a host of issues and traveling to many countries in defense of persecuted writers. She was particularly emphatic about the urgency of opposing American cultural parochialism and indifference to writing and ideas from abroad. An extraordinary champion of new writers from other countries and of literature in translation, she helped to introduce authors as diverse as Danilo Kis, W. G. Sebald, and Orhan Pamuk.

It is this persona of an outspokenly committed writer, critic and patron of serious literature that I have lost. I say persona because I did not know her. I know the facts, which are interesting, but just a sketch telling no more than anyone reading this site might know about me. When a famous actor or writer dies, someone who we as a public have a piece of, we mourn for our culture’s loss and we mourn for our own loss. We own them in a way. We feel as though they are ours and we have a right to their continued existence. We feel as though we know them.

In the case of Susan Sontag, it is indeed everyone’s loss, even those who didn’t know of her, much less know her. According to what I’ve read about her, she was not only a controversial intellectual, but activist as well. This from the London Times:

“Sontag’s political writings caused considerable public controversy. Impelled, she said, by grief, she wrote on America’s involvement in Vietnam, on Cuba, communism and the wars in Yugoslavia. She valued Hanoi and China, in particular, as sensibilities alternative to that of the West. At a 1982 rally for Polish Solidarity in New York, she famously declared communism to be ”Fascism with a human face“, which was widely but erroneously read as a conversion to the Right. Her political activism and concern for human rights also took her to Yugoslavia in the early-1990s, where she called for international intervention to put an end to the erupting civil war there.”

Impelled by grief, she said. Perhaps Ms. Sontag knew the answer to the questions I’ve posed.

• posted by Bud Parr
• 29-Dec-2004
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“…that streak of cacodaemonic extravagance sundering the very dome of heaven.”

 

Some thoughts on reading The Recognitions.

Coming from St. Marks Bookstore a few days before x-mas, I’m on the uptown 6 subway, a local, sitting on the edge of my seat (because my backpack is too heavy with books to carry it anywhere but on my back) and delicately balancing a cup of coffee from Mud in one hand, a willfully uncooperative umbrella in the other, and between my thumb and forearm I’m balancing my stocky copy of The Recognitions.

Despite this precarious situation and being overdressed for the warm, rainy and muggy (in the subway) day, I’m able to read until I’m stopped by astonishment by the following passage, which in my view is a literary hole-in-one:

This is Stanley thinking [321-22]:

“He shuddered at Esme, seduced by an apprehension in a world real enough to her: appalled one day when an airplane moving with the speed of sound had disemboweled the heaven above them and eviscerated its fragments in nausea from their bodies walking below. Alone, he might have thought nothing of it, but shut it out as he did all the frenzied traffic of the world. But her terror shook him; and she was right. And if on the other hand, they’d met that early Jesuit Father Anchieta in the street on a sunny day, sheltered under the parasol of birds he summoned to hover over him and keep pace, she would have appreciated such resourcefulness without profane curiosity, probably not have repeated what she’d seen to a soul. But the airplane! Had she met Saint Peter of Alcantara, Saint Peter Nolasco, Saint Peter Gonzalez, walking, as they did, upon the waves of the sea, why, there was more reason in those excursions than that streak of cacodaemonic extravagance sundering the very dome of heaven.”

Not only is it beautiful for its imagery and damning (sorry FSF) of Stanley’s frame of mind, but it says a lot about Esme’s power over Stanley (and perhaps men in general) too.

Arriving at Grand Central Terminal (where the S train will take me to Times Square to the 2 train uptown) I pass Fulan Gong pamphleteers, Colombian flute players, and a group of Hubbardites selling faith-based stress relief. It hits me how little things have changed since Gaddis so stingingly portrayed New York City.

***

In the next major passage with Valentine and Wyatt [332 – 39], Valentine makes an interesting comment “…he murmured as he might have talking to himself. – The simplicity … it’s the way I would paint …” [334], which reflects in some ways my own feeling about this novel. That is, If I could write (and think) like W.G. this is the novel that I would write. That idea brings me to…

Rake’s comments on Borges’ Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote (I didn’t want to say anything until I went back and read it again).

I think it’s an interesting parallel. It is not so much the question of authenticity, which has been a focus of many GDC discussions, but the question of creation and originality. Both Menard and Wyatt seek to recreate the works of past masters not so much through creation but through being the one that did the original. Valentine suggests this when he arrives at Wyatt’s door and mentions Rouge Cloître, the “convent that took van der Goes in.” Tellingly though, Wyatt seems to be unaware of this, perhaps indicating that those details are not necessary (where I believe, for Menard, they would be). Both Menard, whose work would appear to be trifling compared to the task of writing the Quixote, and Wyatt are not very accomplished as artists on their own.

I think the originality question comes up elsewhere too. One instance is when Fuller mimics Valentine’s hand movements [346 & 352]. But more significantly, Otto’s manuscript is authentic, but Max (who stole passages from Rilke) and others think the manuscript is plagierized because Otto writes down what everyone around him says. So when they read the manuscript they see something familiar without quite recognizing it because it’s their own words. Otto’s manuscript is therefore authentic, but not original.

Incidentally, there are no Borges volumes in Gaddis’ library.

***

After running into the word recognition so many times, I began to wonder how many instances there were. Fortunately, the annotations are thorough enough, and they tell us there are 81 “recognitions” in the book. I think that it’s presence in context of art and personal relationships shows the book’s layers of meaning, or perhaps it’s meaning, whatever that really is, as it applies in these different contexts of authenticity originality the falsehood of societal (and religious) norms, etc. Okay, I’m groping with that a bit, as you can see.

***

Now that I am well into the novel, I’ve been browsing around some of the web-based exegesis of T. Recs. Here are a couple things of interest (these have been mentioned on the Gaddis Drinking Club site, but are worth repeating:

I think the roman à clef aspect of the novel is little more than a gossipy distraction, but it can be fun, nonetheless. A story on Sheri Martinelli (Esme in the novel) reprinted on the Gaddis annotations site is pretty interesting because she seems to have been an enchanting fly-on-the-wall in the ’40s Greenwhich Village set. Written by the author of The Recognitions’s Annotation, the article has some interesting things to say about Sheri/Esme in context of the novel as well:

“Gretchen to Wyatt’s Faust, Esme has been sent to him by the novel’s Mephistopheles, Recktall Brown. A promiscuous manic-depressive schizophrenic junkie, she nevertheless models as the Virgin Mary in Wyatt’s religious forgeries (”No needle marks on your Annunciation’s arm, now,“ Brown reminds him [259]). Although Esme is associated with a wide variety of other female figures of salvation in addition to Mary and Faust’s Gretchen, Dante’s Beatrice, Saint Rose of Lima, the Egyptian goddess Isis, the Flying Dutchman’s Senta, Peer Gynt’s Solveig (like other modernist masterpieces, The Recognitions is thickly allusive to other texts), she is elsewhere associated with succubae and sirens, and when Wyatt deigns to think of her at all, it is unfortunately in her role as temptress. ”

“Fire the Bastards,” by Jack Green is a short book, now available entirely on the web, that criticizes the many negative and indifferent reviews that kept T. Recs from achieving success early on. Some of the early reviews compared Gaddis to Joyce, or in the way that Green phrases it, they insinuated plagiarism. Countering that charge, he says that Gaddis had not read very much (40 pp.) of Ulysses before he wrote The Recognitions. I thought of Joyce too when I began reading T. Recs. and thought that Joyce must have been an influence on Gaddis. There are two copies of Ulysses on the list of Gaddis’ library, but that doesn’t necessarily indicate that he read them before writing his first novel, even though the editions he had were from ’34 and ’42. It seems to me (casually) that Green was in a bit of frenzy here, overblowing some reviewers statements.

In my eyes, the comparison to Joyce is positive as it seems to me that Gaddis brought Joyce’s techniques into the mainstream; nearly.

I’m still looking for a cheap used copy of the book of critical essays on Gaddis, so for now, I guess I will have to try and think for myself.

• posted by Bud Parr
• 27-Dec-2004
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Happy Holidays

 

Have a merry book exchange, I mean, Christmas, if that’s what you celebrate. Rake has a good egg nog recipe that, if you follow all of his directions, will go equally well with bourbon, rum, tequila, vodka, but probably not beer or wine.

• posted by Bud Parr
• 24-Dec-2004
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You Don’t Have To Be Blue When You Shop For Books This Holiday Season

 

Having a one-year old who screams as if he’s walking on hot coals when he wakes up in the night can leave one sleepy and grumpy, particularly when you’ve stayed up late to watch your respected lit-bloggers on TV. So perhaps it’s my mood when I say that I feel offended by some of the things that I’ve read this morning about boycotting Amazon based upon their political donations.

This is the fact that is being cited by BuyBlue. org: 61% of Amazon.com’s PAC contributions went to Republicans. For that reason, some intend not to shop at Amazon and Buy Blue advocates a boycott of the company. Now to be clear, I voted for and support the Dems (and the Green party) and my political views are easily found in the archives of this site. However, I think this idea of not buying from Amazon because they gave more money to Republicans than Democrats is little more than a tantrum and counter to progressive ideas.

I think I understand the impulse. I walked out of a favorite restaurant, never to return, when I saw that they had crossed out “French” from French fries on their menu and replaced it with “freedom.” I’m not French, but I think that sort of behavior is childish and offensive (as was the Senate’s when they did the same) and the restaurant deserves to lose business (as does the Senate, but I’m not yet to the point of anarchy).

But let’s focus on Amazon because a) this is a book blog, and b) they are being singled out by Buy Blue and some lit bloggers as a place to avoid.

First of all, there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to do business with someone you don’t agree with politically as long as you don’t eliminate the discourse that is so important to a democratic society. When we stop the discourse, the other side wins. To single out and boycott a corporation who gives 61% of its PAC contributions to members of a political party that you don’t agree with, seems pointless when the real activism could go to VOTING in every local election, talking to those that DISAGREE with you, writing to your elected officials and all of the other productive means of making your views known. The Buy Blue group advocates visiting their site every time you want to make a purchase to check on the status of the company you intend to purchase from; if they fall into the “red” category, look to the “blue” column to find an alternative blue-friendly company (which appear to be those that give more than 50% to Dems).

Let’s think about this practically. If Amazon gave more money to Reps and you don’t want to buy there, you look in the blue column and find that Borders gave all its money to Dems, so you want to buy from them, but gee, it turns out that Borders and Amazon are in cahoots on-line and if you go to buy something from Borders on the Web, you’re actually buying from Amazon.

The Buy Blue group would have us not buy gas: “Most major oil/gas companies supported Republicans with more than 80% of their donations,” and avoid what amounts to most every brand name to be found in American malls (see the list). Such an idea is not only impractical, but think about the impact if the Buy Blue group were truly successful in their campaign; how many working class people would lose their jobs?

Now I do think it would have been reasonable to boycott Disney when they meekishly backed away from distributing Michael Moore’s movie this year, but I didn’t see anyone trying to avoid Disney and the myriad companies they own. A vocal backlash against Disney’s effective censorhsip would have sent a message – not necessarily that they should believe what we believe, but – that Americans will not be treated as if they are too stupid to make their own viewing choices. [Disney refused to allow Moore’s film to be distributed through its subsidiary Miramax because the film would “alienate its customers,” according to the firm. The hypocrisy is that other subsidiaries of the company are responsible for so many other things that could easily do the same, the film “Kill Bill” for instance.]

But let’s get to the heart of the matter. Look beyond the list that Buy Blue lays out and judge for yourself. I went to the Center for Responsive Politics’ site, Opensecrets.org (the organization Buy Blue cites) and found that in 2002, the same Amazon Pac gave only 54% to Reps and 46% to Dems. This hardly represents “Amazon’s finance of a right wing agenda” as Buy Blue says on their site. (During the year 2000 cycle, the first in which information is available, the ratio was 64% to Reps and 36% to Dems, still showing no real trend.). A look at Bezo’s personal donations shows an equally mixed amount given to Dems and Reps and Amazon’s employees gave money to plenty of Democrats, Moveon.org and the DNC.

Further, if one looks at the PACS of the computers/internet sector (where Amazon is categorized) as a whole, the donation pattern looks similar to Amazon’s, with 62% going to Reps in the 2004 cycle, 64% to Reps in the 2002 cycle (making Amazon look like the liberal of the bunch), and 62% to Reps in the 2000 cycle. Education PACS gave 65% to Reps and even unions gave money to those damn conservatives; the pattern is repeated in many industries. The truth is that corporations give money to both parties and more often than not the reasons are self-serving based upon their own legislative agenda and not, in most cases, any desire to “finance a right wing agenda.”

News America, the holding company that owns Fox news, has a PAC that donated 52% to Democrats and 48% to Republicans. While there are certainly good reasons to not watch Fox, shouldn’t this information lead a reasonable person to question political donations as an indicator of where to do one’s shopping?

Ironically, one little whipping boy of the left (at least the anti-globalization folks), Starbucks coffee, gave 100% to Democrats, according to Buy Blue. Just what is a progressive consumer to do?

• posted by Bud Parr
• 20-Dec-2004
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Reading The Recognitions 3

 

I last left off talking about my early impressions of The Recognitions, the Bosch painting and a passage from T.S. Eliot that seemed quite relevant. I am now about a third way through the book and many of my early impressions remain in tact.

After reading in the Gaddis Annotations that W.G. had intended to – but ultimately did not – weave every line of Eliot’s Four Quartets into the novel, I re-read the poem and have been trying to spot any lines that did find their way in. No luck. I thought I found one and despite my excitement (at how smart I could think of myself) I couldn’t find the lines I thought were there. Somehow, “When he was gone the children forgot him and remembered themselves. The birds, forgetting nothing and remembering nothing, dashed the benches with spots of white” reminded me of “…Go said the bird, for the leaves were full of children…” You can see my thimble-brain confused coincidence of two words with meaning. The rest of the Eliot line is great, but I’ll spare it for here since it’s not apparently relevant to the book. There is a Four Quartets quote on page 202: “…distracted from distraction by distraction…” But that is all that I’ve seen in my 4Q hunting.

I had the pleasure of writing the synopsis of chapters six and seven for CAAF at the Gaddis-Drinking-Club site. It was a great process because I went back and re-read much of that section, read through the annotations and thought through the text much more than I might have otherwise – so that is where anything I have to say is contained. Many of the other folks contributing to the GDC are enjoying the slow pace of reading, but to me it feels more like we’re zooming through, but I’m slow that way.

Overall I haven’t found the book difficult to read in the least (despite my expectations), but there is a lot to chew on, including myriad literary allusions and foreshadowing. If I had any complaint at all, it would be that Gaddis’ mocking tone sometimes seems to be a bit over the top, as if he really wanted to make sure no one missed what he was trying to say. I do enjoy the impression that The Recognitions is a puzzle to be solved. I don’t really know if that’s the right way to go about reading a serious novel, but it is compelling. I love Gaddis’ ability to create dialogue and seamlessly overlay snippets from the radio (music and ads, both of which are a fairly constant). I get the sense that Gaddis learned from Joyce’s technique and even improved on it. Derik, who is on his third annual reading of The Recognitions, suggested that I read J.R., which is nearly all dialogue. I’ve been told it is an amazingly difficult read, but imagine it will find its way on my TBR pile soon.

• posted by Bud Parr
• 18-Dec-2004
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On Spelling

 

This is flying around the net, but I thought I would post it here for fun. I promise to get back to regular posts very soon, it’s just that that I share the writing part of my brain with other functions and they’re hogging.

The Amazing Human Mind

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt

• posted by Bud Parr
• 15-Dec-2004
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The Priest is the guardian of mysteries. The artist is driven to expose them: Recognitions Synopsis

 

Chapter VI Chapter six begins the morning after the party with Otto, having slept with Esme in the wee hours, waking up at her apartment to a fly on his cheek and the sounds of the opera Aida. (although the Gaddis Annotations synopsis says that he was at Esme’s, it seems to me he was at home and then went to Esme’s). On his way to Esme’s, Otto encounters someone from the party in the park, heading in the opposite direction. Otto knocks on Esme’s door and she hardly recognizes his voice, and doesn’t open the door, but telling him to return in an hour. He goes to a coffee shop and returns, encountering yet another friend as he approaches her apartment. (Three times Otto encounters someone from the party on his way to Esme’s and each time there is no acknowledgment “Stanley said nothing; but hung his head without recognition as they passed in Washington Square.” When he arrives at Esme’s, Otto is frustrated by her lack of remembrance of their encounter and is then interrupted by Chaby Sinisterra, Frank Sinisterra’s son (!), who monopolizes her attention (and it appears to be easily monopolized). We also find out in this scene that Esme knows Rektall Brown, and the Lavender smell that Chaby notices first establishes Esme’s connection with Wyatt. Otto’s attempt to get Esme in private is foiled when Esme invites Chaby to breakfast with them. The three are then joined by Stanley at the coffee shop and Otto finally leaves in frustration. Otto spends time around the city; in a bar he tries to call Max, who said the night before he would look at Otto’s play. Not reaching Max, he tries Esther with no luck and then reaches Maud Munk who yet again did not go to adopt a child because of her hangover. Otto returns to Esme’s after stopping at Max’s where he tried but failed to leave his manuscript. He now passes Hannah and she fails to notice him. He arrives just after Esme has given Chaby his scarf, which he had left on his earlier visit. Otto and Esme sleep together, waking up happily in one another’s arms. The talk about their dreams and they both have dreamt of Wyatt, although neither realizes that the other knows him. Both of their comments are significant:

Esme: – I dreamt about someone. – Who? -Someone you don’t know, she said. The she said to herself, -He was in a mirror, caught there. (This comes back to us at the end of the next chapter.) Otto: – Now I remember who it was I saw in the park (mentioned in the dream earlier), Otto said. – Who? – Someone I used to know, someone you don’t know, he said, and saw that pale thin man standing in the park vividly silent, watching him without recognition as he approached, blind, with the stick and its retracting point. – A friend, I used to…it’s funny, that I miss him.

But we found out later that Esme knows Wyatt too and he is the person she leaves Otto to meet. Chapter VII (I defer quite a bit here to the Gaddis site’s synopsis) Chapter seven opens on the same day as the previous chapter with the hapless Fuller, Rektall Brown’s servant, and Brown’s black poodle who we encountered earlier and ostensibly brought Rektall and Wyatt together. After establishing Fuller’s superstitious ignorance and dominance by Brown (which probably says more about Brown than anything) we land in Brown’s study where he is waiting for Wyatt with a business associate, the art critic Basil Valentine. An aside: If I were casting this as a film, Valentine would be played by Claude Rains (Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca) and Orson Welles would play a hilariously dark Rektall Brown. Fuller has bought a train ticket to escape from Brown, but has given himself away (“Do they use United States of America money in a place called Utica” [226]) and Brown sends him to his room to sit in the dark. A bulk of the chapter establishes the relationship between Brown and Valentine and tells much about both characters and their illicit business together. Valentine works with Brown by first doubting (in print), then authenticating his commissioned forgeries. (Brown has just picked up Wyatt’s old Memling imitation, thinking it original.) Valentine has come to meet Wyatt and to propose his next forgery. When Wyatt does arrive he soon finds in Valentine someone more sensitive to the implications of forgery than Brown; Valentine is likewise intrigued by Wyatt, and between the two a cautious rapport develops. In the course of the conversation Valentine questions the authenticity of the Bosch table in Brown’s possession, knowing that Brown will have it checked out, after which Valentine will replace it with a copy and send the original “back to Europe where it belongs” (688-89) – apparently this has been his practice with others of Brown’s works. (This is the genuine Bosch painting Wyatt stole from his father and sold to Brown years before. – The revelation of which has haunted me since I read this because I find it inexplicable that Wyatt would do this. Wondering out loud, is that meant to show Wyatt’s lack of regard for the originals? ) Valentine’s plan is for Wyatt to forge a work by Hubert van Eyck, Jan van Eyck’s shadowy older brother – an Annunciation that Wyatt never does actually paint. We also get further insights into Wyatt and perhaps the entire novel in this passage on p. 251:

– Like everything today is conscious of being looked at, looked at by something else but not by God, and that’s the only way anything can have its own form and its own character, and…and shape and smell, being looked at by God. Rektall Brown stood beside him, the heavy naked hand on his shoulder. -And so when you’re working, it’s your own work, Basil Valentine said. -And when you attach the signature? – Leave him alone, God damn it Valentine, he… – Yes, when I attach the signature, he said dropping his head again, – that changes everthing, when I attach the signature and…lose it. – Then corruption enters, is that it, me dear fellow? Basil Valentine stood up smiling…

After their meeting, Valentine and Wyatt share a cab. They overhear passers by talking about Somerset Maugham, which in a minor way continues the theme of society’s attitude toward homosexuality (S.M. was gay). They then nearly run into a man who the synopsis tells us is Mr. Pivner, Otto’s father, who will be introduced in the next chapter, and that causes a misunderstanding between Valentine and the cab driver and the cab ride is abruptly ended. Wyatt declines Valentines invitation to dinner and the idea of Valentine coming to his place at another time (despite their rapport, Wyatt doesn’t seem to want to continue the relationship). The number seven shows up quite a bit in this chapter, first with a mention of the seven deadly sins on page 227 and 238, the seven heavens of the Arabs on page 257 and later, seven lillies and others later. This annotation is worth noting:

265.36] Seven days, seven seals […] Abednego: biblical instances of the magicality of the number seven: “Seven days” refers to the days of Creation, the Holy Week, etc.; “seven seals” from Rev. 5:1; “seven bullocks” (Num. 29:32); “seven times Jacob bowed before Esau” (Gen. 33:3); “seven stars […] in his right hand” (Rev. 1:20; 4:5; 2:1); “seven years in Eden” (apocryphal?); “seven times seven years to the jubilee trumpet” (Lev. 25:8-9); “seven years of plenty […] famine” (Gen. 41:29-30); “Nebuchadnezzar heated the furnace seven times” (Dan. 3:19); “the golden image” is described in Dan. 3:1, and the quotation “ – Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego” (the three in the furnace) is from Dan. 3:28. (It might be noted this passage occurs in the novel’s seventh chapter.)

Wyatt unexpectedly runs into John, a fellow divinity student (he meets him for the second time; the first was on p. 115, almost two years earlier). Both duck into a bar, where John tells Wyatt about his father, still regaling his congregation with pagan parallels to Christianity. Back at his Horatio Street studio, Esme has come to model for Wyatt, only to find she is not needed. After she reads aloud from the Brothers Grimm (in German), however, Wyatt sees in her the lines of completion needed for the portrait of his mother he began fifteen years earlier, and he plans to use the face in his next painting (which Valentine calls a Stabat Mater). A moment of intimacy is suggested: Esme puts her arms around Wyatt’s shoulders, but he suddenly straightens up and dismisses her. Esme goes home, injects herself with heroin, and tries to write some poetry. Failing to come up with anything of her own, she begins writing the opening lines of Rilke’s first Duino Elegy, only to be interrupted by an unidentified knock at the door. In the annotations we find that in regards to the Rilke poem, [277.34] the interrupted seventh line ends: “Each single angel is terrible.” Later Max will steal this piece of paper (299.11-13) and, not recognizing it as Rilke’s, publish the poem as his own (622.16 ff.).

Read widely, think well, and write often.

• posted by Bud Parr
• 13-Dec-2004
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• share this »

• related:
• “…that streak of cacodaemonic extravagance sundering the very dome of heaven.”
• |
• Eating at the big kid’s table
• |
• First Sentence Meme: An Appreciation
• |
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• Gaddis Shorts in Missouri Review

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The 2004 Didn’t List

 

Okay, I admit that a list of things I didn’t do this year is a bit too infinite to fit into a few hundred words. But my intentions are good.

Best book I read that I didn’t write anything about despite meaning to for nearly half the year:

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“Antipodes” (Ignacio Padilla)

This is a collection of short stories translated from the Spanish by Mexican author Ignacio Padilla. But forget about where he comes from, these stories are Euro-centric rather than Latin and even though the subject is far away places, those places exist mostly in perception and time rather than terra firma, or put differently, they are more Borges than Theroux.

Indeed, besides the evocative title, it was the comparison to Borges that drew me to this collection. After reading it, I had intended to write a piece called “Ignacio Padilla, author of the Aleph.” That title stuck in my head for so long because a few of the stories could easily fit into the Borges opus. Most are crafty and memorable and although some try too hard, the overall collection resonated well with me because of its thematic arc that says something about the world we live in. For instance, one of my favorite stories in the collection begins rather dryly as a description of a rifle with only the slightest hint that there is more to it:

“For a start, the butt of the Hutchinson, almost always carved from Fijian red oak, weighs exactly 3 pounds, 25 ounces, and measures 15.4 inches from stock to firing pin. In fact, it might be slightly shorter, but that depends more on the atmospheric conditions of warfare, not on Hutchinson’s manufacturing practices.

This dry tone characterizes the entire story, but by the end we realize that we are being treated to an allegory of nuclear (ie. mutually destructive) warfare and we are nagged by the memory of the tale long after we put the book back on the shelf.

Best Book I didn’t read despite meaning to the entire year:

Ah, you say, how could you possibly say this is the best book you didn’t read this year because not only did you not read it, but you didn’t read so many others.

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”Getting Mother’s Body : A Novel“ (SUZAN-LORI PARKS)

True, I reply. I could have easily said something like ”Cloud Atlas“ that everyone raved about and seemed right up my line, but this first-novel by Suzan-Lori Parks is a bit more obscure, making my post all the more interesting (I hope) and I’m a big fan of Ms. Parks anyway. While this is her first novel, she has written several plays and those I have seen and loved, particularly Topdog/Underdog, for which she won a Pulitzer, about the latent love and hatred between two brothers named Lincoln and Booth. I’ve also have been amazed by her plays ”Fucking-A“ a retelling of the Scarlet Letter, and ”In the Blood.“ ”Getting Mother’s Body“ seems to show Faulkner’s influence on Ms. Parks who studied under James, ”Go Tell it on the Mountain“ Baldwin and won the MacArthur ”Genius“ award a few years ago. I think she is a genius and would venture that anything she writes will be emotionally dense, linguistically fascinating, and thought provoking.

The Worst Book I Didn’t Read Despite Being Excited About its Release:

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”Borges: A Life“ (Edwin Williamson)

I was really excited about the release of this book, but as I read review after review that portrayed it as Borges on the couch, I developed a real distaste for it and decided to remain satisfied with JLB’s writing instead of voyeuristically peeking into his private life. I wouldn’t normally make a decision solely based on reviews, but these all appeared to be consistent in terms of what the premise of the book was.

Best film I didn’t see at the theater but didn’t have to wait too long because of Netflix:

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”Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (Widescreen Edition)“ (Michel Gondry)

I love Charlie Kaufman’s topsy-turvey screenwriting style and every film of his has been a hit with me. I still fondly call ”Maxine“ from time to time, thinking about John Cusack trapped in the body of his wife and ex-lover’s daughter at the end of ”Being John Malkovich.“ That movie is hard to beat, but Eternal Sunshine is close, with its time-memory discombobulating concept wrapped in a love-story between two unlikely lovers, entwined with the bumbling goings-on of an oddly obscure memory erasing company named Lacuna.

Biggest news event I didn’t know anything about by the time it happened:

2004 National Book Award

Because of blogs I read far more about the daily machinations of the literary world than I would otherwise. I mostly enjoy it, but by the time the NBA was announced I had grown tired of hearing about it and now I couldn’t tell you who won.

Visitors to Chekhov’s Mistress who probably didn’t find what they were looking for based on these search terms:

mistress

mistress private lesson

mistress or domina interrogation

mistress japan girl-sex

my wife mistress

mistress september

fatties

you are nobody

The best literary journal that I didn’t know existed before this year:

That’s a real toss-up because I enjoyed the debut of Land-Grant College Review, Sentence, a journal of prose poetry and the on-line journal (which was only new to me), Small-Spiral Notebook.

It’s too difficult to choose just once, particularly since I went to the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses‘ lit-mag fair this year at the Housing Works Cafe, where I picked up a dozen or so (and there are so many more) journals for two bucks a piece.

Swink deserves a mention in this group as well, and its editor Leelila Strogov was also one of the most searched for terms of visitors to my site since I mentioned the journal here back in June.

All of these journals have presented to me worthy authors I’ve not heard of, inspiration by the selfless efforts of forever obscure editors publishing journals for the sake of the literature, and of course, short-bursts of entertainment whenever I picked them up.

Well, my word count is telling me to end it here, so if I have any more end-of-year didn’ts, I’ll share them sometime by, naturally, the end of the year.

Read widely, think well, and write often.

• posted by Bud Parr
• 10-Dec-2004
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Gaddis Shorts in Missouri Review

 

The latest issue of The Missouri Review, called “Experiment” (Vol. 27, No. 2), includes three previously unpublished short stories from William Gaddis.

Of the Gaddis stories, TMR editor Speer Morgan writes, “He wrote the three stories . . . during the ’40s and ’50s, when he was living a bohemian life in New York trying to learn his craft and find his voice. Writers become innovators by a combination of trial and error, accident, temperament, disappointment and discovery. These journeyman pieces demonstrate how naturally Gaddis experimented as he attempted different types of stories and voices. One of them reflects the New Yorker style of the 1940s; another is reminiscent of Beckett and the third is a sincere, moving story about underdogs, with echoes of proletarian fiction.”

This may be of interest to those that are reading Gaddis’ The Recognitions and looking for any little insights into the dour, enigmatic storyteller. I haven’t read this issue yet and it doesn’t appear that any of the Gaddis content is online, but I will post further if I get a chance to pick it up.

• posted by Bud Parr
• 07-Dec-2004
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• related:
• “…that streak of cacodaemonic extravagance sundering the very dome of heaven.”
• |
• Eating at the big kid’s table
• |
• First Sentence Meme: An Appreciation
• |
• Gaddis Short Story in Ninth Letter
• |
• Gaddis’s Library of Babel

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Todays Irony Brought to You By…

 

…The New York City Real Estate Market.

My wife and I sold our apartment for a price that we could not afford to buy.

That stinks and is one reason why we are searching fairly far north for our next home. Now, the person who supposedly bought our place is lying to us and may be trying to back out of the deal. There’s another reason for heading north; it seems we always get on the losing end of someone else’s selfishness around here. I’m reminded of a Gaddis quote from The Recognitions…

“But money, I mean, damn it, a man does feel castrated in New York without money.”

Truth is, we were lucky to have bought this place and to sell it for enough of a windfall to buy a place up north, but I find it sad how ruthlessly inhuman the real estate market makes everyone involved. Some thrive on it, the rest of us take what we can get.

That’s all, I’m angry and depressed and exhausted from all of this and thought the best medicine would be to get it off the proverbial chest.

• posted by Bud Parr
• 06-Dec-2004
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