Friday, March 11, 2016

READING MY OWN STUFF AND THE NECESSITY OF DOUGLAS MESSERLI

Warning: some of this might read like I am voting the graveyard...

TWO    “Helpless as a deck of cards,”  from a song by John Cale, who I have not listened to for years… but in Hobo Sapiens  closest among the living we  get to the sibyl who was Nico..
THREE    Going over the copy-editing for ST PATRICK’S DAY another day in Dublin which University of Notre Dame Press will publish in the Fall.  I have been reading some of the these pages since 1982 when prepared slides appeared in the Review of Contemporary Fiction. 
THREE  as I am reading the proofs  I test my prose against Pascal Quiginard’s THE HATRED OF MUSIC and I THE SUPREME by Augusto Roa Bastos… and I keep on with reading my own prose and can hear Edward Dahlberg annoyed with me and will Goytisolo go toward the book as his friend Julian Rios has read the manuscript and linked me to Fred Exley… too bad Carlos Fuentes is dead and having been a good friend of Julian might have picked up the book and remembered our conversation too many years ago when we talked in the Harvard Club for a Newsday interview/profile and our finding we both had Nelida Pinon as a friend of long standing=== and the same with the shade of Harold Brodkey who wanted us to be friends and who admired my earlier books, as I held him justly important and have never denied him as James Wood has done, it seems: Brodkey becoming a non-person to Woods, it seems as he marched through the American institutions  that could not make room for Brodkey… and both Julian Green and Francis Stuart are dead so can’t be called into witness my book…. And for that matter the other Julian--- Gracq--- is also dead... so one living Julian is sufficient… and more than enough as I see my book eventually on his shelves with the Arno Schmidt, the beautiful old Everyman many volume edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy  over next to the many books of Hans Henny John  but at least I have two of Jahnn’s books  The Ship (and is there a better title)  THE LIVING ARE FEW, THE DEAD MANY…  I wish I could say I saw that Rios had on his shelf two defining books: I THE SUPREME by Augusto Roa Bastos and A BRIEF LIFE by Juan Carlos Onetti…

EIGHT  But  I also wanted to mention that in Los Angeles Douglas Messerli is making a record--- published by Green Integer--- of our days and while the days are his: in the form of individual essays based on the music he hears, the poetry and fiction he reads and the movies and plays he sees, he has shaped into  annual books of his writings in these fields --- at the moment under the title: MY YEAR 2002, 2003,2004,2006, 2007, 2008--- fat volumes each--- however book by book he opens the front against forgetfulness and unique in American letters to be sure—a person who does not forget--- an attempt to hold in the present what should not be forgotten and because of this---unlike books focused on politicians and their followers--- Messerli’s book will never date, even if some of his enthusiasms might possibly be dimmed in the future his endeavor will be valued as he is  creating a record of what is to be remembered and shaping what will be created in the future as whatever is new is never created from nothing…