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…
