28---
The publicity people for the Library of America must have missed sending me a copy of A.J. Liebling that just came out. An editor at a newspaper sent me a copy as they were not going to review the book.
I always look forward to the Library of America books and in the Fall they have some interesting ones: the second William Maxwell, a Philip Roth and a book of poetry by Ashbery. I hope I will not be over-looked as the bound galleys should be coming shortly. In the summer they are doing a second book by Philip Dick which I will talk about one of these days.
But to the Liebling. If this editor had not sent the book to me I would not have discovered this meeting with Louis Ferdinand Celine:
For myself, I shall always remember him as a big-shouldered man, unexpectedly rugged and tweedy for a Frenchman, sitting in the dining room of the Vanderbilt Hotel in New York in 1934, eating strawberry ice cream after rare roast beef and at intervals pausing between enormous mouthfuls and great, grasping swallows to shout obscene regret for the Middle Ages, when the Church assured the common people that they would go to hell after death and be miserable in the meantime. "Then, at least, there were no false hopes," he said.
So, while I might have been skeptical of why the LOA was doing Liebling, I have been won over. The book is a compilation of all his writings during the Second World War and while it is a little marred with the fakery of having a celebrity editor whose name I will not mention it is a real book.
Many of us are waiting for the LOA to do the collected poetry of Melville, the books of Sherwood Anderson, the work of T.S. Eliot and of course: Where is Hemingway? Where is Glenway Wescott? Edward Dahlberg? William Carlos Williams?
29---
In THE WRITER'S CHRONICLE, the trade journal of the creative writing business there was an announcement of the PEN WORLD VOICES FESTIVAL. "Over 200 members of the publishing industry attended a reception for the festival in March, boarding the ocean liner Queen Mary 2 to celebrate the upcoming event"--- hours waiting in a vast storage facility to board, searched as if getting on a plane, a thousand waiting to sail... lines like entering a detention camp--- "the on-board luncheon featured readings"---before the food people were ordered into a stadium seating theater to hear speeches about how the Cunard lines (remember they gave us the Titanic: the ship that God couldn't sink, as they say but as Julian Green once told me, "As they were saying that the iceberg was making its way..." were in favor of crossings, communication... And then there was a pathetic rock band with dragooned "writers" singing anti-George W Bush lyrics; I kid you not, and then the President of PEN was going on about the impending dawn of fascism in the US as witnessed by the denial of entry to a convicted criminal writer at Newark airport. The decor of the boat is down-market Las Vegas. "was hosted by Salman Rushdie, the festival chair"--- no, he did not show up as he had more important things to do: he was in London shilling for another of his unreadable novels.
Two writers by chance this week asked me if I had received the brochure for the PEN conference. Did you do what we did: throw them out? I did not ask why they had thrown them out but can only guess---
If anyone remembers Georgi Markov, the exiled Bulgarian writer who was murdered in London by agents of the Communist regime in Bulgaria they might remember his wonderful exposition of why the Communist regimes loved writers conferences, readings, writers visiting factories, writers retreats: the regime always dreaded the appearance of another book and the inevitable task of having to read it so why not find agreeable and progressive ways to hinder the writing of books and maybe even hinder the reading of books for probably the best way to discourage reading is to have writers read their own works in public along with colleagues, one of which always goes on for too long
30---
I went to a sad lunch for Dirk Wittenborn at The Museum, a restaurant connected to that dreary junk shop MOMA. The dining room was large for the one round table so it seems that they had at one time expected more people. Never having met Wittenborn, never having read a word he has written or seen the film he wrote THE FIERCE PEOPLE--- like most people, as it seems to have gone direct to DVD, or seen another documentary he produced about the hard lives of rich kids and will I be going to see a new film he wrote that is due in the summer The Lucky Ones, something about Iraq War and I am sure it is not celebrating the American effort there---
These lunches happen all the time. They are designed to get word of mouth going... the occasion for this is the publication in August of PHARMAKON.. murder, drugs, rich people, fathers, children, privilege, cover-ups, pain, anger, sex...
Why write a novel instead of a screen play, I asked Dirk. "In a novel you can show thinking," Dirk replied
At the actual lunch of course the question who will write the screenplay and I was wondering, again, why bother with the novel as only then did people at the table seem animated: the movies are the reel world. Why do writers set themselves up like this? Well, money of course and the rich are as grubby as the next person and probably even more so...
Dirk was talking about his three therapists and I could hear them as they alternatively moved through his little talk: the one who dealt with his father/son issues, the next one who dealt with his intimacy/women issues and the last with the issues of drugs...
The pork loin was dried out and without flavour.
PHARMAKON has an opening line that the author is proud of: I was born because a man came to kill my father.
31--- I was reading THE WAGES OF EXPECTATION the biography of Edward Dahlberg by Charles DeFanti... DeFanti quotes as his concluding lines the epitaph that William O'Rourke had written for Dahlberg, For whatever Dear Readers there are now, or are to come Edward Dahlberg wrote 18 books and one masterpiece that will endure; at the end of his long life he had less than six people he would have called friend."
In a Village Voice review of this biography also written by O'Rourke:
"Dahlberg's bile was in direct proportion to the neglect he felt, which of course was enormous. Even if you produce a master work--- which Because I was Flesh surely is--- you can be ignored because literature plays little role int he life of the commonwealth."
And:
"Dahlberg led his life seemingly enunciating one state above all, that of the writer as pariah, the glorious nay-sayer unsullied by commerce, fashion and vain success."
And:
Dahlberg was payed the wages of his own expectations: rejection, isolation, and the curse of superfluity."
O'Rourke's review appeared in the Village Voice on April 16, 1979.
Can anyone imagine such writing in the newspaper that goes by that name today in the year 2008?
32 PS---
We were in Enzo's (Second Avenue between 2nd and 3rd Streets) for pizza this afternoon.
The guy from the funeral parlor across the street was in for a slice.
After he left I mentioned to Mike that I usually see him standing in front of the parlor waiting for a delivery.
If you shake hands with him watch his eyes. They start from your eyes and go down. He's measuring you. If you've shaken hands with him scratch your balls three times that'll keep him away for now.
As I was leaving Mike was looking in the Village Voice at a profile of Philip Glass. Enzo's is mentioned. Glass is a nice guy, Mike says. He comes here.
I tell Mike I see Glass around, sometimes up at the Domincans' bodega.
Showing posts with label EDWARD DAHLBERG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EDWARD DAHLBERG. Show all posts
Friday, April 18, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
GORKY, TOM WHALEN, EDWARD DAHLBERG along with old complaints
---morning---
In New York City if you have a car you have to move it twice a week for street cleaning. On the street where I live that means sitting in the car from 9-10:30AM two mornings. This morning I was reading in a new book from Yale University Press: GORKY'S TOLSTOY & OTHER REMINISCENCES edited by Donald Fanger. GORKY'S TOLSTOY is a new annotated edition of a book that I have carried with me and read for more than 35 years. I have had different editions of it: one a Viking Compass edition and another from an English language publisher in Russia that dropped the chapter on Andreyev.
My knowing and having read this book was one of the frail foundations for being able to have conversations with Edward Dahlberg as it was one of the few modern books that Dahlberg approved of. It was also a book that was close to the heart of Hannah Green... and Nina Berberova.
Of course in Bulgaria when I mentioned the name of Gorky it was because of this book and then the first volumes of his autobiography but for Lilia, Gorky was synonymous with the dread and required novel MOTHER, a model of what Socialist writing was supposed to be and which she was required to admire in secondary school...
Now as I was again reading Gorky's book I was trying to remember what had caught me so and what continues to hold me. I think it has something to do with how Gorky in this book--- which details in a frank and fragmented way his friendships with Tolstoy, Chekhov, Sulerzhitsky, Andreyev and Blok--- the creation of that special country where writing is the center of the universe, where books are living presences and the whole world revolves around them and their creation... but in no way was this some sort of world removed from the actuality of living human beings in all their messy particularity, perversity and just being different. It was a world where friendship did not demand complete agreement in all matters but where there was a complex mutual understanding of the resilient frailty of the individual.
In a more perfect world I would suggest that all of the so-called creative writing courses require this book as a central text... of course you, patient reader, understand how radical this suggestion is because you know that these courses are now training courses in the stalking of success and have very little to do with literature, with the real living presence of a book...
---Mourning---
Yesterday as I was waiting to send my son back to The Groton School where he in the Fifth Form and the dread college application process has slowly begun I was talking with him about vocation as opposed to jobs--- education as opposed to training--- but mostly I was talking about vocation and about how rare it is and why colleges and the world at large talks very little about it. I was talking, maybe too much, about how hard it is to know if you have a vocation and how hard it is to live it out if it does happen.
Of course I reminded him of Baudelaire's thought of there are only three beings worthy of respect, the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create... and I mentioned that when I wrote about Ernst Junger I suggested that he was the only complete person in the 20th Century but you had to substitute his scientific work for the fact that he had not been a priest...
My son knows the quality of Junger about which I spoke through STORM OF STEEL. You always have to give a writer's credentials: his actual books, not his opinions.
I suggested to my son to watch how the future will be presented to you by these dread colleges and universities which are mostly training camps for a job that you would not do if they did not pay you money... and to ask questions to see if these colleges are communities of scholars as Paul Goodman suggests in the very title of his book on the university COMMUNITY OF SCHOLARS or are they just another step in postponing as in when you are in kindergarten they tell you it really begins in school and then they tell you it begins in high school and then in college and then in graduate school and then in post-graduate school and then it begins after you retire and and and...
---morning---
In the mail from Obscure Publications number 57 in an edition of 70: "What an Edifice of Artifice!" Russell H. Greenan's It Happened in Boston?by TOM WHALEN. In 61 pages Whalen describes a novel by Russell H. Greenan that while recently reprinted has not become a central text of world literature. However I am not really concerned with that at this moment but with the fact that Tom Whalen does not have a book of his own stories in print from one of the major publishing houses in spite of publishing hundreds and hundreds of stories and poems in nearly every magazine in the United States
I remember back in 1970/71Richard M. Elman pronouncing that there are no undiscovered geniuses in the United States. It was always unclear to me whether he was mimicking what publishers believed about themselves or if Richard believed this himself. I am sure publishers do believe this and the evidence is all about us and this why there are so few interesting books being published. Publishers mostly no longer know how to read or have the time to read... it is after all a business and it is not based upon reading but upon the creation of copyrights of intellectual properties that can be... enough of this...
For 12 academic years which translates into 24 semesters and with two classes of Freshman composition I have read Tom Whalen's story End of Term now 48 times and each time I have read that story new nuance have shown themselves and each time the story stands revealed as one of the very very few stories that actually describes the powerlessness of a teacher in trying to explain why a student has not done as well as she might have and in turn the story becomes a meditation on what to do with the most awful information that is always coming our way...
In the current THE LITERARY REVIEW Vol 51/2 there is a new story by Whalen, The Effect which is a meditation on a sentence the narrator's wife says as she leaves him for work one morning, "Good luck with your work today." If only Blanchot was alive today to do justice to this story which is able within seven pages to suggest the vulnerable foundation upon which all story resides and in turn all of human life...
---mourning---
The obscurity of Whalen will be held against him. I can not imagine-- though by writing this I of course hope I am wrong-- any editor or other so-called powerful person reading these words and seeking out the story or going to www.tomwhalen.com.
But this afternoon I can go again at random to read Gorky on Tolstoy, "And I see how much life the man embraced, how inhumanly intelligent he was, and how awful." Or an exchange with Suler, to whom he says, "You know how to love all right. But you don't know how to choose and you'll fritter away your energy on trifles." "Isn't everybody like that?" "Everybody?" L.N. repeated. "No, not everybody."
---mourning---
As I have mentioned previously I have been awaiting word myself from a publisher, now revealed, Europa Editions. Day 11 and no word.
a PS. On Friday an email. Manuscript received. Now day 13.
In New York City if you have a car you have to move it twice a week for street cleaning. On the street where I live that means sitting in the car from 9-10:30AM two mornings. This morning I was reading in a new book from Yale University Press: GORKY'S TOLSTOY & OTHER REMINISCENCES edited by Donald Fanger. GORKY'S TOLSTOY is a new annotated edition of a book that I have carried with me and read for more than 35 years. I have had different editions of it: one a Viking Compass edition and another from an English language publisher in Russia that dropped the chapter on Andreyev.
My knowing and having read this book was one of the frail foundations for being able to have conversations with Edward Dahlberg as it was one of the few modern books that Dahlberg approved of. It was also a book that was close to the heart of Hannah Green... and Nina Berberova.
Of course in Bulgaria when I mentioned the name of Gorky it was because of this book and then the first volumes of his autobiography but for Lilia, Gorky was synonymous with the dread and required novel MOTHER, a model of what Socialist writing was supposed to be and which she was required to admire in secondary school...
Now as I was again reading Gorky's book I was trying to remember what had caught me so and what continues to hold me. I think it has something to do with how Gorky in this book--- which details in a frank and fragmented way his friendships with Tolstoy, Chekhov, Sulerzhitsky, Andreyev and Blok--- the creation of that special country where writing is the center of the universe, where books are living presences and the whole world revolves around them and their creation... but in no way was this some sort of world removed from the actuality of living human beings in all their messy particularity, perversity and just being different. It was a world where friendship did not demand complete agreement in all matters but where there was a complex mutual understanding of the resilient frailty of the individual.
In a more perfect world I would suggest that all of the so-called creative writing courses require this book as a central text... of course you, patient reader, understand how radical this suggestion is because you know that these courses are now training courses in the stalking of success and have very little to do with literature, with the real living presence of a book...
---Mourning---
Yesterday as I was waiting to send my son back to The Groton School where he in the Fifth Form and the dread college application process has slowly begun I was talking with him about vocation as opposed to jobs--- education as opposed to training--- but mostly I was talking about vocation and about how rare it is and why colleges and the world at large talks very little about it. I was talking, maybe too much, about how hard it is to know if you have a vocation and how hard it is to live it out if it does happen.
Of course I reminded him of Baudelaire's thought of there are only three beings worthy of respect, the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create... and I mentioned that when I wrote about Ernst Junger I suggested that he was the only complete person in the 20th Century but you had to substitute his scientific work for the fact that he had not been a priest...
My son knows the quality of Junger about which I spoke through STORM OF STEEL. You always have to give a writer's credentials: his actual books, not his opinions.
I suggested to my son to watch how the future will be presented to you by these dread colleges and universities which are mostly training camps for a job that you would not do if they did not pay you money... and to ask questions to see if these colleges are communities of scholars as Paul Goodman suggests in the very title of his book on the university COMMUNITY OF SCHOLARS or are they just another step in postponing as in when you are in kindergarten they tell you it really begins in school and then they tell you it begins in high school and then in college and then in graduate school and then in post-graduate school and then it begins after you retire and and and...
---morning---
In the mail from Obscure Publications number 57 in an edition of 70: "What an Edifice of Artifice!" Russell H. Greenan's It Happened in Boston?by TOM WHALEN. In 61 pages Whalen describes a novel by Russell H. Greenan that while recently reprinted has not become a central text of world literature. However I am not really concerned with that at this moment but with the fact that Tom Whalen does not have a book of his own stories in print from one of the major publishing houses in spite of publishing hundreds and hundreds of stories and poems in nearly every magazine in the United States
I remember back in 1970/71Richard M. Elman pronouncing that there are no undiscovered geniuses in the United States. It was always unclear to me whether he was mimicking what publishers believed about themselves or if Richard believed this himself. I am sure publishers do believe this and the evidence is all about us and this why there are so few interesting books being published. Publishers mostly no longer know how to read or have the time to read... it is after all a business and it is not based upon reading but upon the creation of copyrights of intellectual properties that can be... enough of this...
For 12 academic years which translates into 24 semesters and with two classes of Freshman composition I have read Tom Whalen's story End of Term now 48 times and each time I have read that story new nuance have shown themselves and each time the story stands revealed as one of the very very few stories that actually describes the powerlessness of a teacher in trying to explain why a student has not done as well as she might have and in turn the story becomes a meditation on what to do with the most awful information that is always coming our way...
In the current THE LITERARY REVIEW Vol 51/2 there is a new story by Whalen, The Effect which is a meditation on a sentence the narrator's wife says as she leaves him for work one morning, "Good luck with your work today." If only Blanchot was alive today to do justice to this story which is able within seven pages to suggest the vulnerable foundation upon which all story resides and in turn all of human life...
---mourning---
The obscurity of Whalen will be held against him. I can not imagine-- though by writing this I of course hope I am wrong-- any editor or other so-called powerful person reading these words and seeking out the story or going to www.tomwhalen.com.
But this afternoon I can go again at random to read Gorky on Tolstoy, "And I see how much life the man embraced, how inhumanly intelligent he was, and how awful." Or an exchange with Suler, to whom he says, "You know how to love all right. But you don't know how to choose and you'll fritter away your energy on trifles." "Isn't everybody like that?" "Everybody?" L.N. repeated. "No, not everybody."
---mourning---
As I have mentioned previously I have been awaiting word myself from a publisher, now revealed, Europa Editions. Day 11 and no word.
a PS. On Friday an email. Manuscript received. Now day 13.
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