ONE
From the
shelf, TRIPTYCH by Max Frisch. I had read it when it first came out in 1981
as a partial commentary on the death of Ingeborg Bachmann and so focused on the third
section. This time it was the opening
part that caught me. A man is talking to
a widow in a cemetery chapel. He says, “He
had a good death. Today not many people nowadays have the good fortune to die
at home, and seventy is a good age, after all.
The widow sobs as
the funeral guest stands helplessly beside her; it takes her some time to get a
grip on herself again. WIDOW: I can’t
really take it in. I still see him.
Sitting there is his chair. I can see
him. All the time I can hear what Matthis is thinking.
There is no
protection against feeling something when reading such sentences… with a
birthday two years shy of 70 arriving in October. That was Sunday afternoon. But Sunday night I happened upon a criitical
book I had forgotten I had on the
Russian writer Andrei Bitov: ANDREI
BITOV THE ECOLOGY OF INSPIRATION by ELLEN CHANCES I am sure you know his great novel PUSHKIN
HOUSE, the one Russian novel that might compete with Bely’s ST PETERSBURG, with
Bulgakov’s THE MASTER AND MARGARITA, a book belonging to literature and not to
publicity--- as I am told Russians say to distinguish such books from the
equivalent of the rubbish written by, in the American context, Jonathan Franzen or Toni Morrison--- books not of the passing season… but in the critical
book I was reminded of Bitov’s travel
books and in particular the ones devoted to Armenia and Georgia. Published as
one book by FSG, A CAPTIVE OF THE
CAUCASUS containing : LESSONS OF ARMENIA Journey out of Russia and
CHOOSING A LOCATION Georgia
Album.
I
had been given the book back in 1992 but had not read it. I didn’t get the first sentences of each of
these books within A CAPTIVE OF THE
CAUCASUS: FROM THE AUTHOR: LESSONS OF ARMENIA Journey out of Russia TRANSLATING PAST TO
PRESENT On the first page of this book::::::
I was thirty years old, the entire Soviet regime was preparing for its fiftieth
anniversary, Russian Christianity had not yet reached its millennium and the
Armenian Christianity had already celebrated a millennium and a half. From the second book within A CAPTIVE OF
THE CAUCASUS: CHOOSING A LOCATION Georgian Album. There is a quote from Lermontov and then THE
PHENOMENON OF THE NORM When you try to prove that something is something,
you lose it completely. The plot of a book possesses the peculiarity that
it must be concluded. Having entered
into it you cannot exit via some other labyrinth. Do a thing once, and you’ve gained
experience; gain experience and it immediately proves unusable.. .
TWO
I had totally
forgotten these other books by Bitov and in particular the one about
Georgia from which in that cliché, in fact I had I came
back from on 22 June 2012.. now, so far into the past it might as well have
been a century ago… but I am well aware of the slippage and had found a way to restart the book I have been writing about going
about Bulgaria two years ago: the new
version begins:
EMPTY
AMERICAN LETTERS
to quote: and
if it is to be another seventeen years before my next visit: the place was Istanbul but I am tempted to
think of other cities I might have
named, as if the actual city mattered--- a change of mood you will
notice, a hint of optimism, seventeen years, another visit, I will be 57, my
life nearly at its end--- if my parents are to serve as a model--- possibly
dragging along some awful child, who will not want to be here, I could probably
sell him or her if there is still a market for white children, would anyone be
the wiser, when back in New York City--- though the irony is I will have come
back here only a year later with the woman who would be the mother of the now
21 year old son I was traveling with and now I am on my way to 68 and to
think—in another 17 years: 85 years old…the prefatory paragraph done and now
the warning.
A
reader, and there is never a reason to write unless one expects to be read… I
could find an ear, for sure, any ear and pour all of these words into that
receptacle and have done so but that ear will surely die and then… a reader,
should know, what follows is concerned with work and with a journey around
Bulgaria and with why a few people were not with me and Piret as we made our
way in June two years ago as we went from Sofia to Strazhitsa, to Veliko
Tarnovo to Varna to Plovdiv to Sofia.
THREE
But
this was written before I picked up Bitov, picked up the Frisch… to be given such a book as Bitov’s to now
read in competition with my memories of Georgia and Istanbul and indeed in
Istanbul the appearance of a museum devoted to depicting the contents of a
novel--- a fiction!!!--- by Orhan Pamuk…. And a museum with an illustrated
guide book in which many of the exhibits are carefully and romantically photographed… photographs of something made up…
FOUR
But
reading books do add, the very best do not take away…only rubbish diminishes a
person…I am not thinking of those simple books a person receives when he asks
for the latest mysteries or she asks for the latest sci-fi books… or even the
latest romance or cowboy books.. there is another class of books, far larger
and more insidious that can only diminish a reader and you will know them if
you read on the back of as I did the galleys for Craig Nova’s THE CONSTANT HEART,
to be published by a rather good publisher, this quote from the New York Times,
“[Nova’s fiction] is so powerful, so alive, it is a wonder that turning its
pages doesn’t somehow burn one’s hands.”
For
an author to take pride in such a reaction… and to allow it to appear on a book
cover.
Or,
a publicist wrote this about TRIBURBIA
by Karl Taro Greenfield, “ Triburbia is
an enveloping look at the lives and yearnings of a particular breed that will
speak to anyone plugged into the contemporary zeitgeist. An impressive, wholly original debut, it
introduces a remarkable new voice…”
Greenfield has seen five other books published.
Why
bother remarking on any of this?
The
first of August begins the silly season as the English say. Colonels in
Somerset go into conspiracy mode and I added just after EMPTY AMERICAN LETTERS
a quote from a song by Zeki Müren:
seni gormem imkansiz imkansiz imkansiz
ruyalarim olmasa
ruyalarim olmasa
