From
an unpublished manuscript by David Jones, “Teach the pupil that first you make
one mark on the paper. Then you make
another. And the significance of these
two marks is the relationship between them--- which is a third, invisible
mark.”
-88-
If I was editing a book section for this
week I would start with a memorial notice for Peter Esterhazy by sending you to
a long review in which I discussed many of PE’s novels when such reviews were
possible in big city newspapers in the US—but of course no longer: http://articles.latimes.com/1998/jun/07/books/bk-57301
And the Los Angeles Times even let me
go on again with Esterhazy:
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/mar/14/books/bk-mcgonigle14
I would skip to a line in the most
recent Patrick Modiano novel LITTLE JEWEL (Yale University Press)
to be translated, “He was still speaking to me of about Persian
of the plains. It was like Finnish, he said. It was also a pleasant language to
listen to. You could hear the rustle of
wind in the grasses and the murmur of waterfalls.”
Modiano like
Claude Simon is fortunate to have only had one publisher in France, but then
both are French and at one time they did things differently there… both
writers, so unlike in many ways, live in the constant confusion of past-present-future…all of their
books form a whole as did Kerouac come to think of it… and while both Modiano and Simon have Nobel
prizes in their cases these prizes mean nothing, really--- the prize has
allowed more of Modiano to appear in English… for Claude Simon his Nobel was met by derision in the US
summed up by Isaac Singer asking, is Claude a man or a woman… and not joking,
sad to say…
The lines I have quoted from Modiano’s
novel concerns itself with a woman who has met a man who knows 25 languages…
and she has been looking for her mother who years before just disappeared as
people tend to do in Modiano’s novels and as they disappear in our own lives… why
even tell you more… those sentences tell you, here is a very very good writer
and no more need to be said.
All of Modiano’s novels---how I like
the repetition of his books--- are always about looking, looking and wanting to
know…
They are remarkable as is Simon in
that they mirror my own and how like Thomas Bernhard I hate plotted stories…!
Those machines carving the world into beginning middle and end with characters
introduced, developed, inter-acting and complications thrown in their way and
then THE END
-24-
I was thinking of Bernhard because
Laura Lindgren sent me her translation--- that word does not do justice to the
beauty of the actual book itself THREE DAYS (Blast Books) because I had met her and Ken Swezey in the
ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES on Second Street a long time ago where we were all
watching THREE DAYS a documentary made by a German showing and recording
Thomas Bernhard sitting on a park bench
on three days and talking, just talking.
Lindgren has made a beautifully designed book composed of artfully
arranged stills from the movie, nicely printed and with a generous use of blank
space to allow the reader to experience the actual said words of Bernhard, as
is proper: the words of Bernhard, and it is only because of the words of
Bernhard that we go to him…
I am
hardly a cheery author, no storyteller; I basically detest stories. I am a
story destroyer, I am a typical story destroyer. In my work, at the first
sign of a story taking form, or if I catch sight of even a trace of a story,
rising somewhere in the distance behind a mound of prose, I shoot it down.
-43-
And I would go on and ask someone to
read DISPATCHES
FROM MOMENTS OF CALM by
Alexander Kluge and Gerhard Richter (Seagull Books) which is a collaboration between the writer
and artist that begins in a new year’s meeting at Hotel Waldhaus in Sils-Marie…of course the
reader and viewer recognize the place and its association with Nietzsche… the
nervous words of Kluge moving so easily from Gemany to Lebanon and many other
places echo the complexity of Richter who in so many ways is the only painter
one can compare to Warhol--- but let me not explain that--- except I am
thinking of two shows of Richter I have seen: the retrospective at the Tate years
ago and another of the unveiling at MOMA of the complete series of paintings
that came out of the violent deaths of Baader and Meinhof, October 18, 1977.
-7-
And I would ask for words on the
interview book with MARGUERITE
DURAS SUSPENDED PASSION by
Leopoldina Pallotta delle Torre (SEAULL BOOKS)
and here is an answer to the question And how do you read?
“I read at night, until three or four in
the morning. The darkness around you
adds greatly to the absolute passion that developes between you and the
book. Don’t you find hat? In a way
daylight dissipates the intensity.”
Which strikes me as the perfect
answer to those really stupid articles about “beach reads”, “summer reads” all
invitations to mindlessness… whenever I see someone reading a book at the beach
I know that is a person I would never want to talk with… newspapers and
“quality magazines” are perfect beach readings…
-39-
But how I dislike the idea that a
book review in a newspaper is just really as was patiently explained to me a number
of times by book section editors as really being only a report of books being
published,,. you are writing a book review you are not doing criticism whatever
that is... and no newspaper person does criticism and remember of course that
books of criticism are the first to be discarded when book collections are
being narrowed down along with the biogrpahies of writers and…
-22-
I think I would want people to maybe
read about a book by Ernesto Sabato THE
ANGEL OF DARKNESS… so a leap to Argentina and how did Sabato become
lost in the shuffle?
-57-
But there should also be books from
the past to go against the idea that only the new matters…the Poundian: news that stays news… making it new is
reminding of what was/is… so SAUL’S BOOK by Paul T. Rogers,
celebrated for how many times it was turned down by the so-called real publishers
and then taken up as the EDITORS’ BOOK AWARD given by Pushcart Press…
The world of homosexuals on the make
and I am not talking about two Dads renting a womb to have twins… obviously
inspired by both CITY OF NIGHT and LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN, still holds
its own and is stillcontroversial as it once was as the repression ever
continues about the actual lives as in the novel: A guy finds a guy in the bathroom of the Port
Authority bus station:
….”and let him blow me for a
couple of minutes until my dick finally gets hard which is when I pump back and
forth like I was cumming and put it out and wipe it off fast with some shit paper, zip myself back up and
tip. When I close the door he’s still
sitting there with his dick in his hand, smiling like something really tremendous
happened. I bet he thinks I came. Most people don’t know it but guys can fake
cumming just like hooers do. All you got to do is while the guy is blowing you,
you bring up a little phlegm, pull your dick out of his mouth fast and grab
ahold of it and while you’re grabbing it you put the phlegm from your onto your
dick head. The phlegm looks like
cum. I guess it must taste like cum too
cause I never had no complaint about it.
When you look up what happened to Rogers, the perfect
literary career: only one book and he
was murdered according to the bio in Wikipedia:
On September 22, 1984, Rogers was
found dead in his apartment by the superintendent of his apartment building.
Two days later on September 24, charges of murder conspiracy and robbery were
laid against Christopher Rogers, the author's adopted son, and Nicholas
Ondrizek, a drifter who had been staying with them. The pair reportedly beat
him to death with a wooden plank, and then stole his wallet and bank card. He
was 48 years old at the time of his death, and according to his editor was gravely ill with cancer.
The two
pleaded guilty to the charges on October 9, 1985.
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