tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35768045291267146082024-03-05T05:12:58.351-05:00ABC OF READINGThomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.comBlogger288125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-27438843906872034612023-10-14T12:12:00.000-04:002023-10-14T12:12:52.891-04:00HAVE I DIED OR AM I?<p><span style="font-size: large;">Recently a reader wondered why I have not written for a long time anything for the abcofreading... part of the reason is the nearly fatal disappearance for me of <b>GOING TO PATCHOGUE</b> and while three other novels of mine have been published: <b>PARTY OF PICTURES, THE BULGARIAN PSYCHIATRIST </b>and<b> EMPTY AMERICAN LETTERS </b>they are to a very large extent hidden from the world... though there was a Bulgarian version of <b>DIPTYCH BEFORE DYING </b>which sadly has not been published in English</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b> TWO</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">As some might remember, Dalkey Archive Press a long time ago published two novels of mine: </span><b style="font-size: x-large;">THE CORPSE DREAM OF N. PETKOV </b><span style="font-size: x-large;">and </span><b style="font-size: x-large;"> GOING TO PATCHOGUE.</b></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b> THE CORPSE DREAM OF N. PETKOV </b>remains in print in paper from Northwestern University Press and a Bulgarian version is in print from Ciela in Bulgaria.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <b> THREE</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>GOING TO PATCHOGUE </b>was published in 1992 and was well reviewed across the country with major reviews in The New York Times, Newsday, The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times. It was reprinted once. A paperback version appeared in 2010 and was allowed to disappear. A copy of the hardcover of <b>GOING TO PATCHOGUE</b> is available from Amazon at $540.25 and a paper version is avilablew at $32.00.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <b> FOUR</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I will not repeat the whole depressing and sad story of my relationship with the founder and owner of DalkeyArchive Press as John O'Brien sadly drank himself to death and left a major publishing enterprise to its fate. O'Brien was even godfather to my daughter Elizabeth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <b> FIVE</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">At the moment some titles from the vast Dalkey Archive list are being reprinted by Deep Vellum Press in Texas. One can hope that GOING TO PATCHOGUE will be one of those books but... the </span><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">BUT</span></b><span style="font-size: large;">... I wonder: if LARVA by Julian Rios, if the long long new novel by James McCourt will ever see light--- a book which John O'Brien promised to see into print--- or even if the issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction focued upon James McCourt will ever see the klight of the day though it was set in type... and there is Ken Tindall's BANKS OF THE SEA?... or or....</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <b> SIX</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">At AMAZON a reader can find my last three books: <b>THE BULGARIAN PSYCHIATRIST, PARTY OF PICTURES </b>and <b>EMPTY AMERICAN LETTERS </b>along with <b>THE CORPSE DREAM OF N. PETKOV</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b> THE BULGARIAN PSYCHIATRIST </b>draws upon the life of George K to describe the consequences of the grand lie in the center of modern Bulgarian life. <b>PARTY OF PICTURES </b>is a comedy based on a St. Patrick's Day party that never ends. <b>EMPTY AMERICAN LETTERS </b>is a journey about Bulgaria-- mostly on the aerial tollway of a soul--- provoked by the violent useless death of an American woman in Upstate New York...the novel concludes in the end of the last Crusade at the Battle of Varna...<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-34891589953766228692022-10-26T09:57:00.000-04:002022-10-26T09:57:12.268-04:00JOHN WESLEY, HANNAH GREEN and Irish poets and their wives<p> <span style="font-size: large;"> from the book:<b>WHAT I AM DOING </b> (visiting the painter John Wesley)</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <span> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;">I did not see Jack this week and I will not see him next week. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span> </span><span> </span>Today, as I typed this line, I was remembering a line in a letter than came from Europe this morning: Lack of knowledge about the future is a kind of freedom the ancients valued - they even claim it was Prometheus who took away from men the ability to foresee their end. And we are putting so much effort into the attempt to regain it!</span></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span> </span><span> </span>But it doesn’t matter which week I am referring to in the previous paragraph--- every word preceding that paragraph and every word coming after has been disappearing as can be said: Hannah now--- a long time ago--- turned away and Wesley is in the midst of a turning away that is beyond his control and while he recognizes me in the present moment he is actually looking at a memory of myself from many years before and he does not remember week to week my visits so it seems when I appear it is as if the past is walking into the room where he is sitting in his chair, in this room where he is located without knowing in the present moment how he came to be in this room and I walk in or out--- as if it were a room at 52 Barrow Street or into the apartment at 52 Barrow Street--- and I always look into the front apartment as Jack might be watching television in the afternoon after having been to his studio… I would say hello and then go find Hannah in her back apartment where she sat with the remains of her Ohio life and where when Jack was watching television she received my visit always saying, Jack likes to watch television when he comes from the studio and while the front apartment was Hannah’s it became their apartment after they met and married and the back apartment was rented to give Hannah a place to be by herself with at first her book about college days or the days at 52 Barrow Street and then after the first visit to Conques it became the place where she tried to find the words for those visits to that village…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But as one came into the rooms in either apartment at 52 Barrow Street there was no real evidence of Jack’s presence beyond the paintings on the wall and the portable television that moved about in the front room depending on the occasion.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This apartment in the front of the building was a floor through from the two large windows in the front room to a kitchen area to a space in which a large double bed was to a visitors’ left and finally at the back a bathroom and shower… I did always think: in that bed they lay--- these two tall people and whatever did they do… but I was aware of Desmond O’Grady---he of the broad pink tie— telling me of standing naked with Hannah in that tiny room… since he had followed her from Cambridge where she had almost been the cause of Thomas Kinsella leaving his wife--- but also John Montague had hinted that he had been part of some activity as when he said her name, Hannah, with a warmth betraying a conspiratorial closeness… or at least a temporary closeness and Hannah saying: all these Irish poets and their wives…</span></p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-26759387263680680092022-10-19T11:13:00.001-04:002022-10-19T11:13:46.264-04:00A fragment from WHAT I AM DOING<p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p><br /></p><p>For many years I have been writing this book about JOHN WESLEY who I met through his late wife Hannah Green. There is a constant sense of futility as the world is little interested---but it has always been such... to ask a person, say an editor or a person of power to be interested in: a writer, HANNAH GREEN who wrote THE DEAD OF THE HOUSE and LITTLE SAINT and an essay "Mr. Nabokov" about being a student of Vladimir Nabokov AND then a painter JOHN WESLEY--- who of course is not the founder of Methodism--- who is usually described as being a pop artist with a sense of the comic and who late in life had a major show sponsored by of all companies Prada in Venice but who then lived on for many years in an apartment on Washington Square and who died during the time of the Covid plague but not of Covid.</p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b> </b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>A difficult question</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">from WHAT I AM DOING</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> (visits with the painter John Wesley)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Thomas McGonigle</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">....and ask Wesley a question I have never asked, is there anything you still want to paint? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He looks at me (in the silence I realize the impossible nature of the question, but it still had to be asked) saying, is there something still to paint that you look forward to painting?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What do you mean by painting? he says yet, I… he is not a house painter, a wall painter… in these moments: is there something I am thinking you would like to write?... asking T. S. Eliot... James Joyce… however, Wesley says, I can’t think of anything. It is not said in a despairing tone or even a tone of resignation, it is simply…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On a more cheerful or at least another subject I hand Jack a book about Jo Baer your second wife… and he is saying I know that picture (on the cover) and opens the book ever so carefully rereading the first lines: There can be no doubt that Jo Baer was and continues to be one of the foremost practitioners of Minimalism. Not only that her paintings and drawings but also her texts have greatly enriched this movement of modern art. He closes the book with a finger inserted holding his place.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That says it, Wesley says. He turns the pages looking at the pictures and is saying, nice, nice, nice.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I ask: what do you mean nice?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Neat. They are neat paintings. They are familiar. Neat. Nice. She was always like that: self, she knew her… she was a self, bossy, she knew. The picture on the cover uses my picture so it is familiar…</span></p><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><p><br /></p>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-38907444839888949642022-08-05T20:53:00.000-04:002022-08-05T20:53:05.777-04:00FORGET THE FUTURE. the opening quarter of the book...<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> FORGET THE FUTURE</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> a novel or something for James Thomson BV</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> by</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Thomas McGonigle</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ACTIONS LEAVE SHALLOWER TRACES THAN DREAMS. ONCE THE DAY HAS ENDED THE LIFE THAT TOOK PLACE IS OF NO INTEREST TO ANYONE.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> ---DOMINIQUE AURY</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> this apology of decay</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> ---Gottfried Benn</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">complications don’t sell, you can be complicated when you’re dead.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> THOMSON AGAIN AND AGAIN</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Only memory really exists and of course dies with us unless we find some way to preserve it… every day when we wake we re-arrange the past and move through it as we move through what is becoming part of the past.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Again, I do go to James Thomson, yes, James Thomson BV</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Charlie Conklin was sitting on a bloody towel on a wooden chair in front of Jerry Foley’s Village Paddock on the corner of Jane Street and 8th Avenue that morning. I’m bleeding from down there, he said. Jerry---that cheap bastard--- wouldn’t let me sit in his bar. He called an ambulance. He was afraid I’d die in there and the city would close him down for a few weeks…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">- I took a drive at 6:30 PM on a December night out from the house where I live three nights of the week and had to drive a few miles away.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-There are only a four streetlights on the long road into which I turned and there are few cars on this Sunday road. I am listening to a CD on the car player as the wipers took the light rain off the windshield but the glistening glass harshly reflected the headlights of the on-coming cars. I thought of the neighbor who had swerved into an incoming car with her car and walked away from the accident on this road.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-It was not a long drive and I had looked in the garage for a tourist brochure I had picked up long ago when I went to Illiers-Combray to see the house Proust described in Remembrance of Things Past.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The house was not as I imagined it to be, though at this moment, I am thinking, was not the book by Proust a novel and why would I think the house I was to walk through was actually the “real” house, that is the setting for a never forgotten scene in a novel… except of course I had been told that it was, as I knew when I went to the Martello Tower in Dublin and to walk up to the gun rest… as stately plump…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Should I write about him and be done with it for the moment and he will exist in the moment of the first person who reads these words.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> LEAVING APACHE</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-It cannot be said that when leaving Apache one can see the sign.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> GOING TO APACHE</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> has to end at the moment</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> while what alone remains from the many times of the going to Apache… one building by the side of the highway.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> There you have it--- this you, remembered or invented in the moment, without a name: a destination, a depository if you can… for these words, these pages, at the moment.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He rejected my advice, saying that travels like the humanities, should serve only to enliven one’s style, “ and the incidents gleaned abroad might be used in a novel, but not in a straight account. Travel writings were to him the same as news items, a low form of literature, and he had higher aspirations.” Maxim du Camp on Flaubert in FLAUBERT IN EGYPT by Frances Steegmuller </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“HER CUNT FELT LIKE ROLLS OF VELVET AS SHE MADE ME COME. “ </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> ---GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-I shouldn’t write about him because of the difficulties of the places he inhabited: Patchogue, Dublin, Sofia and sometimes London.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">IN THE LONG RUN, THE PAST AND THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE ARE PRETTY MUCH THE SAME KIND OF FURNITURE,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> --- JACK SPICER. VANCOUVER LECTURE </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> -I can write about him if he can be said to live on the page by way of the words on the page but this is not for me to decide as while I am able to read these words I also am responsible for these words being on the page and that is where the problems come into being with the simple impossibility of something another might call objectivity… </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">BOREDOM IS THERE, IS SOMETHING SPECIFIC, AND YET IT NEVERTHELESS ALWAYS SURROUNDED BY THESE EXTRANEOUS CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH WE BECOME SIDETRACKED TIME AND AGAIN IN OUR ONGOING INVESTIGATIONS</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> --MARTIN HEIDEGGER</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-To write from the personal point of view is to be constantly aware of the brevity of a life given to an individual--- yet unable or unwilling to rise or fall to that strange… thing: creation, to use words to create a person, a place, things, feelings and then to add adjectives: comic, tragic, friendly, nice, lovable, endearing, inspiring--- or not adding an adjective and choosing to describe action and creations participating in actions, inter-actions all as memorable as the person said to be standing at </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> STOP </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">in Patchogue and being asked what he was doing replied, I am waiting for it to change.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> ===</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Once upon a time a man asked Thomson for a likeness of himself and Thomson replied that he would send a sheet of paper with his name block lettered across the bottom of the page and above there would be an inked square of blank space: all you should require when you want to call me to mind.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">---That’s’ the trouble with you, Thomson is saying, the trouble with all of you, being born in that place---- America, infected with such a dreary portion of optimism. Cannot help but think no matter what your sense, your memory telling you: things are bound to change and on you go in spite of your going out to Highgate Cemetery and seeing I did not even get a grave of my own.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Eventually, the poor me will arrive and I will then ramble down the lane, push aside the dead dog, the cat, pass the rutting lovers and find myself exactly where Thomson wanted me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">---Done with it and I have been done by it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Nothing to be extracted from a locket of hair. The undertaker snipped a lock of my mother’s hair and gave it to me in a plain envelope.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-You’ve been kept busy with that hair! Thomson’s voice appears</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The question of the locket sewn into your own…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-What do you know? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The familiar misery, the comfortable misery.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-It gotta go on. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Has the life gotten better for you?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Are you going to quote Pascal to me: I believe only the histories, whose witnesses got themselves killed. (#593)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-How to keep track of this going on? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Why don’t you just give us a birth-to-death story so we can make sense of it for ourselves or a death to birth… </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">- The ambulance came and took Charlie away. Jerry took his chair and the bloody towel back into the bar. I called St Vincent’s that night to ask after him. I was told to hold the line and---cut it the end: Mr. Conklin died. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Because he was not unidentified the city buried C. Conklin in a cardboard box someplace in New Jersey.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-As I was writing the previous two pages my eyes glanced to my right and I saw a card from QUEEN’S HOTEL in Lerwick, The Shetlands where I had stayed in November</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">after I had left the death of my father back in Saugerties in New York State during August of that year. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The picture even shows the room I stayed in which was in a part of the hotel built into the harbor though quite high up above the sea. I do not remember the sound of moving water but I also do not remember opening the windows as it was cold and damp… a few weeks or so before I had come over to England from New York City on the QE2.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-During the voyage I was torn--- or some other word might be better for what had happened--- between two women: one an unattractive girl but obviously I thought available who had just graduated from Smith College and was going to visit her Rothschild relatives in Germany and an older woman who had come over from Montreal to meet her husband in London, though she had not really wanted to be seeing him but it was expected of her, she had said…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Rachel Fraser came to my cabin and we intercoursed each other on two of the nights of the voyage. We did not talk to each other when we saw each other in the dining room or walking about on the decks. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-I discovered a few things in the dining room at the formal dinners: a passenger in First Class did not have to order what was suggested on the menu and as I was told one night, in the days of the real ocean liners, people like you would not have been allowed to travel First Class. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-At Southampton I was directed to take the First Class train to London and I noticed that, not waving, not even a turn of the head when Rachel saw me, I watched her get into a Rolls Royce that had been waiting for her. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-On the last night of the voyage, Rachel said she had things to attend to in London, events to go to, appointments to be kept to, but she gave me a card for where she would be staying, the Landsdown Club. She said it was a comfortable place her husband liked but which she tolerated, as she had nowhere else to go and she was expected to be there when he called, but it might be possible for us to see each other, she had said--- possibly--- before her husband came over to London from Germany where had business to attend to though she was not sure of the timing as they were meant to go to Scotland to look at land… as if, she added, she had not spent too much of her life in Canada looking at land that was to produce their futures. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Of course in the recounting, now, many years later, I become aware Rachel Fraser was saying this to me as she was tentatively exploring the thought of continuing in some way what had happened on the ship… but only mentally since she knew, I am sure now, that to repeat such—and it seems likely that this had happened before, as everything on that ship journey had repeatedly happened to the majority in whose class I traveled but of course I had been part of that class because I could buy that one time a ticket with my father’s death money.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-To make a novena of those people or should be better to offer one for the…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Charles Conklin, who everyone called Charlie but who for some or no reason both Lilia and I always called Charles, told me that over there at Donovan & O’Leary Funerals they had the contract for taking care of the corpses, remains if you please, of those who died with identification on them and no one claimed them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Had to make a delivery to them of cardboard boxes and asked the man what for?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Stick the stiffs in them.. And they truck ‘em over to ‘Jersey to get burnt.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Never keep an ID on you. Then you leave at least a bunch of pictures behind and get a bit of a hole in Potter’s Field.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-A survival tip. When you sell your blood, Charles said, be sure to take along a brown ink pen. I grew an army of those brown spots. They need the blood so bad they’d take it out of your balls. Get that pen. It gives you a little extra cash.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Never trade near a blood snake, you get a lousy price. Move down a couple of streets. Keep yourself clean. Remember your mother saying no one is too poor they couldn’t buy a bar of soap.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-IN 1872 Thomson is writing: the isolation of thought is sometimes almost appalling. Walking in the streets at night and sunk in musing, I came up to the surface and regard the moving people; and they seem to me distant and apparently unrelated as ships on the horizon traversing the ocean between unknown foreign ports; and there are moments when they seem incalculably and inconceivably remote, as stars and systems in infinite space.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Charles and I were walking along 14th Street. I had met him after work at The Eagle at 9th and 14th. They didn’t know him there but it was a good bar he said, bought you back after 3 drinks. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-He was tired. It’s been a ball busting day. The trucking company’s going broke. I tried to tell Manny put us on short weeks. Spread the work around. At least we’d all be working. Nah, we’ll see, Manny says, we’ll see what happens. Nothing’s gonna happen. It’s closing down. They say it’s cheaper to work out of Jersey. I can’t go back to that place. Ten years of my life stuck there with my third wife. She worked me over. I was a cook, a damn good cook mind you and you do like my veal stew. So does Lilia, doesn’t she? I’d sing her any song she wanted. Lilia I mean. Not my third wife. There’s something about her that makes you want to sing something to her. She’s always so sad. Just if I could take her eyeballs in my hands and just throw into the world. LOOK AT IT. YOU GOT TWO GOOD EYES. SEE THE BEAUTY. DAMN IT. SEE THE BEAUTY. I’ve seen my whole world go rotten. Who do I got? There’s the dame over in Staten Island. I see her once in a while. But her hands are so rough and she makes me bring a dildo along. That’s all I got. What can I expect?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Thomson is writing in the British Museum: Suicide would be much more common, were it not that by the time one has learnt the vanity of life he has acquired the bad habit of living. So by the time one has learnt the vanity, and worse than vanity, of authorship, he has fallen into the bad habit of writing … a clueless victim of the plague…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Sure, Thomson would have been able to puke on the sound of these words. It would have been the week he was in the country and had not been near the thought of a drink. To puke at the idea of happiness that gets tossed about in the newspapers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">What is happiness?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You go to be kidding? Do I get paid for my answer? Will I be on television? What are you to be asking such a question?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Well, you got to start somewhere, as they are always saying.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Thomson would be down in the country. He would make up games for the children. He would tell them of the time the man in the moon came down on a long ladder from the moon and arrived in this little girl’s deserted back garden while everyone was taking a nap after Christmas dinner. At first the child was afraid but quickly she figured out what would be in for the man in the moon to harm a little girl standing in the back garden of her home in London. She was worried her parents might be angry with her for standing in the back garden talking to a stranger. However, can anyone really claim the man in the moon is a stranger? It is true they had not been introduced. She told the man in the moon this reservation on her part and he replied he well understood her fear and had arranged for the sun to come along wiping away all traces he had been there. If anyone asked, she was only to say, I was talking to a neighbor’s cat and no, it did not get close enough to scratch.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Thomson would allow the story to be continued until tomorrow at the same time if the iceberg from the North doesn’t show up and squat in the front parlor. The children all laughed and said he was having a fun at them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-He did not know where they got this expression: having a fun at them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The golden ages of childhood, but now it is said there were no golden ages in history, no way to leap into belief in a golden age outside the life being lived right now and Thank God for weak memories.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Stopped looking in the mirror in the morning preparing for the day and no longer seeking myself in the distorting brass edged shop fronts. Is this so, he asks and forgets to answer his own question because he is thirsty.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The moment came when I no longer recognized myself in the mirror.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">On certain days I fall into happiness and am left with myself and familiar memories never failing to rewind me back to, once upon a time, when there was a chance and I was still in the running, running after something, even when I was sitting on the porch listening to my father going on about the doctor next door and how the noise from the pool on Maiden Lane was draining him minute by minute and why didn’t they do something about it…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Was there a time when I was happy?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This was in Patchogue and her name was Melinda.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Thomson did not have the long pause between when he first saw Mathilda and when…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Though for sure… she was dead and gone and in my case Melinda lives on and on.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That came later. He was lucky in his fashion.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">How can I say that! Comparing your high school love with the love of a poet who died young.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">That poet is from the anthologies, even though he has been declared to be minor.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He is a certified part of THE History of English Literature. His listing in the British Museum catalogue: </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">THOMSON (James) the Poet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>THOMSON (James) Author of The City of Dreadful Night”.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But I am not even a resident of the Incorporated Village of Patchogue. I am a city person for whom they are preparing a rubber sack for my remains.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Lines originally typed in the night as Thomson would have been doing though he does not have money for his lamp after the sun went down. The life was being bound to the relentless rhythm of the sun: the day would grind on and he would be ground into the earth overlooking the error of astronomy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It was beyond any sentiment he might entertain. He isn’t shouldering himself against the sky.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The pity of it...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He would say and give us a drink, the pity of it under the dome of moon.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A pain sits in my stomach. The earth filling her mouth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I wrote: a grain of soils shall fill the vein. This was in Dublin where every word becomes naked to be jumped upon by a likely lad and ridden into the ground.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And my parents in their boxes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I lay upon Melinda and felt the earth ooze up behind her lips and when her tongue twisted about his all he could feel was the slick slime of a worm, while how sad it all was, now, after all these years… the ordinary desire to freeze though of course time would carve them apart… that knowing nod of the head: you were not meant to be together.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Thomson was said to have never spoken of Mathilda. She existed but was also invented to explain the life of Thomson: unrequited love instead of the cold gaze on our individual fate… while Melinda is just a name repeated and the color of the eyes would have to be invented, the shade of blonde hair, the tone of her voice…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We were all so happy. Don’t forget that. We were all so happy, once upon a time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Her flesh dusts his beard.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Thomson has lost--- is it now--- three handkerchiefs in the laundry and his budget is thrown out of whack.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If only the dimness would consume his memory of Mathilda.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">If only had lost the lock of hair that is pinned to the inside of his vest pocket.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">They all think it is the lock of hair of my truelove… the true love who Thomson never speaks of, but who is spoken of, conveniently after he died, and gone away, unable to fill in a rebuke to such an easy explanation for the problems when they try to come to grip, as is said, with the life led, the life that ground him up and sent him out there and back here.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It was all so much fun. If he was honest and who else was there at that moment in the history who could be honest with a pen.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Trying to shoehorn himself up the ladder… that ladder and not able to purchase the first rung.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Get the foot on the first step.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Just submit.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">All the heaven of the page to open for him but he would be warmed by the fire consuming that page.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Could he have made the effort to have his words seen by the passing eye on the High Street?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Even if he knew how this happened they would still cover his words with brown spit.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Even as he was writing he was not supposed to be writing. Haven’t they discouraged you enough? What is the matter with you?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The ladder up is the ladder going down.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The locket could well have come from the woman or boy who was met in the dark and who took away some of the hours.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I have lost the locket of my mother’s white hair. The undertaker had clipped a lock of the hair from the corpse head of my mother. He gave it to me in a plain white envelope.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">These dust bound corpses roll upon each other and while there is an ocean between… held in my mind: the earth is squeezed up from under her breasts that sag over the sides of of her rib cage and rise up and draw me down to kiss her lips. The eyelids are smooth, not yet wrinkled by too my fingers. The tip of my tongue did not etch the corners of her eyes: the orbicularis oculi.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The sun illuminated her pale white flesh and this is going on in my boy room, the room where I sat for days, for hours on end and wishing for this to happen and now what is happening it will end.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I could not imagine the next day and In that…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Give us all a break</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As you still think in this day Melinda disappeared and my hands are covered with the earth: my mouth tastes of the ages of books which will be read looking for this moment.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It was never there in the first place.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Just vague mush, as Thomson might say if pressed and my life long love affair with myself</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Once upon a time</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I knew in Patchogue and Thomson knew on Ireland…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">O, I was happy</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Damn it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Bombast.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In love with idea of love, came to both of them, to Thomson and myself. That bag of worms. Both of us rummaging through the bookstalls and the British Library. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Grubbing midst the records for something along with Dr. Karl Marx and he was so kind to be appreciative of the translations from the divine Heine, the stupid torment of the flesh but no God to believe in so how to call up the divine, as Dr. Marx wrote in his note.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And the blank face turns to me again, as it must, because it thinks I’m loaded with money though that money is in the form of poor me, poor me, poor me and hope that the old guy would give me a push into the hole waiting for me, but again no such luck.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ATTENTION is always focused by the possibility of a free drink.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I rattle the coppers in my pocket, the tongue is nearly out like my own and I wish how do I wish long for and hope for and curse against my fate of being with men who do not have a copper to rub against another and only what to feel their gross bodies pushing against mine in the hope some of my meager warmth will rub off and into…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Just rubbish</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">My hand out to his and his around mine and repeating to ourselves, if only… and both of us knowing we’re just having ourselves upon for a bit of a lark… and if it we were truly grown up we would have long ago out aside these things, this thing of childhood and gotten on with the day-to-day without carrying a sack of ash for our meal, dropping on the stoop we are… and the man looks at us: you don’t expect to be coming in here tracking yourself upon the carpet, now do you?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Before Thomson can twist the words around his tongue and not say what is on his mind, I’ve grabbed him by the arm and moved passed the gentleman</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">---We’ve been invited and now please, announce us as we not to be kept waiting.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Thomson is pointing to the burst sack of ash. I do not see it because what good does it do for either of us to see what we have left behind?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">---That’s’ the trouble with you, Thomson is saying, the trouble with you, being born in that place---- America, infected with such a dreary portion of optimism. Cannot help but think no matter what your sense your memory telling you: things are bound to change and on you go in spite of your going out to Highgate Cemetery and seeing I did not even get a grave of my own.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Eventually, the poor me will arrive and I will then ramble down the lane, push aside the dead dog, the cat, by the rutting lovers and find myself exactly where Thomson wanted me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">---Done with it and I have been done by it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Nothing to be extracted from a locket of hair. The undertaker snipped a lock of my mother’s hair and gave it to me in a plain envelope.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You’ve been kept busy with that hair!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The question of the locket sewn into your…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">What do you know? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The familiar misery, the comfortable misery.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It gotta go on. Has the life gotten better for you?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Are you going to quote Pascal to me: I believe only the histories, whose witnesses got themselves killed. #593</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">How to keep track of this going on? Why don’t you just give us a birth-to-death story and we can make sense of it for ourselves. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But you already have that. There are plenty of them. Even for a guy like Thomson… the books are there on the shelf or in the electronic lists.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">MEETING WITH THE BLIND POET</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Give me another whiskey, I am tired of the wine drinkers and their bars where they linger of the glass, an insult to the wrist and central nervous system: the wine drinker</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">They must expect to live forever, never asking why they would want to do such an awful thing?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Since 1963 he has known of Thomson. The title of the John Rechy novel CITY OF NIGHT… the search through the works of the man of the The Seasons and then discovering the other one or the one.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This novel would surely not have been published as little as five years ago. Its issue by a reputable house marks how far the black hand of censorship and threat of censorship has been lifted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Openly published “City of Night” can be evaluated on its merits. It is about the half-submerged world of homosexuality the community of hustlers, lesbians, queens and other deviates that live on the fringes and in the center of the urban societies of America.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-And was stuck with books and written words. Whole buckets of them and the containers begin to spring leaks and strange substances spread across the floor eating into the carpet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The suitcase is unpacked, at least that is known as a fact.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Deliberation is the boot into which the foot has been fitted.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Nothing so vulgar as the life of a poet or the reader’s report on the life of the poet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">=At one time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Surely, at one time, just as if it was yesterday. One day. And then there were other days. A Sunday in April and deciding after the French that your intestines are too long or too short and that has been your problem all along. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-And there is translating for a reason we will come to after a time. It’s a question of work, of application for months perhaps for years nothing impossible as the Spanish proverb has it Plenty of Vaseline, even more patience and the elephant buggers the ant.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The sun shining outside. Should be shining inside. Anything to overcome the sudden snow storm out of season or maybe not. Weather hesitates us all…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-From the moment Thomson saw Matilda Weller in Ireland, did he know she would be part of his, for lack of a better word, life? -When I saw Melinda she would consume my memory. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Constitutional melancholy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Thomson has been walking. Give him that. It's obvious many things will come between him and me and him and you and this could all be dragged beyond anyone's capacity to find enjoyment. He hasn’t come from a sitting room, so that casts out some potential readers. He has been out and doesn’t remember where he has been.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The year is 1882.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Thomson will be deadly presently.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">My grandfather is being born in Donegal.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Failure of imagination. No bodices to be ripped. No dusty costumes to be raged from the closet and words to be insinuated into their mouths.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Plod on in some fashion. I will be with you within the minute. In one minute. Believe me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Just one of the guys on the road: Tom, Dick, Harry Wilson, Harry. A pose to be sure because as I am not like these geezers, the guys down the avenue.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>S O S</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> WINO IN DISTRESS</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The task is the translation of Destouches’ Bagatelles pour un Massacre. Of course I know no French. Whoever needed a language to translate from that language into one’s native language? Just begin where I can. Dictionaries at the ready. I know the reputation of the book. It might never exist in English. A scheme of madness, the workings as a mind crazed by being locked in a novel or someplace like that. The book fell into my hands.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Thomson knew what I was getting at. He needed to have Leopardi into English. He had his dictionaries. A lot of time on hand. I don’t have the time. The clock is hurrying me along. I don’t own the walls that enclose me. A stranger owns the walls and comes for the money once a month: in cash please.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">My eyes blink and a world is created. The eyes close and the world is obliterated or am I obliterated if I practice this in the middle of the road?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I should be going up to the Sunrise Highway. On one side, the Sunset Funeral Home and on the other, the Break of Dawn Birthing Center: I kid you not.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">You had to be there. Reality has gotten the march on Fiction these days. The poets are running in place.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A creature of books, papers, the library and any fleshy substance to be distilled out of my longing to be back on Patchogue during the summer months of 1965.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Who wouldn’t? Given the day: dogs and derelicts chew bark from the trees in the park. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As did Thomson long for the Ireland of 1853 (Melinda is still alive; Matilda was dead) while I have become used to the longing. It is a faithful shadow, as if a shadow has free will! Or, who is to know, on some days I am quite happy being right here, at your service, at your service…as in the week of his death--- of course he did not know this then---Thomson went to visit the poet, Philip Burke Marston; his poetry would make me throw up: once leaped my heart then dumb, stood still again---this is the room to which she came that day--- then I knelt down, and dared to touch her hand--- those slender fingers--- her radiant beauty made my heart rejoice--- and the sight of him… stuffing his fingers down his throat to get clear of the evening and her hand wrapped ‘round his part…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Marston, you fucker, the Scot’s nerve of you to claim you can’t see because you are blind, dead in the eyes, you say, blind as you say, you are---I’ll carve the eyes out of that skull of yours and then you’ll be able to see, see that I am not lying when I shout into your own good ear, I’m a tiger, not a leopard burning bright into the morning, but tiger burning, burning down this house and the one in which I’ve always lived, the one in which I’ll die, the one to which you think you’ve been able to send me like they’ve always tried to do: send me away for what is perennially said to be my own good: teeth sinking into your arm and I know it is an arm. I am not stupid and blind like you--- because my eyes are open to the walls and I have my teeth into your arm and the blood runs warm, not as in the stories beloved by them sitting by the fire, waiting for Melmoth to come calling from his Irish bog… waiting, that’s all they are good for and all I am good for, though that is all done with: this waiting because I shall gnaw on those full, female described, pleasure loving lips and I shall not dumbly suggest the cruel limitation of your suppose blindness, that darkness, turning the colours on and off in her cheeks, like some wretched sailor’s navigational guide.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My legs give flight and I have my arms outreaching, slung out for the touch, turning my mouth into a portico to the mouth of the heaven or hell that does not exist but was said to open for my mother when she went to chapel and they are all singing every moment of the service, singing and hoping: this is the time of the year when the heavens open an take them by chariot back to where they belonged and they do think this and I have you by the scruff of the neck and will take you back to the jungle and devour you at my leisure… all against the possibility, she felt, of the hell about to open at every step on the way to chapel.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Alas, poor Marston says he cannot see and probably says he can taste the fear gripping him in the small pouch swinging between his legs… grabbing him for all he is not worth. I have him and he is a tasty meal, is not my precious Englishman, a tasty meal is he not… for one and all and when the cannon opens fire I watch them fall over like so many nine pins before the gates of Madrid, was it or was it in Constantinople that I heard Januarius talk of the Bulgarian faces peeled from their skulls and how the Turks used the faces as so many rags to wipe the snout of their hunting dogs to give the dogs the courage when they went forth to eat at the corpses of the dead Geeks which carpeted the floor of the Valley of Roses.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Marston, I shall turn you over because you are done on this side and the fire has not burned bright into the night and filled this room with enough smoke out which I shall carve my escape and back to Ireland and ease her from the earth and pluck her from the sea and lift her from the mountainside and lay ourselves down against all that is good in the supposed heaven of your Christian god who allows the young to drop into the earth with not a shudder and allows the young to be born with one leg or five hearts or three heads or joined to another and the two of them hobble along the street, a slithering creature too disgusting to exhibit and turn a pretty penny… how are they to fit a crust of bread into their mouth to nourish themselves against the cold always with us and always to be with us: we, this accident upon the face of ice and now allowed to rise up and smote the cheek of the creature and there is no such spirit if you think you have me caught out… you have another thing coming to you and my fist willw sink into your stomach and I will take up residence and away the morning light, bright morning light when all our dreams are seen as something more than that… morning light framing what is not let to us anymore. Show me what is left of your sister broken in foudroyant apoplexy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Marston, scream for all you are worth because you are going to be carried into the place you have cried to be taken out of and again I am the tiger sent from the shores of the Ganges to carry you there and I will send you out to be eaten by the river… how will you like that… to be eaten by the river and to come back in the next life as a rock on the road that will trip a king as he makes his way. Can we not both hear the laughter rise up from the rock and the next time around I will be a cloud and I will cover the earth when alas, my poor girl, goes again into the heartland I will not rent some temple rag but I will cleave the very earth upon which they will walk back from the orifice which has received her body and which will be my destination as it will be yours and as it will be for all those who come after me… can you not hear them speaking with those funny American accents we hear more and more of each year: I will just get out of my coffin and walk across the lane and visit with Henny or he will get out of his box and pay a visit to me and Marion will probably count the silver as she is wont to do, as she will say after they leave… never does anyone any harm to count the silver after relatives like them leave the house…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>To climb out of the box after they have screwed down the lid and stomped down the earth and grown the trees and the shrubs and the bushes which will obscure the stone from the visiting eyes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>You fucker, I know you are looking at me and those eyes are telling you that you have but moments to live and then you will be launched forth upon the poetic seas of your words and finally the words will give shape to the death you have longed for and which I have longed for knowing nothing will come after and the horror waits with me knowing it will all just start again and to have to go through all of this, again, and again, over and over again, that is the horror of the East, that is the lesson they have brought back from The East with the tiger, tiger: to be repeated endlessly and each time the mind knows it is being reproduced and each step has been taken and each fall has been raised up only to fall, just like the last time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And Marston whimpers, is that any way for a poet to behave… to snivel when he is being kissed by another who has come all this way to give back the blindness you have long said you are possessed by and I would be possessed by it too, but I know that even to carve these eyes from my own head I would still be left with the stuff, what a pathetic word, with the stuff which has already been accumulated by the eyes in their previous journey through these streets.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And I know they will come and pry me from your neck and they will be shocked but they are innocent of the ways of the world, not knowing it in the way that I know the world. They will be shocked and think they have seen the end of a man’s life and the beginning of a story.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Notice the teeth broken off in his arm. How shocking!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That’s what really happened: they have been in on the making of a story and each will deny to the other the truth of what each has seen but I have been the one who has seen: the fur fell over my blotched skull and I feel the fur when I raise my hand to my face and I have to close my eyes because I wouldn’t want to tear my own eyes out. I would not be able to make my way through this earth to find you, Marston, there, as you are always to be at the end. Having missed the story when it began, you have once again been brought here…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Dead fuck that you are: who comes to call at your house, you who, think yourself so lucky that you do have a house and I who have the street am luckier than most because at least I know: no room can contain me any more unless it is a casket and I long for the wooden garb and the sure destination.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>How I wish to be consumed by flame and for no reason. If I knew they will no allow me to be consumed as flesh. You are no pagan baby being sent to voyage on the river. You are born in these islands, you will be set free from these islands only to rot in the earth of this place.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And do not slobber out how you are just an innocent lamb who has been lost to the world and now you are found by him who is prepared to send you to a world I no longer believe in but which I am sure you too do believe in. So where is the smile on your face as the angels begin to run against each other and send down their tentacles like some sea creature to take you back to your own true home, there midst the clouds and the constant motion of chicken feather and lurking fox coming in from the back of the shed to send these chickens to a further heaven where they wait to be sent further along the rail line to end up right where you are at the moment, about to be sent into the history of my life.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Give me another drink.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>You say, you dare to say, there is no drink in the house and I ask where is this house you speak of: I see only two rooms and one of those rooms is blocked up with the life you are claiming to lead but which is about to take you over hedge and there you will find me waiting with my mouth opened. Hungry I will have been all day, having been send into the world without a decent cup of tea.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I wanted to be done with you, Marston, in the light and speed of the first sentence, Marston, you fucker, I will carve out those eyes of yours and truly you will be blind and seeing all which id denied to us who have been looking for more years than we want to lay claim to but which twists us at the corners of our eyes and at the flesh which swims across our stomachs and consumes the knife.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>No, I will not send you to your Maker because your mother and father are dead and ooze into the earth, lying upon the same bed in death that they lay upon when they squeezed one from the other the melting which became you and which became me and which became those who will live on after I am done into the ground.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I am downed with it all. And have been done in by it all for all these years no matter what I tried to do ain’t it a grand story, as the Americans said in Colorado when I told them of coming over from England. Ain’t it a wonderful story: him come all this way to entertain us with these stories about wanting to go back to streets so narrow two men cannot pass without nudging one or the other into the shit that fills up the gutter and in which the little children dig and fish for the truth of their lives and are they looking for a song; that is not for me to say. There are far better people able to distill from the rubbish of the days the meaning of it all and out of which I am about to launch us so that we no longer have to ask ourselves these dreary questions which come to complete with more answers than any sane person could ever want. An answer is created every moment for the sort like us: give us a moment and we will harden the answer up into a dogma and you will have another dogma to overthrow when the moment comes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And Marston rises up and feels his hands pushing at Thomson’s shoulder which shakes into a rage that drives Thomson back down upon Marston, and yet again Marston pushes back t and the face of Thomson slides as if it were attached with some sort of rubber to the skull and Marston can see the face sliding off the bone of skull and Thomson’s teeth are mostly still there… that was what surprised Marston: Thomson has a full head of teeth. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Now by all that is fair in the world, how did Thomson keep all his teeth? But now the mouth opens and the smell is as if the river rose up and dropped down in one small bucket right next to the bed with a deep sigh and the wives of a tiger being lead into the field by the little indian boy and they prance and show their little stuff.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course Marston does not see. He has never seen anything and no one will see him in a couple of years when he goes to join the others in the card catalogue of the museum, just another card and will the cards get up and cross the aisle and have a friendly chat like the corpses do in the cemetery… picture postcard cute.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The room will be stripped bare because he will not be able to go back to it because he knows Thomson will always be lurking in the corner ready to pounce and claim those eyes for his own. There is no reason for how to understand Thomson wanting the eyes of a dead person,,, no, wanting the dead eyes of a person who has always been the symbol of friendly concern and Thomson is always heard saying: if he was the saint you are talking about why didn’t the angels come down and replace the eyes in his head?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I will tell you: there was no need to replace those eyes because there was nothing wrong with them. He could see better than most men who are born and walk along the avenues with an eye peeled for a loose coin. Marston saw everything and nothing was lost on him which is the way Thomson would like to be. He would like to store up this sort of treasure so in old age he would have something to do.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And if you believe this you are prepared to accept the earth being flat and we area all falling off the side of the place being held up to the cannibal emperor in the sky who lunches on the flesh of innocent children, only.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I believe none of this and Thomson believes none of this and Marston believes none of this and we are all in this room which is the shape of the box to be shoved into the earth in Highgate to be swamped by the vines and the beautiful trees (say the words beautiful trees as if your tongue was covered with all the sugar of India).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The front teeth have finally broken off and pieces will remain in Marston’s arm. Blood is mingled. Thomson is saying, now we are Red Indian blood brothers and which way is the war path and which way do we go to capture the spirits that are our due because we have not a snowball’s chance in the proverbial hell of the Christians of gaining entrance into a public house.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thomson will live on. And not just in the scholar’s phrase repeated by the newspaper reviewer on a provincial paper.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">His flesh has been folded into her flesh as a joke by that scoundrel and now he would live on in flesh and not just in the yellowing pages lodged in the library,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Flesh and not a moment even remembered when this event happened. Frank Harris knew all about it. He often knew all about it and knew about in more ways than many a man was capable of imagining it. The final joke of year: the poet of pessimism in a moment of drunken forgetfulness has his part folded into the receiving part of the girl and while it is not known if she knew what was happening… it was sure that the poet did not know what was happening.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Or, so the story goes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Another drunken evening in the lives of the poets.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And that will be enough for the night and for the day which is about to dawn, once again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The poet is speaking of pus and semen.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And there are the complications of the drink and opium.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But I would assert Thomson turned to the drink, turned to the pipe because what else was he to do… he didn’t turn… it matters not at all if he did or did not turn to either of these solutions.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Nothing matters except this near revelation, on the road to a new world Damascus.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>All of us enjoy being mis-understood in a gross and easy way: the death of Thomson’s child love who was merely a young girl: the failure of two young people, so easy, myself, so easy, my fantasy picture and when confronted by a change: how dare people change, and nature so unkind and echoing the true heartlessness of myself for expecting something different and the long inevitable regret and the self-satisfaction when all the events roll out as described --- of being alone to indulge in these feelings with no retribution, yet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Come when it may: the life will not change and there is no going back. He, I, you are stuck with what has happened and as we grow older--- just settlement of the various organs as is said to occur at death--- a long sigh prefigured in the steps we take each day our walking with our knowledge: this is the life and we are stuck with it for good or bad…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is not that bad, of course, and that is part of the situation (how lucky you are when compared to…) and people close to us think it is something they have done, when In fact they are only the current scenery for our little drama which exists both before and after.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>All here waiting. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As we shall. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As we must. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A cold, nasty January in New York City, 1873 but it is any year. Weather does not change. Nostril hairs freeze, the mouth corners of beard are chewed icy threads.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, even if do look like you are chewing canary</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So, you say, you’ve been out there in the west and are going back over there as soon as you can locate a berth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Another place, you say, that can hit a man over the head and leave him with the thought: ain’t seen nothing yet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Did what I could as such circumstances allowed for but there came a moment when how could I squeeze what I needed with only pen and paper while trusting the post to bring the necessary reply.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If I had been younger and had a spark in the pocket or wherever that flames to reside which is said to send men grubbing wealth from the soil or trying to yank it out of the earth: the consuming flame for hard manual labour, I was denied, in spite of my pre-disposition to such work as opposed to the drudging futility of carving a living through sifting the ashes in The Library that became my lot through chance: my pen no longer a lance but instead a funeral rake.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>To be one of the fortunate ones who knew and still knows what he wants to do. Having known with microscopic precision what is allowed and what is forever beyond any room I will be allowed to inhabit.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>For the most part free of that ache which rides a man’s back when he looks upon the favoured and those burdened with worldly success. </span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The Merchants Hotel. Manhattan.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The walls will not leak. There is nothing hidden under the floorboards or lurking under the bed. He does not hear voices and he will not see a face in the window glass even though it is smeared with grey winter grime. He is waiting. His mind is no longer in the city and certainly it is not in this room though he can vision the man’s arm as it raises the knife up and up to gain momentum so when, as it plunges down, the blade will be sure to strike home and end the torment of the life that insinuated itself, without invitation, into his biography.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course it can be said, the newspaper has done a better job of inching itself into his mind and he will not argue with those words since they are carefully stated and show no expectation of a reply.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He is also uninterested in these men who rub up against him in public expecting some sort of reply to their vivid fevered observations. What is it that he is expected to know. He has accomplished nothing. His hands do not drip with idleness or blood. He has not allowed his ship to sail anywhere near the predictable shores of either success or flamboyant failure.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He has tried to get on as best he could. He had allowed himself to be seized with the proper degrees of enthusiasm: carefully calibrated so as to not frighten off his future employer and was sent out, in due course, to The West and it will happen again, he is sure of that: he can distill the necessary words.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>After all is said and done to death: he is a man of words at the beck and call of the masters with large sheets of paper needing to be full up every week, every day, every month.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At their command, he is by the pence, for the inches that sluggishly spread up and down the columns. But has not the knack for the saleable anecdote. He can get cloud, the trees, the stone down on to the paper.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Human beings!!!: that’s another bag of muck he can’t bring himself to turn inside out,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Yet, people want it and he is unable to supply. No good calling round next year, things will not have changed. He has his plate in front of him and there are just some who…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A sort of sun in the sky. He should get a move on and see some more of this place. He will be asked and he will have to fill up the hours with his impressions. And as long as they don’t expect words to be knitted into columns he can lie with the best of them or with shrug of shoulder: why must he get things right? The stories will come out and as long as the cup is refilled: the evening will not stare him down into silence. He knows what he has to do. He is not that cut off from the companions who stand about the room, not having gone forth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>However, he has to decide whether to talk of his reading or just allow that he saw some interesting sites and was seen by exotic eyes. People are interested in turns of phrase that are not too far removed from the effusions gracing greeting cards called up by the passing holidays. Though, actually, who will be interested in his reading or the names of streets he has walked in.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Well, pass the bottle and make sure the glasses are full and the interest will be as intense as any man can bear.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> But he is not held by this consideration. He has been listing the years of his life. He is making sure he has been alive and it is no mistake his now being in New York City. He has walked up a staircase, depending on his mood, or he has walked down a staircase or as is more the case he is walking along a long corridor which might also serve to frame his thought or the only truth: one year followed another and he places certain events after four numbers:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">1834 born in Port Glasgow</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">1840 Da stricken</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">1842 London Mama dies</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">1851 Ireland</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">1853 Da dies</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">1856 Ireland again</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">1861 Jersey</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">1862 London and my true friend Bradlaugh</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The vanity, the futility of doing up such a listing falls as an arm upon his shoulders, as if anyone will or could care.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>No, cancel the word futility.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But do I care? His ear can almost create these words being spoken by his mouth, though no sound actually tampers with the silence in the room,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Just almost, he can believe someone is in the room with him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Approximation is an interesting concept in mathematic--- up on the podium as the lecture was moving into the fourth paragraph… while in the room he is aware only that the room is just a meeting room in the hotel in New York City and he is only here waiting to go back, more definite than he would like</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Already back in London, to be sure. Now waiting for the body to be back, to get, as they say, the lead out…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He has been reading in Whitman and Swinburne. He is convinced by Whitman, convicted for his going back to London where the narrow streets hammer words into chains.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>How to escape while knowing there is no escape? The tedious spinning of the mind. As sure as a night’s drinking and being clobbered in the morning by the grave cloth of what might have been, if only.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There comes a moment, I suddenly thought, as I was walking along on the west side of Cooper Square in Manhattan and that moment is only known after it has come to pass… and I try to write down words about that moment and what it was composed of.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I knew the feeling provoked the moment before I could find any of the words to articulate what the feeling was about.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The moment was about the feeling within which I existed and was an attempt to explain why most mornings and increasingly during the course of the day I felt a great sadness had fallen upon me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Literarily, I could explain it as a sort of waking up or swimming into a lifelong sentence of enveloping greyness.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the morning: again the day and the same old feeling: there, with the same reliability of… name any thing, you want.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is realized: things will not change. There is nothing in the world that will truly give me happiness. (where ever did the idea come from, ”your poor mother and I only want you to be happy, you were meant to be happy.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It happened and I am stuck with the life I have at the moment. I try to tell myself I am being too much of an absolutist, but even I know this is a sort of playing with fate, a reluctance to accept, as true, the fate dished out to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Could I, should I invoke the name of M….. and all which the name of the first love entails without having my life reduced to a long reaction to the failure of that first love, now more than half a century ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The same thing happened to James Thomson.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I am sure of it. I have no proof. Only the power in the assertion.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sometime before Thomson left for America in 1872, he realized nothing would come of this journey. It would not be the fault of America and it is not to be blamed on his longing to get back to England while he is in America and it is not to be blamed on a lack of courage---as I exhibited when I did not go to the south of France in June in that long ago year, and it is not to be blamed on the death of the girl in Ireland, though he is well aware the sentimentalists down through the years will hark to the figure of the girl and try to explain everything though the figure of her death and Thomson’s long grief.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And there are the complications of the drink and opium. The children love your stories, your laughter</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> My ten ugly friends sitting at the ends of my feet. To invent a gang of desperados for the children, ten toes as loyal to the foot as any man can expect another--- all living in tunnels. The smell. Hold the nose! Into the tunnel we go---- dark, sticking together: one for all and all for one, bound through life, good chums who will never pass beyond. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And the children love it because he is able to empty his mind of adult years. Nothing holding him firm to acting his age.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The children love your stories, your laughter. An enticement in her words to return, to come back and he was eager to comply with their youthful commands having no allegiance to the things he was supposed to be interested in. <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> How he longed and looked forward to being free of the sound of stones grinding stones down into sand or at least his awareness of it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The eyes of the young people were not filled up, stuffed with the too many passages upon this earth that would eventually, he well knew, acid lines into their young faces.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He could skip a stone across the pond saying the moon had gone for a fling and was out capering since it did not want to be tied to the usual and sudden disappearance every evening. The sad sun could not dance as it wanted. It was frozen in place even when it did shine. The sun was a creature of responsibility.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But the moon does not appear suddenly, Linda objected, and he stands at attention corrected.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>You are right, Madam, it is I who have been found guilty of being an old grouch.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The children laugh and dance about him as they imagine the moon to be dancing about the earth: he will not allow himself to think more on these scientific matters. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I throw out and up my fingers so that there in the middle of each palm an Oriental face, with slanty eyes and slanty nose and slanty mouth come to weave a spell.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ten fingers as if each head had five ears. He wiggles his fingers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>With so much to hear is it not a wonder no one has thought to improve the lot of the poor man who only has two ears. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Alas, the man with only two ears cannot hear the seas as they roll up on the sands of India.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Did I tell you of the time that Good William was lost for many days and did not know which way the sky was pointing?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> * * *</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Coming from the West the train passes through a long tunnel and dumps you on the shore of the river. Across there is the city of New York and just to wait and he would be home and…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, did you find out which way the sky was pointing?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That is another story.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course it was another story, with the sun suddenly bright for this time of year; all the creases upon his face are visible to the eye but he grateful for their inability to see these sketches of his future countenance.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Aware of his duties.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He tries to think what story he should dangle in front of the children: they will have gotten so much grown up In the less than a year he has been away. He will tell them about the Rocky Mountains: the spine of the earth, cast up to the sky and how he was reminded each day every day looking these jagged edges of shattered stone: how fragile the human world is.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Paradoxically, he will say, in the sight of the very grandeur of these mountains in those United States…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>However, interrupting you, Linda will say in her sudden adult voice, if he saw any scalped men because she had been reading about such adventures in her wild west book.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I did, paradoxically, in that you should expect after such an ordeal a man would be dead. The top of the head had been lifted clean away and you should look into the brain cavity and surprise of surprises---pause--- it was empty, though there is a smile on the man’s face. I can tell you. A smile as broad as the ocean and with an Irish accent, cradling the words this man spoke, if I might with your permission, ice the tea cake….</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jimmy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The child’s voice scratches the inside of my ear. It is not painful. I am not mad. How bold is my assertion. On the other day I’d have never dared say or write this but today for the proverbial, some reason, when I hear in the ear, Jimmy I want to yank off my ears or only the right ear because that is the one into which the word was poured.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>No, it is as plain as the nose in the center of the face: the delight that is his in the obvious liberation contained within the initials BV, for the by-line allows me to be free of who I am in the world.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>To have created for a little while a new person and shoulder into extinction this Jimmy, that James or Jim and the expectations within these names. There is the careless intimacy of Jimmy, the constant adolescence of Jim even when stuffed into a chair in the gin mill or James on his mother’s lips, calling him from the game being played with the feel of grass to the child cheek and remembering the eyes of those children glazed with happiness as are these children before him as he is telling them again of the moon that was captured under a fingernail.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And were there men and women on the moon or is that a fable for another day?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Today is another day, Linda says.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>To have finally gotten myself free from the name, James Thomson, only to be called to account because of my contributions to literature with BV attached to what I was aching to be free of.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Struggle to free ourselves is to compound the problem.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The chains grow warm in anticipation of our surrender to their embrace.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>How’s that for poetry. Off the cuff and yet the white shirt is still clean enough--- should be getting ready to venture out into the slushy streets: places to go, people not to see or be seen by and what a blessing--- only the faces of strangers for the eyes to graze upon.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Obvious voices can be heard within his and my own anxiety at getting the show to some final resting spot.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Just like your Uncle Jimmy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>You’re going to be just like your Uncle Jimmy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>You take after your uncle Jimmy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Your uncle Jimmy could never admit he had done anything wrong.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Something happened in that war, I later thought, but back then I didn’t think this. He came back, from Korea, from the Crimea, from the Sudan and we never saw him. Something must have happened. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>No one could tell your Uncle Jimmy anything.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Some people like your Uncle Jimmy have to learn everything the hard way.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>You’ll grow up to be as tall as your Uncle Jimmy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>AND FOR THE TIME of his being in the city Thomson keeps taking notes. He has been reading Tyndall’s Lectures on Light. Understood most. Must read them carefully again. Bodies seen within the eye. Persistence of impressions. An Impression of light once made upon the retina does not subside instantaneously. An electric spark is sensibly instantaneous. But the impression it makes upon the eye remains for some time after the spark has passed away. This interval of persistence varies with different persons and amounts to a sensible fraction of a second.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>However, like any sensible soul, without ascribing any religious meaning to that word, soul, he admits to an inability to reconcile who this person is with who is taking down his words--- his pictures in head--- who is writing them up over a hundred years later who feels himself into the moment of Thomson putting the book aside and realizing it is now too dark to read what he had just read and Thomson will not venture out into the street. He has nowhere to go.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He is a stranger in the city. Though he takes some comfort in thinking: Whitman is nearby… not within the city but his Leaves of Grass is also by the chair. He has already read through it once and is waiting for the right moment to begin, again, to read.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thoughts created in idleness. If only he could create a companion instead of relying upon the accidents of the drink shop or the road. How he envies the child’s quick ability to invent any number of companions to listen to the various moods that capture him in the course of the day. But his admiration ceases at this point. When he looks with chilled eye and without hesitation all he sees: mistakes and how lucky he is to have done with all the years each of these children still has to march through like an army traveling with little in its stomach and the land burnt over by an ever-retreating army.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He is tired of having to fancy up stories for the children. How to even begin to edge into a paragraph of true complaint, with them as audience? They would look at him as if he was speaking in a foreign language And of course he would not do so. They deserve to live--- for a little while--- within the ignorance nature has allowed some of them to have as a comforter. Some have the luck to never learn and others: look to the shoulders, to the cast of the eye, to the way the fingers spread over the knees when palm of hands comes to rest after the day’s walk about.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He works his words into small pocket diaries. Notes to himself and to this person who will come after. He has misplaced these books on occasion and the horror that grips him until he has recovered them, reclaimed his life from this sudden catastrophe.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is not the slightest chance to be rational about this business of who is coming after.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Finally, he knows: into the hole with this flesh which is doing and had done the writing and yet these little books will be kept and will somehow endure. He has tried to get near to understanding with words this feeling that drives the words into these little books. He could settle for a shrug of the shoulder and just say it is what he is doing right now, that he is keeping track of his life; that he will at least know what he did on such and such a day and if someone suddenly needs to know an address he will not have go back to his room: he carries all the current names and addresses of those people who he is seeing at this moment: did not Dr. Karl Marx value my Heine, and I corrected him by saying it is a only a version of Heine who you have in a more intimate form given to you by your mother German tongue and ear.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Or, to convince himself he is putting away items of research for poems or an article, not enough time to sit around and wait for inspiration when the editor is calling for inches upon inches and there is not a penny in his pocket. There is always a need for some local colour. However he doesn’t believe this shrug and has only: if I knew.., or could know and it is always possible he will come to some understanding along with an ability to translate…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>FROM THE WEST. Owen’s good story about the tobacconist’s well-known woman who happened to be delivered of a still born child. The doctor wrapped it in newspaper and took it home for preservation in alcohol. He forgot it for two days and then unfolding the parcel found the body marked across the stomach with something he couldn’t rub off. Covering all the marks he called in some of the fellows and showed them the creatureling. They asked whose it was. Oh, he said. There can be no doubt about that, for it bears their brands and uncovering the stomach revealed in plain characters impressions taken by the moist body from their advertisements in the paper. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Each of these fellows used to visit the woman, enough said.</span></p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-31797937084717542402022-08-04T10:56:00.001-04:002022-08-04T10:56:42.000-04:00FORGET THE FUTURE<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> FORGET THE FUTURE</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> a novel or something for James Thomson BV</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> by</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-large;"> Thomas McGonigle</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ACTIONS LEAVE SHALLOWER TRACES THAN DREAMS. ONCE THE DAY HAS ENDED THE LIFE THAT TOOK PLACE IS OF NO INTEREST TO ANYONE.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> ---DOMINIQUE AURY</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> this apology of decay</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> ---Gottfried Benn</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">complications don’t sell, you can be complicated when you’re dead.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> THOMSON AGAIN AND AGAIN</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Only memory really exists and of course dies with us unless we find some way to preserve it… every day when we wake we re-arrange the past and move through it as we move through what is becoming part of the past.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Again, I do go to James Thomson, yes, James Thomson BV</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Charlie Conklin was sitting on a bloody towel on a wooden chair in front of Jerry Foley’s Village Paddock on the corner of Jane Street and 8th Avenue that morning. I’m bleeding from down there, he said. Jerry---that cheap bastard--- wouldn’t let me sit in his bar. He called an ambulance. He was afraid I’d die in there and the city would close him down for a few weeks…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">- I took a drive at 6:30 PM on a December night out from the house where I live three nights of the week and had to drive a few miles away.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-There are only a four streetlights on the long road into which I turned and there are few cars on this Sunday road. I am listening to a CD on the car player as the wipers took the light rain off the windshield but the glistening glass harshly reflected the headlights of the on-coming cars. I thought of the neighbor who had swerved into an incoming car with her car and walked away from the accident on this road.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-It was not a long drive and I had looked in the garage for a tourist brochure I had picked up long ago when I went to Illiers-Combray to see the house Proust described in Remembrance of Things Past.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The house was not as I imagined it to be, though at this moment, I am thinking, was not the book by Proust a novel and why would I think the house I was to walk through was actually the “real” house, that is the setting for a never forgotten scene in a novel… except of course I had been told that it was, as I knew when I went to the Martello Tower in Dublin and to walk up to the gun rest… as stately plump…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Should I write about him and be done with it for the moment and he will exist in the moment of the first person who reads these words.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> LEAVING APACHE</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> (photo to be inserted)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-It cannot be said that when leaving Apache one can see the sign.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> GOING TO APACHE</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> has to end at the moment</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> (photo to be inserted)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> while what alone remains from the many times of the going to Apache… one building by the side of the highway.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> (photo to be inserted)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">There you have it--- this you, remembered or invented in the moment, without a name: a destination, a depository if you can… for these words, these pages, at the moment.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He rejected my advice, saying that travels like the humanities, should serve only to enliven one’s style, “ and the incidents gleaned abroad might be used in a novel, but not in a straight account. Travel writings were to him the same as news items, a low form of literature, and he had higher aspirations.” Maxim du Camp on Flaubert in FLAUBERT IN EGYPT by Frances Steegmuller </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">“HER CUNT FELT LIKE ROLLS OF VELVET AS SHE MADE ME COME. “ </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> ---GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-I shouldn’t write about him because of the difficulties of the places he inhabited: Patchogue, Dublin, Sofia and sometimes London.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">IN THE LONG RUN, THE PAST AND THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE ARE PRETTY MUCH THE SAME KIND OF FURNITURE,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> --- JACK SPICER. VANCOUVER LECTURE </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> -I can write about him if he can be said to live on the page by way of the words on the page but this is not for me to decide as while I am able to read these words I also am responsible for these words being on the page and that is where the problems come into being with the simple impossibility of something another might call objectivity… </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">BOREDOM IS THERE, IS SOMETHING SPECIFIC, AND YET IT NEVERTHELESS ALWAYS SURROUNDED BY THESE EXTRANEOUS CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH WE BECOME SIDETRACKED TIME AND AGAIN IN OUR ONGOING INVESTIGATIONS</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> --MARTIN HEIDEGGER</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-To write from the personal point of view is to be constantly aware of the brevity of a life given to an individual--- yet unable or unwilling to rise or fall to that strange… thing: creation, to use words to create a person, a place, things, feelings and then to add adjectives: comic, tragic, friendly, nice, lovable, endearing, inspiring--- or not adding an adjective and choosing to describe action and creations participating in actions, inter-actions all as memorable as the person said to be standing at </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <b> STOP </b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">in Patchogue and being asked what he was doing replied, I am waiting for it to change.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> ===</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Once upon a time a man asked Thomson for a likeness of himself and Thomson replied that he would send a sheet of paper with his name block lettered across the bottom of the page and above there would be an inked square of blank space: all you should require when you want to call me to mind.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> IN REMEMBRANCE OF</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> JAMES THOMSON</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> (B.V.)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> "The City of Dreadful Night"</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Born 23 November 1834</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Died. 3 June 1882</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Interred at Highgate Cemetery</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> 8 June 1882</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">---That’s’ the trouble with you, Thomson is saying, the trouble with all of you, being born in that place---- America, infected with such a dreary portion of optimism. Cannot help but think no matter what your sense, your memory telling you: things are bound to change and on you go in spite of your going out to Highgate Cemetery and seeing I did not even get a grave of my own.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Eventually, the poor me will arrive and I will then ramble down the lane, push aside the dead dog, the cat, pass the rutting lovers and find myself exactly where Thomson wanted me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">---Done with it and I have been done by it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Nothing to be extracted from a locket of hair. The undertaker snipped a lock of my mother’s hair and gave it to me in a plain envelope.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-You’ve been kept busy with that hair! Thomson’s voice appears</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The question of the locket sewn into your own…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-What do you know? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The familiar misery, the comfortable misery.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-It gotta go on. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Has the life gotten better for you?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Are you going to quote Pascal to me: I believe only the histories, whose witnesses got themselves killed. (#593)</span></p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-70571733754893255642022-07-13T23:42:00.000-04:002022-07-13T23:42:05.046-04:00DAVID RATTRAY on THE CORPSE DREAM OF N. PETKOV.<p>On a dull sort of day I was heartened by re-discovering a letter from the late David Rattray on my novel THE CORPSE DREAM OF N. PETKOV. I wish I had known about the expanded version of his collected prose as it surely might have found a place there in HOW I BECAME ONE OF THE INVISIBLE. David was a very rare human being who actually knew how to read and... </p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">June 18, 1987</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Dear Tom, The Corpse Dream of N. Petkov is a tour de force. I was riveted as they say, although it is a tale I wouldn't want to identify with, I guess I am forced to, willy-nilly. The 12-minute interior monologue of a man being strangled, compressed into 120 pages or less---I count the dozen-odd pages of documents as something that might flash past in a split second--- then the many pages of your autobiographical track, and the interviews, which further whittle it down--- less than half is straight Petkov--- so I tried to imagine all this as a speeded-up tape actually being spoken in the 12 minutes and I believe it is possible even if in a Martian Donald Duck falsetto--- provided Piko's thoughts and rejoinders run in tandem, and the author's voice and documents are flashed onto a wall--- it would fit ---a tight fit, but so is that noose or loop as you consistently call it. Like Piko I am a raki man; it takes one to appreciate one. The ignoble is also in a state of humiliation. Apart from this book I had never read a line about Petkov that fool who persisted in showing character. The dream of dying in one's bed with one's hand held is in the papers, on TV, in Reader's Digest. The puff of wind exploding the speck of ash into the air is the reality hitherto reserved for the few, now made available for all. Have you heard of Bogdan Borkowski's film Le Poeme which shows a dissection in progress to a sound track consisting of an actor's voice declaiming Rimbaud'sDrunken Boat in impassioned tones? For the man being hanged to imagine a major earthquake reminds me of Kleist's novella "The Earthquake in Chile" in which the young man has just climbed upon a stool n his dungeon cell to hang himself on a noose he has fashioned somehow, when the first giant tremor of the great earthquake of sixteen-something causes the building to collapse and lands him unscathed in the street. Therefore I at first misread your line "An earthquake would get him out of there." Obviously you are referring to getting Dimitrov out of the saddle, not Petkov out of the noose. I loved the Hyperborean or Austral icecap fantasy on p62. Having spent half my life worrying the lie that creeps in when we are speaking and the abyss between thought, word, and ear, I have to plead for Gosho and Petko and their liking for the sound of their own voice. Maybe that was their direction finder as it is in a way our direction finder when we share in meetings. We are all as blind as bats in many ways, and I read that that is precisely how bats do find their way through the maze of pitch blackness--- the sound of their own voice bouncing off obstacles--- it is shows them where to go and where not to go. "Fly my little bird but remember no bird makes a nest in a cloud." I was put in mind of Gilbert White in Selkirk the speculation on whether sparrows migrate south in winter or were ravished up into the empyrean where they somehow levitated on the highest clouds. I really loved your book.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> DAVID (Rattray)</span></p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-37656257594832783112022-06-17T11:57:00.003-04:002022-06-17T12:06:17.409-04:00ONCE UPON A TIME: The Hollins Critic essay by Daniel J. Tharp on ST. PATRICK'S DAY another day in Dublin by Thomas McGonigle<p>Yesterday 16 June 2022 another day was celebrated in Dublin for another book about a day in Dublin... </p><p><br /></p><p>Thomas McGonigle's two previous novels, The Corpse Dream of N. Petkov (1987) and Going to Patchogue (1992), were reviewed by The New York Times Book Review , the Los Angeles Times , the Chicago Tribune , and The Village Voice Literary Supplement . Given all that early attention, the best thing to do is not to talk at first about Thomas McGonigle's St. Patrick's Day: another day in Dublin , a novel that flaunts a sense of timelessness, but instead to talk about two other artists who exist outside of time: Oscar Peterson and Count Basie.</p><p>In 1980, BBC Four broadcast Oscar Peterson: Words and Music , a television show hosted by Peterson during which he performs, hosts performances, and talks about music with legendary jazz guitarist Joe Pass. After Peterson discusses with Pass his experiences playing solo concerts, they discuss the difficulty of playing in a group setting and how no big band has a synched musical phrasing better than Count Basie's big band. The show then goes into a flashback in which Peterson has a head-to-head talk with Count Basie at Festival Hall. After showing off Basie's light touch, the conversation turns to the "musical intimidation" often caused by Art Tatum, who is widely acknowledged to be the greatest jazz pianist to ever exist and who was influential to both Peterson and Count Basie. Peterson recounts how there used to be "great instigations" where, when two pianists were at a bar, people would coax the two to play against each other.</p><p><br /></p><p> [Art] went straight to the piano and he like just took it apart</p><p> literally, just wasted everything on the piano.... And he went through</p><p> about ten minutes of something, and just wasted it all and he came</p><p> back over and sat down beside me and said, you know, when I get</p><p> through you can have it. You know he was a total, he was an eagle,</p><p> he was a very proud man, and he should have been. And I don't think</p><p> there's a pianist of that era that wasn't influenced by him.</p><p><br /></p><p>Peterson continues to explain that, for a long time, whenever Tatum entered the room, he would suffer fits of extreme nervousness, and that once Tatum had told him, "If you have to hate me, if that's what's gonna make you get over this, you'll just have to hate me ... and really ... It wasn't a case of really hating him, I needed to ignore him the best I could, if you can ever ignore--death."</p><p>That is what the literary culture in America needs to do, ignore death, and acknowledge that contemporary writers who follow in the footsteps of modernist giants need to be studied and read, and not forgotten or brushed to the side.</p><p>The literary world is currently in a metaphorical period of "musical intimidation." Since the Irish writer Samuel Beckett, the term modernism is nigh untouchable, and Beckett's use of modernist techniques to approach human nature and psychological realism could be used to argue the end of the literary time period known as modernism, because no one can take it any further. When Beckett sat down with his instrument, to steal Peterson's phrase, he "took it apart literally, just wasted everything," and when he died in 1989, he sat down and said to the world, "when I'm through, you can have it"; however, this does not mean that contemporary writers who follow in his lineage should be ignored. Like modernism, literary realism is a phrase that is hardly mentioned right now; perhaps, this is because the phrase has little meaning, that is, if words have meaning anymore and are not just currency to prompt bestselling interviews.</p><p>During an author talk about craft at the 2017 Association of Writers and Writing Programs held in Washington D.C., Ron Charles, editor of Book World at The Washington Post , asked Jennifer Egan, 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner, and Karen Joy Fowler, 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award winner, to talk about the state of fiction, realism in particular. Fowler's response was [because of President Trump] "The final nail in the coffin has been struck." Egan nodded in agreement. One important reason why Thomas McGonigle's novel St. Patrick's Day: another day in Dublin , among his other works, needs to be read, reviewed, and studied is because his novel reflects a literary lineage that is keeping realism in a timeless present that refuses to be laid in a grave.</p><p>To say that McGonigle's newest novel, Saint Patrick's Day: another day in Dublin , directly reflects Beckett would be hyperbolic and would shortchange the importance of a contemporary author's using a writing style that has been deemed by many as outdated, because, as is often is the case with art and architecture in America, to be historical is to be wasting space. Before you can trace McGonigle's novels to Beckett, or Faulkner, or Joyce, you must first look back to a French novelist by the name of Marie-Henri Beyle, known by his pen name Stendhal. In 1839, Beyle published a novel called La Chartreuse de Panne (The Charterhouse of Parma) . The novel follows the life and adventures of an Italian nobleman, Fabrice del Dongo, and, while this novel has since been translated multiple times, it has also been turned into an opera, multiple film-adaptations, and a TV series, and it holds great literary significance, since it is considered by many to be a revolutionary work representing a change from the "romantic style" into a more "realistic style" because of his close exploration into human nature and psychology. This is done throughout the novel by Fabrice's comparing his life to various novels and poems he has read, and by the way in which Beyle juxtaposes paradoxes: long passages of straight description with the Battle of Waterloo, where the totality of the battle slowly accumulates amid Fabrice's confusion; wit with fits of melancholy; politics with idealism, with love, with failed dreams.</p><p>These themes and techniques were later employed by James Joyce, most notably in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses , both of which might well be two of the most written about Irish novels of all time.</p><p>Instead of tarrying over what has already been said about these works, a few specific comparisons can be made between McGonigle's Saint Patrick's Day: another day in Dublin and Joyce's works. This may seem merely verbose on my part at first, but there is a clear intention by the author to reflect the Irish legend. McGonigle told Dr. Miriam Nyhan in an interview on Glucksman Ireland House NYU Radio Hour (early 2017) that, "Joyce is ever present in this book, as he is present in every single person concerning Ireland;" therefore, to ignore Joyce's influence, would be tantamount to skimming the first couple of paragraphs and calling it quits.</p><p>Saint Patrick's Day tells the story of one 'Tom McGonigle' and follows him as he wakes up on St. Patrick's Day, journeys through various drinking establishments, and interacts with the characters he meets along the way; so, what you get is a psychologically close rendering of a single man existing after the death of his father, as he drinks away his bequeathed inheritance. This sort of psychological dabbling is reminiscent of the technique used by Joyce to portray Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . The major difference is that, in Portrait , Dedalus has both a spiritual and an artistic awakening, while, in St. Patrick's Day: another day in Dublin , 'McGonigle' does not, even though both characters use literature to directly interact with their past and present (much as Fabrice del Dongo does).</p><p>The seeming lack of an awakening by 'Tom McGonigle' in St. Patrick's Day affects the reader in much the same way that waiting for the arrival of Godot in Samuel Beckett's 1953 play Waiting for Godot affects its readers/audiences. By the end, the reader is unsure if he has already been there, or if he is there, or if he will ever come.</p><p>Another direct correlation between Joyce and McGonigle is the experimentation with layout and font. In Joyce's Ulysses , this can be seen in Episode Seven: "Aeolus," which takes place at the Freeman newspaper offices. This section begins with the headline: IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS. The purpose behind Joyce's using this visual tactic in his writing has been discussed at length: possible intentions of parodying the emptiness of journalism, juxtaposing Bloom with Dedalus; political allegory; and it has even been considered a possible admission of admiration of the newspaper Scissors and Paste which ran in Dublin from 1899-1906. Whatever the reason may be, it cannot be argued that the change in text, in terms of font style and size, is hard to miss.</p><p>The same can be said fof the way the McGonigle changes his font. One font size or style might be employed in the exact manner as Joyce, to give headlines, while another is used to recall a written poem, another for a letter, another purely for emphasis. In each instance, the change in font is doing something the words are not. While this might be a challenge for readers as they get used to the mechanics of the novel, much as with the complicated style of Joyce's writing, McGonigle's style can be perceived in the same light, when boiled down: the plot of both "Aeolus" and St. Patrick's Day can be read straightforwardly as though this technique were not employed. This visual style, however, creates a meta-fictional atmosphere as well, the reader having to acknowledge someone outside the narrative crafting the story. The biggest difference between the two is, while the headline style in Ulysses can create confusion or, at the very least, make the textual meaning harder to discern, the font size and style changes in St. Patrick's Day make the passages easier to follow; also, the variety of uses of this visual technique seems to say to the rest of the literary world a reiteration of what Art Tatum said to Oscar Peterson, "... when I'm done you can have it."</p><p>In his foreword to his book Re Joyce (1965), Anthony Burgess addresses an issue that is centric not only to Joyce, McGonigle, and academia, but also to the American public: "My book does not pretend to scholarship, only to a desire to help the average reader who wants to know Joyce's work but has been scared off by the professors. The appearance of difficulty is part of Joyce's big joke; the profundities are always expressed in good round Dublin terms; Joyce's heroes are humble men." Difficulty and Joyce's intentions, such as the headlines previously discussed, have been argued about constantly and this quotation is brought up, not to dispute intentions, but to argue that while Joyce's heroes might have been humble men, it can be argued that Joyce, himself, was not so humble. Part of the difficulty with Ulysses is that it operates on one level as a biography and on another as fiction. There is a mythic quality about Joyce that is caused by the details of his life mixing with creativity. The same could be said about McGonigle's work. The presence of biographical facts and fiction in a text written with stream of consciousness as a primary style complicates the text in a way that may make his novel seem more complex to the average reader than it actually is. While this may be a way to make a myth out of a man, it should not scare away potential readers.</p><p>When George O'Brian reviewed Saint Patrick's Day for The Dublin Review of Books , Issue 87, he spent much of his time reflecting upon the lines from T.S. Eliot's poem "Burnt Norton." The lines go as follows: "Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future / And time future contained in time past. / If all time is eternally present/All time is unredeemable." O'Brian used these lines to try to explain how the text operates in terms of setting and tense, and O'Brian does explain his point that the character 'Tom McGonigle' is constantly crossing between realms of time and place. O'Brian explains his point exhaustively, but he misses the big picture: a timeless present also describes the literary heritage that McGonigle's novel is consistently referring back to and existing presently in.</p><p>McGonigle has claimed the novel is as much fiction as Joyce's work was, that most of the experience is made up and some is real, that all the experience is real and some is made up, and while these claims may seem to be an aloof and dismissive comment about his writing, they, in actuality, explain much about the tense of the book and, perhaps, McGonigle's intentions behind his use of a timeless present tense. In a letter (February 2017), McGonigle responded to a question concerning the direct connection to the Irish writers/monoliths, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. He stated that,</p><p><br /></p><p> Certain writers are always at the shoulder as it is with Beckett,</p><p> Celine, Bernhard, Thomas Wolfe ... but one doesn't write to refute,</p><p> to ... more in the way why repeat what has been done ... it seemed</p><p> to me I have always been interested in what is happening right now</p><p> as opposed to what is going to happen ... so for me that sentence</p><p> right in front of me sends me to the next sentence ... I heard the</p><p> business about what is happening right now from Nicholas Mosley the</p><p> son of Sir Oswald who is a very prolific novelist and whom I</p><p> interviewed for Newsday</p><p><br /></p><p>.</p><p><br /></p><p>McGonigle's interview with Nicholas Mosley was published on the 5th of January 1992, and in it Mosley explained to McGonigle that there are two types of books, those about what happens next and those about what happens on the page. To reiterate the basic plot of St. Patrick's Day , the novel is about a man waking up as the St. Patrick's Day parade is ending, who then travels from pub to pub, and does a walkabout through Dublin; however, while this may seem straightforward, McGonigle infuses the text with a recollection of all the years that 'Tom McGonigle' traveled back and forth to Dublin, which creates a timeless-present tense that often demands the reader's full attention.</p><p>This technique is reminiscent of not only A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but also Faulkner's use of stream of consciousness. McGonigle stated that he sees his work in conversation with Faulkner in terms of place, place as an anchor for the writer:</p><p><br /></p><p> I think Faulkner has always been there ... It's like he never</p><p> really left the homeplace ... and so while I was in Dublin I was</p><p> really still in Patchogue ... which would lead a French reader to</p><p> Jacque Rigaut and discovering as I did he had invented LORD</p><p> PATCHOGUE after being on Long Island in the 1920s and seeing those</p><p> signs and saying the word Patchogue as a French person might 60</p><p> miles to no way out ... (Letter, February 2017)</p><p><br /></p><p>This might also lead a reader to Stendhal, as previously mentioned, and while McGonigle was referring to Faulkner as a writer of the local, what McGonigle doesn't express is how his novel reflects the passage of time, or lack thereof, that exists in Faulkner's writing. His novel shares the confusion of a timeless present that Faulkner uses in his novel The Sound and the Fury , which follows different members of the Compson family: Benjy, Quentin, Jason IV, Caddy, along with the Compsons' long time caretaker, Dilsey. The first section which centers on the narrative of Benjy is notably told in stream of consciousness, because Benjy is mentally handicapped and timelines merge in his head. Events are often told not in chronological order, and oftentimes this section is described as non-linear or non-chronological, but it would be more apt to say that Benjy exists in a timeless present that folds in on itself and, at the same time, constantly expands, much as in the way McGonigle portrays time and space in St. Patrick's Day: another day in Dublin . While Benjy's perspective is written the way it is to reflect his mental handicap, 'Tom McGonigle' has something much like the same handicap; perhaps, this similarity reflects a shift in realism brought about by Beckett's perception of human nature, and that while Benjy has a mental handicap recognizable by doctors and by the people he interacts with, 'Tom' is handicapped by being human, that is to say that perhaps it is human nature to be alone and fragmented from reality. Another connection between the two works of fiction is the use of inheritance, father to son, Jason IV inheriting the Compson farm and becoming patriarch and 'Tom McGonigle' inheriting his father's money earned from working forty-nine years at the American Can Company. It can be argued that both sons fail with their charges; the farm falls to rot and ruin, while 'Tom' manages only to get across Dublin on his late father's dime, episodic perhaps, but not the most epic use of coin.</p><p>Even with its lineage of literary giants, even with its winning the Notre Dame Review Book Prize, there is an important question that needs to be asked concerning McGonigle's newest novel. Why were McGonigle's other novels reviewed by such sources as the New York Times Book Review and the Chicago Tribune , while this book has received little to no critical credit in America? (The only exception being the American Book Review , which has recently published "Portrait of McGonigle," by Jane Rosenberg Laforge in its November/December issue, currently available online.)</p><p>What might explain this phenomenon of lost interest in McGonigle's work is its heritage of realism and immigration. To borrow from McGonigle's own work on the novel, realism is "soiled," and Saint Patrick's Day is rooted in a long line of literary realism, and the novel tries to claim nothing else. It seems to be an immigrant itself, and publishing is only important or congratulatory dependent upon the place you have originated; Irish heritage and the Irish-American experience has long been covered in earlier decades, but in this new century it is considered somewhat passe, is overlooked, and perhaps this is a continuance of a populace's ignorance of Irish tradition.</p><p>The problem with reviews of McGonigle's newest novel is that although some of them might admit there is something going on with his use of time and tradition, they do not fully explain its use. In a blurb, Nuala Ni' Dhomnaill states "[McGonigle] puts a certain period of Dublin literary history before our eyes with freshness and honesty. Not only that but by his skillful use of modernist techniques he gives the 'Irish novel' a long outstanding and much deserved kick up the arse into the 21st century."</p><p>Saint Patrick's Day uses modernist techniques, techniques influenced greatly by the Irish writers Joyce and Beckett, but it was published in a time that is very much post-Joyce and very much post-Beckett. This is the 21st century, the literary period wherein an overcrowded AWP hall of two hundred plus aspiring writers, editors, professors, reviewers, journalists and publishers give thunderous applause to the sound of "the last nail in the coffin [of realism]." There are no more rules. Perhaps that is the problem with McGonigle's book. Saint Patrick's Day has rules and a lineage and it owns these things. Unlike Egan and Fowler, two very contemporary writers, who would like to shove realism over a cliff, claiming that experimentation, such as a section of a novel's being entirely told from the perspective of a PowerPoint presentation, is the preferred way to write. They forget, however, that this experiment, too, could be argued to have roots in psychological realism, that because of the increasing proximity of technology in our lives, a perspective from technology might be the mutation of Stendhal's depiction of the battle of Waterloo.</p><p>The only differences between McGonigle's claims and Fowler's are that, currently, historical roots are only important in certain circumstances, and describing how your novel is like others one hundred and two hundred years ago does not excite the current readership of America as much as does throwing up your fist and claiming a mode of writing to be dead. McGonigle foresaw this as an issue when his article, "A Writing Life", was published in 2002 in The Notre Dame Review :</p><p><br /></p><p> You can go to Google.com and plug in my name which I share with a</p><p> lawyer and a priest; you can read excerpts from those reviews both</p><p> by me and about the books. Google only goes back a few years and as</p><p> the kids say, who cares about the old shit, anyway</p><p><br /></p><p>.</p><p><br /></p><p>Joyce is still revered; Beckett is still revered; Faulkner is still revered, but contemporary writers who follow in their footsteps are not. Realism is viewed as soiled and has been viewed as stanch, stiff necked, and outdated for some time now, but the fault cannot be put on the shoulders of McGonigle, but rather the short sightedness of American critics, popular authors, and reviewers.</p><p>While McGonigle might disapprove of labels being put on his novels, or himself as an author, there is an importance to his biography. As he told Dr. Miriam Nyhan during the interview on Glucksman Ireland House NYU Radio Hour, his grandparents were shipped out of Ireland to go to work when they were twelve, and their--and perhaps his--identity might be described as that of Irish extraction. He went to Beloit College and then in 1964 studied abroad at University College, Dublin. This is important, both because of the time when Saint Patrick's Day was published and who the novel is about. The elephant in the room is the unspoken truth that Thomas McGonigle is a white, American-born male writing about a white, American-born male, who is having an identity crisis while abroad in another country. This is not something new for McGonigle to write about, nor is this new writing territory for Irish-American writers. McGonigle's novel, Going to Patchogue , published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1992, concerns a similar protagonist and motif; however, that novel was praised for its use of stream of consciousness and its ability, while using various modernist techniques, to stick together a cohesive reading experience. Saint Patrick's Day has not received such praise, nor has it had the critical success that his earlier novels have had. Saint Patrick's Day: another day in Dublin was published by Notre Dame Press in 2016, the year of a presidential election in which U.S. presidential debates often concerned immigration, and immigrant experiences (stories, poems, memoirs, and novels) took the literary world by storm. It might be argued that part of the reason Saint Patrick's Day has been overlooked is because it has been taken at surface level, and that it was published at time when an immigrant novel written by a white, American-born male is seen by many as politically incorrect and counter-intuitive to the cause, almost superfluous. This could not be further from the truth, though white-male is the least trendy of contemporary sub-cultures. The exploration of self in immigrant texts often contemplates and complicates issues of human nature, but also, specifically, contemplates and complicates issues of identity. In his critical essay, "Joyce's Merrimanic Heroine: Molly vs. Bloom in Midnight Court," James A. W. Heffernan argues that "conspicuous by its absence from this multicultural stew [in Ulysses] is anything explicitly Gaelic, anciently Irish." This is wrong. The themes of problematic identities (national and religious and writer/bard) are explicitly represented in Joyce's text, and these themes, while not exclusively Gaelic, are "explicitly Gaelic, anciently Irish." That is why they can be traced in Joyce's work, and in Beckett's work, and in McGonigle's work. On page three of his novel, McGonigle writes,</p><p><br /></p><p> The Americans came dressed in white socks and London Fog raincoats.</p><p> I lost my white socks and kept the J.C. Penney raincoat which was</p><p> soiled down the right front side with dried red paint after</p><p> brushing against wet posters in the anarchist office in Glasgow</p><p> where I had visited: Americans never wore soiled clothing being</p><p> afraid of getting run over by a truck ...</p><p><br /></p><p>Perhaps, to be an American abroad is now viewed in the same light as realism--soiled, because the American readership is so hyper-politicized with agendas that historicism seemingly has little value anymore. The fear of being run over by a truck has now been replaced with a literary "musical intimidation" of the twentieth century.</p><p>Saint Patrick's Day: another day in Dublin should be read because of the company it keeps in a timeless present: Faulkner; Beckett; Joyce; Beyle; also, two other French authors I have not mentioned yet, Marcel Proust and Louis-Ferdinand Celine. The last two, although it is regrettable they come so late in this argument, will, perhaps, bring us closer to a conclusion and a better understanding of the importance of what McGonigle's latest novel is representing by its existence in 2017. Certain similarities can be drawn between the influences of St. Patrick's Day that have been already mentioned and the writing of Louis-Ferdinand Celine, if one can forget for a moment Celine's anti-Semitism and think only of his fiction, specifically his first novel Journey to the End of the Night .</p><p>Celine, McGonigle, and Joyce share not only the mythic quality of a work of fiction's being both creative and biographic but also a dark, dry humor, and a yearning to render on the page a character's chaotic subconscious attempting to find a kind of order in the physical world, creating characters less idealistic, in the romantic sense, and more realistic. The last two are also represented in the works of Beckett and Proust.</p><p>Marcel Proust's tour de force A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past orIn Search of Lost Time ) tells the autobiography of an unnamed (except for a single "Marcel"), first-person narrator often with stream of consciousness narration. The closest allusions to McGonigle's work can be drawn near the end of Swann s Way when the narrator envisions visiting different places, but his failing health makes elaborate travel impossible, so instead he walks in the Champs-Elysees. One might compare this to the way that 'Tom McGonigle' walks about Dublin, going from pub to pub, because he fails to come to grips with the past and the present. His failing health is a failing psychological health preventing him from fully existing in the present, which keeps him from moving fully into the present, or on into the future. Going back to the very end of Swann's Way , we see the narrator expressing grief about the fleeting nature of places, physical places that no longer exist where they used to, creating a lamentation about the passing of time and the decay of the present, which directly correlates to the timeless present that McGonigle exists in.</p><p>Madison Smartt Bell said of McGonigle's first book, The Corpse Dream of N. Petkov , "Here's a fine effort to capture disappearing history--history that vanishes by being forgotten ..." This essay is, in part, an effort to capture a disappearing history, an effort to capture the importance of a literary lineage that is vanishing, not because it is being forgotten, but because award-winning authors and critics are consciously refuting its validity as a contemporary means of fiction.</p><p>Thomas McGonigle's newest novel, St. Patrick's Day: another day in Dublin , represents, then, not only a lineage of realism, but also a tangible proof that great contemporary novels can be written while still honoring the past. This novel's existence in today's literary marketplace represents a timeless present that deserves to be read, studied, and reviewed, another display of why the American readership needs to get over its fear of "musical intimidation."</p><p>Thomas McGonigle</p><p>Thomas McGonigle was born in 1944 in Patchogue, Long Island. Throughout his life, he has lived in Brooklyn, New York; Dublin, Ireland; Sofia, Bulgaria; Douglas, Arizona; and Manhattan, his current home. McGonigle has written extensively on the topic of Ireland and Irish writers, and is the founder and editor of Adrift (The American Irish Cultural Project). He holds degrees from University College, Dublin, Beloit College, Columbia University, and Hollins College, where he earned an M.A. in English in 1970. McGonigle writes regularly for periodicals like The Guardian, The Washington Post , the Chicago Tribune , and the Los Angeles Times . His prose and poetry have been published in Poetry Ireland, Bomb, The Gorey Detail, Broadsheet , and Screw , among others. McGonigle's latest novel, St. Patrick's Day: another day in Dublin , described as a musing "on death, sex, lost love, and Irish immigrant history" by Notre Dame Press, was the winner of the 2016 Notre Dame Review Book Prize.</p><p>--I. L. S.</p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-2284631451065947532022-06-05T10:16:00.001-04:002022-06-06T21:17:55.688-04:00WHAT I AM DOING. WHEN AN ARTIST STOPS PAINTING?<p> </p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> WHAT I AM DOING</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> WHEN AN ARTIST STOPS PAINTING</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But is the reader perhaps opposed to digression? Does he believe in a goal not only for ordinary life, but life as well? Is he longing for a story with a beginning and end? This is contrary to the noble purpose of literature, which knows neither beginning nor end, and wants only to give form and shimmer to the continuous present in life. Let the reader beware and not allow himself to be distracted from the art of strolling.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> From SPEAKING TO CLIO by Alberto Savinio</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><b style="font-size: xx-large;"> AND AGAIN CHANGED: John Wesley</b></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A version in prose.</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If only there has/had been the precise sentence describing at the moment: John (Jack) Wesley and indeed this sentence could be describing the person pushing the keys on a computer in a bright sunny room on East First Street in Manhattan in the month of December though this man hesitates as he did not write that sentence by Alberto Savinio in 1938 but read it recently once again ---having read it many years ago--- because he had come to realize he is neither a biographer, nor a memoir writer so why did he type many pages describing visits with John Wesley and attempting to describe a knowing of this man and some of the people Wesley knew since some date in the early 1970s in Manhattan and now being in the summer of 2022... <b>and the artist is dead.</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But the last time that the writer who is now writing felt in some way free was back in January 2020 driving about in the desert of southern Arizona with an English woman who had come to the United States for the first time to drive about with me who she had met for the first time in Dublin so many years before and who now lived at Lordington, a great house near Chichester... a tangling of memory of course, you might ask and why when we are here wanting--- to read about John Wesley, an artist who is no longer painting. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But even this sentence seemingly complex is not complex enough...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">OR THEN. The other day, another year, a Monday in the month of March, in a sunny three window room overlooking Washington Square Park, I asked Jack Wesley why he began to paint. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I don’t know.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Why did you continue to paint?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> I liked doing it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Why have you stopped painting?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I am not now inclined to paint.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> ***</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> But why not? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Already not belonging to life yet not swept up by the void. --- Georgi Ivanov</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>John Wesley is in the first generation of Pop artists or is it the second? He is in his 85th year. [ONCE UPON A TIME] </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Seven months ago [once upon a time] Wesley stopped leaving his apartment to go down for lunch at the North Square restaurant on the corner of MacDougal and Waverly Place which had become over the years a daily activity. Now, the stairs down into the place were too difficult and the stepping up and down at the curb in order to cross the intersection had proven frightening and dangerous since his step had become unsteady. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> +++</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I had come to talk to him of my recent trip to southern Arizona and New Mexico, along the Mexican border...</span></p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-69646808760712113942022-02-24T08:02:00.002-05:002022-02-24T08:02:33.494-05:00JOHN WESLEY--- THE PAINTER--- DIED 10 FEBRUARY 2022<p>I am copying this from a post done now it seems in the ancient times of this January </p><h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0.75em 0px 0px; position: relative;"><br /></h3><h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0.75em 0px 0px; position: relative;">from WHAT I AM DOING: AND AGAIN CHANGED, JOHN WESLEY</h3><div class="post-header" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 10.8px; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><div class="post-header-line-1"></div></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-1504006577022840841" itemprop="description articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 570px;"><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span> <span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> I have been for a long time writing about the painter John Wesley who was in the first generation of pop artists: a book of memory going back to my first meeting of him in the early 1970s as the husband of the writer Hannah Green (author of THE DEAD OF THE HOUSE and LITTLE SAINT; she was a student of Vladimir Nabokov at Wellesley and published "Mr. Nabokov")... for many years Jack has been unable to leave his apartment on Washington Square and is now at another residence. There have been two great exhibitions of his work: at MOMA's PS 1 in 2000 and in Venice in 2009 a massive exhibition of his work was staged by Fondazione Prada. A selection of his work is on permanent display at the Judd Foundation in Marfa, Texas.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">from: WHAT I AM DOING: AND AGAIN CHANGED, JOHN WESLEY</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> Hannah still seems to be here. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> But I can’t sound like those old relatives Hannah always talked about. I know in Los Angeles you would expect a lot of people to talk about ghosts and voices and spirits and all the rest of those things but it wasn’t the way it was—at least for me--- we were there and they were there and it was all so real, I guess you could say and then someone wasn’t there and that was hard to understand, it is always hard to understand really understand how someone isn’t there anymore, Elman isn’t here anymore, MacShane isn’t here anymore, Hannah isn’t here anymore… but I am not so sure… but I am sure I fell, I really fell not here in this room, did I fall but in the hall. I fell in that long hall I fell..<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Here in this room I have fallen, it would be easy to say, it would be grand to say: here I have fallen, didn’t MacArthur say, I have returned, and he was walking in the surf in the Philippines and I wonder when did he change his trousers and shoes or boots… remember those pictures?... you’ve only seen them in documentaries, but we saw them in newsreels that was in the summer I think and I fell in August and in October. <br /></span></div><div></div><div></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Not in this room, really, but in this apartment, I have fallen and I can hear them saying that in a movie, he’s fallen down, he’s down and I felt myself down when I fell in the hall. <br /></span></div><div></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I didn’t hit my head, I knew that was not what you were supposed to do, you are not supposed to hit your head…<br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Does that make sense? <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>People are always talking about hard heads. Remember when they talked about hard hats… I guess they all went away or something happened to them. You still see people wearing hard hats but they don’t call those guys hard hats, as far as I know.<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Do you ever get the feeling you’re in a hole and some little guys are digging right under your feet and you feel yourself slipping down each day but you’re not really in a hole, you are still right here but you have this feeling in the bottoms of your feet--- you could say it but people will say you’re nuts--- the feet are saying they are going down but the rest of your body is trying to say, no, that ain’t happening and what’s gotten into you and if I was really in a hole I wouldn’t have fallen as all you can do is fall forward like in the movies when the guys went over the top or climbed out of the foxhole, always one of the guys gets it right away and is slipping back into the hole and the other guys just had to keep going though one maybe lingers for a moment and the older gruff know-it-all gives him a yank: he’s done for and then there is always a lull in the movie and someone slips back and finds his friend dead and you don’t see any gore because that only came later, the gore and all the stuff to make it seem believable but they always leave out the feelings so then they had to ladle out the gore as no one really believes this is for real with the slimy red slippery stuff and all you keep wondering if they are using cow guts and gore or if it was a black and white film they used chocolate syrup I was told by a friend who had a friend who worked in one of the studios. What a mess that must have been but they weren’t allowed to show too much of it so I guess it wasn’t that bad.<span style="white-space: pre;"> <br /></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I fell. I don’t want to fall again. No one wants to fall again after they have fallen once or like me, have fallen twice. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I have fallen twice and do not want to fall again. Then, it gets too much like Good Friday. I went along with Hannah, but it was just too distant from me. Christ falls three times and there are all those women. Hannah wanted to see the Shroud of Turin, is it… but we had decided for France and that trip to Spain. MacShane liked Italy but I went where I was taken. I didn’t know what to say in Italy. Prada didn’t take me on a gondola and I knew not to buy one of those windup gondolas I saw them selling in San Marco. You wind it up and it goes up and down as if it was in choppy seas.<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jack had an eye for the windup things… he used to have go down to Chambers Street and there were all these great stores along it filled with stuff. That’s where he got the bird clock. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Hannah would take the battery out and I would put it back in. That was then, I think.<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The bird clock is not in the room. I think it was once and I remember it as being one of those objects, as they say, only Jack could find, a clock that made bird sounds, a different one for every hour. I don’t know if it did 24 but I know it made 12 and then repeated itself. 12 birds, one for each hour and the hands of the clock should have been some sort of feather design but they weren’t, Hannah knew something about birds and it bothered her that some of the calls weren’t very clear and seemed more like a person imitating what a bird sounded like. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jack liked the bird sounds even if they were made by humans as they didn’t toll your hours away and bring your death closer the way a church bell did or the bells ringing out the hours in public buildings…<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course, the bells ringing allowed me to quote Anthony Burgess to his knowing when you heard the bells ringing in Christian places of old: the Mussulmen are coming, the Mussulmen are coming and this is why the bells are not ringing in Turkey because they know what the bells really mean, even if they say they don’t for their own purposes…<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There was no reply…<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But you should know the room is not sterile, isn’t that the word people sometimes are saying, it’s very sterile in here as if like so many things… how should anyone know what a sterile room is unless they are some sort of medical doctor and anyway have you ever met a doctor who gave a rat’s behind when it came right down to it about germs?<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"> When I first got to the city they used to have these walk-in doctors and for five dollars they would listen to your symptoms, give you some sort of jar of something or other and a note to the boss… the last one like that was down on Spring Street, when they had factories all over the place…<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Things change, they are always saying and they don’t have those doctors anymore.<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"> ***<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Death changes things. What a cliché. Yes, people die but no, people is not the exact word: my father died, my mother died, Hannah died… and I guess it is a good thing we didn’t start with such a sentence. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Probably better to say, certain people have been forgotten, though their names remain... but damn: what do I really know about that person, what can I call up?<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was born, Wesley says. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Can there be a more obvious statement a human being can make? If I add in California the statement is surrounded by all the illusions Hollywood so obviously and capably delivers and no one wants to have it contradicted by anything that might take away from the picture a person has formed when they hear: I was born in California and if I revise my sentence to: I was born in Los Angeles, California, I have been removed from something which I can only tell you about when I tell you about of all places the Rue Charlemagne in Conques--- what a grand name for a broken cobbled lane--- and Pierre was kicking the wall not hard as he was a very old man and saying what Hannah translated as : this is here, this is here. This is real. I don’t remember the French but I am sure it sounds better in French, everything sounded better in French, I was always thinking, even when people were ordering in the bakery: it was more than just going in to get a loaf of bread when it was being said in French… <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is nothing to kick when you say, I was born in Los Angeles, California. Once I heard on the radio, as Bill sometimes had the radio on in the studio. It was just a line: <b>Home is…I forgot.</b> I don’t know who sang it. <b>Home is… I forgot</b>.</span></div></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-15040065770228408412022-01-02T15:09:00.000-05:002022-01-02T15:09:09.982-05:00from WHAT I AM DOING: AND AGAIN CHANGED, JOHN WESLEY<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span> <span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> I have been for a long time writing about the painter John Wesley who was in the first generation of pop artists: a book of memory going back to my first meeting of him in the early 1970s as the husband of the writer Hannah Green (author of THE DEAD OF THE HOUSE and LITTLE SAINT; she was a student of Vladimir Nabokov at Wellesley and published "Mr. Nabokov")... for many years Jack has been unable to leave his apartment on Washington Square and is now at another residence. There have been two great exhibitions of his work: at MOMA's PS 1 in 2000 and in Venice in 2009 a massive exhibition of his work was staged by Fondazione Prada. A selection of his work is on permanent display at the Judd Foundation in Marfa, Texas.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">from: WHAT I AM DOING: AND AGAIN CHANGED, JOHN WESLEY</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span> </span><span> </span>Hannah still seems to be here. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span> </span>But I can’t sound like those old relatives Hannah always talked about. I know in Los Angeles you would expect a lot of people to talk about ghosts and voices and spirits and all the rest of those things but it wasn’t the way it was—at least for me--- we were there and they were there and it was all so real, I guess you could say and then someone wasn’t there and that was hard to understand, it is always hard to understand really understand how someone isn’t there anymore, Elman isn’t here anymore, MacShane isn’t here anymore, Hannah isn’t here anymore… but I am not so sure… but I am sure I fell, I really fell not here in this room, did I fall but in the hall. I fell in that long hall I fell..<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Here in this room I have fallen, it would be easy to say, it would be grand to say: here I have fallen, didn’t MacArthur say, I have returned, and he was walking in the surf in the Philippines and I wonder when did he change his trousers and shoes or boots… remember those pictures?... you’ve only seen them in documentaries, but we saw them in newsreels that was in the summer I think and I fell in August and in October. <br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Not in this room, really, but in this apartment, I have fallen and I can hear them saying that in a movie, he’s fallen down, he’s down and I felt myself down when I fell in the hall. <br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I didn’t hit my head, I knew that was not what you were supposed to do, you are not supposed to hit your head…<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Does that make sense? <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>People are always talking about hard heads. Remember when they talked about hard hats… I guess they all went away or something happened to them. You still see people wearing hard hats but they don’t call those guys hard hats, as far as I know.<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Do you ever get the feeling you’re in a hole and some little guys are digging right under your feet and you feel yourself slipping down each day but you’re not really in a hole, you are still right here but you have this feeling in the bottoms of your feet--- you could say it but people will say you’re nuts--- the feet are saying they are going down but the rest of your body is trying to say, no, that ain’t happening and what’s gotten into you and if I was really in a hole I wouldn’t have fallen as all you can do is fall forward like in the movies when the guys went over the top or climbed out of the foxhole, always one of the guys gets it right away and is slipping back into the hole and the other guys just had to keep going though one maybe lingers for a moment and the older gruff know-it-all gives him a yank: he’s done for and then there is always a lull in the movie and someone slips back and finds his friend dead and you don’t see any gore because that only came later, the gore and all the stuff to make it seem believable but they always leave out the feelings so then they had to ladle out the gore as no one really believes this is for real with the slimy red slippery stuff and all you keep wondering if they are using cow guts and gore or if it was a black and white film they used chocolate syrup I was told by a friend who had a friend who worked in one of the studios. What a mess that must have been but they weren’t allowed to show too much of it so I guess it wasn’t that bad.<span style="white-space: pre;"> <br /></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I fell. I don’t want to fall again. No one wants to fall again after they have fallen once or like me, have fallen twice. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I have fallen twice and do not want to fall again. Then, it gets too much like Good Friday. I went along with Hannah, but it was just too distant from me. Christ falls three times and there are all those women. Hannah wanted to see the Shroud of Turin, is it… but we had decided for France and that trip to Spain. MacShane liked Italy but I went where I was taken. I didn’t know what to say in Italy. Prada didn’t take me on a gondola and I knew not to buy one of those windup gondolas I saw them selling in San Marco. You wind it up and it goes up and down as if it was in choppy seas.<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jack had an eye for the windup things… he used to have go down to Chambers Street and there were all these great stores along it filled with stuff. That’s where he got the bird clock. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Hannah would take the battery out and I would put it back in. That was then, I think.<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The bird clock is not in the room. I think it was once and I remember it as being one of those objects, as they say, only Jack could find, a clock that made bird sounds, a different one for every hour. I don’t know if it did 24 but I know it made 12 and then repeated itself. 12 birds, one for each hour and the hands of the clock should have been some sort of feather design but they weren’t, Hannah knew something about birds and it bothered her that some of the calls weren’t very clear and seemed more like a person imitating what a bird sounded like. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jack liked the bird sounds even if they were made by humans as they didn’t toll your hours away and bring your death closer the way a church bell did or the bells ringing out the hours in public buildings…<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course, the bells ringing allowed me to quote Anthony Burgess to his knowing when you heard the bells ringing in Christian places of old: the Mussulmen are coming, the Mussulmen are coming and this is why the bells are not ringing in Turkey because they know what the bells really mean, even if they say they don’t for their own purposes…<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There was no reply…<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But you should know the room is not sterile, isn’t that the word people sometimes are saying, it’s very sterile in here as if like so many things… how should anyone know what a sterile room is unless they are some sort of medical doctor and anyway have you ever met a doctor who gave a rat’s behind when it came right down to it about germs?<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span> </span>When I first got to the city they used to have these walk-in doctors and for five dollars they would listen to your symptoms, give you some sort of jar of something or other and a note to the boss… the last one like that was down on Spring Street, when they had factories all over the place…<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Things change, they are always saying and they don’t have those doctors anymore.<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"> ***<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Death changes things. What a cliché. Yes, people die but no, people is not the exact word: my father died, my mother died, Hannah died… and I guess it is a good thing we didn’t start with such a sentence. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Probably better to say, certain people have been forgotten, though their names remain... but damn: what do I really know about that person, what can I call up?<br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was born, Wesley says. <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Can there be a more obvious statement a human being can make? If I add in California the statement is surrounded by all the illusions Hollywood so obviously and capably delivers and no one wants to have it contradicted by anything that might take away from the picture a person has formed when they hear: I was born in California and if I revise my sentence to: I was born in Los Angeles, California, I have been removed from something which I can only tell you about when I tell you about of all places the Rue Charlemagne in Conques--- what a grand name for a broken cobbled lane--- and Pierre was kicking the wall not hard as he was a very old man and saying what Hannah translated as : this is here, this is here. This is real. I don’t remember the French but I am sure it sounds better in French, everything sounded better in French, I was always thinking, even when people were ordering in the bakery: it was more than just going in to get a loaf of bread when it was being said in French… <br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is nothing to kick when you say, I was born in Los Angeles, California. Once I heard on the radio, as Bill sometimes had the radio on in the studio. It was just a line: <b>Home is…I forgot.</b> I don’t know who sang it. <b>Home is… I forgot</b>.</span></div><p><br /></p>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-5989183206042824362021-10-23T13:02:00.000-04:002021-10-23T13:02:32.053-04:00AN AMERICAN IS A DISEASED SCRAP OF HUMANITY<p><span style="font-size: large;">This novel was written now some time ago and remains unpublished: about a young American who goes from Dublin in the Spring of 1965 to the DDR, or as it was more commonly called: East Germany. I have long thought of it as A Beginning of the Sixties of the last century...a premature understanding of "an American." </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">AN AMERICAN IS A DISEASED SCRAP OF HUMANITY</span></b></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">from <b>JUST LIKE THAT</b> a novel as a beginning of the Sixties of the last century...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The I of the novel has spent much of the night [in the spring of 1965] next to the monument to the Battle of the Nations on the outskirts of Leipzig in what was then called the German Democratic Republic (DDR).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Martin who has been with this "I" all day and now in the late night begins to speak: </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Don't sit there anymore. The night is done with. You are an American and you can't deny it. It is written on your face, in the book you carry next to your heart and how you would like to insert that book into your heart if you could. That little greenish book, the colour of corpses in comic books which the frontier guards will look at and hand back to you as if you were diseased. Did you feel that as you crossed our country on the way to Berlin? Surely you did. You are so sensitive, if you say so, as you please. I know that. An American is a diseased scrap of humanity who does not what it is: just a creature who will die and before dying will grow old and not all the money, not all the wishes, not all the king's men will be able to step in and put a stop to the lines appearing at the corners of your eyes, at the corners of your mouth that has kissed my lips and which will spot the backs of your hands with those false stigmatas of saintliness: are they not saints for having endured this life--- but in your United States of American, from what I have read, the old are put to the field and turned into manure, the young have not the experience of being around their old people and the aged are left to rot. But even to think of death--- what a heresy--- how the stakes must be kept in readiness all across America because death is what denies the ever bigger future and the happiness always around the corner if you work very hard and have the boss's dick up your ass and you don't comment on how small his dick is.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Martin had walked a little way from the monument and I could see him pacing back and forth beyond the low hedge. I sat with the stone of the monument to my back, as I have said, the bullets stitching a death across my chest. Was I not James Connolly tied to a chair because I was unable to stand to meet the English guns.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">(the opening and the ending of this novel were published long ago in THE READING ROOM edited by Barbara Probst Solomon...</span></p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-10156398171211734792021-09-06T20:50:00.000-04:002021-09-06T20:50:26.159-04:00MY INTERVIEW WITH ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET<p><span style="font-size: large;"> Interview: Alain Robbe-Grillet</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Author: McGonigle, Thomas</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In an interview, novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet discusses his literary style and the publication of his new novel "Repetition." Among other things, he cites the reasons why his ideas are known but his works are forgotten.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Alain Robbe-Grillet occupies that paradoxical position not uncommon to avant-garde writers: He is both famous and obscure; his ideas are well known but his work much less so. Nevertheless, he remains a major figure in the landscape of postwar French letters and film. After publishing The Erasers fifty years ago, he became a fierce advocate for what came to be known as the nouveau roman. In a book of critical essays, Fora New Novel (1963), and by the example of his own now canonical novels The Voyeur (1955), Jealousy (1957), and In the Labyrinth (1959), Robbe-Grillet pointed the way toward a fiction that eschewed psychological motivation in favor of pure, almost analytical description of physical reality. His ideas were shared by writers such as Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras, Claude Simon, Robert Pinget, and Nathalie Sarraute. A strongly contentious figure, he garnered many enemies as well as advocates. (Vladimir Nabokov was one of his most prominent fans.) In 1984, Robbe-Grillet's autobiography, Ghosts in the Mirror, sparked renewed interest in his work because of its revelations about his life during World War II and his apparent rejection of some of the tenets of the nouveau roman. He has directed six films and is the author of Last Year at Marienbad, the 1961 art-house classic directed by Alain Resnais. A new work of fiction, Repetition, is now appearing in the United States after a twenty-year hiatus of English-language publication. Viewed as a sort of anthology of his previous fiction, Repetition was a great critical and popular success across Europe. Much less intimidating in person than you might expect-judging by photographs and the sometimes dogmatic tack of his critical articles-the eighty-year-old Robbe-Grillet was a little anxious when we met in his well-appointed apartment in the posh Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. His wife of many years, Catherine, was under-going an eye operation that morning, yet he was gently concerned about my comfort as the conversation began.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">THOMAS McGONIGLE: How has your reading of The Erasers changed from fifty years ago to now?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET: There's a great continuity to the work, yet I do feel like there's a lot of change as well. The earlier books are clarified by the later books. So if you've read The Erasers, you will find it further illuminated by Jealousy. TM: Readers often first encounter your theories of the novel-particularly your ideas about the flatness of characterization. Does this discourage them from reading the fiction?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: That's a big problem.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: You wrote For a New Novel, which condemns metaphor entirely, and at almost the same time, you were writing Jealousy, which is a festival of metaphor.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: True. But it was my impression that the reader was reading both For a New Novel and Jealousy. Unfortunately, this was not the case. I just received a Vietnamese translation of For a New Novel, which is the only one of my works that's been translated into that language. So in Vietnam, I will be known as the person who theorizes a new kind of novel, but readers there will not have access to any of my actual novels. As I said, it's a big problem.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: As far as your reputation, you are in this strange position-you are both well known and yet, in many quarters, somewhat forgotten.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: Since the publication of Repetition, I've gone to bookstores to sign books and o there's a crowd of only young people. No old people. Let's put it this way: I was once fashionable. And when I was in fashion, nobody read my books. For instance, the first year when I was really in vogue my novel Jealousy sold five hundred copies for the entire year. But Repetition has sold fifty thousand copies. When I started to gather readers, I was already out of fashion. But when I was in style, I couldn't live on my writing. Now I can live on my writing very nicely. Nice apartment here, a chateau in the country. You know, I come from very modest origins.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: Academics preserved your name and made possible your current revival.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: I had a dialogue with William Styron at one point when he came here, in a lovely setting, to join a conference about what is literature. Styron picked up the subject of the difference between literature for professors and literature for readers. he said that literature for common readers rises out of your body, that it comes out of your guts. Yet he soon understood that he couldn't last the two-hour program on this subject of what comes out of your guts. So Styron then started to go on somewhat abstractly, sounding like a professor himself. The problem or advantage is that university people, the professors, they have the time to read. Does your average reader have that same kind of time? Time to read and to really think?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: I wasn't attacking your academic readers, but rather noting that during the years you weren't publishing novels, the academy, not the marketplace, maintained your reputation.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: Well, it's rather populist to say nasty things about professors. Saying bad things about professors is like agreeing with Le Pen. But my books do sell. In China, I am the most translated French author. Repetition was a best-seller in France and Germany. I live very well. [Leaves the room and returns with a framed poster.] This is what my copyrights have bought me, the Chateau du Mesnil-au-Grain in Normandy. When I die it will go to the state and become a foundation to preserve my papers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: In 1984, your memoir, Ghosts in the Mirror, appeared. You were quoted as saying, "I have never spoken of anything but myself." In light of such a statement, how should we read the novels and theory that made you famous? Are all of your novels disguised autobiography?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: It's true for all writers. Faulkner is in all his novels. So is Flaubert. My novel Jealousy is absolutely autobiographical. I lived in that house. I have photographs of that house. I was one of the three characters in the novel. What's strange is that this was received by critics as a novel without an author, as the most abstract of all novels. The Voyeur is set in Brittany, where I was born. The chief difference is that I did not murder a young girl. Yet the idea of doing such a thing was in me. A very famous psychoanalyst told me, "It's a good thing that you wrote that novel, because it was your psychoanalyst couch. If you hadn't, you might have murdered a young woman."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: With the publication of your first novel in twenty years, Repetition, I am reminded of Gertrude Stein's quote, "There is no such thing as repetition, only insistence." What you are insisting upon in this novel?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: The Ghost in the Mirror and Angelique were also...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: But Angelique has not been translated into English. We're talking about English.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: I'm sorry; but just because they haven't been translated into English doesn't mean they don't exist. There was supposed to be a conference ten years ago in St. Louis, and the university there announced, "Mr. Robbe-Grillet will speak French." So a minister who is interested in literature calls the university and is told by a professor that I do not speak English. The minister replies, "He could have made an effort to learn English, because God wrote his Bible in English."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: Back to my question: Why write another novel? Why write Repetition?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: I don't know. But I do insist on insisting. Literature has survived Hitler and Stalin. It will survive Chirac and Bush. It survives.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: Richard Howard, your translator, has said that he thought this new novel was an anthology of all your previous work, with an interlude for fucking a teenage girl.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: Well, Howard is a homosexual. And to him there's nothing more disgusting than women. He even announced twenty years ago that he was going to refuse to translate any books in which there's any sexual activity with women. To dedicate himself entirely to homosexual literature. Even in his translation of Baudelaire, when it gets too sexual, he cuts off Baudelaire's balls. Anyway, the statement is stupid. Because since The Voyeurwas written, there have been thirteen-year-old girls getting fucked in my books.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: In publications like the New Yorker or the New York Times, there have been attacks on what is called "difficult" writing, literary writing. Some critics wonder why popular novels like those by James Patterson aren't embraced by literary tastemakers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: I can't even comment. If you're going to read Repetition, you have to have philosophical training, and it would help to know Kierkegaard. And I'm perfectly aware of the fact that readers without that education can also read it on another level, but my books are especially approachable by people who have some philosophical background.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: I ask because you have said that the reason you teach is to encourage young people to believe in high culture. Now they read that, perhaps, James Patterson's novels are the equal or better than, for instance, William Gaddis's.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: What they say is abominable. My job is not to write best-sellers; I hope to write long sellers. Young writers, it seems, are no longer that interested in culture per se. They are interested, instead, in having a career in literature. If you're going to have a career, then you may well not have much else. There's a danger in this disappearance of culture, because it's not only the literary culture that's disappearing; it's also scientific culture. We're going to become a society where the people will know only how to push buttons. My grandfather was a teacher. In his time the idea was to raise someone to become a teacher, not a professor, but an elementary school teacher. The idea then was to raise people up toward the elite. Now, of course, the word "elite" is pejorative. When Pompidou became president, he founded a committee to defend the French language because he saw a threat of homogenization. he needed a general, a priest, and an avant-garde writer, so I ended up part of this committee. We were rather close at the time, and I told him that "Defense of the French Language" was not a good name for this committee. I told Pompidou that the name or idea should be "The Extension of the French Language and Defense of Its Purity." "You're right," he said. "But the purer it stays, the less we can extend it." I answered, "If you want to fight the battle with basic English, you have to have a basic French." I made the choice of French-of pure French and syntax. You'll notice mysteries are complicated, but the syntax is simple. To be a novelist is to see, to look with words, to find the exact words.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: In 1966, you said that the erotic photograph had more of a future than the erotic film.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: That's possible. It's not idiotic; it's possible that I said that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: Are you happy with the proliferation of eroticism on video or the Internet?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: I can't say, because I don't use the Internet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: So you've lost interest in the erotic.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: No. I've lost interest in technology. If you have to be connected to the Internet to be interested in eroticism, then you're in trouble.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: You chose not to have children. Do you find any advantages to that choice now that you're in your eighties?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: Yes, a lot. When I see all my friends that have children. Parenthood tends to make them sick. Their children take drugs, they don't work at school, all they have is problems.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: My daughter is at a Lycee in Nantes to learn French. In my old age, when I'm eating oatmeal, I hope she will read me her translation of Celine's Bagatelles pour un massacre.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: If she agrees, but who knows with the young. I knew Celine, and, like Kafka, he had a great sense humor. He wrote two great books, but after that his stupidity got the best of him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: When I interviewed Julian Greene when he was about ninety-four, I asked him what he had to look forward to, and he said he looked forward to purgatory.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: He was a Christian, and that changes things. I'm not a tarot-card reader. I don't know what the future will bring. By nature, though, I'm optimistic.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: Even given the horrors of the last century?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: I think it's a genetic-it's a question of genetics. Maybe they'll find the gene or the chromosome.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: But I find that being Celtic, as you are, that I'm constitutionally pessimistic.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: The Celts have a sense of humor, which is more or less like Jewish humor. And you can say there's a sad side to the Jewish spirit too, but the Celts and the Jews are pre-despair.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">TM: You mentioned your wife. You have been married for fifty years.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">ARG: Well, I had my young mistresses, and she had her young mistresses, and she still does, because she's younger than I am. And when I had, well, rather spectacular young mistresses, because I was directing movies, she remained quite content because she considered them flighty. Still, she shared my pleasure, and now I share hers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Sidebar</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">My novels are absolutely autobiographical. The Voyeur is set in Brittany, where I was born. The chief difference is that I did not murder a young girl. Yet the idea of doing such a thing was in me.</span></p><p><br /></p>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-41322061006786835132021-08-23T14:53:00.000-04:002021-08-23T14:53:13.826-04:00SCALPEL OF CHAOS or With Elizabeth<p> </p><p>(Note: End of August thought of what has not been done, what is to be done or... this book was finished many years ago and I waited and waited, but could never think of who might read it or who might publish it... (the Elizabeth of this book is now happily married and they have their first child, Augustus)</p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> WITH ELIZABETH. For want of a better title or maybe this is the best title or it could be called THE STORY OF A DEAD TIME a journey with my daughter.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Begin with what happened after Elizabeth and I came back from Europe during the winter.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Beginning at the beginning. The best way to go about talking, no, writing, since that is what...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Now, at this moment in the year 2---, no place where the story or our story could be told: no room, porch, campfire, ocean voyage, rail journey. No setting where such a story could be teased out and then the effort to see this conversation redundantly and artfully fixed to the page, arranged by the Scalpel of Chaos, though we hadn't gone to Zagreb where such an instrument is available in a cafe near the cathedral.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Neither Elizabeth nor I could suspend our disbelief in order to hear me talking with a stranger on the flight back from London: to hear me retelling what appeared to us as we moved about the English countryside and then to Paris and in one of the near villages painted by Monet: no, not that famous garden, for this was in January, seemingly so long ago as I write in July and soon to be August then September and...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Or, in Vienna in a taverna near the train station where the Balkans are said to begin, where we were to hear about what Nuala had taken us to see from the hill in Dalkey: the light to be made visible rising up out of the Irish Sea revealing the colour of the winding sheet for the corpse of our dreams as it was sent back into the earth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> All through the Spring I would take notes of what had happened much as I did even on the flight back when I had been reading Front de 1'est, 1941-1945 from which I copied out what Leon Degrelle writes, "Shaking my hand firmly in his two hands at the moment of my departure. Hitler told me with stirring affection: "If I had a son I would want him to be like you."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Aware to be sure of the folly of the taking for granted what had happened as being ordinary yet with the possibility it was of interest that a father and his daughter might travel to Europe looking for something that was not there in the still New World.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> But nothing could be as simple as that because life is never so easy as anyone knows who has ever tried to describe even the brief moment of a hand about to reach out to be shaken by... though if what had happened did not happen I would have been complaining in reply: no, nothing much had happened while we were away--- no building fell down as we walked by, no man held a gun to the head of a child demanding the President of the United States get on the line and talk to him, right now, motherfucker, hear me!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> No, nothing had happened to us, I guess, like any of that, but... though taken speechless and afraid of what had happened as I sat in the aisle seat while Elizabeth looked down to the mountains of Greenland, already that far along in the flight back to New York: the mountains of Greenland across which no one has ever walked, I think, or wanted to walk and of waking in the middle of the night trapped on the side of one of those mountains while the plane flies overhead with a girl leaning to see more clearly the figure waving helplessly up to the plane.</span></p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-20303787621925753242021-08-13T11:13:00.001-04:002021-08-13T11:16:18.372-04:00FORGET THE FUTURE<p><span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> <b><i> for many years, since 1990 in Oxford, I have been trying to shape the life of James Thomson BV into ... </i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i> a piece of this prose was published a long time ago in BOMB and had been edited by David Rattray... I discovered James Thomson many year s before that in the title of John Rechy's CITY OF NIGHT. </i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i> Thomson had gone out to the west in the United States and now he is in Manhattan waiting to sail back to England. </i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i> It is known that Herman Melville, also adrift at this moment in Manhattan, had read and liked Thomson's work. (another piece appeared in the Crab Orchard Review)</i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i> the shade of Thomson stalks Eliot's The Waste Land</i></b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-large;"> and upon a time, I had come to describe a moment in your life in London--- you, James Thomson--- in his death’s week you went to visit the poet, Philip Bourke Marston, whose poetry gagged you. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> Once leaped my heart, then dumb, stood still again— that had been the room to which she came that day and there came another</span><span style="font-size: x-large;"> moment: when you were staying in Manhattan, New York and while I did imagine those days long after your time in New York City, Manhattan to be exact--- though is there any difference between my experience and your experience--- though who is the self who is imaging the self who I am finding... if only I knew--- as you are again really in Manhattan if words can be said to be real though what else have I? and your adventures as one of the dead, really forever dead or not as in this moment, no longer three rows over in Highgate Cemetery from where we used to keep Karl Marx--- a borrowed grave: how you enjoyed the humor of that... the original owner of the grave had no use for it as he was still as is said, alive, unlike myself: if I am able to ventriloquize his agreeing to my residence... a residence as comfortable as I have ever been used to but then in the present moment here in a room in East First Street--- the most delicious of all fictions: the present moment which has disappeared as these words were typed. </span><span style="font-size: x-large; white-space: pre;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-large;">A pause and already this sentence is not much different from Akkadian being looked at by a visitor from so long ago or it could be right now ...the past and the future are always dripping with blood, these moments always consumed by a need for revenge yet here shall we go walking in which country, in which museum... is there any difference between these seconds and 2500 years ago...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> The walls of the Merchant's Hotel will not leak. There is nothing hidden under the floorboards or lurking under the bed. He does not hear voices and he will not see a face in the window glass even though it is smeared with grey winter grime. He is waiting. His mind is no longer in the city and certainly it is not in this room though he can vision the man’s arm as it raises the knife up and up to gain momentum so when, as it plunges down, the blade will be sure to strike home and end the torment of the life that insinuated itself, without invitation, into his biography.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course, it can be said, the newspaper has done a better job of inching itself into his mind and he will not argue with those words since they are carefully stated and show no expectation of a reply.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He is also uninterested in these men who rub up against him in public expecting some sort of reply to their fevered observations. What is it that he is expected to know? He has accomplished nothing. His hands do not drip with idleness. He has not allowed his ship to sail anywhere near the predictable shores of either success or flamboyant failure.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He has tried to get on as best he could. He had allowed himself to be seized with the proper degrees of enthusiasm: carefully calibrated so as not to frighten off his future employer and he was sent out, in due course, to The West in America and it will happen again, he is sure of that: if he can distill the necessary words.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>After all is said and done to death: he is a man of words at the beck and call of the masters with large sheets of paper needing to be full up every week, every day, every month.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At their command, he is by the pence, for the inches that sluggishly spread up and down the columns. But has not the knack for the saleable anecdote. He can get cloud, the trees, the stone down on to the paper.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Human beings!!!: that’s another bag of muck he can’t bring himself to turn inside out,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Yet, people want it and he is unable to supply it. No good calling round next year, things will not have changed. He has his plate in front of him and there are just some who…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A sort of sun in the sky. He should get a move on and see some more of this Manhattan place. He will be asked to... and he will have to fill up the hours with his impressions of foreign places.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> As long as they don’t expect words to be knitted into columns of type, he can lie with the best of them or with shrug of shoulder: why must he get things right? The stories will come out and as long as the cup is refilled: the evening will not stare him down into silence. He knows what he must do. He is not that cut off from the companions who stand about the room, not having gone forth.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>However, he must decide or not... whether to talk of his reading or just allow that he saw some interesting sites and was seen by exotic eyes. People are interested in turns of phrase not too far removed from the effusions gracing greeting cards called up by the passing holidays. Though, who will actually be interested in his reading or the names of streets he has walked in.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Well, pass the bottle and make sure the glasses are full and the interest will be as intense as any man can bear.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But Thomson is not held by this consideration. He has been listing the years of his life. He is making sure he has been alive and it is no mistake his now being in New York City. He has walked up a staircase, depending on his mood, or he has walked down a staircase or as is more the case he is walking along a long corridor which might also serve to frame his thought or the only truth: one year follows another until they don't.</span></p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-90447668375696898852021-05-18T13:21:00.003-04:002021-05-22T22:02:00.160-04:00THE DEATH OF DENIS DONOGHUE: GRATIFIED ATTENTION<p><span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZBUkgFhaKSA/YKm3aTsXwwI/AAAAAAAB2eE/xXc32v0TyMorewguZB_mnOHcPR5G1bXVQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_7245.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZBUkgFhaKSA/YKm3aTsXwwI/AAAAAAAB2eE/xXc32v0TyMorewguZB_mnOHcPR5G1bXVQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_7245.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Already now, May 16, 2021, it seems so long ago that Denis Donoghue died on April 6, 2021</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I first heard Denis Donoghue in 1964 when I attended his lectures on silence in Shakespeare while a student at University College, Dublin. He began with that reply of Cordelia to her father that I need not repeat as anyone reading this will know that sentence... years later we became friends through little notes exchanged and then meals shared: costs carefully split to the penny. He became a not infrequent guest for dinner as it seemed he had time to come to our tiny apartment in the East Village of Manhattan as there were very few people, he said, at NYU who had an actual interest in poems and stories… </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My wife and children always enjoyed his company which in some way is a commentary on then and continuing politically argumentative academic reality.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We remember vividly the time DD described his giving up classical singing--- his arm slashing through the air--- "I gave it up, I could not subject my wife and future children to the uncertain life of a singer; so now, not even singing in the shower."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And of course another time when my son and Denis agreed that Latin prose was quite boring when compared to Latin poetry…. I myself never really got beyond Caesar.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I am sure more distinguished people will write of his many critical books and the arguments he pursued and was pursued by though nothing dates more than such. <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span> </span>Denis Donoghue's true legacy is contained in <b><i>Warrenpoint</i></b>. It is his own story of growing up in a policeman's barracks in Northern Ireland and of how he came to be a very good reader. The following I would suggest is always the center of that reading: "It did not grieve me that I lacked inventiveness , could not make up a story or imagine a sequence of thought requiring rhyme. All I wanted to do was to observe a relation between myself and structures I had not invented... Mine was the intelligence that comes after." </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Denis reiterated this once upon a time when he was asked to lecture at the St. Marks Poetry Project in the East Village of Manhattan on the future of poetry. Someone in the audience asked him what poets should be writing about and in what form?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He declined to prescribe what a poet should write, "All of my work depends on what the poet created or will create." </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On a very personal note: probably the last thing Denis Donoghue wrote was an essay on the Henry James novel “The Sacred Fount” which I had been unable to make sense of even after having been goaded to attempt to read it by the Spanish writer, Julian Rios. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When Denis was able, last year we talked on the phone and I asked him if he could explain how to read the novel or at least provide an approach to how to read, "After all you are the Henry James Professor" and we both laughed. <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He begins his essay by quoting from a letter by Hugh Kenner to Guy Davenport which is from the collected letters of Kenner and Davenport which were edited by a friend of mine Edward Burns whose name I had included with mine---to share the embarrassment, really--- in the asking DD to explain "The Sacred Fount" as Burns also found the James novel impossible...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">[<b>Aside</b> Denis reviewed---possibly is last published essay---, this magnificent annotated collection of letters and over-looked the rather nasty comment on Denis by Hugh Kenner, a mark of the respect DD had for Kenner, I choose to believe]</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I will accept and choose to believe that possibly these are near the last lines DD wrote and even if I am corrected, they invite a reader to read: "Reading one of James's later novels is like walking slowly through a gallery of modern art, paying gratified attention if possible to each painting. Many of the paintings distain to be asked what does it mean while issuing a strong invitation to pay attention. When I come to Chapter 8, I am not ready to be ravished, as I am when I read "Among School Children" and "Ash Wednesday," but after a few sentences, I give in."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sadly, I never got the chance to talk more about this novel with Denis as I received a text message on April 7th from his daughter Emma, "Really sorry to tell you that Denis died in his sleep yesterday (having been unable to keep down much food these last months)."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I so wanted to "tease out" my continued difficulty with the novel, "The Sacred Fount" and to remind him I had first read that expression "to tease out" in a note--- in which he had replied to me then in Patchogue, New York back from my year at University College, Dublin--- about that sentence of Cordelia's... </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>I have left out all the personal information and/or gossip one acquires in the knowing of a person for a long period of time... of these days I must probably start by retelling when Alastair Reid, the poet and translator, and a woman friend came along with Denis to our small apartment and my wife poured the Irish whiskey for Alastair as if it was wine: the consequences while not fatal are after all comic... or as my Whitney mother would being say, sounds like you're gonna become an Irish washer-woman... </b></span></p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-78657636748538948982021-04-06T10:47:00.000-04:002021-04-06T10:47:32.535-04:00THE BULGARIAN PSYCHIATRIST (how it begins)<p>(of course I am aware that there is a rather famous story "The Bulgarian Poetess" by John Updike but this short book is not a comment on it)</p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">George said he came to America with only a suitcase stuffed with neckties.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Yes, stuffed with neckties, he said, but couldn’t begin to tell anyone how many ties were in the brown suitcase because both the number, three, seemed so insubstantial when it came to trying to see how three ties could fill up a suitcase and how could anyone who hadn’t come to America with only one suitcase stuffed with ties, begin to understand how a suitcase--- even a large brown fake leather suitcase from Bulgaria--- could be stuffed with three neckties, two of which he never wore after he began to live in America, which is not to say he had ever worn those three neckties as he and his wife moved about the United States during the year and nine months before establishing themselves in Brooklyn, on the edge of Greenpoint, to be exact, a street over from McCarren Park--- though there was a moment before that when they lived at another address in Brooklyn, in a street given over to as a topical description might: light industry, in a building stuffed, George later said, with Bulgarians and you can imagine what that was like, I am sure, stuffed with Bulgarians but we are not talking of that time…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">No, he wore only one of the three ties as it was hard to unpack a suitcase stuffed with three ties and he was not trying to be thought philosophical because he and his wife had flown TWA from Frankfurt, that most factual of German cities, where they had been in residence immediately before receiving the notification that their application for a visa to the United States of America had been approved after having lived--- for how many years had it been--- in Hamburg where George was an attending psychiatrist in a clinic where fresh-cut flowers were placed in each patient's room reminding visitors of the complex glimmer of a possible recovery or funeral.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And it was not that he had always ever worn those three neckties in Germany or even before in Bulgaria. He was sure of having worn one of the ties and it was that tie he was wearing as he arrived in the United States of America and which appears around his neck and under the collar of the white shirt in the photograph his wife took of him as he walked down the steps from the plane.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Later, he learned that both actions: the walking down the steps from the plane and the picture talking were very rare actions, events almost, it could be said. Vera was standing on the runway, smelling the kerosene fuel he was sure, having paused, turning telling George STOP as he was about to continue his walking down the steps having been separated from Vera by a very large man and two women who had pushed their ways in front of George, who gave way as was his wont.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Never again in all the times they were to come back from journeys abroad did any of these now three actions re-occur: the walking down the steps, the picture taking, the being separated by pushy large people.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There must have been some sort of renovation of the terminal going on and while they did not have to board a bus for a short ride to the ARRIVALS as they were familiar with in Sofia, George does not remember any obvious signs of construction but he was hardly looking out for it on this, his first arrival in The United States of America, wearing one of the three ties which he always said later filled up his suitcase.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Vera some time later must have had the snapshot enlarged into a framed 8x10 photograph. It was installed on the wall just before the bathroom door next to a drawing by Christo of an aspect of his plan to wrap the Reichstag in Berlin. One of the children had typed on faded slip of lined school notebook paper: DAD'S ARRIVAL and inserted it in front of the glass but behind the wood of the lower right corner of the frame,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The tie, at the moment of the picture being taken, was blown by the wind up to George's right in the form of an abstract representation of the letter J in the Latin alphabet.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Indeed, it was this same narrow woven wool black tie which he constantly wore all those months as they traveled about in the United States and to be scrupulous, something George did not advocate, as it only led to the dreariest of consequences, though he was not making any real argument for lying, if someone might jump on his claim. There is however a difference between lying and being scrupulous and it might be supposed in some way he did not have three ties in his suitcase if he was wearing one of them both arriving and then while traveling in the country by train, plane, bus and rented, borrowed or private automobile.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>George did not have an epiphany while traveling, as had Powys, in Houston. George was not given to any sort of religious enthusiasm. The very word epiphany frightened him because of its religious overtone and while he did not think very highly of the anti-religion campaigns by the communists in Bulgaria, there was still a residual materialist component to his life as a psychiatrist and now he did believe, if he could use that word, that there was really nothing much beyond the room in which he and his patient sat, right now, pretending of course all the while, there was something beyond the room, a dire necessity for many reasons: his patients were so lacking in imagination! If only they had imagination and the ability to forget! His patients were too often gripped by memories as tenacious as a terminal cancer and held by fantasies occasionally nailing them to the floor as in the famous joke much repeated with curious variations in the cafes in Sofia when he had been a medical student and still repeated to this day, Ilov told him only recently even with the fall of the communism now more than ten years ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">George did wonder, when he thought about it so many years later, why Powys could use a word like epiphany when describing his discovery of the absence of sewers in Houston. Powys had ended up in that city while on his own journey around the United States, a journey which turned out to be both his first and final trip around the country. It was there in Houston Powys knew why he was moving to France with his family.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">At the very least in France, Powys believed then, the French would not refuse to build a sewer system when there was only a need for one every three or four years, if even then, because how could a person look forward to living in a country, living out the years remaining, in a country where there was a city with many millions of people that could be built without a sewer.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">However, when you arrive in a country with only a suitcase stuffed with neckties, you have only your own intelligence, George would say. You arrive with only what you have already put into your head. They could take everything away from you and they did that as far as they were able when you left a country like Bulgaria, back then, and it is hard to explain this, now, after the fall of the communism but then: you are suddenly in this country, in The United States of America, where you have to always remember you arrived with only a suitcase stuffed with neckties and you have to be always prepared to survive, once again, as you did then, as you stepped down from that plane--- it was a TWA plane, an airline long gone from the skies and how it seemed then that TWA, Trans World Airways, along with PANAM, Pan American World Airlines, were symbols of the country George was coming to and this observation, one of so many, came back to him when he came to think about his curiosity about this Powys and his being able to decide on such a radical move as he had after his trip by railroad around the United States and from that moment in Houston as Powys tried to get across a main highway now under a foot of water because that was the year of the one flood every three years or was it four years and Powys wanted to get across the highway to have a drink which he needed and when he got back to St. Marks Place couldn't get it out of his mind that there were people in this country, in the United States of America, in a rich and powerful city of the United States of America who could make such a decision that prevented him on that day from getting across that highway to have a drink after a hard day... no, it was more like days which seemed like months of traveling on the so-called Amtrak where you didn't know what would break next, which part of the train would fall silent, dark, stop working and again Powys thought there had to be some better way to live and while he was prepared to think traveling by railroad was maybe not the best way to see America and he was prepared to make allowances for all the things that didn't work on the train </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> he had learned to be tolerant, though that wasn't exactly the word he wanted, but anyway, he learned, somehow, as a grave digger for the Archdiocese of Brooklyn, when he was in the last years of high school, to over¬look, to be prepared for nasty surprises, to the finding of things that they didn't expect to find when they went digging into these graves where surprisingly things move about which are not supposed to move about and really most of the time no one knew what was just a shovelful of earth away and later after both of the decisions were done into the past: when Powys had moved to France and when George and Vera had left Germany for The United States of America eventually finding themselves living in Brooklyn, Powys on a brief visit from Paris for the fortieth anniversary of his brother's ordination, asked George: did you think you would end up here in this bar on St. Marks Place--- or where you are living in Brooklyn?--- when you stepped down from that plane out there at Kennedy? and found yourself in a country where even the white people didn't have brains because by now I am sure you have discovered: white people in America are prepared to put up with the most awful situations if they think they are bound to get better--- which of course they are not really--- but there is no way to ever convince anyone in this country of that and you learn to be an American within an hour of landing in the United States of America, if not earlier as the world is full up of people who are destined to be Americans and are saturated with the idea: life is going to get better and better no matter what either the life or experience teaches them: </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>isn't it a wonderful country where people in their eighties are thinking about, as they put it, career changes, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">(Copyright @Thomas McGonigle 2021)</span></p>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-84774737150554129152021-02-10T11:33:00.000-05:002021-02-10T11:33:41.899-05:00THE GLACIAL CARNIVAL<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">THE GLACIAL CARNIVAL </span></b></p><p>Another piece of this book appeared in the on-line journal CAVEAT LECTOR (Caveat-lector.org). The only time something of mine has so appeared. <b>THE GLACIAL CARNIVAL </b>is composed of sentences rooted in rescued relics from that time of the late Seventies in NYC when living in Room 801 in the Earle Hotel over-looking Washington Square....</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Hugo was saying: too much concern for everybody if you ask me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">---And you didn’t even come from out of town so you can take it in stride when you’re in the WHITE MARK DELI on Sixth Avenue… and have asked the guy for change after you got a quart of ale and this next customer comes up to the counter with a can of dog food saying, hey, can you open this for me? The guy behind the counter asks, do you need a spoon? Nah, I can get it out with my fingers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Hugo has been here before. He is stunned to still be alive, I think. All his best friends are dead or married and he only thought of the former. What can you say to a guy who’s married? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I go over to Hugo's apartment near the river. Across the street from from his window is a truck park. Guys fuck each other between the trucks or suck each other off. I could charge admission… a guy gives a guy a hand job and hands him a handful of cum… what does he tell the guy?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Hugo gave up on girls and boys a long time ago. It’s nice and boring here. I want or I don’t want. That’s about all there is. People are always asking, how’s it going, how are you, how, how, how…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-I go back to the hotel. The only thing I miss…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Was there ever a time when I didn’t miss something or other?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Pride is a bird’s meal.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Hugo says he knew a woman who liked to get a guy from the Bowery when guys were sleeping on the street… don’t ask me how she did it. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Get a guy on the Bowery and brought him Uptown and does things to him and then tells him to get lost with a twenty dollar bill.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Hugo says, he is much too busy. He didn’t have the time to kill himself. To kill yourself you got to be able to find yourself.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-But Hugo was at one time not alone: he is remembering her tongue discovering his armpits, the place behind the knees, the spot behind his balls and she would comment on how his little toe is curled up into a miniature fist.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-But she left. They always eventually do.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Like him, I often sleep with my clothes on… saves time in the morning--- for what you ask? It’s only habit.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-At least no refrigerator in the room…the waking and falling asleep to the sounds of a refrigerator… to be found dying and the last sounds you will be hearing: the refrigerator…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-The smallness of my room is appealing as there is no empty spaces to dream of…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-But room enough for a Pat and Mike joke… they had been great drinking buddies and then one of them goes and dies and it could be either one or the other and you throw in the cows, the wife, the house and the children and one of them is looking at the other boxed up and ready to go: looks good since he stopped drinking.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">REMEMBER, here is a young man living in a hotel room, once upon a time, as the hotel where he lived once upon a time no longer has such tenants, they have guests who come because of its location, because they want a small hotel, they want a hotel that reminds them of small hotels they have stayed in Europe, once upon a time, and even Europeans come to the hotel as they want something that is familiar, though these people are surprised that the light bulbs actually allow you to read while resting in bed.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-He is listening,: I gotta find a lady to eat my grapes, being said in The 55--- a hole two steps down from Christopher Street--- with a bursting liver, once you’ve decided nothing matters that would be paradise, a version of it, I guess someone else is saying: broken glass, tears.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-My corpse should be viewed face to the pillow.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Obsession versus observation.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Is it tonight to The Ramrod or The Toilet?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Jason Holliday was saying, fucking a girl in the ass is like milking a cow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-ehssx01b0</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-I’ve been fucking you for ten years and now you want to go down to get a license so we don’t have to keep on with the fucking: what do you call it?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-He had died of a heart attack on the operating table--- they thought it was a heart attack but it was his spleen that got him in the end. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">-Shut your mouth a little while I… what I’m saying…</span></p><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-32253993017995261252021-02-03T14:09:00.009-05:002021-02-03T19:48:26.809-05:00ROLLED DICE ( A SHORT NOVEL OF THE PRESENT MOMENT)<p> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></p><p>(there are a few unfixed errors in the typing)</p><p><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>PREWORDS: in the fiction of the fictional present moment there is a constant argument about what is true... did something happen or did nothing happen... could it all be farce repeating as farce as is often said about history though history is a fiction because of its nature which is always based on selection and selection has all the authority of the flipping of a coin.</p><p><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>I had just read INVISIBLE INK, the newly translated novel by Patrick Modiano (Yale University Press, 2020) when news came of the death of the Irish poet Derek Mahon. </p><p><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>I have read now 25 of Patrick Modiano's short novels and the coincidence of these two readerly events seem to me to point to the genius of Modiano which could be too easily summed up in Gertrude Stein's famous remark: There is no such thing as repetition. Only Insistence.</p><p><br /></p><p> INVISIBLE INK--- a man remembering a moment when he went looking for a person--- is in so many ways a sort of description of every one of Modiano's novels, novels that hint often overtly at autobiography or rather at the truthful necessary element that is in every so-called fiction, whether that fiction be by Joyce or Tolstoy or Proust of Celine or or or.. </p><p><br /></p><p> All of Modiano's novels are searches for something or someone who is lost to the narrator or misplaced because poorly remembered... but then in the so-called real life are we not all accidents and our meetings with others, accidents.</p><p><br /></p><p> All of the novels end in some sort of defeat, something found missing or just that phrase found missing and so the only next step is another book... </p><p><br /></p><p> As to Mahon I met him on Dublin in 1965 and again in 66 and in other years but always in some way associated with a certain another: Eugene Lambe</p><p><br /></p><p> But as with INVISIBLE INK: "There are blanks in this life, white spaces you can detect if you open the "case file": a single sheet in sky-blue folder that has faded with time. That ancient sky blue has itself turned almost white. And the words "case file" are written across the middle of the folder. In black ink. This is my only remnant of the Hutte Detective Agency, the only trace of my passage in that old..."</p><p><br /></p><p> Modiano's words invited me to open pages found when I was into my apartment in Manhattan, pages still held together by a metal spindle minus the covers.... there are some pages of prose in ink and then a list of names some with addresses but others without addresses:</p><p><br /></p><p>Teddy Disterdick</p><p><br /></p><p>Brian Mooney</p><p><br /></p><p>Clive Burland</p><p><br /></p><p>Gary Seaman</p><p><br /></p><p>Michael J. Peters </p><p>11357 35th Ave NE </p><p>Seattle</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But I've already written about Michael J. Peters and copied out the three letters I had saved from him: which you can read if you go to July 28, 2015 abcofreading.blogspot.com.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I know why the names are there. Michael J. Peters was the last American I talked to Zagreb--we had met in Trieste--- before I took the train to Istanbul though I got off in Sofia (that began my Bulgarian life) and Michael was on his way to see the Cedars of Lebanon</p><p><br /></p><p> Gary Seaman was met in Berlin, Spring 1965) and speaking German took me to East Berlin and then as guests of the FDJ we went to the DDR...he re-appeared in JUST LIKE THAT my novel of a beginning of the Sixties of the last century...</p><p><br /></p><p> As to the other and even with these two names I wonder and will only wonder and not having won a Nobel prize and not having published now 25 novels in English translation...no one is lining up to get my whatever might result...and I know because of Modiano there is some value in looking back, though looking back is much frowned upon by the present moment unless one is engaged in some vulgar political polemic...</p><p><br /></p><p> . One must remember that in say 1920 just before the moments that will give the USA: Anderson, Hemingway, Faulkner, the population was 106 million and the average sale of a real literary book was a couple thousand copies while a century later with a population of 331 million a couple of thousand copies is still all that a very good literary author can hope for... </p><p><br /></p><p>HERE ARE THE LETTERS FROM MICHAEL J. PETERS AND A REPLY:</p><p> ONE</p><p> 10.18.68</p><p>Dear Tom</p><p> The fault of not continuing our, at best, broken line of correspondences is entirely mine. Your letter written in Dublin arrived here some months back. I shall pledge myself to more discipline in the future and hopefully purge myself of my shortcomings. Please forgive this horrible red [the letter is written in red ink] but it’s all I have. Perhaps it’s symbolic of many things--- but that would really be too heavy to write about!!</p><p> I haven’t written anyone since last spring when I wrote a Syrian girl about her body and how much her armpit had meant to me while suffering the adversities of Oriental life. In that particular letter I overextended myself, totally exceeding my fondest expectations and proving what I’ve always suspected; that words are nearer to me than pubic stubble. So anyway my letters comes someplace between Theŕeśe’s smooth belly and just plain words</p><p> My family forwarded your letter (I spent the first two months of summer north of Seattle) but I didn’t receive it until after your proposed induction date of 1 June. However I can vaguely recall being terribly drunk at about that date so I must have communed with you somehow. I’m confident that you did avoid the messy business in some manner--- hopefully it will end soon and civilization can redeem her soul.</p><p> ‘Merkan’ intelligence is beautifully characterized by Wallace, Nixon, and to a lesser extent H.H.H. The idea of a national political platform essentially based on beating Black-Americans into submission and giving young people haircuts is particularly appalling in the face the real issues: poverty, capitalist economy , etc. (Before I forget--- I’ve a stack of back issues to the ‘Helix’ Seattle’s underground. It’s established and heads above most such papers. Drop a card with your new address and I’ll forward them immediately!!)</p><p> A close friend wrote a few weeks ago from Big Sur about living and dying and he idea of somehow reaching a decision as to the validity of life. It was really quite abstract. Implicit was the suggestion that he might die soon by his own hand. I mention it only because I think about it at times and I’m sure you also do.</p><p> I’ve been reading a lot of late, mostly heavy academic books but some Gíde, Hesse and Greek tragedy too. In an attempt to make myself more comfortable I’ve change majors again--- transferring to the NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES & LITERATURE DEPT. was easy. It seems to be more a challenge. I think my field may eventually be Islamic art</p><p> At any rate, Tom—write me of your condition and of your wife. As I proposed--- a simple card with your address would be adequate. In return I promise a stack of ‘underground’ sheets’ as well as long coherent “think letter.”</p><p> Michael.</p><p><br /></p><p> TWO</p><p> SEATTLE November 68</p><p>Thomas-</p><p>I must say how pleasant it was to receive your letter. My blatant procrastination had left me worried that Elbie J. and the boys had grabbed you in London and somehow thrust you into the War Machine. Like all Crusades, ours kills, rapes, pillages and sloganizes in the name Good. If it weren’t so sad we could chuckle until the piss runs down our legs. But alas it is most serious and profitable!! By the way—did you see Chicago (Pig City, USA)?? A totally beautiful and predictable exercise in ‘Merikan’ democracy. Ah, for the good old days when pigs were pigs and not cops.</p><p>I’m glad to see you have returned to the States if for no other reason than to fill your belly with unescapable crud of ‘Merikan” civilization and your nostrils with the stench of our hypocrisy. Beware!! The spirit of 76 corrupts.</p><p>Can your believe Nixon?? Absolutely disgusting!! The man is a Turkey!! The imagination can easily see a new era of Brown Shirts and Black Boots. By the way—did the good people of Wisconsin erect a monument to good old Joe Mc. They must have; it would be only proper to have done so.</p><p>University continues--- it drones on and on with the rhythm of a palpitating whore. It’s a game that I’ve to pay for a while. Still I look for the warm lady dressed in brown, cloaked in darkness, but that’s a game I play with myself and hardly as significant as the scholarly thing with books. A friend who sits on the fence and gets despondent over things like spring mornings at the [Big] Sur and Leningrad snows wrote that but I had to destroy his letter because it caused me to think about things and that’s somewhere near the end. I like the idea of making love on dirty sheets in your Venetian slum house. I beg to be your guest paying or otherwise. Venice is good to those who know her., Where else the ecstasy of days measured in the downy armpits and the dry rasps of rending spirits. Which reminds me--- did you see the latest issue of NOVA? (It’s an English (British) mag. Of doubtful quality). It has an etching of Twiggy with an arm extended to God doing her toilette with a trusty Gillette super blue blade. God was it laughable!!!! They must have invented that splendid cover for me--- an exclusive thing designed solely to evoke a licentious chuckle from those who care about such trivia.</p><p>The sky never seems to be more than pale green, an opaque continuum that leaves some doubt about the exact moment when heaven meets mother earth. The November sky is for those who think about communion and black flags and tortured genius of sensitive people—</p><p>I hope you find some value in the copies of Helix---it’s our ersatz journalism draped in the filigree of OP-POP culture.</p><p>Well at least they try.</p><p>About your letters and things--- a catholic school. Really, Thomas!! A bastion of radical, irrational dogma. Can you make it?? I had hoped you could find something in Europe away from all the hassle of concerned parents. I’m looking closely at teaching in Roberts College, Istanbul my next trip over. However with an M.A. in NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES & LITERATURE it is will be a tight fit to meet their requirements. I understand they prefer English M.A.’s with teaching experience.</p><p>Of course I remain interested in your writing, anxiously awaiting an opportunity to read your work. What are the chances of publication?? If things get too slow, I could work for a printing at this end. If you’re truly satisfied with your novel, now in London, and assuming it is turned down, you might try Grove Press in NYC or Lighthouse Books in San Francisco.</p><p>I’ll shortly begin working for the Post Office in an attempt to work off my indebtedness--- I was forced to buy a car… V.W. and will in the next month rent a beach cottage on the Sound. I’ve to get away from my family they are stunting my personality. It will be limited freedom allowing me to be more eccentric in my existence. Somehow I’ll manage to keep up my studies at [University of] Washington while working. You should strongly consider visiting me or moving out here. We have the mountains and the sea and a radical political climate. (We were the only western state to tell Nixon to get screwed). Because of certain regrettable obligations I can’t truly consider Mexico this spring. But I’m sure you would find the Northwest rather enjoyable and my cottage would be yours and your wife’s We are provincial, but nevertheless very good people. The music is sweet as is the beer and the grass is abundant in the children’s pipes. I can confidently say there would be good times for all. Consider it, Tom. We could open a commune in the wastes of eastern Washington or in the nearby mountains.</p><p><br /></p><p>I couldn’t find the issue of the Evergreen Review that you requested but I did meet an interesting cunt that led me to several café-au-lait in the district and a near fuck. I’ll keep looking!</p><p>When I gather my wits I’ll write you a long ‘think’ letter… Should be around the New Year. Let me know of your plans, Tom, I want to share conversation and beer with you before time passes and things are lost. As for God’s blessing--- I’m sure he would if he could.,</p><p> MICHAEL</p><p><br /></p><p> THREE</p><p><br /></p><p> 29/11/68 [29/12/68]</p><p>Thomas McGonigle:</p><p>My bed has been empty for weeks and it’s cold. God it’s cold—the frost is fixed on the window till well past noon and my feet stay bare through it all like Ransom’s frozen parsnips in the snow. The hot bath at 2:00 brings me back; things focus much better with lemon scented suds soaking my crotch. Tom, I’m glad you have at least tenatively agreed to share the northern wilderness this summer—It’ll be good for both of us. My disordered mind needs company and you need inspiration before returning to ‘academia.’</p><p>Through the ordeal of autumn with the death and all I managed to rise above it all be placed on the “President’s List of Scholars” at the University. Janet said is showed how well adjusted and established I was--- I grabbed her tits in front of her mother, she cried, and now in their minds I’m not nearly as well adjusted as they had contemplated. An unfortunate outburst for all concerned but it was the easiest way to make my point. Anyway it’s all returned to the back of my foggy consciousness and it’ll not return until I rattle.</p><p>I read Donleavy’s Saddest Summer of Samuel S. last evening--- it was naturally impressive but not the same magnitude as The Ginger Man. Also have a short story copied ifn the bourgeois anti-sexuality monthly Playboy--- The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthasar B. but it is the same Dublin/Trinity thing and it will probably be bit as well received as the others. It seem better suited to those of us for whom the divine light of perversion has long since descended and dimmed. Anyway my shadow seems larger and my body-mind more lustful. Read this morning where a G-man (FBI) gunned down a hippie in Istanbul. Seems be less safe than before. It all sounds ultra-somthing.</p><p>They’ve taken all the plastic Christmas to the rubbish heap thank God. It becomes unbearable after a while. I’m always suspicious of prophets and apocalyptic visions anyway, it strikes me as a business man’s hoax. Can you imagine your wife telling you that your child was conceived in heaven let alone the Immaculate Conception---but I mustn’t offend the R.C.s and the lessers. Skepticism is my cross! To bear it on my slightly stopped shoulders for the sake…….?</p><p>I don’t feel like continuing , Tom. An inspiration is about to send me to the Conservatory to look at the tropical flora captive behind steamy windows. The idea of brightly blooming things behind and forced birth while even the worms are frozen in their slime is curious. I’ll post this then write within a few days, enclose any journals I’ve accumulated since the last and if you like talk about Phédra or send some of Doneavys that you’ve not read.</p><p>A prosperous new year full of goodies</p><p>MICHAEL</p><p> [I have no further letters from Michael]</p><p><br /></p><p>POST POST SOMETNING</p><p>In September, 1967 I was in Trieste staying at a youth hostel on the Adriatic with the Castle of Miramare to the right and the city to the left… I met Michael J. Peters there. I remember a drunken evening and being forced to stay during a heavy rainstorm in a seaside cabana with him and two South African girls as we were locked out of hostel which closed at 10PM. The next day Michael and I went to a hotel in the Via Diaz in Trieste, thinking of Joyce writing Ulysses in this city now hollowed out and no longer important… we took a ferry along to Pula in what was then Yugoslavia and then by train to Zagreb where I last saw Michael as he was leaving for Athens and on to look at the Cedars of Lebanon as he said while I was going to Belgrade and eventually to Sofia where my life changed when I walked up in the dark Hristo Botev Boulevard to eventually marry Lilia, the first girl I talked to, who was then minding her mother’s kiosk. We left Sofia just before Easter, 1968 for Dublin by way of Venice, Paris and London. In October we went to Menasha, Wisconsin where my parents were living in exile from Patchogue.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have a carbon of a letter I must have sent to Michael during this time written on the back of a mimeo of a history quiz I had given in the 7th grade class I was teaching at St. John’s Polish Catholic School in Menasha, Wisconsin. I began teaching in November after Lilia and I came from Dublin at the end of October. The teacher had quit and they needed someone desperately. I was a lousy letter writer but… </p><p><br /></p><p>Michael: Thank you ever so much for the Helixs they are a piece of food in this cold night that is lived through with little sign of the morn… could you send more if possible in fact any you don’t need?</p><p>The reverse is a test… it is all arbitrary and that but I had to find out if they knew any facts at all…these poor students already their minds are warped by the American death, they talk with glib fascination of the Vietnam death,, about the orgasm of killing (we have had deer hunting the last two weeks) have you this great festival? About the refined brutality of death that is American football American style…the previous teacher used to give them no homework if the Green Bay Packers won also no homework on days they might play. </p><p>About Joe McC his spirit was exorcised by Allen the G last year…the RCs have a mass over his grave each year hoping to bring back his body from the worms.</p><p>From the newspapers I could imagine that you should be able to find some nice pair of breasts to bury your nose in, I wouldn’t want the armpit of American civilization for the stubs might spear your tender,,,</p><p>The RCs quite good compared to other places and quite progressive very little control over what I do no outside exams in the 7th grade the religion is opening their eyes at least that is what it will be for me… I also teach American history. Monday they debate resolved THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE WAS NOT JUSTIFIED perhaps we could go on IT WAS ALL A WASTE OF TIME</p><p>You must realize these kids have never seen a slum, they have never seen a Black. I was going to write negro but that is taboo and I only use the b in class.</p><p>Are you able to work and study full time. I am going to back for night courses at the u in languages as anything serious up here would be a waste of time I just want the basics and any idiot can teach that</p><p>Are you developing the Lowery bit?</p><p>I think we will come in June if it is at all possible. I will get paid for that month and but won’t have to work</p><p>Spring in Mexico is impossible anyway there is no holiday given for that</p><p>The near fucks (Evergreen search) deserve head split open</p><p>In fact as I write this letter I have made my mind definite to come up on the hill with the beautiful long haired women all mingling and gentle no news now on novel but sent it to Hollins College in Virginia in the hopes of a full fellowship to do an MA in creative writing a nice gentle way of spending a year</p><p>Hollins is a girls undergraduate school with an integrated sexually grad school of 30. The main thing I just do is over awe that them with talent suck’em down socially and then I can sit and type to my heart’s content for a year.</p><p>Washington state radical even with Boeing?</p><p>You have a nice hand writing the symbol of good breeding that is more important in this world gone to seed, now or a few seconds I shall turn my upper class properly aristocratic</p><p> I might mention in this context that Mr Donleavy has a new book out</p><p>Roberts should not be difficult if you could pick up a methods course in teaching eng. as a foreign language what about the place in Beirut also there is an American college for some religion in Alexandria also working for the oil companies also the British Council has good jobs in Saudi Arabia $7600 plus travel insurance cheap housing etc etc you would save 5 at least</p><p>If you ever want anything from this place I will try and comply I will send the Milwaukee rad sheet if I can get some copies a trip to Mil is more than 100 miles</p><p>Swimming through the vomit is bad enough</p><p>Let me end there</p><p>Christmas we realize is coming,,,</p><p>I hope you find nice things in stocking but remember it’s what between that counts</p><p>And god bless your undertaking to introduce a note of necrophilia into this…</p><p> </p><p> FINALLY</p><p><br /></p><p>Michael J. Peters is alive in your reading of his letters. Or have I lurched too far from the example of William's trusting in his red wheelbarrow? Am I supposed to tell you what I make of Michael J. Peters in these letters. One last detail we exchanged books in Zagreb. I do not remember which book I gave him but I still have the small Grove Press paperback version of Alain Robbe-Grillet's THE VOYEUR</p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-33778466798682668242020-12-24T17:46:00.000-05:002020-12-24T17:46:38.882-05:00FRANZ KLINE NAPKINS from THE POSTHUMOUS CLICHE<p> </p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> FRANZ KLINE NAPKINS</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>from THE POSTHUMOUS CLICHE</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> <b>knowing Jack(John) WESLE</b></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">....but he is saying here I am in this apartment and it is very nice and I don’t know why I am here: I think I must be getting away with something:</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>I’m getting away with something </b></span><span style="font-size: x-large;">he says</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-large;">again and I am confessing in</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-large;">some way in response to the silence--- which is a too grand of a word I say--- but it feels like it, when certain names are used when sometimes talking about art: I have never understood Picasso or Braque’s work--- and Jack says I don’t know--- people are always talking about them so I guess they knew what they were doing or people were saying they knew what they were doing but I never talked about them because no one ever asked me about them but it could have been because of the people I knew and I say the only painter I ever heard you talk about was Franz Kline and he says I don’t remember and I said it had nothing to do with the white and black paintings or how Kline thought the white part was the most important part but no one ever talked about the white part and only saw the black parts of his paintings which he never understood but you were telling me about being in the Cedar Tavern and he gave you some napkins and even signed them… he had been marking then up with a pen or something and it was just the two of you that night because most times he was always surrounded by all these people and you didn’t know what to talk about and here he was by himself and you were sitting next to him and he pushed these across to you and then he took them back and scrawled his name on them but didn’t say why he was doing this and you shoved them into your pocket and then sometime in the 60s you needed money so you had to sell them as you didn’t have any need for napkins signed by Franz Kline… so he was the only painter I ever heard you talk about, and Jack is saying if you say so and Rudy is in the room as it is probably time for me to be going and Jack is not wanting to stand up and I am saying you can change your t-shirt now and I am saying Piret my wife is always telling me I dribble all the time and that is what men do they dribble all the time here there and everywhere and on anything but always always on their clean white t-shirts for sure their t-shirts, it’s something women learn to put up with, she says, if they want to be around a man while Jack is saying there’s another number I’m really afraid of: six, it’s such an incomplete sort of number and then in the movies they are always deep-sixing something or other while Rudy is tapping the back of Jack’s chair, you have to take a piss Jack, he says and then the exercise person is coming, this is a busy day and Jack is saying, I have to take a piss and while it is hard for him to get out of the chair he still saying, six and getting deep-sixed, that is what I am afraid of : they’re going to put an 86 on my forehead and then deep-sixing me out the window or into the toilet--- Jack, you’re so funny, Rudy says and I watch Jack grab the walker—as he is pushing himself up from the chair and he begins to walk saying they were always deep-sixing things in the Navy movies during the war and I am always scared of being deep-sixed as you say and you never know when they are going to put an 86 on your head and then deep-six you out the window but I don’t think they would put me down the toilet as it would be better to put me out the window… at the door to the toilet Jack takes his hand off the walker and I shake it and we have a lot to talk about the next time I am saying and he is saying I am glad you came to visit…I hope you will come again…</span></p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-14959124752511553522020-11-22T20:02:00.007-05:002020-11-22T20:02:32.092-05:00MY DEAD OF IRELAND<p> </p><p><br /></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">This evening I was wondering why Dublin does not come to mind more frequently. I was in the basement and picked up GIRL ON A BICYCLE a novel by Leland Bardwell. I had not read it as it was badly printed on paper that turned brown though I had acquired it from the memory of meeting her in Dublin. But more vivid in mind was Fintan MacLachlan her companion, boyfriend or what not, now finally only known as the father of three of her children but when I knew him he was a taxi driver and as a "toucher." </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is never reason for how names appear in mind, as they simply do...we are always almost unanchored to the present moment</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>SO to make a list of the dead--- does that account for how Dublin seems to have gone somewhere yet my ST. PATRICK'S DAY another day in Dublin remains in print in the world--though the National Library of Ireland does not have it in its collection, while University College, Dublin's library has it... </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">James Liddy, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Philip Casey, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Eugene Lambe, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Derek Mahon, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Patrick Kavanagh, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">John Jordan, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Francis Stuart, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Liam O'Flaherty, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Dickie Riordain, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Dermot Healy, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">John Montague, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Leland Bardwell, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">J. P. Donleavy, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Christine Keeler,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Pearse Hutchinson, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Austin Clarke, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Jonathan Bardon, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Ian Whitcomb, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Tommy Smith, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Philip Hobsbaum, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Brian Higgins, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Michael Hartnett, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Tim Tollekson, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Willie and Beatrice Opperman, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Brian Moore, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Desmond O'Grady, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Roger McHugh, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Jeremiah Hogan, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Garech Browne, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Paddy O'Hanlon, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Jan Kaminski, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Justin O'Mahony, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Jim Fitzgerald, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Stephen and Kathleen Behan, </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Mary Lavin,</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">But of course Grafton Street remains and St Stephen's Green... I will walk by Ely Place where last I lived...continue on and think of teaching at the Dublin Tuition Center or living in Grosvenor Square...and and and... but no longer tonight</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-40588916858299066452020-10-17T18:16:00.021-04:002020-10-19T18:02:46.419-04:00PATRICK MODIANO AND DEREK MAHON: TO BE MISSING<p> </p><br /><div><span style="font-size: large;">PATRICK MODIANO AND DEREK MAHON....</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I had just read INVISIBLE INK, the newly translated novel by Patrick Modiano (Yale University Press, 2020) when news came of the death of the Irish poet Derek Mahon. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> SUGGESTION: </span><span style="font-size: medium;">some have suggested the plague will last for another year so a wonderful time to read TWO Modiano novels a month and by the end of the year there will be a new one from Yale....</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> I have read now 25 of Patrick Modiano's short novels and the coincidence of these two readerly events seem to me to point to the genius of Modiano which could be too easily summed up in Gertrude Stein's famous remark: There is no such thing as repetition. Only Insistence.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> <i><b>INVISIBLE INK</b></i>--- a man remembering a moment when he went looking for a person--- is in so many ways a sort of description of every one of Modiano's novels, novels that hint often overtly at autobiography or rather at the truthful necessary element that is in every so-called fiction, whether that fiction be by Joyce or Tolstoy or Proust of Celine or or or.. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"> All of Modiano's novels are searches for something or someone who is lost to the narrator, or misplaced for poorly remembered... but then in the so-called real life are we not all accidents and our meetings with others, accidents.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> All of the novels end in some sort of defeat, something found missing or just that phrase found missing and so the only next step is another book... </span></div><div></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> As to Mahon I met him on Dublin in 1965 and again in 66 and in other years but always in some way associated with a certain another: Eugene Lambe</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SUdwDQ6OCzA/X4tsdfuTcZI/AAAAAAAByUg/bN1i4ley-UoNTjuVdPzI2H8rEcgcsOUjwCPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_5797.HEIC" style="font-size: x-large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SUdwDQ6OCzA/X4tsdfuTcZI/AAAAAAAByUg/bN1i4ley-UoNTjuVdPzI2H8rEcgcsOUjwCPcBGAsYHg/s320/IMG_5797.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> (AN ASIDE)What a perfect gift to give to a loved one: a two year subscription and each month they would receive a Modiano novel... I know of only one other author like this: Cesar Aira who is also the author of many many short novels which instead of being searches for are rather concerned with the telling about something or other, a telling... my review from the LA Times of one of Aira's <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />novels will fill you in on this author: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-mar-01-ca-cesar-aira1-story.html. </span></div><div></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Here are the last two lines:</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;">A final reviewer’s sigh: the charm (if that word is still meaningful) of this scene -- so refreshing. And what a gift: to look forward to reading a new Aira novel from New Directions every year for the rest of one’s life. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"> Sadly, no one will pay me to write a review of Modiano's novel... so I write this post... but as with </span><i style="font-size: x-large;"><b>INVISIBLE INK</b></i><span style="font-size: x-large;">: "There are blanks in this life, white spaces you can detect if you open the "case file": a single sheet in sky-blue folder that has faded with time. That ancient sky blue has itself turned almost white. And the words "case file" are written across the middle of the folder. In black ink. This is my only remnant of the Hutte Detective Agency, the only trace of my passage in that old..."</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> Modiano's words invited me to open pages found when I was into my apartment in Manhattan, pages still held together by a metal spindle minus the covers.... there are some pages of prose in ink and then a list of names some with addresses but others without addresses:</span></div><div></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Teddy Disterduck</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Brian Mooney</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Clive Burland</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Gary Seaman</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Michael J. Peters </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">11357 35th Ave NE </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Seattle</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But I've already written about Michael J. Peters and copied out the three letters I had saved from him: which you can read if you goto July 28, 2015 abcofreading.blogspot.com.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I know why the names are there. Michael J. Peters was the last American I talked to Zagreb--we had met in Trieste--- before I took the train to Istanbul though I got off in Sofia (that began my Bulgarian life) and Michael was on his way to see the Cedars of Lebanon</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> Gary Seaman was met in Berlin, Spring 1965) and speaking German took me to East Berlin and then as guests of the FDJ we went to the DDR...he re-appeared in JUST LIKE THAT my novel of a beginning of the Sixties of the last century...</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;"> As to the other and even with these two names I wonder and will only wonder and not having won a Nobel prize and not having published now 25 novels in English translation...no one is lining up to get my whatever might result...and I know because of Modiano there is some value in looking back, though looking back is much frowned upon by the present moment unless one is engaged in some vulgar political polemic...</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-large;"> Finally I admire the novels of Modiano and I admire ever more to the point of jealousy of his having a reading public in France that has an appetite for such books. One must remember that in say 1920 just before the moments that will give the USA: Anderson, Hemingway, Faulkner, the population was 106 million and the average sale of a real literary book was a couple thousand copies while a century later with a population of 331 million a couple of thousand copies is still all that a very good literary author can hope for... </span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: x-large;">HERE ARE THE LETTERS FROM MICHAEL J. PETERS AND A REPLY:</span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: x-large;"><div> ONE</div><div> 10.18.68</div><div>Dear Tom</div><div> The fault of not continuing our, at best, broken line of correspondences is entirely mine. Your letter written in Dublin arrived here some months back. I shall pledge myself to more discipline in the future and hopefully purge myself of my shortcomings. Please forgive this horrible red [the letter is written in red ink] but it’s all I have. Perhaps it’s symbolic of many things--- but that would really be too heavy to write about!!</div><div> I haven’t written anyone since last spring when I wrote a Syrian girl about her body and how much her armpit had meant to me while suffering the adversities of Oriental life. In that particular letter I overextended myself, totally exceeding my fondest expectations and proving what I’ve always suspected; that words are nearer to me than pubic stubble. So anyway my letters comes someplace between Theŕeśe’s smooth belly and just plain words</div><div> My family forwarded your letter (I spent the first two months of summer north of Seattle) but I didn’t receive it until after your proposed induction date of 1 June. However I can vaguely recall being terribly drunk at about that date so I must have communed with you somehow. I’m confident that you did avoid the messy business in some manner--- hopefully it will end soon and civilization can redeem her soul.</div><div> ‘Merkan’ intelligence is beautifully characterized by Wallace, Nixon, and to a lesser extent H.H.H. The idea of a national political platform essentially based on beating Black-Americans into submission and giving young people haircuts is particularly appalling in the face the real issues: poverty, capitalist economy , etc. (Before I forget--- I’ve a stack of back issues to the ‘Helix’ Seattle’s underground. It’s established and heads above most such papers. Drop a card with your new address and I’ll forward them immediately!!)</div><div> A close friend wrote a few weeks ago from Big Sur about living and dying and he idea of somehow reaching a decision as to the validity of life. It was really quite abstract. Implicit was the suggestion that he might die soon by his own hand. I mention it only because I think about it at times and I’m sure you also do.</div><div> I’ve been reading a lot of late, mostly heavy academic books but some Gíde, Hesse and Greek tragedy too. In an attempt to make myself more comfortable I’ve change majors again--- transferring to the NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES & LITERATURE DEPT. was easy. It seems to be more a challenge. I think my field may eventually be Islamic art</div><div> At any rate, Tom—write me of your condition and of your wife. As I proposed--- a simple card with your address would be adequate. In return I promise a stack of ‘underground’ sheets’ as well as long coherent “think letter.”</div><div> Michael.</div><div><br /></div><div> TWO</div><div> SEATTLE November 68</div><div>Thomas-</div><div>I must say how pleasant it was to receive your letter. My blatant procrastination had left me worried that Elbie J. and the boys had grabbed you in London and somehow thrust you into the War Machine. Like all Crusades, ours kills, rapes, pillages and sloganizes in the name Good. If it weren’t so sad we could chuckle until the piss runs down our legs. But alas it is most serious and profitable!! By the way—did you see Chicago (Pig City, USA)?? A totally beautiful and predictable exercise in ‘Merikan’ democracy. Ah, for the good old days when pigs were pigs and not cops.</div><div>I’m glad to see you have returned to the States if for no other reason than to fill your belly with unescapable crud of ‘Merikan” civilization and your nostrils with the stench of our hypocrisy. Beware!! The spirit of 76 corrupts.</div><div>Can your believe Nixon?? Absolutely disgusting!! The man is a Turkey!! The imagination can easily see a new era of Brown Shirts and Black Boots. By the way—did the good people of Wisconsin erect a monument to good old Joe Mc. They must have; it would be only proper to have done so.</div><div>University continues--- it drones on and on with the rhythm of a palpitating whore. It’s a game that I’ve to pay for a while. Still I look for the warm lady dressed in brown, cloaked in darkness, but that’s a game I play with myself and hardly as significant as the scholarly thing with books. A friend who sits on the fence and gets despondent over things like spring mornings at the [Big] Sur and Leningrad snows wrote that but I had to destroy his letter because it caused me to think about things and that’s somewhere near the end. I like the idea of making love on dirty sheets in your Venetian slum house. I beg to be your guest paying or otherwise. Venice is good to those who know her., Where else the ecstasy of days measured in the downy armpits and the dry rasps of rending spirits. Which reminds me--- did you see the latest issue of NOVA? (It’s an English (British) mag. Of doubtful quality). It has an etching of Twiggy with an arm extended to God doing her toilette with a trusty Gillette super blue blade. God was it laughable!!!! They must have invented that splendid cover for me--- an exclusive thing designed solely to evoke a licentious chuckle from those who care about such trivia.</div><div>The sky never seems to be more than pale green, an opaque continuum that leaves some doubt about the exact moment when heaven meets mother earth. The November sky is for those who think about communion and black flags and tortured genius of sensitive people—</div><div>I hope you find some value in the copies of Helix---it’s our ersatz journalism draped in the filigree of OP-POP culture.</div><div>Well at least they try.</div><div>About your letters and things--- a catholic school. Really, Thomas!! A bastion of radical, irrational dogma. Can you make it?? I had hoped you could find something in Europe away from all the hassle of concerned parents. I’m looking closely at teaching in Roberts College, Istanbul my next trip over. However with an M.A. in NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES & LITERATURE it is will be a tight fit to meet their requirements. I understand they prefer English M.A.’s with teaching experience.</div><div>Of course I remain interested in your writing, anxiously awaiting an opportunity to read your work. What are the chances of publication?? If things get too slow, I could work for a printing at this end. If you’re truly satisfied with your novel, now in London, and assuming it is turned down, you might try Grove Press in NYC or Lighthouse Books in San Francisco.</div><div>I’ll shortly begin working for the Post Office in an attempt to work off my indebtedness--- I was forced to buy a car… V.W. and will in the next month rent a beach cottage on the Sound. I’ve to get away from my family they are stunting my personality. It will be limited freedom allowing me to be more eccentric in my existence. Somehow I’ll manage to keep up my studies at [University of] Washington while working. You should strongly consider visiting me or moving out here. We have the mountains and the sea and a radical political climate. (We were the only western state to tell Nixon to get screwed). Because of certain regrettable obligations I can’t truly consider Mexico this spring. But I’m sure you would find the Northwest rather enjoyable and my cottage would be yours and your wife’s We are provincial, but nevertheless very good people. The music is sweet as is the beer and the grass is abundant in the children’s pipes. I can confidently say there would be good times for all. Consider it, Tom. We could open a commune in the wastes of eastern Washington or in the nearby mountains.</div><div><br /></div><div>I couldn’t find the issue of the Evergreen Review that you requested but I did meet an interesting cunt that led me to several café-au-lait in the district and a near fuck. I’ll keep looking!</div><div>When I gather my wits I’ll write you a long ‘think’ letter… Should be around the New Year. Let me know of your plans, Tom, I want to share conversation and beer with you before time passes and things are lost. As for God’s blessing--- I’m sure he would if he could.,</div><div> MICHAEL</div><div><br /></div><div> THREE</div><div><br /></div><div> 29/11/68 [29/12/68]</div><div>Thomas McGonigle:</div><div>My bed has been empty for weeks and it’s cold. God it’s cold—the frost is fixed on the window till well past noon and my feet stay bare through it all like Ransom’s frozen parsnips in the snow. The hot bath at 2:00 brings me back; things focus much better with lemon scented suds soaking my crotch. Tom, I’m glad you have at least tenatively agreed to share the northern wilderness this summer—It’ll be good for both of us. My disordered mind needs company and you need inspiration before returning to ‘academia.’</div><div>Through the ordeal of autumn with the death and all I managed to rise above it all be placed on the “President’s List of Scholars” at the University. Janet said is showed how well adjusted and established I was--- I grabbed her tits in front of her mother, she cried, and now in their minds I’m not nearly as well adjusted as they had contemplated. An unfortunate outburst for all concerned but it was the easiest way to make my point. Anyway it’s all returned to the back of my foggy consciousness and it’ll not return until I rattle.</div><div>I read Donleavy’s Saddest Summer of Samuel S. last evening--- it was naturally impressive but not the same magnitude as The Ginger Man. Also have a short story copied ifn the bourgeois anti-sexuality monthly Playboy--- The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthasar B. but it is the same Dublin/Trinity thing and it will probably be bit as well received as the others. It seem better suited to those of us for whom the divine light of perversion has long since descended and dimmed. Anyway my shadow seems larger and my body-mind more lustful. Read this morning where a G-man (FBI) gunned down a hippie in Istanbul. Seems be less safe than before. It all sounds ultra-somthing.</div><div>They’ve taken all the plastic Christmas to the rubbish heap thank God. It becomes unbearable after a while. I’m always suspicious of prophets and apocalyptic visions anyway, it strikes me as a business man’s hoax. Can you imagine your wife telling you that your child was conceived in heaven let alone the Immaculate Conception---but I mustn’t offend the R.C.s and the lessers. Skepticism is my cross! To bear it on my slightly stopped shoulders for the sake…….?</div><div>I don’t feel like continuing , Tom. An inspiration is about to send me to the Conservatory to look at the tropical flora captive behind steamy windows. The idea of brightly blooming things behind and forced birth while even the worms are frozen in their slime is curious. I’ll post this then write within a few days, enclose any journals I’ve accumulated since the last and if you like talk about Phédra or send some of Doneavys that you’ve not read.</div><div>A prosperous new year full of goodies</div><div>MICHAEL</div><div> [I have no further letters from Michael]</div><div><br /></div><div>POST POST SOMETNING</div><div>In September, 1967 I was in Trieste staying at a youth hostel on the Adriatic with the Castle of Miramare to the right and the city to the left… I met Michael J. Peters there. I remember a drunken evening and being forced to stay during a heavy rainstorm in a seaside cabana with him and two South African girls as we were locked out of hostel which closed at 10PM. The next day Michael and I went to a hotel in the Via Diaz in Trieste, thinking of Joyce writing Ulysses in this city now hollowed out and no longer important… we took a ferry along to Pula in what was then Yugoslavia and then by train to Zagreb where I last saw Michael as he was leaving for Athens and on to look at the Cedars of Lebanon as he said while I was going to Belgrade and eventually to Sofia where my life changed when I walked up in the dark Hristo Botev Boulevard to eventually marry Lilia, the first girl I talked to, who was then minding her mother’s kiosk. We left Sofia just before Easter, 1968 for Dublin by way of Venice, Paris and London. In October we went to Menasha, Wisconsin where my parents were living in exile from Patchogue.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have a carbon of a letter I must have sent to Michael during this time written on the back of a mimeo of a history quiz I had given in the 7th grade class I was teaching at St. John’s Polish Catholic School in Menasha, Wisconsin. I began teaching in November after Lilia and I came from Dublin at the end of October. The teacher had quit and they needed someone desperately. I was a lousy letter writer but… </div><div><br /></div><div>Michael: Thank you ever so much for the Helixs they are a piece of food in this cold night that is lived through with little sign of the morn… could you send more if possible in fact any you don’t need?</div><div>The reverse is a test… it is all arbitrary and that but I had to find out if they knew any facts at all…these poor students already their minds are warped by the American death, they talk with glib fascination of the Vietnam death,, about the orgasm of killing (we have had deer hunting the last two weeks) have you this great festival? About the refined brutality of death that is American football American style…the previous teacher used to give them no homework if the Green Bay Packers won also no homework on days they might play. </div><div>About Joe McC his spirit was exorcised by Allen the G last year…the RCs have a mass over his grave each year hoping to bring back his body from the worms.</div><div>From the newspapers I could imagine that you should be able to find some nice pair of breasts to bury your nose in, I wouldn’t want the armpit of American civilization for the stubs might spear your tender,,,</div><div>The RCs quite good compared to other places and quite progressive very little control over what I do no outside exams in the 7th grade the religion is opening their eyes at least that is what it will be for me… I also teach American history. Monday they debate resolved THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE WAS NOT JUSTIFIED perhaps we could go on IT WAS ALL A WASTE OF TIME</div><div>You must realize these kids have never seen a slum, they have never seen a Black. I was going to write negro but that is taboo and I only use the b in class.</div><div>Are you able to work and study full time. I am going to back for night courses at the u in languages as anything serious up here would be a waste of time I just want the basics and any idiot can teach that</div><div>Are you developing the Lowery bit?</div><div>I think we will come in June if it is at all possible. I will get paid for that month and but won’t have to work</div><div>Spring in Mexico is impossible anyway there is no holiday given for that</div><div>The near fucks (Evergreen search) deserve head split open</div><div>In fact as I write this letter I have made my mind definite to come up on the hill with the beautiful long haired women all mingling and gentle no news now on novel but sent it to Hollins College in Virginia in the hopes of a full fellowship to do an MA in creative writing a nice gentle way of spending a year</div><div>Hollins is a girls undergraduate school with an integrated sexually grad school of 30. The main thing I just do is over awe that them with talent suck’em down socially and then I can sit and type to my heart’s content for a year.</div><div>Washington state radical even with Boeing?</div><div>You have a nice hand writing the symbol of good breeding that is more important in this world gone to seed, now or a few seconds I shall turn my upper class properly aristocratic</div><div> I might mention in this context that Mr Donleavy has a new book out</div><div>Roberts should not be difficult if you could pick up a methods course in teaching eng. as a foreign language what about the place in Beirut also there is an American college for some religion in Alexandria also working for the oil companies also the British Council has good jobs in Saudi Arabia $7600 plus travel insurance cheap housing etc etc you would save 5 at least</div><div>If you ever want anything from this place I will try and comply I will send the Milwaukee rad sheet if I can get some copies a trip to Mil is more than 100 miles</div><div>Swimming through the vomit is bad enough</div><div>Let me end there</div><div>Christmas we realize is coming,,,</div><div>I hope you find nice things in stocking but remember it’s what between that counts</div><div>And god bless your undertaking to introduce a note of necrophilia into this…</div><div> </div><div> FINALLY</div><div><br /></div><div>Michael J. Peters is alive in your reading of his letters. Or have I lurched too far from the example of William's trusting in his red wheelbarrow? Am I supposed to tell you what I make of Michael J. Peters in these letters. One last detail we exchanged books in Zagreb. I do not remember which book I gave him but I still have the small Grove Press paperback version of Alain Robbe-Grillet's THE VOYEUR</div><div> </div><div><br /></div></span></span></div><div><br /></div><p></p>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-64796557372874849362020-09-30T17:14:00.002-04:002020-09-30T17:25:39.507-04:00MEI SAVAGE BRADY <b> <span style="font-size: large;"> BY ACCIDENT more than 3 years after I had written this post and had not publish it, I have now published it. It lingered in the written but not published. Awaiting a day when I opened THE ADVENTUROUS HEART by Ernst Junger where I had put a printed out version of this post. Today I had taken down Junger's book as I had been reading in Blanchot's THE BOOK TO COME since in a new novel by Patrick Modiano he quotes a passage from Blanchot on Diary and Story where Junger's book was mentioned.</span></b><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"> To be arrogant: I learned about art by looking at it in galleries, in museums, in books, on walls of friends' houses, from gossip, from who knows where: just like Baudelaire I will claim. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"> I have never sat in art history classes which are nothing more than slide shows with an exam at the end testing your ability to ID pictures, worse than a police line up you could say.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"> ... and so I have come to writing about John Wesley, Andy Warhol, Pati Hill Martin Rameriz, Michael Madore, Howard Finster, Jeff Adams... </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"> So, I have come to the art of Mei Savage Brady: </span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2MbjPG8X-_w/WL7FbESS0DI/AAAAAAABAms/YVXtIno5yX4bwLyZGjVldbU0gLs_rGi-QCKgB/s1600/IMG_9377.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2MbjPG8X-_w/WL7FbESS0DI/AAAAAAABAms/YVXtIno5yX4bwLyZGjVldbU0gLs_rGi-QCKgB/s320/IMG_9377.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"> (a detail)</span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">photographed badly, framed badly yet given the ability now to present a picture captured by a cellphone I am willing to state these two pictures are Mei Savage Brady's claim to not be forgotten...</span><br />
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<u><span style="font-size: x-large;">NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN</span></u><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">but most likely to be as she did not really scratch the earth beyond my rescuing these pictures, beyond the memory of an aging daughter and in turn two grand children who... but in the available sources all the soil fully necessary to fill in her grave out there again and again on Long Island but before I get to the burial---these paintings, water colour... as if bandages across a still leaking wound... she was almost guilt ridden sending them to be as they did not look at all like her other work: realistic, commercial, well- executed, entered into "juried shows", these abstractions of a life that she did not lead, comfortable because of a successful husband (over-head garage doors, of all things, a nice guy..and she had unlimited money for materials, a grand studio, collection of books...and yet these pictures, send off to me, rolled up and never to be in handsome frames... how afflicted she was by classic allusions and then these bindings across the wound of her life--- that began as her family worked in a duck farm on Long Island and the language of Belorussia, not even Russian, but the overlooked center of both the whole of World War II and the Holocaust for good measure... but finally these two pictures with the signature of the artist as a sort of talesman: this student of Philip Evergood, who at one time lived in Patchogue before burning to death in Connecticut--what a fate for a teacher... but Mei was the only person I ever knew in Patchogue to describe herself as an artist but very quietly and she the mother of the girl who would have the mis-fortune to be my muse, Melinda, to be found looking into a locker on the second Floor of Patchogue High School in 1961-62--- so now you have the whole story, again... these corpse wrappings disguised as paintings...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The shovelfuls: <b>one</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Mei Savage Brady</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Noted North Fork artist and sculptor Mei Savage Brady </span><a href="http://www.archives.com/search/?cam=7879&tid=context_died" style="font-size: small;">died</a><span style="font-size: x-small;">Friday, Oct. 8, at her home in Mattituck. She was 78 years old. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ms. Brady's works were exhibited widely on Long Island and in New York City over the past 50 years. She was honored for her work by the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, the Hecksher Museum in Huntington, Guild Hall in East Hampton, the East End Arts Council in Riverhead and the Smithtown Arts Council. Several of her pieces are in the permanent collection of the Islip Art Museum. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Muts. Brady was </span><a href="http://www.archives.com/search/?cam=7878&tid=context_born" style="font-size: small;">born</a><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Jan. 1, 1921, to Anthony and Mary (Choprowski) Savage in the hamlet of Brookhaven on one of Long Island's first duck farms. She graduated from Bellport High School in 1938 and studied painting and drawing in New York City in the early 1940s. In the 1950s, artist Philip Evergood of East Patchogue became her mentor. She painted throughout her adult life, and her most recent work currently is on exhibit at the Clayton & Libertore Gallery in Bridgehampton. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">A spokesperson at the gallery described the Brady exhibit as a "new phase" of "semi-abstract" black and white paintings that had been completed since March of this year. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ms. Brady also was an active environmentalist. She was instrumental in the founding of the North Fork Preservation Society in the late 1960s and, later, the creation of the North Fork Environmental Council. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">A statement released by family members said: "All who knew and loved Mei Savage Brady will miss her endless energy, talent and generosity of spirit and mind."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Surviving are Ms. Brady's husband, Warren; her daughter, Melinda Munford Jaques of Water Mill; two sisters, Veronica Bergin of Westhampton and Helen Adams of Center Moriches; her brother, Benjamin Savage of Brookhaven; two granddaughters; and a stepgrandson. She was preceded in <a href="http://www.archives.com/search/?cam=7879&tid=context_death">death</a> by a brother, Frank Savage of Center Moriches.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">A funeral mass was celebrated Monday morning at Our Lady of Good Counsel R.C. Church in Mattituck with Father Peter Allen officiating. Burial followed at Cutchogue Cemetery. Arrangements were made by the F.J. McLaughlin Funeral Home of Riverhead.</span><br />
<span face=""open sans" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "trebuchet ms" , "arial" , "verdana" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #323232; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>
<span face=""open sans" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "trebuchet ms" , "arial" , "verdana" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #323232; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span><span face=""open sans" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "trebuchet ms" , "arial" , "verdana" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #323232; font-size: large;"><b> two</b></span><span face=""open sans" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "trebuchet ms" , "arial" , "verdana" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #323232; font-size: 12px;">Mei Brady painted and sculpted for sixty years. Her work is in permanent collection of Islip Art Museum, Long Island. She exhibited her work at the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton; Hecksher Art Museum, Huntington; and Guild Hall, East Hampton. </span><span face=""open sans" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "trebuchet ms" , "arial" , "verdana" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #323232; font-size: 12px;">She received an award in a juried show by Henry Geldzahler, former Curator, American Art at Metropoitan Museum of Art in NYC. </span><span face=""open sans" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "trebuchet ms" , "arial" , "verdana" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #323232; font-size: 12px;">Submitted by Melinda Jacques, who houses the collection of her mother.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b> three</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Goddess of the Sound. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">This is the weekend that Teima, goddess of Long Island Sound, will take to the seas. For the last five months Teima has been waiting to get her feet wet in the Mattituck studio of Mei Savage Brady, an artist. Ms. Brady created Teima, a figurehead, from a six-foot-long piece of bass wood </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">It was her husband, Warren's, idea that a figurehead was what his 43-foot Island Trader ketch Arabesque needed. "It's part of the lure of the sea," Mr. Brady said. So are mermaids, and figurehead carvers, it turned out, are just as elusive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"My husband looked for three years," Ms. Brady said. "He couldn't find anyone to make the figurehead. So finally I decided to do it." </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ms. Brady has painted, sculptured and carved, so making a figurehead combined her talents, she said. And because she displayed her work in East End galleries, why not also on East End waterways? Five extra coats of varnish were the only concession she made to Teima's marine backdrop. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Teima, goddess of Long Island Sound -- "the name just came to me," Ms. Brady said -- appears as a young blond woman in a multicolored short skirt. "Most figureheads are just the bust of a woman," Ms. Brady said. She decided to give her husband the whole body. But with a bit of excitement. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">The finished figurehead is bare-breasted. "I didn't intend it to be nude," Ms. Brady said. "I was working on the anatomy and I got so involved with it I thought it would be a shame to destroy it by covering it up." </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mr. Brady said that was just fine with him.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> four</span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: xx-small;">Art; SURPRISES AT PARRISH SHOW </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; font-size: xx-small;">By HELEN A. HARRISON </span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; font-size: xx-small;">Published: December 13, 1981... </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">to the consternation of some artists, no firstplace award was made. The juror, Dore Ashton, a well-known writer on modern art who is a professor of art history at Cooper Union, instead picked seven artists for special mention, and the museum has opted for a group exhibition of their work next fall.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Mei Savage Brady's ''Shut the Mountain Door'' is also powerful, but makes its impact with ambiguity, appearing to alternate between two and three dimensions and even seeming to radiate an inner light from beneath its Lucite surface.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"> REBUTTAL </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Fully accepting the verdict of disappearance while this person possessed of his eyes and his typing these sentences the ability to urge other eyes, other words remains for a moment, but for not that long as soon enough, soon enough</span><br />
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<br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-86886750152309695672020-09-21T11:07:00.002-04:002020-09-21T11:08:31.324-04:00THE BULGARIAN PSYCHIATRIST (pages)<p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-style: italic;">For many years I have been writing a book about four men I contained in a book </b>NOTHING DOING. These are some pages...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>George has been drinking again and I have been listening to him in The Grass Roots. <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>One of those nights when no one we knew came it. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It had been a long day with my patients. I am old fashioned. They become part of my life even though I have them out there as I am supposed to. But how to remain human, isn't that all anyone can ask for…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> Once one of them, even back in Bulgaria, you know who I mean, became human for a moment and said to me, very quickly as we walked near Sveta Nedelya : just leave, or maybe it would be better to catch it exactly: just go away, he said</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This man didn't have to say anything more. It was all he was capable of. I had helped him with his son who was very sick. I won't tell you who he was. It doesn’t matter but I knew that he was speaking for them. I had had helped some of them when they had no one else to turn to: for some reason they understood that nothing else worked.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>George is talking about Bulgaria, a Bulgaria that no longer exists and even then it did not exist or at least people did not see it or even know it might exist. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I am still sometimes in Bulgaria. You can not take a language out of the brain. A new language does not replace the old language. Bulgaria under the communism: people look at me when I say that: none of that exists except in books.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But in my head, I want to say and I know they are holding back from saying: poor man. </span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>45</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I should tell you--- like I told George--- about going into <b>The Guardian </b>office in London having come back from Sofia and trying to talk about the Freedom Village that was set up in front of the Communist Party building in the summer of 1990. I did not know how to make it vivid to these English people. They had a man in Bulgaria. They did not want another voice. One voice was enough and he had his two or three inches somewhere in the paper. No one that summer, that hottest summer on record in England, wanted to know about a Freedom Village in Bulgaria. It sounded like an American resort filled with people waving Bibles and shotguns, Clare told me and everybody in England knew enough about Bulgaria. I had known Clare for twenty years. That didn’t help. At all. She thought I was making it up and I wasn't trained to look at things like their man in Bulgaria.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And George embarrassed me by saying, you understand this Bulgaria, all these Bulgarias, without speaking the language. You are as powerless as all this implies and is understood. No one in the West will care what you have to say. No one in Bulgaria will understand what you are saying.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>45</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If they find you still in Bulgaria, this man was telling me, you would be sent to the psychotic ward, George was saying. That is how I was to understand this man's words: just go away. I understood what they meant: just go away. They didn’t need to say anything more. If I did not understand what they were saying they had a place for me in one of their hospitals…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>45</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">To try to understand driving across the Air Force range--- I should have looked carefully at the map, the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range--- with a road like a wire bisecting it on the way to Barstow--- this time--- and George nudging aside the man in Ajo who I see walking into a diner in a small strip mall just outside… </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>though George is going to talk about violent death also: torture, beatings, and how a man put on a dead man's clothes as if he always belonged in that clothing: without the slightest twinge of guilt: something that is not in his or their vocabulary… but this man in Ajo… where has he gotten to? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Can I pretend I knocked on the door where he was staying or can I write, his car was not there in the morning? Probably on his way up to Phoenix and then to get the lead out as he had to be in Chloride before it got dark. His wife was waiting for him and the child was going to need a lot of love, and he would curl his lip as if anyone knew what the phrase: she will need a lot of love.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>45</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Forget the local colour, George is saying. You are not some guy stuck in a pig hole in the countryside. I want you to move me about in your mind. I want not to be fixed like some dead bug tacked to an exhibit wall. I was happy, every day I was happy to see the new buildings going up in New York--- do you remember where we lived in Brooklyn? None of it is there anymore. The landlord moved to Florida. The building was torn down and no one knows what it looked like. That is not something to mourn, at all. A person can always go to Paris to see things that stay the way they were. Every city is different. People get confused when they try to criticize a city with the standards of another city. It is a way to go crazy. You have to see what is in front of your face, first. You go crazy if you can not look and see what is really there… never forget that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>45</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">So throw in the picture from that cemetery. A moment before the plastic flowers get blown apart to become burial rubbish against the barbed wire fence. Make sure you mention the birthday candles arranged in the earth but not lit. To be lit by lightning, you can suppose…memorial rubbish for someone going to a shop, buying, carrying, leaving behind, blown away… idle sentimentality, poor man.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cO_FneOWLrI/X2jAEf3oqDI/AAAAAAABx1A/_7klQPZvbaob-jCRiGH-azbtkKKfObzgwCPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_5768.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cO_FneOWLrI/X2jAEf3oqDI/AAAAAAABx1A/_7klQPZvbaob-jCRiGH-azbtkKKfObzgwCPcBGAsYHg/s320/IMG_5768.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large; text-align: left;"> You told me once of walking around in Dublin and wanting to almost cry because it was all so painful… to have admitted that is sufficient. No one walks around in New York talking: do you remember when… the city is a wonderful drug wiping itself clear and wipes away those thoughts from the people who find themselves living here. And it’s something to be proud of, not scorned like some pretend. When I go Upstate Katya's sister has a photo book of OLDE NEW YORK. She bought it because she thought she would impress me with her new found interest in history. I wanted to tell her what Ed said in the Grass Roots: Francis Bacon liked old photographs of masses of people because all the people in the photographs were dead, now, and I am alive looking at them. </span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>45</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">While George did not know the novels of Gerhard Roth--- it is a permanent regret we were not able to talk about them--- George did tell me he had read two books by Max Frisch: Man in the Holocene and I'm not Stiller. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He did not want to forget his German. While no longer having a desire to go to Germany the language allowed him to think, he said. Only if you know German could you know what I am trying to say. It is not that German is better than English but English is the language of the streets, of this bar, of the television, the language my patients speak to me, the language my children use and which I talk to them in. German is my other language. The language took me out of Bulgaria even during the Communism. I have told you all of that and even in East Germany the language, though damaged by the communism, could not have been hurt at its center which even resisted the Nazis contrary to what some would have you believe. People do not lose everything and yet rebuilt everything if there is nothing at the center. That is a mystery, George would say. I wonder if everything was wiped out in the United States if it could all be re-built. To think of the United States broken into pieces and then divided into two competing systems and then re-united! Americans do not know what it is means to lose. Bulgarians only know about loss and it is nothing to be proud of, nothing is gained from the experience. Germany is different, in some way, and it drives some people crazy but they can't do anything about it.</span></p><div><br /></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-84180274182624711462020-08-04T12:33:00.033-04:002020-08-04T12:56:29.269-04:00IN SOFIA, BULGARIA SUMMER 1990<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">30 years ago I was living in Summertown, Oxford, England with Ruth and our daughter Elizabeth who was two and half. Ruth's mother came for a visit and I went to Sofia for a week.</span><div><font face=""><span style="font-size: 26.6667px;"><br /></span></font><div><font face=""><span style="font-size: 26.6667px;"><b><i>BEFORE. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-udKbBYv30kA/XymM9imZ2mI/AAAAAAABwvM/SFRLvr-oLUskBj_k1D_eV36QTnFLKj8YwCPcBGAsYHg/s3939/IMG_5613.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2954" data-original-width="3939" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-udKbBYv30kA/XymM9imZ2mI/AAAAAAABwvM/SFRLvr-oLUskBj_k1D_eV36QTnFLKj8YwCPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5613.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YyR60aJZPQ8/XymM9qJ0KPI/AAAAAAABwvM/iNSUW3N72Z87LZXdq8kUZzyeI4cfQ-uHQCPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_5612.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YyR60aJZPQ8/XymM9qJ0KPI/AAAAAAABwvM/iNSUW3N72Z87LZXdq8kUZzyeI4cfQ-uHQCPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5612.HEIC" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0UM03vr1Rsg/XymM9k9LFVI/AAAAAAABwvM/XdoWhdd0fCcmWqBeyBpGH9LK4NXn9PZCACPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_5611.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0UM03vr1Rsg/XymM9k9LFVI/AAAAAAABwvM/XdoWhdd0fCcmWqBeyBpGH9LK4NXn9PZCACPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5611.HEIC" /></a></div><br /></i></b><br /></span></font><div><font face=""><span style="font-size: 26.6667px;">A PREFACE: </span></font></div><div><font face=""><span style="font-size: 26.6667px;"><br /></span></font></div><div><font face=""><span style="font-size: 26.6667px;"> reality always tempers </span></font></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">I had been in Bulgaria six years before when the fortieth anniversary of 9 September 1944 was being prepared to be celebrated.</span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;"> </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">Of course I knew that things had changed in the previous year and I wanted to see what was going on.</span><br />
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<br /><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">In the weeks before going to Sofia I had been reading in the near medieval quiet of the Duke Humfrey's library of the Bodleian, the little pocket journals of James Thomson BV as I was wanting to imagine</span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;"> </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">his life--- the life of the man who had written "The City of Dreadful Night" the single greatest poem to come out of Victorian England--- I noted in a journal: </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;"> </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">Dr. Karl Marx and his address as both men sat in the same room in the British Library... it is known that Marx approved of Thomson's translations of Heine... but </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;"> </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">that is all...</span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;"> James Thomson has been on my mind now for more than 50 years... i have a long book about him FORGET THE FUTURE: a section was published in BOMB </span><a href="https://bombmagazine.org/articles/an-ending/">https://bombmagazine.org/articles/an-ending/</a> <br />
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">I went by way of Zurich and arrived at Sofia airport which was dark inside even though it was the afternoon... no real passport control...a brief glance at the passport and waved on through...so unlike previous times... and many people yelling taxi taxi taxi... the first change from 1984, and the last time I will mention that word, change.</span><br />
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<br /><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">I was met by Philip Dimitrov and his wife Ellie.</span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;"> </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">In 1984 I had brought the collected works of Freud to Philip as a gift from his friend George Kamen, who was then living in exile in New York.</span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;"> </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">Back in 1984 Philip was a young lawyer and doing group therapy inspired by the work of George who had introduced the idea to Bulgaria and then was forced to flee Bulgaria... it was said he had treated the child of someone on the central committee who was seriously mentally unwell: talk therapy was taboo and George was told it would be wise if he ... as if such a treatment became known to other members of .... there were always these pauses...but this report is not about George but about this moment in Sofia in July... I stayed in the apartment of Philip's parents in one of the housing complexes not distant from the centre:</span><br />
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<span><font size="6">People took pride in the interiors of their apartments, it was said, </font></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><font size="6"><br /></font></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><font size="6"><br /></font></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEildEr_uRNTONcqYt66PLv1uAUHQNIG5Y7ckyqMca4_hF21J1lY_d6Ysu9JrZGVYLrLujAlyTbefXop29VLbwDvQexe-8sHtcVtEM7WpPrVn70zYAIJSz0cSSr4tFhrj96YsENAta_yLBa_/s3801/IMG_5591.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2850" data-original-width="3801" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEildEr_uRNTONcqYt66PLv1uAUHQNIG5Y7ckyqMca4_hF21J1lY_d6Ysu9JrZGVYLrLujAlyTbefXop29VLbwDvQexe-8sHtcVtEM7WpPrVn70zYAIJSz0cSSr4tFhrj96YsENAta_yLBa_/s640/IMG_5591.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><font size="6"><br /></font></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">but all the public spaces about the buildings were haphazardly cared for, as they were public property and rarely would foreign people venture into such housing complexes...people freely getting together to improve a public space was unheard of and in fact it was inconceivable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 26.6667px;">The week went away very quickly. Between the archeology museum and the great imposing building of the Communist Party. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px;">was a broad avenue and an open space--- on the other side of the mausoleum and the national bank building, was a space filled with tents and each tent seemed to represent a particular political party, religious group or interest group or...</span><br />
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<br /><font size="6">TALK TALK TALK TALK</font><br /><br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CncoLRy-2Hs/XyCnuxmQHBI/AAAAAAABwk4/zGmyPNnIRfoUTIUOiGcHx2fU4GZlJ_CWgCPcBGAsYHg/s1600/IMG_5529.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CncoLRy-2Hs/XyCnuxmQHBI/AAAAAAABwk4/zGmyPNnIRfoUTIUOiGcHx2fU4GZlJ_CWgCPcBGAsYHg/s320/IMG_5529.HEIC" width="320" /></a><br />
<font size="6"><br />The strangest aspect was the appearance of buttons with photographs of Simeon on them--- the now grown-up former Tsar who had been exiled by the communists after 1944. He had been educated in America and lived in Spain. I saw people wearing buttons with his image and the image of his father, Boris.</font><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pabk7PFeZ7s/Xyl591IzdGI/AAAAAAABwsw/8b6HwaX_FNgKH7IyKb0xdx_tjl9u48rgACPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_5593.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pabk7PFeZ7s/Xyl591IzdGI/AAAAAAABwsw/8b6HwaX_FNgKH7IyKb0xdx_tjl9u48rgACPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5593.HEIC" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><font size="6"><br /></font></div><div><font size="6">STUFF </font></div><div><font size="6"> STUFF </font></div><div><font size="6"> STUFF </font></div><div><font size="6"><br /></font></div><div><font size="6"> MADE VISIBLE</font></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3_TsMnfDN08/Xyl5916OAuI/AAAAAAABwsw/Be4lkkI90RchjNo9w5SpHm5SHX2J0YwsgCPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_5594.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3_TsMnfDN08/Xyl5916OAuI/AAAAAAABwsw/Be4lkkI90RchjNo9w5SpHm5SHX2J0YwsgCPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5594.HEIC" /></a></div><br /><div><font size="6"><br /></font></div><div><font size="6">Memory is too often just a bag of stuff...people were playing guitars, looking at screens of one sort or another: conversation and people moved from one tent area to the next... people knew Philip and he was constantly being approached; constant brief conversations... all of this was in no way how it had been even 6 years before... </font><br />
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Behind our back if we are looking at the encampment is what was the mausoleum:</font><br />
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<font size="6"><br />but of course before the recent events other sorts of gatherings... at one time school children were brought to the mausoleum to view the embalmed body of Georgi Dimitrov and I too had been there a number of times...wonderful air-conditioning and if you lingered you would feel the finger of a guard in the center of your back to move you along... of course I had seen other bodies on display in funeral parolors, including my own parents...</font><br />
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<font size="6">Before, no one went willingly to see the corpse of Dimitrov... one paraded by on official occasions with one's group--though it was NOT REQUIRED but expected..... and if you wanted something or needed a signature an absence might be noted or not noted...</font></div><div><font size="6"><br /></font>
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And heaps of stuff... and conversation.... normally---well, when I was here in 1984 and so long ago as 1967 and later in the 70s. no one lingered... one walked quickly in this area...</font></div><div><font size="6"><br /></font></div><div><font size="6">TALK<br /></font>
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<br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><font size="6">Here I should insert a photograph from the once upon a time when the leadership of The Peaople's Republic of Bulgaria stood on this perch waving to the crowds marching by</font></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2dTQ2WxEPwU/XyCnu5qTPfI/AAAAAAABwk4/wWUSTEbotksxWb1L_uaJGqSTYbUqcDD5wCPcBGAsYHg/s1600/IMG_5538.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2dTQ2WxEPwU/XyCnu5qTPfI/AAAAAAABwk4/wWUSTEbotksxWb1L_uaJGqSTYbUqcDD5wCPcBGAsYHg/s320/IMG_5538.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div>
<font size="6">A Bulgarian of a certain age could recite the string of adjectives and nouns that would be pressed into service to describe the person whose hand wrote these letters. And a person familiar with the movies of Eisenstein might appreciate the lettering on this shop front</font></div><div><font size="6"><br /></font></div><div><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6dmmKRY712Q/XyCnu2KT1NI/AAAAAAABwk4/tRzYk-03Q-s8MOQxFice_seeQkhUylIaQCPcBGAsYHg/s1600/IMG_5536.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6dmmKRY712Q/XyCnu2KT1NI/AAAAAAABwk4/tRzYk-03Q-s8MOQxFice_seeQkhUylIaQCPcBGAsYHg/s320/IMG_5536.HEIC" width="320" /></a><font size="6"><br /></font>
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<font size="6">Here I need only one word</font></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><font size="6"><br /></font></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0iqhT_ZhHL8/XyCnuzAVgkI/AAAAAAABwk4/N-JIviR00wc7JcKV8RYLnXYifnaICuUbwCPcBGAsYHg/s1600/IMG_5532.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0iqhT_ZhHL8/XyCnuzAVgkI/AAAAAAABwk4/N-JIviR00wc7JcKV8RYLnXYifnaICuUbwCPcBGAsYHg/s320/IMG_5532.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div>
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the end or an end</font></div><div><font size="6"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDbi1aV5LmrIR0n_L19jgYwi04q264lPt6AEEtv4FFKwIcBJAe_VVjg_cJo0qVz0kYE8mnY3h7VDEDtwfCjHjMAdMr5VsDnI4S_DuCEYwb37DvjgTCEEyWUIMl5oaqP1xLv0oB_XCNenzW/s3723/IMG_5597.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2792" data-original-width="3723" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDbi1aV5LmrIR0n_L19jgYwi04q264lPt6AEEtv4FFKwIcBJAe_VVjg_cJo0qVz0kYE8mnY3h7VDEDtwfCjHjMAdMr5VsDnI4S_DuCEYwb37DvjgTCEEyWUIMl5oaqP1xLv0oB_XCNenzW/s640/IMG_5597.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bYAxV9_T0bI/Xyl8fStDYyI/AAAAAAABwtc/RP-ldnqqg_oZ7XcCbxFa_x9IIwjsDXGrwCPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_5595.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bYAxV9_T0bI/Xyl8fStDYyI/AAAAAAABwtc/RP-ldnqqg_oZ7XcCbxFa_x9IIwjsDXGrwCPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5595.HEIC" /></a></div><div><font size="6"><br /></font></div><div><font size="6">an end</font></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UL94VTpx-f0/Xyl8faETFMI/AAAAAAABwtc/4DgE4KiVmp4TKFCzZEU7mhIxl9Z7OgN-ACPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_5599.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UL94VTpx-f0/Xyl8faETFMI/AAAAAAABwtc/4DgE4KiVmp4TKFCzZEU7mhIxl9Z7OgN-ACPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5599.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div><font size="6"><br /></font></div>or the way it was</font></div><div><font size="6"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLQRsNsm8pScz_nj4Gg77bw675Iw1UVYzTotpykZWgmXMw0VBhyGlWWZn1zKGbi32XpmbB5CWFJ7Lf4W8eGjvli0LFdxstvBRZj8r01mLoDjclSjSZzjoZeKUbKvKnYgl8TV7-P8-7qDPR/s4032/IMG_5603.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLQRsNsm8pScz_nj4Gg77bw675Iw1UVYzTotpykZWgmXMw0VBhyGlWWZn1zKGbi32XpmbB5CWFJ7Lf4W8eGjvli0LFdxstvBRZj8r01mLoDjclSjSZzjoZeKUbKvKnYgl8TV7-P8-7qDPR/s640/IMG_5603.HEIC" /></a></div></font></div><div><font size="6"><br /></font></div><div><font size="6"> to be more---- 2020--- just heaps of photos... time...1984... 1993...</font></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy4ujtA6cZu_tQMTxZ4iPjbm7273T-ahk6F_tGw9HeOQ9VMFe-8PU54pquA728ClUh7bAKPs40QKYBsHI1QA7tpwYH23dCia5_QMelClBo1hG9F3qoX6ZhojwmUoSLba6AOmVcSRMUOYlD/s3868/IMG_5608.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2901" data-original-width="3868" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy4ujtA6cZu_tQMTxZ4iPjbm7273T-ahk6F_tGw9HeOQ9VMFe-8PU54pquA728ClUh7bAKPs40QKYBsHI1QA7tpwYH23dCia5_QMelClBo1hG9F3qoX6ZhojwmUoSLba6AOmVcSRMUOYlD/s640/IMG_5608.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><font size="6">one wonders what this guy is doing 36 years later...</font></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MqAHhr6Tqq8/XymCi9w-1yI/AAAAAAABwuA/G3vTMXvb2WYoyYDOYP8Giaxc98-cK6P8wCPcBGAsYHg/s3913/IMG_5607.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2934" data-original-width="3913" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MqAHhr6Tqq8/XymCi9w-1yI/AAAAAAABwuA/G3vTMXvb2WYoyYDOYP8Giaxc98-cK6P8wCPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5607.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MnsLF1hChuQ/XymCi9TGRsI/AAAAAAABwuA/CPp1tfvjJborRhvQPMfSAAtcHg03bKRTwCPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_5609.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MnsLF1hChuQ/XymCi9TGRsI/AAAAAAABwuA/CPp1tfvjJborRhvQPMfSAAtcHg03bKRTwCPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5609.HEIC" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vj-yXqRP1Ac/XymCi4SpCxI/AAAAAAABwuA/kfoEOrcaVDAoxNpNpc_jCM5agIfTwC_lgCPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_5606.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vj-yXqRP1Ac/XymCi4SpCxI/AAAAAAABwuA/kfoEOrcaVDAoxNpNpc_jCM5agIfTwC_lgCPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5606.HEIC" /></a></div><font size="6"><br /></font></div><div><font size="6">Across the way from the talking talking talking was another sort of talking: the club of the Bulgarian Socialist party formrly the Bulgarian Communist Party</font></div><div><font size="6"><br /></font></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-exsy75SImDY/XymETqfKS0I/AAAAAAABwuU/pvhv54TStWIT6ECRIv2zJ_e_2Ciq8hQuACPcBGAsYHg/s3694/IMG_5528.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2770" data-original-width="3694" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-exsy75SImDY/XymETqfKS0I/AAAAAAABwuU/pvhv54TStWIT6ECRIv2zJ_e_2Ciq8hQuACPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5528.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><font size="6">and of course people strolling by, by by, by...</font></div><div><font size="6"><br /></font></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WS_kfsXuoGg/XymE8cO84bI/AAAAAAABwug/CcGckjqBFVkQy8r1dAf2FM754PcLL7DUQCPcBGAsYHg/s4032/IMG_5610.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WS_kfsXuoGg/XymE8cO84bI/AAAAAAABwug/CcGckjqBFVkQy8r1dAf2FM754PcLL7DUQCPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5610.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><font size="6"><br /></font>
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<div><br /></div><div><font size="6">I WAS GOING TO END THERE BUT OF COURSE THAT WOULD BE CHEATING, </font></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YR6NF6zAMI0/XymKaCL0zwI/AAAAAAABwu0/MJVkSRhQG0opUHkbCBJvgJpDfEuPIpP-QCPcBGAsYHg/s3891/IMG_5575.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2918" data-original-width="3891" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YR6NF6zAMI0/XymKaCL0zwI/AAAAAAABwu0/MJVkSRhQG0opUHkbCBJvgJpDfEuPIpP-QCPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5575.HEIC" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gBG_Y4ugyW4/XymKaNTdMOI/AAAAAAABwu0/6btPWuV_vTA6znmg9KNJNEN8tW3E_0A6ACPcBGAsYHg/s3824/IMG_5540.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3824" data-original-width="2866" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gBG_Y4ugyW4/XymKaNTdMOI/AAAAAAABwu0/6btPWuV_vTA6znmg9KNJNEN8tW3E_0A6ACPcBGAsYHg/s640/IMG_5540.HEIC" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 20pt; line-height: 53.3333px;">6- So to see for myself what was going on. I won't rehearse the political/historical narrative. It was a busy week with an over-night trip to Veliko Tarnovo and Targovishte. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 20pt; line-height: 53.3333px;">7- what remains: a tent city by the archeology museum across from the former communist party headquarters, people playing guitars..while the communists blasted heavy metal music from their club in the former headquarters... <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 20pt; line-height: 53.3333px;">8- I made lists. Everything seemed to be uncertain. Of course I could not follow much of it....talking always to mayself and the sheer shock at being in a place in whuich everythig that seemed to be eternal when I first was in Sofia in 1967 was while still there was in a sense not there though hysically still present. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div></div></div></div></div>Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-36695628787506003232020-07-20T19:38:00.003-04:002020-07-22T07:27:05.719-04:00JACK WESLEY AND FRANZ KLINE from WESLEY by Thomas McGonigle<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 20pt; line-height: 53.3333px;"> From my Wesley book:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26pt; line-height: 69.3333px;">Jack Wesley and Franz Kline<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 26pt; line-height: 69.3333px;"> (another visit)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 20pt; line-height: 53.3333px;">And we are talking about age and I am telling him I feel old at being 70 on the way to 71 and he is saying I don’t know how old I am and I am saying you are on the way to 87 and as I am saying this I tell him because you don’t want to be 86 and he says in the post office that was what they marked on a parcel that is to be destroyed and in the bar it means you got thrown out and in Ireland I am saying they use the phrase: you’re barred and I knew a man who was barred for being boring and Jack says that must have been awful to be called boring and not to be allowed into a bar, it isn’t so bad if you get as you say barred for being drunk or throwing things or getting into a fight which are all normal things going on in bars all the time and imagine how he must feel being barred as you say for being boring… and everyone always knows about something like this I say and you are probably right Jack says about that as people talk and I am asking Jack if he misses drawing and he says not really-----there is a pause with the obvious expectation----- but he is saying here I am in this apartment and it is very nice and I don’t know why I am here: I think I must be getting away with something: <b>I’m getting away with something</b> he says again and I am confessing in some way in response to the silence--- which is a too grand of a word I say--- but it feels like it, when certain names are used when sometimes talking about art: I have never understood Picasso or Braque’s work--- and Jack says I don’t know--- people are always talking about them so I guess they knew what they were doing or people were saying they knew what they were doing but I never talked about them because no one ever asked me about them but it could have been because of the people I knew and I say the only painter I ever heard you talk about was Franz Kline and he says I don’t remember and I said it had nothing to do with the white and black paintings or how Kline thought the white part was the most important part but no one ever talked about the white part and only saw the black parts of his paintings which he never understood but you were telling me about being in the Cedar Tavern and he gave you some napkins and even signed them… he had been marking them up with a pen or something and it was just the two of you that night because most times he was always surrounded by all these people and you didn’t know what to talk about and here he was by himself and you were sitting next to him and he pushed these across to you and then he took them back ad scrawled his name on them but didn’t say why he was doing this and you shoved them into your pocket and then sometime in the 60s you needed money so you had to sell them as you didn’t have any need for napkins signed by Franz Kline… so he was the only painter I ever heard you talk about, and Jack is saying if you say so and Rudy is in the room as it is probably time for me to be going and Jack is not wanting to stand up and I am saying you can change your t-shirt now and I am saying Piret my wife is always telling me I dribble all the time and that is what men do they dribble all the time here there and everywhere and on anything but always always on their clean white t-shirts for sure their t-shirts, it’s something women learn to put up with, she says, if they want to be around a man while Jack is saying there’s another number I’m really afraid of: six, it’s such an incomplete sort of number and then in the movies they are always deep-sixing something or other while Rudy is tapping the back of Jack’s chair, you have to take a piss Jack, he says and then the exercise person is coming, this is a busy day and Jack is saying, I have to take a piss and while it is hard for him to get out of the chair he still saying, six and getting deep-sixed, that is what I am afraid of : they’re going to put an 86 on my forehead and then deep-sixing me out the window or into the toilet---<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 20pt; line-height: 53.3333px;">Jack, you’re so funny, Rudy says, and I watch Jack grab the walker—as he is pushing himself up from the chair and he begins to walk saying they were always deep-sixing things in the Navy movies during the war and I am always scared of being deep-sixed as you say and you never know when they are going to put an 86 on your head and then deep-six you out the window but I don’t think they would put me down the toilet as it would be better to put me out the window… at the door to the toilet Jack takes his hand off the walker and I shake it and we have a lot to talk about the next time I am saying and he is saying I am glad you came to visit…I hope you will come again…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 20pt; line-height: 53.3333px;">copyright 2020 Thomas McGonigle</span></div>
Thomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.com0