Hermosa Beach cont.
z..
in the town of Claremont after looking in at Pomona College I bought in Second Story Books--- a very good second hand bookshop owned by a young man who says he did not go to any college but who from his conversation seemed more literate, more involved with the reality of books than 90% of college and university English professors and who having read all the previous books of Alexander Theroux, especially taken by DARCONVILLE'S CAT--- was pleased to be stocking Theroux's new novel LAURA WARHOLA... which is already in the top three best books of all of 2008--- something you would not know from the stupid second rate review in the NYTimes by a fellow who was many months ahead of time bragging in the basement of the Strand Bookstore in NYC that he had panned the book and who by his conversation revealed that he simply was unaware of AT's work and being possessed of a pedestrian mind was incapable of reviewing such a novel: in fact if he even read the novel is probably a question that might be worth perusing.
The TLS gave AT's novel a full page review and there the reviewer revealed a close understanding of Theroux work and easily grasped the delicious difficulty of the novel and how because of the shadow it casts...
easily distracted by these irritations that sliver from the NYTimes... and like so many other infiltrations from the East--- driving to Pomona College you have to cross Yale and Harvard Streets--- reminding one of the terrible power these colleges have in spite of the fact that they are mere training schools for the most part and to try to imagine them in PAUL GOODMAN'S phrase, as COMMUNITY OF SCHOLARS--- you get my point: Pomona seems the ideal size for a college: 900 some students... orange trees growing outside the dorm rooms... a many million volume library...
yes, at SECOND STORY i bought three books: THE CALIFORNIA DESERTS by Edmund C. Jaeger
PARIS PEASANT by Louis Aragon in the Exact Change Press edition ( Aragon's only real book as afterwards he gave himself over to the worship of Stalin)
THE DIAMONDS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA AND OTHER STORIES by Desmond Hogan (to replace an earlier copy that had become water damaged)
y...
before going to Claremont I was at the Nixon Library and Presidential museum... thoughtful people know that Nixon is the only American president of the Twentieth Century who would have interested Shakespeare...
again, i was reminded of how trivial Kennedy seemed when placed side by side with Nixon in those famous debates: the smirking, hair caressing Kennedy was again in evidence on a television screen, complete with that aura of demanding unearned entitlement
but it is what one sees at the end of the tour that interested me: a re-creation of the last study of Nixon's in his residence in New Jersey on April 18, 1994. Books are arranged on his desk that one can only assume--- unless it is all a sad charade--- were being read, looked into, what-have-you: Democracy and Leadership by Irving Babbitt, Flaubert by Henri Troyat, Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche (in the Penguin paperback edition)... on a shelf to the right a book on Carl Schmitt by Paul Gottfried...
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
i was reminded: Nixon established the EPA in the face of--- as they say in the street--- fierce Democratic opposition---
i did buy a t-shirt celebrating Nixon's bowling ability...
the Nixon grave site is very close to the actual modest house he was born in midst what was once an orange grove...
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
HERMOSA BEACH, CAMILO JOSE CELA, THE BLACK KISS, A PATCHOGIAN, THE GETTY VILLA
Hermosa Beach.
m-
i will miss next week's
Hermosa Beach Historical Society presents a night of "beat" poetry at the HBHS Museum, 710 Pier Avenue, celebrating the Beatnik movement in So Cal with Dr. Colin Campbell. 4:30 p.m.; Bob Hare, founder of the Insomniac, at 6:30, followed by poetry readings, live music, exhibits, refreshments and more.
I wonder about: "and more."
n-
at the house here we watched SUNSET BOULEVARD.
I hope everyone has seen the movie.
One detail, Norma Desmond is fifty years old.
Her career is over and done with.
Made in 1950 it is still the best movie about the reality of Hollywood.
o-
on the side of the Hermosa Beach Community Center,the former junior high school,
WHERE THERE IS NO VISION THE PEOPLE PERISH
p-
in Vons supermarket Liza made me a California Dreamin' sandwich. She had to follow the directions from a posted sign as she had forgotten how to make it since she had been off work for some time recuperating from breaking her Achilles tendon. She had come to California from West 112th Street in Manhattan because her brother and father were body builders.
q-
we went to visit at her studio in a reclaimed former hangar at the Santa Monica Airport a Patchogian artist long resident in California. Patti M(then. She gave me a hardcover version of a recent gallery show---done with Minx B--- RIPE, A Collection of Passionate Poetry and Pears:
Dedicated to the Creative Force in each and ever one of us sourcing
our infinite capacity for passionate self-expression.
On the back of the book:
Ripe, a collection of Passionate Poetry and Pears is a compilation of recent poems and paintings by these two artists. Their decision to collaborate on this book was born from their deep friendship and mutual admiration. They have found both the process and the result satisfying and feel honored to be able to share themselves on the world through these pages.
Patti M told us she is now working on a series of "water lily" paintings.
r-
after our visit to the Patchogian artist Patti M we drove up to the Getty Villa in Malibu. Rain had threatened earlier in the day. A sign was posted near the parking lot telling visitors they need not bring an umbrella. We discovered the museum had thoughtfully placed umbrella stands at convenient places through out the museum so any visitor could use one of the museum's own grand umbrellas.
Never in my life have I been in a museum more solicitous of the pleasure of its visitors.
Never have I been in a museum that so genuinely treated each and every visitor adult and child simply as being the most important person in the museum.
The level of thinking that had gone into the construction, the layout, the selection of the art and the careful full sized reproduction of a great Roman villa is a model that I know has no equal in the world.
Of course here is no admission charge.
The restaurant is modestly priced and the quality of the food is simply excellent.
It has long been maintained as we walked in the long formal gardens of the outer peristyle that there is really no value in looking at modern art, which in a real sense is non-existent and invisible.
When the French murdered their king during the so-called French Revolution... there was no longer any point to art. Art is the total slave of mere subjective fashion. It is no longer in service to something more than itself. Everything is now allowed so nothing is of...why say anymore about...
The Villa had a small exhibition devoted to Piranesi. On display was his Column of Trajan.
s.
again, from my travel reading, from CHRIST VERSUS ARIZONA by Camilo Jose Cela.
::::what's bad is when a man wants to put his thoughts into another person's head, that's a sign that death is lurking nearby and feeling brave
::::what's bad is being a stranger, all strangers go around dragging a dirty, bloody history that they don't want to tell anyone, silence ends up making the bones ache, but anything is better than the gallows, strangers don't have any traditions and that's why they rob banks, and trains, they cheat at cards, they steal cows and horses and they shoot you in the back, tradition doesn't forbid robbing banks and trains or cheating at cards or stealing horses and cows but it does forbid killing a man from behind
(how a woman can keep a man from wandering)
::::and my mother knows a special caress, it's something exquisite, something that's pleasurable and that send a shiver right through you, she charges a bit more but it's worth the money, it's wonderful, she gets her mouth on your asshole, puts in her tongue a little and sucks hard, like a vacuum, it's called the "black kiss" and it was invented by Bonne Mere Mauricette, a madam from Napoleonville, near New Orleans, my mother does it to anyone who pays for it, I'm exempt, she doesn't charge me for it, afterwards she smiles, my mother always smiles sweetly
t-
a letter is being sent from Glendale protesting the I HAVE A DREAM MATTRESS SALE, advertised in Sunday's Los Angeles Times, because it violates the spirit of the holiday being celebrated on Monday
m-
i will miss next week's
Hermosa Beach Historical Society presents a night of "beat" poetry at the HBHS Museum, 710 Pier Avenue, celebrating the Beatnik movement in So Cal with Dr. Colin Campbell. 4:30 p.m.; Bob Hare, founder of the Insomniac, at 6:30, followed by poetry readings, live music, exhibits, refreshments and more.
I wonder about: "and more."
n-
at the house here we watched SUNSET BOULEVARD.
I hope everyone has seen the movie.
One detail, Norma Desmond is fifty years old.
Her career is over and done with.
Made in 1950 it is still the best movie about the reality of Hollywood.
o-
on the side of the Hermosa Beach Community Center,the former junior high school,
WHERE THERE IS NO VISION THE PEOPLE PERISH
p-
in Vons supermarket Liza made me a California Dreamin' sandwich. She had to follow the directions from a posted sign as she had forgotten how to make it since she had been off work for some time recuperating from breaking her Achilles tendon. She had come to California from West 112th Street in Manhattan because her brother and father were body builders.
q-
we went to visit at her studio in a reclaimed former hangar at the Santa Monica Airport a Patchogian artist long resident in California. Patti M(then. She gave me a hardcover version of a recent gallery show---done with Minx B--- RIPE, A Collection of Passionate Poetry and Pears:
Dedicated to the Creative Force in each and ever one of us sourcing
our infinite capacity for passionate self-expression.
On the back of the book:
Ripe, a collection of Passionate Poetry and Pears is a compilation of recent poems and paintings by these two artists. Their decision to collaborate on this book was born from their deep friendship and mutual admiration. They have found both the process and the result satisfying and feel honored to be able to share themselves on the world through these pages.
Patti M told us she is now working on a series of "water lily" paintings.
r-
after our visit to the Patchogian artist Patti M we drove up to the Getty Villa in Malibu. Rain had threatened earlier in the day. A sign was posted near the parking lot telling visitors they need not bring an umbrella. We discovered the museum had thoughtfully placed umbrella stands at convenient places through out the museum so any visitor could use one of the museum's own grand umbrellas.
Never in my life have I been in a museum more solicitous of the pleasure of its visitors.
Never have I been in a museum that so genuinely treated each and every visitor adult and child simply as being the most important person in the museum.
The level of thinking that had gone into the construction, the layout, the selection of the art and the careful full sized reproduction of a great Roman villa is a model that I know has no equal in the world.
Of course here is no admission charge.
The restaurant is modestly priced and the quality of the food is simply excellent.
It has long been maintained as we walked in the long formal gardens of the outer peristyle that there is really no value in looking at modern art, which in a real sense is non-existent and invisible.
When the French murdered their king during the so-called French Revolution... there was no longer any point to art. Art is the total slave of mere subjective fashion. It is no longer in service to something more than itself. Everything is now allowed so nothing is of...why say anymore about...
The Villa had a small exhibition devoted to Piranesi. On display was his Column of Trajan.
s.
again, from my travel reading, from CHRIST VERSUS ARIZONA by Camilo Jose Cela.
::::what's bad is when a man wants to put his thoughts into another person's head, that's a sign that death is lurking nearby and feeling brave
::::what's bad is being a stranger, all strangers go around dragging a dirty, bloody history that they don't want to tell anyone, silence ends up making the bones ache, but anything is better than the gallows, strangers don't have any traditions and that's why they rob banks, and trains, they cheat at cards, they steal cows and horses and they shoot you in the back, tradition doesn't forbid robbing banks and trains or cheating at cards or stealing horses and cows but it does forbid killing a man from behind
(how a woman can keep a man from wandering)
::::and my mother knows a special caress, it's something exquisite, something that's pleasurable and that send a shiver right through you, she charges a bit more but it's worth the money, it's wonderful, she gets her mouth on your asshole, puts in her tongue a little and sucks hard, like a vacuum, it's called the "black kiss" and it was invented by Bonne Mere Mauricette, a madam from Napoleonville, near New Orleans, my mother does it to anyone who pays for it, I'm exempt, she doesn't charge me for it, afterwards she smiles, my mother always smiles sweetly
t-
a letter is being sent from Glendale protesting the I HAVE A DREAM MATTRESS SALE, advertised in Sunday's Los Angeles Times, because it violates the spirit of the holiday being celebrated on Monday
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
HERMOSA BEACH, KARL KRAUS, RICHARD NIXON, REAL WIVES OF ORANGE COUNTY
z.
Where I am.
Hermosa Beach. Two streets from:
Alive & Well. Fish World. Flower World. California Sushi Teriyaki. Nancy Nails & Spa. South Bay Soccer. Skooby's. Amigos Tacos. Maui Rose. Rosa's Mexican Restaurant. Town & Country Pizza. Oki Doki Sushi. Just Massage Studio. Skate Surf Smoke. The Gym. South Bat Jiu-Jitsu. The Roth Group Real Estate. Bow Wow Boutique. Discount Cigarettes & Liquors. Triangle Hardware. A & M Auto Repair. Boxing Works. Asian Art Furniture. Nails & Waxing. Fluff and Fold. 7 11. Hermosa Design Center Futones Waterbeds. Poulet de Jour. Domino's Beach Cities Cycle. Hair's the Place. Westside Rentals Where Quality Tenants find a place to live. Cleanrite Cleaners. Royal Nails. Hermosa Saloon. Pacer Darts.
y.
I drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to Dana Point and beyond to San Clemente. In a 7 11 I asked the clerk: is this where Richard Nixon lived? While the guy was giving me my change and saying he didn't know who I was talking about another guy had come in and was standing near me. Long time no see, he said. He gestured to the highway, Down there a little bit is Nixon's favorite Mexican restaurant.
When I drove passed it: Dave's Mexican.... though when I asked at the San Clemente Chamber of Commerce the girl said Nixon's house was inside a gated community and could not be seen from the road. She thought his favorite Mexican restuarant was El Mundo in San Juan Capistrano.
x.
I had an address: 22401 Antonio Parkway in Rancho Santa Margarita. I was looking for Coto Insurance Services which is owned by one of the Real Wives of Orange County.
I am sure everyone knows this show on Bravo. Now in its third season--- doesn't that sound like I can speak TV talk?
22401 Antonio Parkway is in the middle of a shopping center. Well, the name over the door says: REALTY EXECUTIVES. Two blond women came to the door of an office off the little lobby: Can we help you? Is this where the woman from Real Wives of Orange County has her office? They rent space from us.
I picked up two local newspapers from the lobby. The Cota de Caza News and the Trabuco Canyon News. The latter newspaper serves communities from Coto de Caza to Walden. Many houses for sale with prices well into the seven figures. Being from Manhattan--- or at least living in Manhattan--- one is really unaware of what wealth looks like when packaged up as a home. All those tall apartment buildings look alike. Of course even on East First Street in Manhattan there is a small building going up in which a small one bedroom condo will sell for more than one million dollars... but who lives around 22401 Antonio Parkway
I must quote 8 lines by Lana Chandler, Society Editor and author of Society Scene Exclusively for the Coto de Caza News:
The 34th annual Candlelight Concert was an amazing, electrifying evening that the guests will always remember. This upscale event, attended by the society elite, was orchestrated by event chair Pat Poss, honorary co-chairs Sally Crockett and Carol Wilken, and devoted committee members. Their efforts raised the bar and stunned the highbrow guests with transforming the Orange County Performing Artscenter Segerstrom Hall into a New York Nightclub Studio 34. The ambiance was perfect for the special performance by Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons...
(at a future date I might be forced to quote more of Lana Chandler, Society Editor and author of Society Scene.)
w.
Driving through Long Beach. Jeffrey MacDonald once was a doctor here. For the last 27 years he has been in prison for killing his wife and children. Do I have to say the Green Beret doctor? Fatal Vision?... the most famous son of Patchogue.
We were in Boy Scout together. He is a year older. I remember our father's because of the rain sitting in a car drinking and smoking all night during an overnight camping trip in Yaphank. All the boys were in sleeping bags in tents. The Dads...
I have often thought that he is innocent and though his case has been appealed up and down the ladder and here have been films even by the BBC suggesting serious doubts about the case he will never get out of jail. And now on the internet you can see the autopsy photos of all the parties...
v.
Traveling slows reading down-- which might be a mistake--- for so much of what is written is not designed to be read:
I am sure you have heard the name Karl Kraus, the Austrian writer who wrote savage investigations of the mis-use of language in the Austrian press before, during and after WWI.
Like Ezra Pound, Kraus well knew that the debasement of the language is always necessary to further the bad aims... you might know Kraus for writing that psychoanalysis is a disease that proposes itself as its cure.
Some sentences or phrases that I do not understand:
one of the strongest early stories
powerful, precise and startlingly modern qualities
pushes his characters.
And from Kathryn Harrison: -there's the writing, clean and stark
-sentences feel less written than rendered
-I've fled into a novel
-he friable boundary between fiction and nonfiction.
And it was a pleasure to read the journalist Joe Conason putting on a funny hat for his look into the fortune teller's crystal ball: In the years that follow the second Bush presidency many of us will no doubt continue to ask ourselves...
Where I am.
Hermosa Beach. Two streets from:
Alive & Well. Fish World. Flower World. California Sushi Teriyaki. Nancy Nails & Spa. South Bay Soccer. Skooby's. Amigos Tacos. Maui Rose. Rosa's Mexican Restaurant. Town & Country Pizza. Oki Doki Sushi. Just Massage Studio. Skate Surf Smoke. The Gym. South Bat Jiu-Jitsu. The Roth Group Real Estate. Bow Wow Boutique. Discount Cigarettes & Liquors. Triangle Hardware. A & M Auto Repair. Boxing Works. Asian Art Furniture. Nails & Waxing. Fluff and Fold. 7 11. Hermosa Design Center Futones Waterbeds. Poulet de Jour. Domino's Beach Cities Cycle. Hair's the Place. Westside Rentals Where Quality Tenants find a place to live. Cleanrite Cleaners. Royal Nails. Hermosa Saloon. Pacer Darts.
y.
I drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to Dana Point and beyond to San Clemente. In a 7 11 I asked the clerk: is this where Richard Nixon lived? While the guy was giving me my change and saying he didn't know who I was talking about another guy had come in and was standing near me. Long time no see, he said. He gestured to the highway, Down there a little bit is Nixon's favorite Mexican restaurant.
When I drove passed it: Dave's Mexican.... though when I asked at the San Clemente Chamber of Commerce the girl said Nixon's house was inside a gated community and could not be seen from the road. She thought his favorite Mexican restuarant was El Mundo in San Juan Capistrano.
x.
I had an address: 22401 Antonio Parkway in Rancho Santa Margarita. I was looking for Coto Insurance Services which is owned by one of the Real Wives of Orange County.
I am sure everyone knows this show on Bravo. Now in its third season--- doesn't that sound like I can speak TV talk?
22401 Antonio Parkway is in the middle of a shopping center. Well, the name over the door says: REALTY EXECUTIVES. Two blond women came to the door of an office off the little lobby: Can we help you? Is this where the woman from Real Wives of Orange County has her office? They rent space from us.
I picked up two local newspapers from the lobby. The Cota de Caza News and the Trabuco Canyon News. The latter newspaper serves communities from Coto de Caza to Walden. Many houses for sale with prices well into the seven figures. Being from Manhattan--- or at least living in Manhattan--- one is really unaware of what wealth looks like when packaged up as a home. All those tall apartment buildings look alike. Of course even on East First Street in Manhattan there is a small building going up in which a small one bedroom condo will sell for more than one million dollars... but who lives around 22401 Antonio Parkway
I must quote 8 lines by Lana Chandler, Society Editor and author of Society Scene Exclusively for the Coto de Caza News:
The 34th annual Candlelight Concert was an amazing, electrifying evening that the guests will always remember. This upscale event, attended by the society elite, was orchestrated by event chair Pat Poss, honorary co-chairs Sally Crockett and Carol Wilken, and devoted committee members. Their efforts raised the bar and stunned the highbrow guests with transforming the Orange County Performing Artscenter Segerstrom Hall into a New York Nightclub Studio 34. The ambiance was perfect for the special performance by Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons...
(at a future date I might be forced to quote more of Lana Chandler, Society Editor and author of Society Scene.)
w.
Driving through Long Beach. Jeffrey MacDonald once was a doctor here. For the last 27 years he has been in prison for killing his wife and children. Do I have to say the Green Beret doctor? Fatal Vision?... the most famous son of Patchogue.
We were in Boy Scout together. He is a year older. I remember our father's because of the rain sitting in a car drinking and smoking all night during an overnight camping trip in Yaphank. All the boys were in sleeping bags in tents. The Dads...
I have often thought that he is innocent and though his case has been appealed up and down the ladder and here have been films even by the BBC suggesting serious doubts about the case he will never get out of jail. And now on the internet you can see the autopsy photos of all the parties...
v.
Traveling slows reading down-- which might be a mistake--- for so much of what is written is not designed to be read:
I am sure you have heard the name Karl Kraus, the Austrian writer who wrote savage investigations of the mis-use of language in the Austrian press before, during and after WWI.
Like Ezra Pound, Kraus well knew that the debasement of the language is always necessary to further the bad aims... you might know Kraus for writing that psychoanalysis is a disease that proposes itself as its cure.
Some sentences or phrases that I do not understand:
one of the strongest early stories
powerful, precise and startlingly modern qualities
pushes his characters.
And from Kathryn Harrison: -there's the writing, clean and stark
-sentences feel less written than rendered
-I've fled into a novel
-he friable boundary between fiction and nonfiction.
And it was a pleasure to read the journalist Joe Conason putting on a funny hat for his look into the fortune teller's crystal ball: In the years that follow the second Bush presidency many of us will no doubt continue to ask ourselves...
Sunday, January 13, 2008
TOMBSTONE, AJO, INDIO, LUCERNE VALLEY, BARSTOW, ROBERT PINGET
a: Claiming places
b: I was going to write about the battle of books in Tombstone, Arizona--- how unsettled every single historical fact remains--- but as I was driving across and between the Sonora and Mojave deserts I thought of a historical marker in the Tohono O'odham Nation near QUIJOTOA: a Papago word for mountain shaped like a carrying basket--- Near there in 1883, a gold rush and camps grew up: Logan, New Virginia, Virginia City, Brooklyn and eventually formed this city with the name that reminds me of the Spanish knight and at first I did think it was an approximation of it....
c: Nothing at all remains of that city. The desert has done its...
d: Of course one sees all the new housing developments, "communities for active adults" all over the land about Phoenix, Tuscon and every other place... the huge caravan city of Quartzsite where thousands upon thousands of RVs converge and disperse during the year... squatters in Desert Center
e: walked into the desert near Tombstone to see the remaining propped up buildings of Fairbank which had once been the rail station for Tombstone complete with oyster serving terminal hotel...
f: the old people all about, wrung wrung out from their years of hard labor up North or where ever...
g: when they move here have they already made the arrangements as I am reminded of hearing John Montague talking about his last meeting with Samuel Beckett in Paris and saying as if often does, the mind turns and I asked: and the arrangements and Beckett replied: in the ground...
h: do the arrangements come with the new houses?...
i: in AJO by the now abandoned vast open copper mine I met a man who had just come back from Belize to look at where he had come many years before to be a geologist and when he got there--- so many years before when he was young and just out of college--- but they did not then need a geologist so he went away to tend to other businesses but he had now come back here because his daughter had an autistic child and no husband... and Arizona is a good place to raise an autistic child...
j: in the Wal Mart in Indio they keep all the dvd's under lock and key... the freight trains go by all night--- many broken down cars being driven...
k: in LUCERNE VALLEY a guy gets out of a car goes into this combination grocery/liquor store and I hear him say, give me a double... I do not see what he is drinking but I watch him get back into the car and the argument on the wife's face and the sleeping child strapped into a seat in the back...
l: local color,as the say, both the distortion and the accuracy...
m: in a Days Inn on Cool Water Lane, Barstow where the rug looks like it has absorbed lots of blood and vomit
n: in Twentynine Palms three kids dressed up in Statue of Liberty costumes try to attract customers to the Liberty Tax preparing shop... in Barstow one kid is dressed up in a Statue of Liberty costume...
n: in the video store in Twentynine Palms the clerk says there were two movies with the title Twentynine Palms. He hasn't seen either one of them. One of them has subtitles.
0: Twentynine Palms by BRUNO DUMONT is, while fictional, a documentary... there are not a lot of words to read... a film about what can happen... and about the words that are not available
p: in 1994 murals began to appear on the walls of Twentynine Palms buildings as a way to " boost community pride and make out city more inviting." The murals have begun to fade... and the fading is a delight to the eye...
q: "THAT ENDLESS STORY OF SUCCESSIVE DEATHS RECORDED IN THE PAPERS AT DIFFERENT PERIODS IN THE HOPE THAT THE VERY DIVERSITY OF THE DETAILS, WHAT ELSE COULD YOU EXPECT IN THAT DOMAIN, WOULD TESTIFY TO THE COHERENCE OF HIS OBSESSION, AND ELEVATE IT INTO A GUARANTEE OF SALVATION, A STRANGE WAY TO BECOME CONVERTED" from THE APOCRYPHA by ROBERT PINGET
b: I was going to write about the battle of books in Tombstone, Arizona--- how unsettled every single historical fact remains--- but as I was driving across and between the Sonora and Mojave deserts I thought of a historical marker in the Tohono O'odham Nation near QUIJOTOA: a Papago word for mountain shaped like a carrying basket--- Near there in 1883, a gold rush and camps grew up: Logan, New Virginia, Virginia City, Brooklyn and eventually formed this city with the name that reminds me of the Spanish knight and at first I did think it was an approximation of it....
c: Nothing at all remains of that city. The desert has done its...
d: Of course one sees all the new housing developments, "communities for active adults" all over the land about Phoenix, Tuscon and every other place... the huge caravan city of Quartzsite where thousands upon thousands of RVs converge and disperse during the year... squatters in Desert Center
e: walked into the desert near Tombstone to see the remaining propped up buildings of Fairbank which had once been the rail station for Tombstone complete with oyster serving terminal hotel...
f: the old people all about, wrung wrung out from their years of hard labor up North or where ever...
g: when they move here have they already made the arrangements as I am reminded of hearing John Montague talking about his last meeting with Samuel Beckett in Paris and saying as if often does, the mind turns and I asked: and the arrangements and Beckett replied: in the ground...
h: do the arrangements come with the new houses?...
i: in AJO by the now abandoned vast open copper mine I met a man who had just come back from Belize to look at where he had come many years before to be a geologist and when he got there--- so many years before when he was young and just out of college--- but they did not then need a geologist so he went away to tend to other businesses but he had now come back here because his daughter had an autistic child and no husband... and Arizona is a good place to raise an autistic child...
j: in the Wal Mart in Indio they keep all the dvd's under lock and key... the freight trains go by all night--- many broken down cars being driven...
k: in LUCERNE VALLEY a guy gets out of a car goes into this combination grocery/liquor store and I hear him say, give me a double... I do not see what he is drinking but I watch him get back into the car and the argument on the wife's face and the sleeping child strapped into a seat in the back...
l: local color,as the say, both the distortion and the accuracy...
m: in a Days Inn on Cool Water Lane, Barstow where the rug looks like it has absorbed lots of blood and vomit
n: in Twentynine Palms three kids dressed up in Statue of Liberty costumes try to attract customers to the Liberty Tax preparing shop... in Barstow one kid is dressed up in a Statue of Liberty costume...
n: in the video store in Twentynine Palms the clerk says there were two movies with the title Twentynine Palms. He hasn't seen either one of them. One of them has subtitles.
0: Twentynine Palms by BRUNO DUMONT is, while fictional, a documentary... there are not a lot of words to read... a film about what can happen... and about the words that are not available
p: in 1994 murals began to appear on the walls of Twentynine Palms buildings as a way to " boost community pride and make out city more inviting." The murals have begun to fade... and the fading is a delight to the eye...
q: "THAT ENDLESS STORY OF SUCCESSIVE DEATHS RECORDED IN THE PAPERS AT DIFFERENT PERIODS IN THE HOPE THAT THE VERY DIVERSITY OF THE DETAILS, WHAT ELSE COULD YOU EXPECT IN THAT DOMAIN, WOULD TESTIFY TO THE COHERENCE OF HIS OBSESSION, AND ELEVATE IT INTO A GUARANTEE OF SALVATION, A STRANGE WAY TO BECOME CONVERTED" from THE APOCRYPHA by ROBERT PINGET
Monday, January 7, 2008
TOMBSTONE, VENICE, EZRA POUND, MANDELSTAM, JAMES LIDDY, CAMILO JOSE CELA, ROBERT PINGET, ELIZABETH BISHOP, ANTONIO LOBO ANTUNES
1
If the planes work I should be in Tombstone tomorrow evening.
2
Tonight I walked around down to Soho and then to St. Marks Bookshop. I was talking to a guy who works there about tomorrow. He publishes tiny letters occasionally in the TLS. He said, the day after you go to Tombstone I am going to Venice.
Two tomb cities, I replied.
3
ON THE EVE by Ivan TURGENEV was not sadly on the shelf. The guy in the shop did not know that Ezra Pound is buried in Venice. He is taking Ruskin as a guide. I suggested THE CANTOS as the best guide.
4
I regretted, I said, I could not travel with the necessary large library as Lamartine had done when he went to Bulgaria for the first time.
Books are so heavy, the guy said... and I could hear the understanding of the necessity of reading when traveling.
5
JAMES LIDDY sent me to read as I journey his little book of translations from MANDELSTAM... and I thought I won't be able to take with me THE COMPLETE CRITICAL PROSE AND LETTERS by Mandelstam: containing the absolutely essential essay on the addressee in poetry but the thought of Mandelstam lead me to remember that he had interviewed Ho Chi Minh in Moscow in 1923---"(he) breathes culture, not European culture, but perhaps the culture of the future."
6
And then on to my friend Al Willis who was fighting Ho Chi Minh's soldiers in Vietnam 42 years later as a young U.S. Marine from Patchogue... more thought... while in Tombstone where my guide will be CHRIST VERSUS ARIZONA by CAMILO JOSE CELA... and I will be thinking of George who is dead and who was from Bulgaria, so it is no accident that I know that ON THE EVE has a Bulgarian as a central character and how the novel ends up in Venice as I did both on the way to and on the way back from Bulgaria in 1967-68 and how to make sense of all of this will be through the example of THE APOCRYPHA by ROBERT PINGET which provides a model for the movement of time through words.
7
I have one errand while I travel: to finish a short notice of THE SINGING REVOLUTION, an Estonian documentary I am doing for Anna which now is crossed in my mind with the news that JAAN KROSS is dead: you might remember that tiny bit in his book of short fictions where he remembers seeing Russian soldiers standing in the National Lbrary in Estonian with axes in hand and chopping up-ended ancient Estonian books as if they were so many logs... in their effort to remove history from Estonia.
8
And two books which I don't know if I will get to them: the new Library of America edition of Elizabeth Bishop and KNOWLEDGE OF HELL by ANTONIO LOBO ANTUNES. I hope the title of Antunes's novel does not turn out to be an ironic commentary on this journey.
If the planes work I should be in Tombstone tomorrow evening.
2
Tonight I walked around down to Soho and then to St. Marks Bookshop. I was talking to a guy who works there about tomorrow. He publishes tiny letters occasionally in the TLS. He said, the day after you go to Tombstone I am going to Venice.
Two tomb cities, I replied.
3
ON THE EVE by Ivan TURGENEV was not sadly on the shelf. The guy in the shop did not know that Ezra Pound is buried in Venice. He is taking Ruskin as a guide. I suggested THE CANTOS as the best guide.
4
I regretted, I said, I could not travel with the necessary large library as Lamartine had done when he went to Bulgaria for the first time.
Books are so heavy, the guy said... and I could hear the understanding of the necessity of reading when traveling.
5
JAMES LIDDY sent me to read as I journey his little book of translations from MANDELSTAM... and I thought I won't be able to take with me THE COMPLETE CRITICAL PROSE AND LETTERS by Mandelstam: containing the absolutely essential essay on the addressee in poetry but the thought of Mandelstam lead me to remember that he had interviewed Ho Chi Minh in Moscow in 1923---"(he) breathes culture, not European culture, but perhaps the culture of the future."
6
And then on to my friend Al Willis who was fighting Ho Chi Minh's soldiers in Vietnam 42 years later as a young U.S. Marine from Patchogue... more thought... while in Tombstone where my guide will be CHRIST VERSUS ARIZONA by CAMILO JOSE CELA... and I will be thinking of George who is dead and who was from Bulgaria, so it is no accident that I know that ON THE EVE has a Bulgarian as a central character and how the novel ends up in Venice as I did both on the way to and on the way back from Bulgaria in 1967-68 and how to make sense of all of this will be through the example of THE APOCRYPHA by ROBERT PINGET which provides a model for the movement of time through words.
7
I have one errand while I travel: to finish a short notice of THE SINGING REVOLUTION, an Estonian documentary I am doing for Anna which now is crossed in my mind with the news that JAAN KROSS is dead: you might remember that tiny bit in his book of short fictions where he remembers seeing Russian soldiers standing in the National Lbrary in Estonian with axes in hand and chopping up-ended ancient Estonian books as if they were so many logs... in their effort to remove history from Estonia.
8
And two books which I don't know if I will get to them: the new Library of America edition of Elizabeth Bishop and KNOWLEDGE OF HELL by ANTONIO LOBO ANTUNES. I hope the title of Antunes's novel does not turn out to be an ironic commentary on this journey.
Friday, December 28, 2007
FRANZ KAFKA, EDMUND WILSON, LOUIS FERDINAND CELINE, THE ORDEAL OF CIVILITY
86
"The misery of having perpetually to begin, the lack of the illusion that anything is more than, or even as much as, a beginning, the foolishness of those who do not know this, and play football, for example, in order at last "to advance the ball" one's own foolishness buried within one as if in a coffin, the foolishness of those who think they see a real coffin here, hence a coffin that one can transport, open, destroy,exchange
Among the young women up in the park. No envy. Enough imagination to share their happiness, enough judgment to know I am too weak to have such happiness, foolish enough to think I see to the bottom of my own and their situation. Not foolish enough; there is a tiny crack there, the wind whistles through it and spoils the full effect.
Should I greatly yearn to be an athlete, it would probably be the same thing as my yearning to go to heaven and to be permitted to be as despairing there as I am here.
No matter how sorry a constitution I may have, even if-- "given the same circumstances"-- it be the sorriest in the world (particularly in view of my lack of energy), I must do the best I can with it (even in my sense of the word)-- it is hollow sophistry to argue that there is only one thing to be done with such a constitution, which must perforce be its best, and that one thing is to despair.
----FRANZ KAFKA October 16, (1921)Sunday
87
I put the quote from Kafka's Diary there as a way to tell against myself. I have never really "gotten" Kafka. I think I have read myself through almost all of his work. He does not stick. I know that there are many--- Nabokov, Calasso come to mind--- who look to him with...
As far as I know, Edmund Wilson is the only writer to not be taken in by Kafka: "Kafka's reputation and influence have been growing till his figure has been projected on the consciousness of out literary reviews on a scale which gives the illusion that he is a writer of towering stature," "A Dissenting Opinion on Kafka"
July 26, 1947. CLASSIC AND COMMERCIALS.
"If,however, one puts Kafka besides writers with whom he may properly be compared, he still seems unsatisfactory. Gogol and Poe were equally neurotic, in their destinies they were equally unhappy; and if it is true, as Mr Savage says, that there is present in Kafka's world neither personality nor love, there is no love in either Gogol or Poe, and though here are plenty of personalities in Gogol, the actors of Poe, as a rule, are even less characterized than Kafka's. But,though the symbols that these writers generate are just as unpleasant as Kafka's, though,like his,they represent mostly the intense and painful realization of emotional cul-de-sac, yet they have both certain advantages over Kafka --for Gogol was nourished and fortified by his heroic conception of Russia, and Poe, for all his Tory views, is post-Revolutionary American in his challenging , defiant temper, his alert and curious mind. In their ways, they are both tonic. But the denationalized, discouraged, disaffected, disable Kafka, though for the moment he may frighten or amuse us, can in the end only let us down. He is quite true to his time and place, but it is surely a time and place in which few us will want to linger -- whether as stunned an hypnotized helots of totalitarian states or as citizens of freer societies who have relapsed into taking Kafka's stories as evidence that God's law and man's purpose are conceived in terms so different that we may as well give up hope of ever identifying the one with the other."
88
In the title of John Murray Cuddihy's book THE ORDEAL OF CIVILITY we probably have everything we need to know about Kafka. The sub-title elaborates: "Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity." Cuddihy is or was a professor of sociology at Hunter College. The question of course: if one is not Jewish why should one care about Kafka?
89
The problem of Kafka is also the key problem in the United States when it comes to the question of what German writers are available. If one is honest, Americans only know two German language writers: Kafka and Remarque. They know Remarque for his sentimental ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT which they read in Junior High School and they read maybe the Metamorphosis by Kafka in college. That is it.
Of course on the positive side by focusing all the reading of German literature on Kafka and Remarque Americans are preserved from Gunter Grass and Christa Wolf.
But the loss: without Ernst Junger, Robert Walser, Uwe Johnson, Arno Schmidt my own life would be far dimmer than it might be. These writers, each so different from the other, combine to provide a way to understand the world, a way to describe the world that enables the thoughtful person to find his or her own way in the world: they do not seek disciples which of course is what reading Kafka produces...
90.
A tonic end, finally, of the year from Louis Ferdinand Celine:
Living, just by itself-- what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that terribly exciting--- or he'll come along and nibble your brain. A day that is nothing but a mere round of the twenty-four hours isn't to be borne. It has to be one long, almost unbearable thrill, a twenty-four copulation, willy-nilly.
---JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT
"The misery of having perpetually to begin, the lack of the illusion that anything is more than, or even as much as, a beginning, the foolishness of those who do not know this, and play football, for example, in order at last "to advance the ball" one's own foolishness buried within one as if in a coffin, the foolishness of those who think they see a real coffin here, hence a coffin that one can transport, open, destroy,exchange
Among the young women up in the park. No envy. Enough imagination to share their happiness, enough judgment to know I am too weak to have such happiness, foolish enough to think I see to the bottom of my own and their situation. Not foolish enough; there is a tiny crack there, the wind whistles through it and spoils the full effect.
Should I greatly yearn to be an athlete, it would probably be the same thing as my yearning to go to heaven and to be permitted to be as despairing there as I am here.
No matter how sorry a constitution I may have, even if-- "given the same circumstances"-- it be the sorriest in the world (particularly in view of my lack of energy), I must do the best I can with it (even in my sense of the word)-- it is hollow sophistry to argue that there is only one thing to be done with such a constitution, which must perforce be its best, and that one thing is to despair.
----FRANZ KAFKA October 16, (1921)Sunday
87
I put the quote from Kafka's Diary there as a way to tell against myself. I have never really "gotten" Kafka. I think I have read myself through almost all of his work. He does not stick. I know that there are many--- Nabokov, Calasso come to mind--- who look to him with...
As far as I know, Edmund Wilson is the only writer to not be taken in by Kafka: "Kafka's reputation and influence have been growing till his figure has been projected on the consciousness of out literary reviews on a scale which gives the illusion that he is a writer of towering stature," "A Dissenting Opinion on Kafka"
July 26, 1947. CLASSIC AND COMMERCIALS.
"If,however, one puts Kafka besides writers with whom he may properly be compared, he still seems unsatisfactory. Gogol and Poe were equally neurotic, in their destinies they were equally unhappy; and if it is true, as Mr Savage says, that there is present in Kafka's world neither personality nor love, there is no love in either Gogol or Poe, and though here are plenty of personalities in Gogol, the actors of Poe, as a rule, are even less characterized than Kafka's. But,though the symbols that these writers generate are just as unpleasant as Kafka's, though,like his,they represent mostly the intense and painful realization of emotional cul-de-sac, yet they have both certain advantages over Kafka --for Gogol was nourished and fortified by his heroic conception of Russia, and Poe, for all his Tory views, is post-Revolutionary American in his challenging , defiant temper, his alert and curious mind. In their ways, they are both tonic. But the denationalized, discouraged, disaffected, disable Kafka, though for the moment he may frighten or amuse us, can in the end only let us down. He is quite true to his time and place, but it is surely a time and place in which few us will want to linger -- whether as stunned an hypnotized helots of totalitarian states or as citizens of freer societies who have relapsed into taking Kafka's stories as evidence that God's law and man's purpose are conceived in terms so different that we may as well give up hope of ever identifying the one with the other."
88
In the title of John Murray Cuddihy's book THE ORDEAL OF CIVILITY we probably have everything we need to know about Kafka. The sub-title elaborates: "Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity." Cuddihy is or was a professor of sociology at Hunter College. The question of course: if one is not Jewish why should one care about Kafka?
89
The problem of Kafka is also the key problem in the United States when it comes to the question of what German writers are available. If one is honest, Americans only know two German language writers: Kafka and Remarque. They know Remarque for his sentimental ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT which they read in Junior High School and they read maybe the Metamorphosis by Kafka in college. That is it.
Of course on the positive side by focusing all the reading of German literature on Kafka and Remarque Americans are preserved from Gunter Grass and Christa Wolf.
But the loss: without Ernst Junger, Robert Walser, Uwe Johnson, Arno Schmidt my own life would be far dimmer than it might be. These writers, each so different from the other, combine to provide a way to understand the world, a way to describe the world that enables the thoughtful person to find his or her own way in the world: they do not seek disciples which of course is what reading Kafka produces...
90.
A tonic end, finally, of the year from Louis Ferdinand Celine:
Living, just by itself-- what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that terribly exciting--- or he'll come along and nibble your brain. A day that is nothing but a mere round of the twenty-four hours isn't to be borne. It has to be one long, almost unbearable thrill, a twenty-four copulation, willy-nilly.
---JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
JULIEN GRACQ, GLENWAY WESCOTT, JULIAN GREEN, WILLIAM MAXWELL
57
The news arrives of the death of Julien Gracq.
If you were reading the New York Times you learned nothing of who this man was and why--- for those who read--- it is a very sad moment and also a moment when it can finally be said that all the "old ones" are now dead.
(A very good obituary by the translator James Kirkup can be found in The Independent newspaper from London. The last line, "HE and his work are lessons to our expiring humanity."
***
We living in the present--- those of us who claim to write--- are now all alone.
Julian Gracq has now finally joined Ernst Junger, Julian Green, Francis Stuart, Glenway Wescott, E. M. Cioran, Edward Dahlberg, Nina Berberova, Jorge Luis Borges and--- I would add personally though I well know she does not rank in this listing--- Hannah Green, though with her THE DEAD OF THE HOUSE, if she had lived longer and been able to finish her second book, might have been comfortably installed within this group.
To have known these writers, to have read them, to have talked with them, to have seen them is to have been given the gift of participating in literature, in writing and reading as it once was and is now no longer so.
***
In Julian Green's diary, "Lunch yesterday with Wescott. He told me that it seemed to him impossible for a journal to be written that should be absolutely sincere and bear the stamp of truth. But sincerity is a gift--- one among others. To wish to be sincere is not enough..."
***
Thanks to Turtle Point Press the reader today can find these books by Julien Gracq:
READING WRITING, THE SHAPE OF A CITY, THE NARROW WATERS, KING COPHETUA. In the shops you might be able to find second hand copies of THE CASTLE OF ARGOL, THE OPPOSING SHORE, THE DARK STRANGER, BALCONY IN THE FOREST. At www.junger.org you can read Gracq's essay on Ernst Junger's ON THE MARBLE CLIFFS which should then lead you to STORM OF STEEL.
So from READING WRITING:
---The creative artist who steps back and tries to understand what he is doing stands before his canvas as before a green and intact prairie: for the writer, the literary material he would like to recapture in its freshness is already similar to what passes from the second to the third stomach of a ruminant.
---At ninety, no writer, if he is still writing, can hope to maintain all the quality of his production. But in painting, Titian and Picasso--- others,too,no doubt--- manage perfectly well. No writer is brilliant until full adolescence at least. But, in music, Mozart--- others,too, no doubt--- was. Which tends to corroborate physiologically the hierarchy of the arts as promulgated by Hegel (which is fine by me). Historical counterproof would provide the same result: of all the arts, literature was last to appear. And one day, no doubt, it will be the first to be eclipsed
---Nine-tenths of the pleasures we owe to art over a lifetime are conveyed not by direct contact with the world but by memory alone. How little we have preoccupied ourselves, however, with the different nature, fidelity, and intensity of forms cloaked in memory, depending on whether it is a painting, a piece of music, or a poem!
58
If you wish to see proof of what I have been writing read carefully all the reviews of the Library of America volume of the works of William Maxwell being published in January. Not a single reviewer will question why this and the second one in the Fall is being published. Not a single review will question why there has not been a volume devoted to the work of Glenway Wescott whose novels permit the emergence of someone like William Maxwell, whose whole literary reputation begins and ends with his connection as fiction editor to The New Yorker magazine. Maxwell was a decent writer and human being, fortunate in those he edited and who claim him as an inspiration but his writing is nothing more than that. It does not re-arrange in any way the statues in the garden. One might thing of his writing as being a bench with a brass plaque attached.
***
This writing on this Christmas morning is finally dedicated to Anna Saar McGonigle who suggested I launch myself into this form of writing
The news arrives of the death of Julien Gracq.
If you were reading the New York Times you learned nothing of who this man was and why--- for those who read--- it is a very sad moment and also a moment when it can finally be said that all the "old ones" are now dead.
(A very good obituary by the translator James Kirkup can be found in The Independent newspaper from London. The last line, "HE and his work are lessons to our expiring humanity."
***
We living in the present--- those of us who claim to write--- are now all alone.
Julian Gracq has now finally joined Ernst Junger, Julian Green, Francis Stuart, Glenway Wescott, E. M. Cioran, Edward Dahlberg, Nina Berberova, Jorge Luis Borges and--- I would add personally though I well know she does not rank in this listing--- Hannah Green, though with her THE DEAD OF THE HOUSE, if she had lived longer and been able to finish her second book, might have been comfortably installed within this group.
To have known these writers, to have read them, to have talked with them, to have seen them is to have been given the gift of participating in literature, in writing and reading as it once was and is now no longer so.
***
In Julian Green's diary, "Lunch yesterday with Wescott. He told me that it seemed to him impossible for a journal to be written that should be absolutely sincere and bear the stamp of truth. But sincerity is a gift--- one among others. To wish to be sincere is not enough..."
***
Thanks to Turtle Point Press the reader today can find these books by Julien Gracq:
READING WRITING, THE SHAPE OF A CITY, THE NARROW WATERS, KING COPHETUA. In the shops you might be able to find second hand copies of THE CASTLE OF ARGOL, THE OPPOSING SHORE, THE DARK STRANGER, BALCONY IN THE FOREST. At www.junger.org you can read Gracq's essay on Ernst Junger's ON THE MARBLE CLIFFS which should then lead you to STORM OF STEEL.
So from READING WRITING:
---The creative artist who steps back and tries to understand what he is doing stands before his canvas as before a green and intact prairie: for the writer, the literary material he would like to recapture in its freshness is already similar to what passes from the second to the third stomach of a ruminant.
---At ninety, no writer, if he is still writing, can hope to maintain all the quality of his production. But in painting, Titian and Picasso--- others,too,no doubt--- manage perfectly well. No writer is brilliant until full adolescence at least. But, in music, Mozart--- others,too, no doubt--- was. Which tends to corroborate physiologically the hierarchy of the arts as promulgated by Hegel (which is fine by me). Historical counterproof would provide the same result: of all the arts, literature was last to appear. And one day, no doubt, it will be the first to be eclipsed
---Nine-tenths of the pleasures we owe to art over a lifetime are conveyed not by direct contact with the world but by memory alone. How little we have preoccupied ourselves, however, with the different nature, fidelity, and intensity of forms cloaked in memory, depending on whether it is a painting, a piece of music, or a poem!
58
If you wish to see proof of what I have been writing read carefully all the reviews of the Library of America volume of the works of William Maxwell being published in January. Not a single reviewer will question why this and the second one in the Fall is being published. Not a single review will question why there has not been a volume devoted to the work of Glenway Wescott whose novels permit the emergence of someone like William Maxwell, whose whole literary reputation begins and ends with his connection as fiction editor to The New Yorker magazine. Maxwell was a decent writer and human being, fortunate in those he edited and who claim him as an inspiration but his writing is nothing more than that. It does not re-arrange in any way the statues in the garden. One might thing of his writing as being a bench with a brass plaque attached.
***
This writing on this Christmas morning is finally dedicated to Anna Saar McGonigle who suggested I launch myself into this form of writing
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