February 2013

FEBRUARY  2013

Friday night Feb 8

Long essay by Holly Case in the Nation about Bernhard.  Excellent.  "Bernhard's banal repetitions are a willful plunge into the "internal processes" of the human spirit, "that which no one sees."  And the internal process that most captivated him was the human individual's gorgeous, catastrophic romance with its own perfectibility.  We believe it's possible, we know it's not possible, we believe it's possible, we know it's not possible: the spirit strives for perfection, tantalizes us with the very outline of perfection because it know there is no such thing."

"Writing books is also a kind of intercourse," he told Krista Fleischmann in 1984; "it is much more pleasant to write a book than to go to bed with someone."

Just a passage for the larger collection.  Not a sentiment I subscribe to, but more a matter of recognizing a pattern here---a good conversation has sometimes seemed more interesting than the notion of going to bed with the person.  That sort of thing.  Something IN types would hold in general, until they flip over into ES experience in moments of release and escape or temporary madness, in italics.  Bernhard seemed much closer to madness and contrasted himself on that score with his friend Wittgenstein's uncle.  Ludwig was an uncle of his friend Paul Wittgenstein.  Bernhard had his work as his greatest pleasure and focus for expression and creativity and Case shows how perfection of the work obsessed him.  I guess as the polar opposite of this I look to Aira the younger Argentine who talks about following the advice of his mentor who said "Publish first, writing will follow."  Maybe for Bernhard's generation or just for him individually the lure of perfection became the topic.  For Aira perhaps it is the opposite.  And yet in there too on the moebius loop inevitable for all such things. 

So the great storm skirted below and above us and we were in this strange, quiet pocket today.  Some snow but nothing of the wild wind expected and reported.  I've been checking on the wind map all day.  It really is beautiful to watch. 

Even ordering some more of Bernhard's books I draw back and recall Pessoa and then the quandry returns.

SUNDAY night Feb 17

howling winds at 6:15pm 

wrote this to Phil earlier---

Well, the darn thing just works, damn it.  Beautifully so.  Finished it

an hour or so ago.  It makes me fall back on my old grad school tools--those presented by

a long dead died early prof named Sheldon Sacks who argued there are three basic types of fiction---

actions, fables and . . .  of course I forget the key typology and can't find my copy if I still have it.

thinking Sitter might have heard of it, years ago--since it deals with 18th c works mostly--and now

I remember---actions, fables and satires.   So is your novel (all novels have to fit somehow) an

action a fable or a satire? and it becomes clear it is a fable in the sense that caring for the characters

is the major pleasure, almost, because that pleasure is subordinate, finally, to caring about

the profound and subtle meditation the book provides on the philosophical issues hemming

the characters in, driving them, being the atmosphere they breathe.  Race, class, geography,

politics, injustice, crime, murder, psychology, gender, -- in short--a meditation on the whole

of life pretty much and how fucked it all it pretty much.  But not a tragic "action"  of course now

I forget Sacks's examples of such---Oedipus I guess.  As a finely honed piece of work, it is

"more like" Candide than it is like Oedipus or Hamlet.  Make any sense.

all the more difficult for editorial, agentic bozos in publishing to even give it the time of day--

can't help compare and contrast it with de la pavia's book---because of the self-publishing

thing--and then because of the crime/city/ the Wire/ urban jungle sort of thing, including

racial politics-- I'll put something of this up on my blog site----and then, because it is so

powerful, news of the book will go viral and within weeks, my friend, you will be rolling in

more filthy lucre than the carnival cruisers were in their own shit !

and don't really have much more to add.  As he knows, he's written a very outside-the-genre genre novel and he can't get any traction for it because it is just too sacred a genre to muck with in any but the most superficial ways. 

Have to post a review on amazon and my site and maybe goodreads---

sent a rec letter to Parker Allen---such a go-getter bright guy and as likable as all get out. 

Monday afternoon Feb 18

lovely video visit with Emma and Dave.  Earlier video chat with poor Bob Sprankle.  He is recovering from the surgery that removed the goin mesh that he thinks was giving him so much pain.  Still in pain, still on oxy and hoping to heal within a month or so enough to go back to the school and resume work even if on a limited basis for the rest of the spring calendar.

Got valuable info from Dave about their plans and non-plans.  they will know in a day or so if they will go to Houghton.  Still hoping quietly to myself that they will not.  But if so, why not and all power to them for the adventure and the money and the experience.  Great news is they are planning to come again in the summer--mid-July to mid-August.  Hooray.  Quite  a year for us this year.  In spite of the howling winds outside and they seem calmer and because it is so white-bright more bearable. 

Sunday night  Feb 24

posted this yesterday.  Phil likes it so that is good. 

In Convictions J P Jones gives us a familiar sort of can't-put-it-down detective thriller and then gives it twists in unexpected ways that lift it out of the genre box and places it into the category of being something remarkable--a noir novel with profound meditative resonance.   I would borrow Melville's subtitle from Pierre and recast the title into Convictions, Or the Ambiguities. 

Tommy Baker is the experienced DC detective investigating a brutal, racist murder of a young woman.  He hails from West Virginia and is the Outsider/Other who does not, has never quite, fit into the Washington world of polarities and contradictions that fall along familiar black-white, north-south, upper-lower class lines.  Add in too the politics of a city that lives and breathes nothing but. 

Jones has crafted an incredibly tight, finely honed work of suspense, a reader's delight of tension and carefully unfolded revelations and turns.  Even though the crime gets solved, Baker feels loose ends remain and another murder happens, so the one story complicates into a different story and our expectations and comprehension must also complicate.  The resulting exploration of the certainties that drive each of the characters becomes quite satisfying and a genuine examination of what each means by truth, investigation, discrimination and justice. 

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snow day today, sunday --  wet snow last night and all day today.  we both took naps after a lovely slow spa day earlier.  winter sleeping.  Tonight the Academy Awards.  Tomorrow back to Nashua to get the lands end sweaters to go with the ones we bought the other day. 

Monday Feb 25

Marie-Therese visiting with Va downstairs.  Dick is still down in Florida---he hates the cold and she says his memory is much much worse now.  M-T is living here with her daughter looking in and driving her around.  Doesn't want assisted living.  Health problems suddenly a few months ago---lack of salt in her system.  Depression and anxiety.  She still exercises wildly at RehabFit every day. 

sad afternoon until more caffeine.  Strange hangover from the terrible oscar show last night.  Expected sense of tribal bonding failed. 

But today I'm thinking that my guy in Copenhagen will be looking to install himself as an installation artist.  Hotel lobby artist.  As well as courier.  In fact he could have three different social purposes, one for each hotel in which he lives. 

Snow day Weds Feb 27

is tomorrow the 10th anniversary of Virginia's event?  we think so. 

will we note it?  I cd ask Carter.  Wonder if it is bad to put him in that situation?  Just a question--but I am curious to know if he has any memory of it.  Why?  Why would it matter?  Because memory sears things for us and we wonder if the searing was noticeable to anyone else.  Of course it is not and yet we know it is.