Category: Writers

“The Executor” — Muriel Spark

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“The Executor”

by

Muriel Spark

When my uncle died all the literary manuscripts went to a university foundation, except one. The correspondence went too, and the whole of his library. They came (a white-haired man and a young girl) and surveyed his study. Everything, they said, would be desirable and it would make a good price if I let the whole room go – his chair, his desk, the carpet, even his ashtrays. I agreed to this. I left everything in the drawers of the desk just as it was when my uncle died, including the bottle of Librium and a rusty razor blade.

My uncle died this way: he was sitting on the bank of the river, playing a fish. As the afternoon faded a man passed by, and then a young couple who made pottery passed him. As they said later, he was sitting peacefully awaiting the catch and of course they didn’t disturb him. As night fell the colonel and his wife passed by; they were on their way home from their daily walk. They knew it was too late for my uncle to be simply sitting there, so they went to look. He had been dead, the doctor pronounced, from two to two and a half hours. The fish was still struggling with the bait. It was a mild heart attack. Everything my uncle did was mild, so different from everything he wrote. Yet perhaps not so different. He was supposed to be “far out”, so one didn’t know what went on out there. Besides, he had not long returned from a trip to London. They say, still waters run deep. Continue reading ““The Executor” — Muriel Spark” →

Sad Postcard in a Sad Book (Gass/Pancake)

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A book, you would think, is not a pocket, a purse, or a wastebasket, but people dispose of their sniffle-filled Kleenex between unexposed pages, their toothpicks, too, dirty where they’ve gripped them while cleaning their teeth—such in-decency—matchbooks with things written on the underside of the flap, usually numbers, of telephones, I suppose; or they leave paper clips and big flat mother-of-pearl buttons—imagine—curls of hair and all sorts of receipts as well as other slips of paper they’ve used to mark the spot where they stopped; and they file correspondence between leaves as if a book were a slide drawer—do they do that to their own books?—or they tuck snapshots, postcards, unused stamps, into them, now and then a pressed bloom—they stain, I’ve seen leaf shadows—one- to five- to ten-dollar bills, you’d never guess, yes, rubber bands, a shoelace, candy and gum wrappers—even their chewed gum that I have to pry out with a putty knife—people—people—I dee-clare—and newspaper clippings, often the author’s reviews, that are among the worst intruders because in time they’ll sulfur the pages where they’ve been compressed the way people who fall asleep on the grass of a summer morning leave their prints for the use of sorcerers like me to make our magic.

–From William H. Gass’s novel  Middle C.

I leave stuff in books all the time. In fact, I almost always leave something (a movie stub, a photo, a note, a picture my son or daughter drew, something) in each book I finished.  (I even wrote about it a bit last year). So I guess Miss Moss, the old librarian in Gass’s Middle C, would be royally pissed with my habits. I read this passage a day or two after a visit to my favorite used bookstore, where, looking for books by Grace Paley, I came across an uncracked copy of Breece D’J. Pancake’s super sad super terrific collected stories. I own the book, but in a different edition (fox on the cover), so I grabbed it out. Lo and behold, a postcard!–and of a scene straight out of Pancake’s own semi-beloved West Virginia, no less! The note, a token of friendship, accompanied an inscription in the book itself—is there anything sadder than an inscribed book abandoned to a used bookstore?

I left the book, postcard in it, easily resisting the initial temptation to slide it into one of the Paley volumes. Destined for another reader.

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Should have been (T.S. Eliot)

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Library Rules (William H. Gass)

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We can’t frisk our customers—I wouldn’t want to put my hands on some—but in the reading room or anywhere—if you see someone taking notes with a pen, you must caution them. Highli—? Indeed. Highlighters—highlighters are evil, they must be immediately confiscated and their users given a talking-to, even if they are marking up their own books or some harmless paper copies. Oh … Marjorie raised her hands to heaven. How I hate highlighters—you don’t use them, do you? Joseph wagged his head. Good, she said, good sign. The dog-ear people do it, stupid students do it, and they will grow dog-ears in due time. You don’t do dogs, do you, Joseph? We never could afford a pet, Joseph said. Good sign. Good sign. Dogs are bad for books. Don’t ever do dogs. They chew. Cats are bad, too. They claw. They love to rub their chins on the corners of covers, leave sneezers of fur. Rub their chins and grin at you. Before they fade from view, Joseph said. Oh, you are a darling, I kiss the nearby air, Marjorie exclaimed.

But it would not be for the last time. The neighboring air got many a smooch. Marjorie’s approval made Joey happy. He was a success.

Do not lean with heavy hands or rest your elbows on a book, even closed, even at apparent peace. You know why, I suppose?

Ah—

It compresses the covers against the spine and may crack the adhesive.

Oh.

Do not use a book as a writing board. Points can make indentations, especially—you’d be surprised—on jackets, many of which are waxy, slick, easily marked, for example, with a fingernail. And never put your notepaper on an open book, even to write a word—a dozen crimes in one action there.

I wouldn’t do that. Open books are so uneven.

Never mark in a book not your own, but even then, unless you think you’re Aristotle, never make a marginal note or a clever remark you will surely regret, and always assume the author is smarter than you are—have you written a book on his subject? … well?—so put down your differences on a piece of paper made for the purpose, or keep the quarrel quietly in your head where it will bother only you and never fluster another, not even your future self who will have forgotten the dispute, you can be sure, and will not wish to be reminded.

Yes, ma’am.

Marjorie. Not Miss, Mizz, or Ma’am. Marjorie. Marjorie.

It was a nice name, he thought, well syllabled.

Don’t put your palms down on illustrations, reproductions, any page at all, really, because even the most fastidious sweat—men sweat the most, women have more discipline over their bodies—did you know that? except for their hands, their hands are public advertisements, they encounter a porcupine, a precipice, a proposal, and their palms get runny; oh yes, and in the old days, when men kissed a milady’s hand, it was the top of it they put their lips to, not the palm, you never know where the palm has been or what it’s been wrapped around. Well. Where was … Ah … Be wary. Inks may smear. Pigments flake. Thumb oils may seep into the paper, leave prints, and sweat attracts insects, did you know? also there may be a fungus in the neighborhood. Sweat is a magnet.

Gee, I didn’t know that.

Joseph. That is your last “gee.” Never even feel—“gee.” You are a grown-up.

Okay …“Okay” is also out? Gee … Okay.

Marjorie laughed like a wind chime. Good man, she said. Good man.

From William H. Gass’s novel Middle C.

“Two Cures for Love” — Wendy Cope

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“Hubert and Minnie” — Aldous Huxley

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“Hubert and Minnie”

by

Aldous Huxley

For Hubert Lapell this first love-affair was extremely important. “Important” was the word he had used himself when he was writing about it in his diary. It was an event in his life, a real event for a change. It marked, he felt, a genuine turning-point in his spiritual development.

“Voltaire,” he wrote in his diary – and he wrote it a second time in one of his letters to Minnie – “Voltaire said that one died twice: once with the death of the whole body and once before, with the death of one’s capacity to love. And in the same way one is born twice, the second time being on the occasion when one first falls in love. One is born, then, into a new world – a world of intenser feelings, heightened values, more penetrating insights.” And so on.

In point of actual fact Hubert found this new world a little disappointing. The intenser feelings proved to be rather mild not by any means up to literary standards.

“I tell thee I am mad
In Cressid’s love. Thou answer’st; she is fair,
Pour’st in the open ulcer of my heart
Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice….”

No, it certainly wasn’t quite that. In his diary, in his letters to Minnie, he painted, it is true, a series of brilliant and romantic landscapes of the new world. But they were composite imaginary landscapes in the manner of Salvator Rosa – richer, wilder, more picturesquely clear-obscure than the real thing. Hubert would seize with avidity on the least velleity of an unhappiness, a physical desire, a spiritual yearning, to work it up in his letters and journals into something substantially romantic. There were times, generally very late at night, when he succeeded in persuading himself that he was indeed the wildest, unhappiest, most passionate of lovers. But in the daytime he went about his business nourishing something like a grievance against love. The thing was a bit of a fraud; yes, really, he decided, rather a fraud. All the same, he supposed it was important. Continue reading ““Hubert and Minnie” — Aldous Huxley” →

“Scolds, schlemiels, schnorrers, schnooks, schmucks, schlumps…” (William H. Gass)

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When young and full of fellow feeling, Professor Joseph Skizzen had been tormented by the thought that the human race (which he naïvely believed was made up of great composers, a few harmlessly lecherous painters, maybe a mathematician or a scientist, a salon of writers, all aiming at higher things however they otherwise carried on) … that such an ennobled species might not prosper, indeed, might not survive in any serious way—symphonies sinking like torpedoed ships, murals spray-canned out of sight, statues toppled, books burned, plays updated by posturing directors; but now, older, wiser—more jaundiced, it’s true—he worried that it might (now that he saw that the human world was packed with politicians who could not even spell “scruple”; now that he saw that it was crammed with commercial types who adored only American money; now that he saw how it had been overrun by religious stupefiers, mountebanks, charlatans, obfuscators, and other dedicated misleaders, as well as corrupt professionals of all kinds—ten o’clock scholars, malpracticing doctors, bribed judges, sleepy deans, callous munitions makers and their pompous generals, pedophilic priests, but probably not pet lovers, not arborists, not gardeners—but Puritans, squeezers, and other assholes, ladies bountiful, ladies easy, shoppers diligent, lobbyists greedy, Eagle Scouts, racist cops, loan sharks, backbiters, gun runners, spies, Judases, philistines, vulgarians, dumbbells, dolts, boobs, louts, jerks, jocks, creeps, yokels, cretins, simps, pipsqueaks—not a mensch among them—nebbechs, scolds, schlemiels, schnorrers, schnooks, schmucks, schlumps, dummkopfs, potato heads, klutzes, not to omit pushers, bigots, born-again Bible bangers, users, conmen, ass kissers, Casanovas, pimps, thieves and their sort, rapists and their kind, murderers and their ilk—the pugnacious, the miserly, the envious, the litigatious, the avaricious, the gluttonous, the lubricious, the jealous, the profligate, the gossipacious, the indifferent, the bored), well, now that he saw it had been so infested, he worried that the race might … might what? … the whole lot might sail on through floods of their own blood like a proud ship and parade out of the new Noah’s ark in the required pairs—for breeding, one of each sex—sportscasters, programmers, promoters, polluters, stockbrokers, bankers, body builders, busty models, show hosts, stamp and coin collectors, crooners, glamour girls, addicts, gamblers, shirkers, solicitors, opportunists, insatiable developers, arrogant agents, fudging accountants, yellow journalists, ambulance chasers and shysters of every sleazy pursuit, CEOs at the head of a whole column of white-collar crooks, psychiatrists, osteopaths, snake oilers, hucksters, fawners, fans of funerals, fortune-tellers and other prognosticators, road warriors, chieftains, Klansmen, Shriners, men and women of any cloth and any holy order—at every step moister of cunt and stiffer of cock than any cock or cunt before them, even back when the world was new, now saved and saved with spunk enough to couple and restock the pop … the pop … the goddamn population.

From William H. Gass’s novel Middle C.

“Byzantium” — Malcolm Lowry

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“People brutalise everything” (Thomas Bernhard)

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People brutalise everything. They get up noisily, go about noisily all day, and go to bed noisily. And they constantly talk far too noisily. They are so taken up with themselves that they don’t notice the distress they constantly cause to others, to those who are sick. Everything they do, everything they say causes distress to people like us. And in this way they force anyone who is sick more and more into the background until he’s no longer noticed. And the sick person withdraws into his background. But every life, every existence, belongs to one person and one person only, and no one else has the right to force this life and this existence to one side, to force it out of the way, to force it out of existence. We’ll go by ourselves, as we have the right to do. That’s part of the natural course.

From Thomas Bernhard’s novel Concrete.

“Wants” — Grace Paley

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“Wants”

by

Grace Paley

I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library.

Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.

He said, What? What life? No life of mine.

I said, O.K. I don’t argue when there’s real disagreement. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them.
The librarian said $32 even and you’ve owed it for eighteen years. I didn’t deny anything. Because I don’t understand how time passes. I have had those books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away.

My ex-husband followed me to the Books Returned desk. He interrupted the librarian, who had more to tell. In many ways, he said, as I look back, I attribute the dissolution of our marriage to the fact that you never invited the Bertrams to dinner.

That’s possible, I said. But really, if you remember: first, my father was sick that Friday, then the children were born, then I had those Tuesday-night meetings, then the war began.Then we didn’t seem to know them any more. But you’re right. I should have had them to dinner.

I gave the librarian a check for $32. Immediately she trusted me, put my past behind her, wiped the record clean, which is just what most other municipal and/or state bureaucracies will not do.

I checked out the two Edith Wharton books I had just returned because I’d read them so long ago and they are more apropos now than ever. They were The House of Mirth and The Children, which is about how life in the United States in New York changed in twenty-seven years fifty years ago.

A nice thing I do remember is breakfast, my ex-husband said. I was surprised. All we ever had was coffee. Then I remembered there was a hole in the back of the kitchen closet which opened into the apartment next door. There, they always ate sugar-cured smoked bacon. It gave us a very grand feeling about breakfast, but we never got stuffed and sluggish.

That was when we were poor, I said.

When were we ever rich? he asked.

Oh, as time went on, as our responsibilities increased, we didn’t go in need. You took adequate financial care, I reminded him. The children went to camp four weeks a year and in decent ponchos with sleeping bags and boots, just like everyone else. They looked very nice. Our place was warm in winter, and we had nice red pillows and things.

I wanted a sailboat, he said. But you didn’t want anything.

Don’t be bitter, I said. It’s never too late.

No, he said with a great deal of bitterness. I may get a sailboat. As a matter of fact I have money down on an eighteen-foot two-rigger. I’m doing well this year and can look forward to better. But as for you, it’s too late. You’ll always want nothing.

He had had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber’s snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, half-way to my heart. He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment. What I mean is, I sat down on the library steps and he went away.

I looked through The House of Mirth, but lost interest. I felt extremely accused. Now, it’s true, I’m short of requests and absolute requirements. But I do want something.
I want, for instance, to be a different person. I want to be the woman who brings these two books back in two weeks. I want to be the effective citizen who changes the school system and addresses the Board of Estimate on the troubles of this dear urban center.

I had promised my children to end the war before they grew up.

I wanted to have been married forever to one person, my ex-husband or my present one. Either has enough character for a whole life, which as it turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn’t exhaust either man’s qualities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life.

Just this morning I looked out the window to watch the street for a while and saw that the little sycamores the city had dreamily planted a couple of years before the kids were born had come that day to the prime of their lives.

Well! I decided to bring those two books back to the library. Which proves that when a person or an event comes along to jolt or appraise me I can take some appropriate action, although I am better known for my hospitable remarks.

“All I have left in the end is my present pathetic existence” (Thomas Bernhard)

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But what am I really like? Once more I was caught up in speculations about myself. I don’t know why, but suddenly I recalled that twenty-five years ago, when I was just over twenty, I’d been a member of the Socialist Party. What a joke! I wasn’t a member for long. As with everything else, I resigned my membership after a few months. And to think that I once wanted to become a monk! That I once thought of becoming a Catholic priest! And that I once donated eight hundred thousand schillings for the starving in Africa! To think that that’s all true! At the time it all seemed logical and natural enough. But now I’ve completely changed. To think that I once believed I would marry! And have children! I even thought at one time of going into the army, of becoming a general or a field-marshal like one of my ancestors! Absurd. There’s nothing I wouldn’t once have given everything for, I told myself. But all these speculations added up, if not to nothing, then to ludicrously little. Poverty, wealth, the church, the army, parties, welfare institutions — all ludicrous. All I have left in the end is my present pathetic existence, which no longer has very much to offer. But that’s how it should be. No doctrine holds water any longer; everything that is said and preached is destined to become ludicrous. It doesn’t even call for my scorn any longer. It doesn’t call for anything, anything at all. When we really know the world, we see that it is just a world full of errors. But we are reluctant to part from it, because in spite of everything we’ve remained fairly naive and childlike, I thought. What a good thing that I had my eye-pressure measured. Thirty-eight! We mustn’t pretend to ourselves. We may keel over at any moment.

From Thomas Bernhard’s novel Concrete.

“Oscar Wilde” — Dorothy Parker

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Milton When a Boy Instructed by His Mother — Henry Fuseli

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“Asylum Product” — Charles Reznikoff

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“The King of Jazz” — Donald Barthelme

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“The King of Jazz”

by

Donald Barthelme

Well, I’m the king of jazz now, thought Hokie Mokie to himself as he oiled the slide on his trombone. Hasn’t been a ‘bone man been king of jazz for many years. But now that Spicy MacLammermoor, the old king, is dead, I guess I’m it. Maybe I better play a few notes out of this window here, to reassure myself.

“Wow!” said somebody standing on the sidewalk. “Did you hear that?”

“I did,” said his companion.

“Can you distinguish our great homemade American jazz performers, each from the other?”

“Used to could.”

“Then who was that playing?”

“Sounds like Hokie Mokie to me. Those few but perfectly selected notes have the real epiphanic glow.”

“The what?”

“The real epiphanic glow, such as is obtained only by artists of the caliber of Hokie Mokie, who’s from Pass Christian, Mississippi. He’s the king of jazz, now that Spicy MacLammermoor is gone.”

Hokie Mokie put his trombone in its case and went to a gig. At the gig everyone fell back before him, bowing.

“Hi Bucky! Hit Zoot! Hi Freddie! Hi George! Hi Thad! Hi Roy! Hi Dexter! Hi Jo! Hi Willie! Hi Greens!”

“What we gonna play, Hokie? You the king of jazz now, you gotta decide.”

“How ’bout ‘Smoke’?”

“Wow!” everybody said. “Did you hear that? Hokie Mokie can just knock a fella out, just the way he pronounces a word. What an intonation on that boy! God Almighty!” Continue reading ““The King of Jazz” — Donald Barthelme” →

“Résumé” — Dorothy Parker

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The London Jungle Book (Book Acquired, 2.28.2014)

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Bhajju Shyam’s The London Jungle Book arrived a few days ago: Beautiful stuff. Full review to come, but blurb for now:

Hailed as a book that reverses the anthropological gaze, ‘The London Jungle Book’ is the personal story of Indian tribal artist Bhajju Shyam’s first encounter with a western city. Revised & fully updated to mark the 10th anniversary of that momentous journey, Bhajju’s rich art and poignant reflections are as relevant today as they ever were.

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