When his son wept, he most frequently uttered a highly specific sound in A-flat minor. Can one do anything with this? It hurts me, of course, not that I have anything to say about it, because, because, but the real point is that if it didn’t hurt me it would be unconscionable to build it into my music, but since I, my God, how can I not weep when my children suffer? And therefore, it would be unconscionable not to use that A-flat minor, when it might somehow, well, it’s important to remember that each one of us has his work.
From William Vollmann’s novel Europe Central; the “he”—which, via the novel’s free indirect speech pivots to an “I”—is Shostakovich.
Salon has posted a new interview with Lydia Davis. From the interview:
I can’t write incorrectly. I find it very difficult to just relax and have spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes and punctuation – I cannot do that. But I can’t do that even if I write a shopping list, so that’s not surprising. I can’t be casual, so it’s more correct. Sometimes I have fun writing it nicely – doing parallel constructions or, you know – but of course it’s more relaxed than a formal story, but it’s still a piece of writing that has an effect whether it’s a really good friend or a business email so I’m still quite conscious. It’s amazing how you can write something quickly and when I reread it – I always reread my emails – I make mistakes and I’m confusing and you’d think after all this time I could write a quick email that would be absolutely perfect, but I can’t.
No literary quality can be attained by reading writers who possess it: be it, for example, persuasiveness, imagination, the gift of drawing comparisons, boldness or bitterness, brevity or grace, facility of expression or wit, unexpected contrasts, a laconic manner, naïveté, and the like. But if we are already gifted with these qualities—that is to say, if we possess them potentia—we can call them forth and bring them to consciousness; we can discern to what uses they are to be put; we can be strengthened in our inclination, nay, may have courage, to use them; we can judge by examples the effect of their application and so learn the correct use of them; and it is only after we have accomplished all this that we actu possess these qualities. This is the only way in which reading can form writing, since it teaches us the use to which we can put our own natural gifts; and in order to do this it must be taken for granted that these qualities are in us. Without them we learn nothing from reading but cold, dead mannerisms, and we become mere imitators.
From Arthur Schopenhauer’s essay “On Reading and Books.”
Sexuality was drastically restricted in my case, because the moment it began to stir, you see, and I noticed somehow, aha, these are pretty mysterious forces, which suddenly set you in motion and toward certain objects. [Laughs.] That’s when I became mortally ill somehow. And that’s why it was all quite bottled up and kept in check for years. Which is a pity, really, because just at the time when sexuality has its greatest appeal, that is when it awakens so to speak, when that little weenie starts to stir, to put it plainly, you see, that’s when I was in the hospital. Everything was limp, more or less, and one lies there and is kept down, simple as that. When I finally got out, I was rather tired and a little weak. But, between twenty-two and thirty, everything was in place and normal, I believe, you see. With all the pleasure and all the ups and downs, literally and metaphorically–don’t be embarrassed now.
Krista Fleischmann, Thomas Bernhard: Eine Begegnung. (Vienna: Österreichische Staatsdruckerei, 1991), 53-4. Quoted in Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian, Gitta Honegger. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 62. Trans. Gitta Honegger.
“However,” the Officer said, interrupting himself, “I’m chattering, and his apparatus stands here in front of us. As you see, it consists of three parts. With the passage of time certain popular names have been developed for each of these parts. The one underneath is called the Bed, the upper one is called the Inscriber, and here in the middle, this moving part is called the Harrow.” “The Harrow?” the Traveller asked. He had not been listening with full attention.
Biblioklept 