Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Farrar Staus and Giroux, 2009

733 pages is an awful lot of Lydia Davis. When this book arrived I thought, will I ever want to read Lydia Davis again, when I'm done with this book?

I was a student in one of those MFA Creative Writing programs no one can disparage enough. In the late 90s they were pretty much workshops for the creation of Lydia Davis imitations. A few of these, too, read like Lydia Davis imitations. Occasionally I feel like the victim of a confidence trick, like, would it all seem so profound, if the spine didn't say 'Farrar, Straus and Giroux'?

And yet -- I would read ten more volumes of Lydia Davis, each the size of this one. Her stories are a very special and quiet kind of music, which makes you listen to everything differently. The stories work because Lydia Davis somehow smuggles me into a slightly different consciousness, the one next door, the one I sense when I've had one strong cup of coffee too many, and feel the meaning of life is slowly being revealed to me, in the form of a code contained in the very most minor events of my life.

Lydia Davis inspires a very special kind of attention, like a day spent in silence. This book is a good chance to be entirely caught up in that familiar and strange light.

ROAD TRIP with SAM McGEE

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee

I was seven years old when my mother died and my father tried to make it up to me by taking me to Disney World. We drove three days to get there. On the way Dad passed time by reciting, over and over and over again, "The Cremation of Sam McGee". This gave me a chance to learn vocabulary relevant both to the poem and to my personal situation, such as "crematorium" and "corpse".

My father often drove in reverse on the freeway. Engrossed as he was in poetry, he tended to miss exits. We never went on and circled back. No. We backed right up to where we were supposed to be.

Now it seems that much of my childhood was spent suspended in this odd precarious feeling, like what I felt as my father drove steadily backward, peering past me through the rear window. Is this really such a good idea? I wondered. I never see other people doing this. If we do this all the time and don't die -- does that mean it's all right?

I liked to learn death's vocabulary. For example, I wanted to know all about embalming. I liked the flowers and the sympathy cards. I was seven years old and everything was interesting to me. I had thick bifocals, jug ears and a limp. I felt most at home with things that were strange. I liked the sense that something momentous had happened and no one quite knew what would happen next. I like the way death had of showing up and demanding holidays.

I wasn't sure about my father. I remember Mrs. Haig sitting me on the sofa and announcing that my mother had died. I remember thinking -- this means I only have him. This seemed to me a distinctly bad idea.

I think my father would have done really well in another line of work. For example, Abstract Impressionism. As it was, he had to make do with apple farming. This had mixed results. His perpetual distraction was dotted with sudden rages.

Now he'd lost his wife of twenty-two years and was in the car speeding on the way to Florida. Imagine his astonishment and consternation when he happened to notice, in the backseat, a jug-eared kid with bifocals, his nose stuck in a book.

I was no good at watching for exits. I didn't look up from my book unless physically compelled.
My mother's death taught me to read. Before that I was no good at reading -- me and Mike Buto nearly flunked first grade. I taught myself to read with books of Bible stories in the tiny waiting room at Derry Hospital because children were not allowed inside.

After my mother died I had horrendous nightmares. I believed that Bible stories had the power to protect me and so I read for hours in the middle of the night. I did not turn off my bedside lamp for years.

Our road trip took three weeks. Thus I missed learning cursive in second grade. I never learned. In fact, I viscerally disapproved of cursive. I printed perfectly, endlessly and obsessively, my mother's death embedded in every word I wrote.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror driven.
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true and it's up to you, to cremate those last remains."

Most of my nightmares were about zombies. I woke to find my bedroom walls luminous with gaping eyes. Unlike Sam McGee, my mother had been buried, not cremated. Somehow I'd gotten the idea that embalming meant that my mother's body would remain intact underground for seven years. I was very concerned about that.

The stories I was exposed to at the time -- "The Cremation of Sam McGee", the New Testament -- suggested that death was a reversible process. On some level I knew that wasn't exactly true. On some level I knew that was absolutely true. One thing was clear: resurrection was accomplished by reading. And so I read all I could.

In Egermeier's Bible Story Book I read, and the angels stirred David's heart with courage, and I imagined the heart was a cast iron soup pot (my mother's had a hole in it) and the angels could come and stir in any necessary ingredient. I read about the angels stirring and my body shivered with sensual excitement: I could become strong.

The angels would come, riding on Tony the Tiger. Or a gypsy would give me a potion. And I would become a strong, heavy-muscled hulk, instead of a gimp-legged kid with a plastic leg brace and elevated shoe who went alone to Remedial Phys. Ed. every Friday afternoon.

I was obsessed with ugliness. I thought about my mother's body decomposing in the grave for seven years, as many years as I was old. I refused to comb my hair because it required a mirror. I remembered the shame I felt when I was fitted with bifocals because of a lazy eye. Now I'm really ugly, I thought. My father tells me I was fitted for glasses shortly before I turned 4.

In my dreams a zombie bogeyman chased me, his greasy gray hair flying out behind. If he caught me he would tickle me. If he tickled me I'd be as ugly as him. This was my most common nightmare. I was forever fleeing ugly.

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Everything was interesting to me. It was on this trip that Granma Betty introduced me to the ocean, this space which was both infinite and accessible by car, where it was possible to walk in the same place every day and find something entirely different. The ocean was another book of stories -- the tide turned the page.

About Disney World all I remember is that I vetoed the purchase of a coonskin cap. I was not Davey Crockett. The raccoons and I wished to be left alone.

Two weeks after my mother died, my father brought home a girlfriend. Very interesting. She was a Jewish Vegetarian. She made Spinach Lasagna. My father could cook two things. I was always allowed to choose between them. I could have an omelet with green pepper and onion. Or I could have an omelet with mushrooms.

I was immediately aware that this woman had no interest in me whatsoever, but I didn't mind because 'Jewish Vegetarian' was drastically better than 'omelet'.

Shortly before Christmas (I was allowed to have my own small tree in my room!) my father gave me the last present my mother had bought for me -- and announced that he was getting married.

I was very happy. I had learned it was far better for me if my father was kept busy elsewhere. Periods of neglect were much better suited to life than periods of attention. (There was a secretary and a housekeeper I could ask for food. Also, I made spectacular creations of my own using corn flakes, Worcestershire sauce and Parmesan cheese.) As far as I was concerned I needed no supervision. I knew exactly what I was doing. I had books to read.

I think my father's relationship with the Jewish Vegetarian was already on the rocks by the time we took our road trip. Always only tangentially connected to reality, my father was now in far over his head. Asked for a story, he explained that the bulbous white towers appearing here and there along the highway were actually the eggs of spiders. Sooner or later they would hatch and billions of spiders would pour forth from the towers.

At one point he had me write the word LUNCH on a piece of paper and hold it out the window. The pretty lady in the car behind had lunch with us.

I understood that death was both permanent and reversible. I was a crippled boy and I knew where I was going. In the meantime, I was in the car with my father. We'd passed our exit a mile before. My father was turned, looking past me, through the rear window to the highway. He was backing up the car.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Brenda Aims to Go Mad

Brenda longed to go raving mad, off the rails, AWOL, gone beyond, beyond gone, gone. And she aimed to do so in a single afternoon, with just two diet beers. Because obviously she was past mending. And because no one else was going to pay the rent. Or run round to her mother's place to climb a ladder when the bathroom fixture started making that sound again.

Other people must make plans to go mad months, if not years, in advance.

No, people in Scandinavia probably went mad any time they felt like it, and were supported by the government.

Some people didn’t need to save money at all. They were well-connected or well-loved. Brenda had only her old mother; her old mother had only her. Her mother would rather have hired a nurse, if only she could have afforded it. Someone brawny. Or a fresh young girl who was always smiling.

No, Brenda could not afford to go mad.

Brenda was forever overshooting the mark. Although she aimed to go mad in a single afternoon with two diet beers, she wound up going mad with two diet beers, a fifth of gin, a frozen lasagna, two drunken phone calls and an altercation with – well, most recently a parking lot attendant. Which was pretty bad. Considering she didn’t drive.

Anyway, a man who criticized a woman’s bottom was always wrong. Brenda was 43 years old. She had a right to wear whatever pants she wanted.

It didn’t occur to Brenda to give up being mad entirely. Any more than it occurred to her to give up urinating. It couldn’t all just build up in there indefinitely –

She would explode.

Really it was extremely complicated, going insane. It was difficult to let go of everything. Especially if you wanted it all to stay in place.

Was this what personal assistants were for, Brenda wondered?

Brenda was only temp staff. And so she had to take care of everything herself. Which was unfortunate.

If she could let go of something, she could afford to go mad.

If she could let go of something, she wouldn’t need to.

One Day A Week

Brenda got to the point where she was insane every week, for one day. I must be a serious case, Brenda thought, insane every week! Then she tried to reassure herself. A week has seven days. She was only crazy for one. Not so bad was it? Lots of people were crazy more often than that. Most of them still held down jobs. Many of those jobs were in Congress.

No, Brenda! she reprimanded herself. This is the slippery slope! To say that one is all right. One whole day. Soon: one whole bottle, one whole cheesecake, one whole body massage, with hot scented oil.

Her judgment was not to be trusted. For -- this might be the day. The one mad day. It did have a way of coming around. Every time she looked for it, there it was.

Sanity, what was it? Simple: sanity was doing the next thing on the list. And sanity, the list, was not as safe as it ought to be. The list was spooky and tall, teetering like those anthills she saw in nature programs about Africa. She had to be careful. She had to be exceedingly precise. One wrong move, one bump -- ants came pouring out, horrible voracious woman-eating ants, swarmed in an instant over her body. Biting and opinionated ants: it's time you heard the truth about yourself.

Brenda was amazed that for so long she'd had no idea hard liquor was marketed, specially for ladies, in playful little bottles with cartoons on them. Bottles which looked like bubble bath for children -- and were 80 proof. No more tears!

One day in seven: she never saw it coming until she was over her head in it.

The next thing on the list: Brenda sat silent and upright. She held the little bottle with the bunny painted on it. She waited for the train to come at her through the wall.

I mustn't scream, Brenda thought, or the neighbors will wonder. Or I will scream. What the hell -- it's my day.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Portrait by Akemi Shinohara

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Penis

F. Scott Fitzgerald, as we know, wrote one of the most perfect novels of all time. He also had a very small penis, about which Zelda complained. One day, looking for reassurance, he took it out and showed it to Hemingway, who reassured him -- and mocked him for it forever after.

I do not know the size of Hemingway's penis. But I do know that it was nowhere near as big as he'd like you to believe.

F. Scott Fitzgerald had a very small penis. Maybe that's why he drank and engaged in obsessive neurotic behavior, such a writing novels.

Do men with nine inch penises write as many novels, statistically? If, before birth, men were given a choice, between literary genius and a genuine porno dong -- would we be living in an entirely oral society?

Or rather -- a world where all the writers were women and all the men walked around with silly, lopsided grins.

Firsts

Recently I saw a man who has a special distinction. Special at least to me. Actually I am the only one who knows about it. He was the first man I ever had sex with in Japan. Obviously this was some years ago now, since I met him that first time.

I was in job training, it was my first day off, and I'd spent all morning searching for Shinjuku ni-chome, the gay district of Tokyo. I knew I'd found it when I noticed a sporty young guy grinning, and gesturing to me from a stairwell.

I followed him up the stairs and wound up fucking him, outside, on the staircase, beside some bar that wasn't open, where thankfully no one chose to show up early to work.

It wasn't particularly epic or passionate. Actually I was rather distracted, and somewhat concerned, because I'd only been in Tokyo a week, and in Shinjuku ni-chome three minutes, and already I was fucking a stranger in public on a staircase. This seemed to me shocking. Actually it was quite in keeping with my standard of self-control, good sense, and propriety at that time.

I saw the young man often after that, in just about every dark corner I frequented. It was sobering to realize that, by fucking that guy, I'd pretty much fucked the entire Tokyo metropolitan area, upon arrival. He never asked for a second round. Maybe I wasn't that good. Maybe he was in a hurry to get to the next one.

Whenever we saw each other after that, entering a darkroom, coming out of the steam, we nodded once, politely, and then ignored each other.

For a few years I saw him very frequently. Later I saw him less. He got fat for awhile, then he got very thin. I looked very carefully at his face, at his belly, at the back of his neck, to see if he'd seroconverted, gone on retrovirals. Probably.

I didn't see him for a long time and then, today, there he was again. We nodded once, as usual. He looked fine, he's a good-looking guy.

I noticed that he has begun to grow old. Not that he's there yet, not by a long shot. But there are the first signs: long thin lines beneath his pecs. Maybe from gaining and losing all that weight. His face is changed: he doesn't need to make a disappointed face to look disappointed.

Do I have lines on my chest now? That face, certainly, is also mine. Evidently we have entered a new stage. We were Young Hotties: never grade A, maybe B plus. Now we've arrived at Officially Attempting Macho.

I'd like to ask him how he's doing. But I'm not sure how to interrupt. He's on his way into the steam, and obviously on a mission. I'd like him to know that I wish him well, that I do care for him , somehow, even if it was just ten minutes on a staircase years ago.

It's a perilous procedure, in which I almost never succeed: to inform a stranger he is significant to me -- that he is obscurely but truly beloved -- without confusing or alarming him.

I want him to be all right. I hope he doesn't suddenly get sick, or lose all his hair. I hope he doesn't sit alone and drink or punch the walls. I hope he doesn't cry himself to sleep. I hope he doesn't stand forever in the shower, scalding himself and still not feeling clean.

I hope that when he's walking down the street alone at night his heart is very light. I hope someone cares for him; I hope he cares for someone. I hope he takes good gentle care of himself. I wish him well. I wish he would get his act together, finally, stop hanging around dark corners, like this one.

Recreational Madhouses, The Era of

The period during which recreational madhouses became hugely popular, when the stigma against mental illness had decreased to such a degree that people actually volunteered for it, and prominent experts appeared on CNN saying that it was even good for you, now and then, to be insane.

The first recreational madhouses offered a 12 hour stay, during which you were free to drink yourself into a stupor, howl inconsolably, make animal noises, expose yourself, or any combination thereof. Running screaming down the corridors screaming was popular -- so popular that the hallway was delineated using tape into lanes and half was reserved for runners, sprinting screaming naked raving up and down the halls.

The recreational madhouses soon became hugely popular. It became necessary to make appointments months in advance. This despite critics who continued to scoff: What, the subway isn't good enough for you?

This surge in popularity swiftly led to the creation of mad spas, mad resorts, and the mad three day two night packages so popular with the Japanese. (As soon as you sat down in the plane, the flight attendants came around with strait jackets.)

Violent insanity was not a problem. Those who wished to be violent were placed in 'V' wards, where there were always others who wished to be beaten.

There was even a mad retirement facility, which aired highly memorable advertisements: golden-agers rolling down a sunny hillside, rouge-laden grandmas smiling straight into the cameras: "I'll lose my marbles from the start -- and have nothing left to worry about!"

"Independent Living? Who needs it! I want full-time hands-on care NOW, while I can still enjoy it!"

Meanwhile, outside the madhouses, things were much quieter. Folks were pretty much content to go to work and then straight home to their spouses, knowing they had two weeks in May reserved for touching themselves inappropriately and screaming obscenities.

Naturally, there was still a segment of society opposed to the Recreational Madhouses. Often these were the very people one would have most liked to incarcerate themselves: the political and the pious. They seemed to believed they'd been called upon by God to be insane in the public arena. Also, some philosopher types speculated that it might be unwise to try to separate sense and madness. Just like you didn't repair your own watch because you were likely to lose some small essential part.

During some public holidays, the streets of the sane were almost entirely empty: everyone had checked themselves in to the madhouse.

What would happen to sanity, the pundits wondered, if no one was interested in participating in it? Would reality languish? Might it go the way of democracy?* Or was it like the ocean floor, which went on existing even though we rarely saw it, while we acted like it wasn't there, and kept on piling crap upon it?

After less than a year, a conservative government came into power and all Recreational Madhouses were abolished. (We're not exactly sure how this happened. It was during our madhouse vacation.) Now everything is pretty much the same as before, we ride the trains with too-tight faces. Now and then someone admits to being Jesus or opens fire or bursts out singing, On top of spaghetti! All covered with cheese!

__________

* Democracy was abolished in 2012 after 84% of the electorate said that free will was bothersome and they wished simply to be told what to think.

Validation

You explained that you would not have continued, except that at exactly the right moment you won a prize.

"I was validated," you said. You said it like it was something very real, something I myself ought to drive downtown and acquire, like a parking sticker or a hunting permit.

And why don't people talk about being in-validated -- since, it seems to me, that happens much more often? We invalidate each other on the train, and then at work, and then in the evening we go out to the bars --

But almost never do you hear someone say: I was found to be entirely invalid! In fact, I'd expired some time ago!

Validation seems both necessary and awful, like morphine, which is horribly addictive, which distorts consciousness, which mutilates lives -- and wouldn't it be just perfectly lovely to have some right now!

On one hand, imagine how it would feel, if a use could be found for oneself.

On the other hand, do flowers stand around thinking, "I'm doing this for the community."

On one hand, consider the vast resources that have been expended on one's behalf: the trees expelling oxygen, the cows slaughtered, the overworked professors, the mother who doubtless would have rather taken a long bath.

On the other hand, have my good intentions done any less harm than my bad intentions? Have my bad intentions achieved any less good?

On one hand, I absolutely agree -- all aspirants should be made to recite "I am not Miss Emily Dickinson of Amherst" until they get it through their heads.

On the other hand, wouldn't it be easier and more satisfactory if everyone seeking validation got an enormous dildo, broadcast on Cam4, and left the university presses alone?

On one hand, validation would mean I wasn't just some narcissist doing this for my own masturbatory glee and self-aggrandizement.

On the other hand, not necessarily.

On one hand, how can it be real if it doesn't connect somewhere?

On the other hand, is nothing worth doing for its own sake?

On one hand, it would be easier somehow.

On the other hand, it's not like I'm going to stop anyway.

On the one hand, I am vastly ashamed there is nothing to be shown for me.

On the other hand, I am venomously proud.

On one hand, how exquisite, at exactly the right moment, to win a prize.

On the other hand, I have discovered that nothing worthwhile ever enters my life unless I have first prepared a ground of perfect complete hopelessness.

On one hand, my dear handsome professor, imagine how much better you would like me, if I could do even the slightest thing to advance your career.

On the other hand, please consider: it used to be enough for poets to do their work simply to acquire lovers.

On one hand, never mind!

On the other -- who gives a damn?

Apathy Man

Dear ______ ,


People like to give you a hard time. About living at home, not going back to school, still working at the cannery, etc.

And I invite you to just go ahead and ignore them. Why can’t he? Why won’t he? Why doesn’t he? You understand that these people are just using you so they can feel less lost. (Whether or not they give a damn is an entirely separate question.) They want to feel good they stayed on the path all this time. The well-worn, signposted path.

But there is no reason, therefore, that you should feel lost. Just for the convenience of those people. Just so they can feel less lost.

You get it, don’t you?

Obviously you do. You’ve done the math few would dare to do, as you revealed to me one day, down in the family basement.

The basement, which smells of pumpkin bread and boiled pork, of whiskey, and exhaustion. The basement where, like a triple X theater, it is always 2:30 in the morning, where you continue even now to live, where your mother toils to keep it all seamlessly and intolerably moving, where your father sits all night in the corner like an angelfish stuck to the filter.

In the basement you explained it all to me. You told me about Apathy Man.

Apathy Man has the powers of all the superheroes. He’s as strong as Superman, as clever as Batman, as nimble as Spiderman. He can leap over buildings, transform himself, save pretty girls, fly.

This power does not derive from a spider bite, from the planet Krypton, but simply from the understanding that, no matter how bad the situation, no matter how bleak things appear, things could always be far, far worse.

Apathy Man can do anything he chooses. Except that he won't do anything at all. If you call him for help he says I’ll be right over. But Apathy Man never shows up. He can’t be bothered.

It might seem like all those super powers are just wasted on Apathy Man.

But, as it turns out, apathy is a very special super power all its own. When the universe is entirely destroyed, as now and then it must be, when the universe is totally pulverized, when the other super heroes are a distant memory, when not even atoms remain intact --

Somehow Apathy Man survives. Apathy Man remains to inhabit the next universe, to create the world anew.

That is, if he gets around to it.

Structural Vanity

By now Brenda understood her vanity was -- well, not just for vanity's sake. Instead it was sort of an organizing principle: a way to check and see if she was still here. Confronted by turbulence? Check your hair. Appearances were easier.

And maybe that was how it was for everyone, or nearly everyone. They didn't expect it to actually work, i.e. that they would be beautiful, and therefore beloved, and therefore all right.

Anyway, one's own decay was easier to haggle and bother with than everyone else's. To say nothing of the dissolution of the world.

Nowadays a woman who didn't smoke and ate greens was likely to outlast major geographic structures. She might easily make it to 2050, longer than nearly any glacier or coral reef. She would outlast the polar bear, perhaps the honeybee, or even tuna fish.

Considering this, it was easier to puzzle out how to look human, than how to act it.

A Visitor

He'd thought it would be fine to always be a visitor. A guest in the family. To fly in, bearing gifts, for a week or ten days, then fly away again. Every year or so. Actually he thought it would be easier.

Twenty years passed this way -- and then one evening he happened to be a guest for dinner at his niece's house. There was just this one chance to see her, and to meet her new fiancé; everyone was so busy and of course he was only staying a short time.

At dinner he happened to say how sorry he was that he was leaving so soon -- and barely glancing at him she said, "Oh, you'll be back again."

And for a moment he saw himself through her eyes, as someone who came and went, as indeed he had for her entire life. He saw that in his absence his reality had decayed, and not only for her, but for himself as well.

He looked around the table, which was populated by real people, who could be measured and weighed, who mattered, who would not fail to be found. A farmer, a school principal, and his niece, the regional director of sales. The new fiancé, in particular, was as real as the policeman who knocks on your door in the night.

Unfortunately, he himself had ceased to be real. How careless, how foolhardy, to not tend to his reality before now! He could not make himself entirely visible; he flickered at the table. He was not quite there -- of course not, he was a visitor. He might suddenly disperse, if someone happened to open a window, or turned on the exhaust fan above the stove.

If only someone had explained to him twenty years ago, how regrettable it was to be always a visitor. Back when he might have done something about it, back when he was real. At least he presumed he'd been real. It was possible he'd always been somewhat lacking in this department.

Other people knew better, as he understood now when he suggested, repeatedly, painfully, that they might yet visit him. They looked at him pityingly, with real distaste, as if he had suggested some game of make-believe, when they had real grown-up things to do.

Why had it taken so long for him to notice the parentheses draped around his shoulders, or this enormous asterisk, like a desiccated spider, floating in the air beside his head?

He tried to console himself it was a reasonable mistake, which anyone could have made. Spending overmuch time with himself, as he did, he was prone to think himself significant. Other people, who saw him seldom, were less likely to fall into error.

And so, like an amphibious creature, he slid from visibility at the dinner table, and contemplated life in one world or the other.

If he stayed away, might he not develop in the other place, at least the appearance of solidity? Could he make-believe until convinced and proceed from there to convincing other people?

To be free at last of visiting. Visit, Visited, Have Visited: to thrash about seeking visibility, the primary effect of which is to fling muck.

Instead he intended to sink permanently from view, so as to obtain thereby the chance of being visible elsewhere.

And so a visitor ceased to visit, and what was seen rarely was now not seen at all, and what was barely noticed was not noticed at all: like a freckle on the underside of an aging arm, like a dun-colored migratory bird.



Whether this person attained reality elsewhere is unknown. Certainly it is to be doubted, considering his tenuous and attenuated state.

Cute, Regulations

One of the primary stresses of modern life is that the period during which one is expected to be cute is constantly being extended. It used to be that women were expected to be cute until the age of 25 and men until the age of 9. Now men are required to be cute until the age of 45. (Unless you are a homosexual. Homosexuals are expected to be cute until age 68.) My grandfather was cute until the age of 95, at least in his green suit. At 96 he was not so cute anymore. Women are now expected to be cute until death. Actually even after death they are expected to be cute, but then it is no longer their responsibility but rather the mortician's.

Threat.

Obviously the advertising people don't write with me in mind. It seems entirely horrible, this Pepperidge Farm truck I see on the highway now, Never have an ordinary day.

The Fear of Lunch

Without warning, Randy Mesmer sprouted an entirely new fear: a phobia of confident Europeans, particularly those with confident voices and thick curly hair. This terror developed to such a degree that Randy longed to take these Europeans aside and pour out his heart to them --

"Listen, I am so incredibly sorry to show up like this. I feel ashamed and I would like to apologize from the bottom of my heart. Trust me, I would have shown up as somebody else if I could have. It's not that I have no money for clothes -- it's that I have no judgment. Oh, what I would give to have been born beautiful! If it were up to me I'd be ravishingly beautiful, so beautiful I'd never have to explain anything, so beautiful that everywhere I went I would be embraced vigorously by the benefit of the doubt. Sadly this isn't the case. It's genetic. Actually my mother and father were reasonably attractive, but the way they're jumbled up in me -- it's not pretty. Anyway I would like for you to keep this all in mind and not judge me too harshly for having the gall, the nerve, the presumption to appear at your restaurant and ask for lunch.

"How about this? I'll just have the special and a glass of red wine and -- you just go ahead and throw the tablecloth over me. It's not a problem. Actually I myself would be more comfortable. Even if it is a little hot. It'd be like making a fort as a child --

"I won't speak. Actually, it would be a tremendous relief to me to not have to speak. Isn't that the reason one orders the special -- so as to not to have to talk?

"Tell me honestly -- are you concerned about the tablecloth? About the possible stain which I might inflict upon it? Because I do not need to drink red wine. Or have pasta with tomato sauce. In fact I do not need to eat at all. Wouldn't that simply matters! How about this? I will sit here in the corner and you just throw the table cloth over me. I would appreciate that very much. I will be entirely careful. And I will be perfectly quiet.

"I appreciate this all very much and I am grateful to you, sir, with your curly hair and your booming voice and your air of owning the world. Please go ahead. Throw the tablecloth over me. Because it is worth 15 dollars to me, just to disappear for lunch."

Manifesto, definition courtesy of Tristan Tzara:
A manifesto is a communication addressed to the whole world, in which there is no other pretension than the discovery of a means of curing instantly political, astronomical, artistic, parliamentary, agronomic and literary syphilis. It can be gentle, good-natured, it is always right, it is strong, vigorous and logical. A propos logic, I consider myself very charming.

The Year of the Aleatory

Like a developing nation seeking to boost tourism, I like to come up with slogans, and declare that this is The Official Year of Something or Other. Like “Malaysia Truly Asia”. Like “Come to Bangladesh Before the Tourists!”

For example, in my one man micro-state, 2005 was the Year of Tight Pants. Not to wear them myself, thank you, but to appreciate them on other people. Actually, The Year of Tight Pants went on for an extremely long time. (Public Relations is a hit-or-miss affair in my one man micro-state.)

Effective immediately however, a new slogan is in effect. This is the Year of the Aleatory. I found this word in a crowded page and fell in love at once. I’m smitten. I couldn’t love this word more if it had broad-shoulders and hands like catcher’s mitts. Not if it had three days of stubble, not if it were wearing overalls.

The dictionary defines aleatory as “dependent on chance, luck, of uncertain outcome.” It is derived from Latin aleator – a gambler.

Aleatory music is “20th century music in which chance or indeterminate elements are left for the performer to realize. The term is a loose one, describing compositions with strictly demarcated areas for improvisation according to specific directions and also unstructured pieces consisting of vague directions, such as “Play for five minutes.”

Anyone can imagine the vast wave of joy and relief that swept across me, when I came upon this vitalizing word. “Oh thank goodness!” I thought. “I was starting to worry that everything just random!”

But, no! No more random accidents, random sex, random scribbled pages. This is the Year of the Aleatory!

I intend to have t-shirts printed up which read: “We’re not LOST, darlings – we’re IMPROVISING!”

I discovered the word aleatory in an introduction to a book of stories by Robert Walser, the Swiss writer and psychiatric patient. His later work, as he neared final permanent incarceration in the sanatorium at Herisau, was described as “aleatory”.

And it was as if Robert Walser himself appeared before me, dapper in a yellow suit, with his pleasant smile and his eyes on the abyss, to say, “You too can practice the aleatory! You too can align yourself with the aleatory!”

My understanding of the word is further colored by the words of Eileen Agar, the Surrealist painter and photographer: “You see the shape of a tree, the way a pebble falls or is formed, and you are astounded to discover that dumb nature makes an effort to speak to you, to give you a sign, to warn you, to symbolize your innermost thoughts. Chance is not a neutral but a distinctly positive force; the surrealists believe that you can get on good terms with chance by adopting a lyrical mode of behavior and an open attitude.”

Ideally, there would be a fund available to reward and sustain anyone who, when questioned at the dinner table by their elderly father as to their future plans and direction in life, was brave enough to respond, “As for me, Dad -- I’m adopting a lyrical mode of behavior!”

Unfortunately, no funds are available at this time.

Annie Dillard says, “Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time.” How then do I learn to step aside and allow the day and the night to speak for themselves? Plans, good intentions and efficiency have been found empty-handed: I have wandered off into the floating world.

(Plans, outlines, and objectives: my opposition to them is suspicious, like a broken-hearted man who forever after takes an immediate dislike to any woman whose hair is a particular shade of red. Maybe I’d even approve of success – if it were a friend of mine.)

The white cards on which I write this evening are turned multi-colored by the rainbow lights of Soi Twilight in Bangkok, where I sit and watch the crowds who’ve come to buy sex and see the shows. The tattooed thug at the massage parlor across the way leers at me, gives a calculated belly rub. As for the mama-san at X Boys – she and I are having an affair -- as yet unconsummated. She’s wearing a red satin suit, her hair is pulled back in a fluffy white scrunchie, and I believe she genuinely loves me. Isn’t cold beer delightful?

Who is this now: a diva marching down the street in three inch heels, bottle red hair flying behind, and – now this is really extravagant – she is waving a large gold fan before her, as if preparing the air to receive her.

We are so rich in our impoverishment, so very promising in this, our advanced state of physical and moral decay. I am astonished to discover myself all the time nearly bursting with radiant light – almost all of which serves only to light up trash.

I am not hopeless, however. Nothing is lost. Nothing is random. Not here in the Year of the Aleatory.

Surrealist Painters and Poets

Mary Ann Caws, editor

The MIT Press, 2001

An anthology so rich and diverse I'm going to go ahead and call it "heroic". So much of this wouldn't be available anywhere, if not for this book. Mary Ann Caws has done dozens of fresh translations. It seemed incredible to sit at my table with my coffee and say, "Ah, now I'll read Andre Breton's letter to his daughter. . . now I'll look at facsimiles of Joseph Cornell's letters to Mina Loy and Marianne Moore. . . here is a picture of an elderly Picasso wearing a fireman's helmet. . . here are the poems of Robert Desnos and Paul Eluard and Malcolm de Chazal." The book is beautiful and fascinating and simply a lot of fun. I'm not a scholar or a historian -- this is a book to read for pleasure.

Somewhat at random, here are 7 Things I Loved:

Giorgio de Chirico, an excerpt from his memoirs: "Although the Surrealists professed unadulterated communist and anti-bourgeois feelings they always tried to live as comfortably as possible, dress very well and eat excellent meals washed down with excellent wine; they never gave so much as a centime to a poor man, never lifted a finger in favor of someone who needed material or moral support and above all they worked as little as possible, or not at all." (p.29)

Louis Aragon, an excerpt from Paris Peasant: "Fearsome, charming whores, let others take to generalizing in their arms." "No museum could ever reconstruct you on the basis of your little dimpled hand." (p.75)

Antonin Artaud, an excerpt from "Van Gogh: The Man Suicided by Society": "He who does not smell of a smouldering bomb and of compressed vertigo is not worthy to be alive." "Only perpetual struggle explains a peace that is only transitory just as milk that is ready to be poured explains the kettle in which it has boiled." (p.106)

Leonora Carrington, the story "House of Fear": "But I'd forgotten that I could only count to ten, and even then I made mistakes. In a very short time, I'd counted to ten several times, and I'd gone completely astray. Trees surrounded me on all sides. 'I'm in a forest,' I said, and I was right." (p.149)

Arthur Cravan, from his Notes: "I am perhaps the king of failures because I'm certainly the king of something." (p.171)

Julien Gracq, "Ross' Barrier": "At such times we hugged each other so long and close that in the melted snow, a single gully was hollowed out, narrower than a baby's cradle, and, when we got up, the cover between the two teat-like mounds suggested Asiatic asses, saddled with snow and descending the mountain slopes." (p.231)

Marcel Marien, his stunning essay "Psychological Aspects of the Fourth Dimension": "For if one break, pierce, breach, split, or otherwise penetrate an object, it is not its interior that is thereby reached; in the new void created, new images are created, hitherto unknown surfaces are touched." (p.289)

And I haven't mentioned the poems of Mina Loy, or the portfolio of Dorothea Tanning paintings, or Joseph Cornell's dream journal or Breton's collaborations with Eluard, or the entirely incredible Meret Oppenheim.

There is so much here -- and so many writers I would never have found if not for this book. An anthology, it seems to me, is a mission of rescue and in this case the survivors are dazzling.

Mr. Gerber Is Living the Life He Always Dreamed About.

We never learned how Mr. Gerber maintained himself. He helped out here at the building, kept an eye on things, but that hardly could have been enough to live on.

Mr. Gerber was peculiar, certainly. I don't doubt that he was somewhat mad. He may have been a pervert. A skim milk-looking middle-aged man, thinning hair, the kind of man you can hardly tell if he is 38 or 61. The sun seems to never shine directly on such a person.

In a crowd of people Mr. Gerber was useful as an end table. You gave him your drink to hold when you went to the toilet. Fifteen minutes later he hadn't moved. I suppose you could have thrown your coat over him.

Mr. Gerber was part of the complex. He lived in a corner basement apartment. A made-over utility closet, I suspect, though of course I never saw it. In this building we're all good friends -- it's required. When we had parties we invited everyone. When we invited everyone, we invited Mr. Gerber, too.

If you forced him to speak, Mr. Gerber would straighten up, tuck his chin down toward his chest, and say that he was grateful, grateful to be at a party like this, among people like these people. Mr. Gerber was so strenuously grateful one wondered if he was grateful at all.

I should clarify some things about myself. I am a person who tells the truth. Thus many people do not like me very much. I'm not a sentimentalist. I'm not a sympathetic sort of person. I'm a pragmatist. I'm an M.T.V. person. Do you know what that means? That means: My Time is Valuable. All right, let's continue.

Mr. Gerber was extremely unobtrusive, but he was always around. If you came home early feeling under the weather, there was Mr. Gerber. Or late on Sunday afternoon when distractions were running low. At 3am when you couldn't sleep, there was Mr. Gerber, clearing away the junk mail, sweeping out the entryway.

If you caught him alone Mr. Gerber was chatty, in a style both humdrum and bizarre. He'd chat about the light that was out, about trash collection, about the weather -- and then he'd sigh and say, "For so long I dreamed of this and now I'm living it!" And an enormous smile would sweep over his face.

I am not impressed by poetic-type people. If you take a moment to investigate their self-conscious behavior, you will nearly always see an attempt to camouflage failure. Like women who gain weight and become spiritual.

For all his being nothing, Mr. Gerber was extremely grandiose. His life appeared to be 10% of one's own life, which frankly was shoddy in some departments, and yet he talked like he was rags to riches, like his whole entire wish list had been delivered. He was delusional obviously. Probably he was actually severely depressed. I've seen a case or two of this before.

I suppose he was giving me some clue the afternoon we discussed Christmas shopping, while leaning up against the mailboxes. He said he was pleased to be finished with his shopping. (I have no idea who he could have been shopping for. I myself never received anything from him.)
Mr. Gerber said, "I like things -- but most of all I like the space between things."

Well. It sounds a little spiritual written down, doesn't it? Trust me, it wasn't spiritual at the time. He had one hand in a crinkly bag of BBQ ripple chips, He had little orange specks around his lips.

Conspiratorially he leaned near me, breathing on me with his barbecue chip breath. "Have you ever been in the train station at rush hour, shoving and elbowing along with everyone else, when, without warning, a gap appears? You've got 144,000 people in front of you. 144,000 in back. But nobody is quite exactly where you are. You're in a little gap. I love that."

I bet, if we really looked into it, we'd find out that Mr. Gerber really was a pervert. Perverts resemble skim milk and are always careful to be the nobody next door.

As for myself, I don't shirk responsibility. I believe in doing things. I celebrate achievement. That is why I live on the top floor, whereas Mr. Gerber lived in the basement. Both of us, it's true, live alone. But a corner on the top floor is obviously very different from a corner in the basement.

All religions of the world agree on one point: every little thing you do matters. All of us are born with a 'to do' list. We must work, procreate, ornament, etc. Like it or not this is the situation. When we die we go to Heaven, to the auditors, and all our exotic destinations, university publications, and redheads are tallied.

You can pretend otherwise but that just means you are afraid of life. At very least you must avoid blowing your nose on cloth napkins and eating potato chips on the train.

One night -- I was having some troubles, I admit. I don't have nearly as many troubles as most other people, but still I have some. For some reason I was walking around in my t-shirt. And underpants.

This is not as inappropriate, as abandoned, as it may seem. I am fastidious about underwear, about its cleanliness. And all my underwear is very modest, more modest than what many people wear on the outside.

Anyway, it was the middle of the night. In one of my hands could be found a fifth of whiskey. I turned the corner and saw that there was someone there. I started to apologize -- but there was no need. It was only Mr. Gerber.

"Whiskey?"

Mr. Gerber looked at the bottle. "It isn't space really," he said. "Actually it obliterates space. But it feels like space." I thought this meant I could continue enjoying my liquor privately, but he took the bottle from me, and had a good strong slug of it.

I remember he didn't shiver and his eyes didn't widen any. So maybe that was Mr. Gerber's story.

"Isn't this the very best time of night?" said Mr. Gerber. "I adore it. I like stumbling on these odd times when one can really live."

Well, this was nonsense, and I would certainly have said so, had I not been overwhelmingly intoxicated. And so I said, "Gosh. You really like some unusual things, Mr. Gerber."

"I like all the things that are likeable. And also those things that cannot help but be loved. Dust, for instance." Now he started counting things off on his thick stubby fingers. "I like train stations when the train is gone. I like gardens in winter. Nothing charms like the absence of charm! I like cafeterias. I am addicted to laundromats. I dislike traveling, but I enjoy being in transit. There's no place a man can really live, don't you agree, besides in a city, in a basement apartment, in a building where no one really likes anyone!"

Likely this was not Mr. Gerber's first whiskey of the evening. Some people enjoy being eccentric and contrary. And they expect other people to find it just delightful.

Personally, I dislike monologists. Don't you, too, dislike monologists? It's the back and forth of dialogue that enriches one, connects one to the species, even has health benefits. Not so Mr. Gerber. He did not seek the back and forth, the to and fro. Mr. Gerber had his speech prepared. No doubt he was a deeply lonely man, and monologues, as everyone knows, are a hazard of that species.

"One of the joys of modern life," said Mr. Gerber, "Is the perfectly anonymous coffee shop -- not the most popular chain, but its cheaper, though I grant still over-priced, imitators. Each shop is just like another and even the street corners on which they appear are so similar, so dull and gray, that you could never agree to meet anyone there, because you could never think of anything that might distinguish it from any other shop, its street from any other street, its city from any other city, until finally you cannot even distinguish yourself from anyone else: in a place like this you can really live!"

My diction doubtless makes Mr. Gerber's gobbledygook more distinguished than it really was. I decided to confront him about his evasions, to remind him that work and restraint are necessary, that the age of consent is 18. Unfortunately that drunken evening was the last I saw of him. For shortly after this discussion, Mr. Gerber disappeared.

I don't mean that there was anything untoward about it. I don't think he ran out on the rent. He just isn't with us anymore.

The odd thing is, now that Mr. Gerber is gone, he's become a very common topic of conversation among residents here in the building. They want to know where he went. They want to understand him. This is a sentimental and foolish interest which Mr. Gerber does not in any way merit.

Thus it disturbs me somewhat to discover that I, too, am unable to stop thinking about Mr. Gerber. Mr. Gerber is absolutely stuck in my mind. He appears to have become part of the structure, like train stations and dull street corners. Like dust.

I want very much to see Mr. Gerber again. I would greet him courteously. I'd listen to whatever nonsense he wished to share. And I'd be sure to tell him, "We cannot forget you, Mr. Gerber." I think the look of disappointment on his dull face would be most satisfactory.

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Robert Walser

Robert Walser, Masquerade

translated by Susan Bernofsky

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990

I adore Robert Walser. Sometimes I think I love him too much. Like, I might have amounted to something, might have succeeded in life, if I hadn't been all the time reading and re-reading Robert Walser. Maybe this book was a really bad influence on me. Maybe you shouldn't read it.

But it is so wonderful. So alive. Despite reading omnivorously and obsessively for years, I haven't found anyone else who writes anything like Robert Walser.

Walser's work is gleefully improvisatory, deliberately sketchy. It disappears as you read it. He is strenuously humble. Haughtily humble. He never stops referring to himself and how minor he is.

There's a special Jane Bowles variety of relief I feel, reading Robert Walser. The relief of having absolutely no idea what sentence is coming next. The feeling that the writer does NOT have a perfect and fixed agenda that I must now march down without missing a scenic vista or semi-colon, as if I were a tourist/prisoner on some kind of militant buttoned-up bus tour.

I think Masquerade is my favorite, among the Robert Walser books now available. (If you can, buy whatever is available. The books go in and out of print.) However, if you're just discovering Walser, I recommend reading Selected Stories first, followed by Masquerade, and then try one of the novels -- Jakob von Gunten or The Tanners.

It's more useful to "taste" Walser, than to try to explain him. Thus, here are a few typical sentences you'll find inside Masquerade:

(p.71) "I came into the world on this or that day, was brought up in this or that place, went properly to school, am something or other, am called so and so, and don't think much."

(p.77) "She then offered the opinion that she was the embodiment of a long string of capricious notions. I said I would love all her notions, would even worship them."

(p.31) "The elegant woman is somewhat hesitant to bite into the caviar marvel; naturally I imagine it's me she's holding and no other, that's why she's not entirely in control of her biting powers. It's so easy and so enjoyable to fool oneself."

(p.154) "Being carefree is never permissible, only seeming to be."

(p.170) "One should, in my opinion, treat sinners with care. To be sure, depravity can not only be exceedingly moving, but even something splendid. I incidentally possess, at the moment, a great deal of social polish, which I point out expressly for the benefit of those incapable of believing it. What a smashing, springblossomishly unfolding tussle I tussle!"