and I noticed for the first time that this man sitting across from me had beautiful eyes now
Both of us know what to think of each other
he probably had the decisive qualification for a book, intution; but since his life was elsewhere, he despised this
And why do I still believe . . . that no better support can be found than in a vacillating, yearning person?
it was only through my writing that I had ever been able to feel something like a connection with the world
he jerked the pencil out of my hand And I stopped at the nearby gas station, where the attendant lent me his ballpoint pen for a note
If you knew how beautiful you look as silhouettes you would never want to be anything else again. If I were a painter, I would never paint anything but silhouettes
if a television interviewer had been there, how they would have spilled their most intimate stories
I have not asked, not once in this entire year
In magnificent Paris nothing required my observation anymore; here, however, in the suburb-bay, almost everything did.
And that almost painful appetite in my breast was called longing
in my style of jumbled thinking
I have love of the world. It is within me. Except that I cannot keep love of the world at the heart of the story. For that I had to go to the margins. The silhouettes: I feel the weakness in them, the lack of presence.
Perhaps the outsider is in fact best equipped to see you as all together.
And since I have been here in the suburbs, I have come to see myself as such an associate judge. As a reader. To read a book of a new-blown world.
Where do I belong? At home at the edge of the field.
When alone I appear to myself again and again as a villain.
at the thought of being alone, I should like to spend my whole life this way
And where are the readers? Mysterious brood! Passersby, hieroglyphic mankind.
Those who have not undergone metamorphosis have done themselves in.
as if I were being butted from below, at the knees, as if by a goat, from sheer joy
And all of them, I saw, had hangnails on their fingers from fumbling around in their pockets in foreign lands
I have never felt more tranquil inside than when I have been listening to such a Thersites, metamorphosed into an epic narrator
To be one with the singer, without having to sing: my ideal.
Eternally amazed, we sat together, each on a ladder rung. The adventure of life showed itself in the form of a single rolling wave in the otherwise tranquil sea.
Handke now examining mushrooms----in depth! and all over his basin. Thoreau would be proud (I think, don't know if he also scoured for mushrooms but surely he must have. Handke shows us what attention finds. His centering focus on his landscape amazes this reader. Just when you think you will doze off and dismiss and skip ahead the
5:43 pm Friday March 20
Just finished My Year in No-Man's Bay, is it our first and only suburban epic? Handke manages to end it most marvelously, a magnificent gathering up and repetition of all the motifs and themes and crochets and images and threads from the whole year. Jan-Dec 1993 fictionalized as 1999 and so a millennial epic to end the eon with joy and song. Birds, bees, beasts, grasses, flowers, trees, ladders, beggars, silhouettes. Metamorphosis.
Porchefontaine is a neighborhood in the south-east of Versilles, in Yvelines department of France.
It was a living working class residential area. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood declined in activity and population.
It features a tiny downtown, two schools, a sports complex, a camping, and a green space that is surrounded by the Versailles, Satory, and Meudon woods.
The neighborhood has a small station served by the RER C.
Metamorphosis. Wonder if he made up the Bar des Voyageurs? Renamed one of the bars there?
Now, if I ever return to Paris, I will have to do that silly thing of looking for all the places he talks about in the book, retrace all of his steps, as if that would be possible. Better to allow it all to be in the book.
"But the only vision I know is reconciliation. . . . The great are those who make peace exciting, not war. Homer today would sing the epic of the souvlake eaters on the train from Corinth to Athens." "How certain I am, even in the world's worst times, that everything is different. . . . And on yet another morning: Even if human history should come to an end soon, even in terror, something will have taken place in that history, from the beginning, and will have continued steadily, so glorious, so childlike, so gripping, so interconnected that it could happen only once; as human history in the universe could not possibly be better and more beautiful. God does not see me because I do not let myself be seen by him. Hair-root wind, from-the-ground wind, Habakkuk wind: it is still there, it still exists. The omega, the last letter of the ancient alphabet, has the form of a jump rope." 466
I underlined and marked many places in the last ten or so pages of the book. He gives it a great finale. Longeurs yes of course and entirely worth it.
pasted up some fragments about Handke--- seemed too few journalists knew much about Ezra Pound to explore similarities between his views and Handke's. Wiki makes sure we see him called an idiot and a moron, so that's ok one supposes in the current day and age after serbia now fades behind today's headlines about Gaza and on and on -----part of his attack on journalism in general --- the writer versus the news packagers --- I started by looking up photos of the house he writes about with such loving infatuation in My Year --- which is a work of genius for one thing if you think of "writing a study of Handke" you immediately droop and say oh my goodness how to do this---tracing lines of this and that just will miss the whole, we need lifetimes to find critical ways of dealing with it over and over, as with all the greats
yesterday's party a fine affair. sent off video clips, everyone had a good time singing and singing a few more times until we got the energy up
reading day today before the rigors of another birthday party tomorrow
oh the visit to Page One was a downer, of course, how did I not remember that? well, bought Genet's Funeral in memory of Phil, and taking a gamble on Donesco, see if I try him sometime. Lunched at Twisters hung out a bit at Starbucks reminded of how tangled that area is grew up in last seven or so years, Beckie says west mesa feels so open and airy and grand
Peter Handke, the Austrian author who received theon Tuesday, said recently that he hated opinions.
“I like literature,” he added, in a bad-tempered exchange during a news conference in Stockholm last week.
Unfortunately for 77, many people have opinions about him. Some see him as a genius who has pushed the boundaries of what novels and plays can be. But others are far less positive.
But some literary heavyweights see no better choice. “I can’t think of a more obvious Nobel laureate than him,” Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard said, adding that Handke had written masterpieces in every decade of his career.
“The great poet Handke has earned the Nobel prize 10 times,” Elfriede Jelinek, an Austrian author who received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, said in a statement.
But few have had the chance to ask Handke himself in detail about his writing, or motivation. On 10 October, he met reporters at his home near Paris, but he ended the impromptu news conference after being asked about his writings on the Balkan wars. “I am a writer. I am rooted in Tolstoy, I am rooted in Homer, I am rooted in Cervantes,” he said. “Leave me in peace and don’t ask me such questions.”
“He grew up in very poor conditions, in a remote provincial region,” said Malte Herwig, a journalist who wrote a biography of Handke. “It was dirt hard. He was the only one who went to college and so on.”
“He still has this air about him,” Herwig added. “If you look at his fingernails, there’s usually dirt underneath them.”
The family lived briefly in Berlin, but then returned to Griffen in 1948. During the journey, Handke’s sister was carried in a shopping bag, he wrote in A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, a stark account of his mother’s life and suicide that was published in 1972.
The Second World War and its aftermath had a clear effect, Herwig said. “He was a highly sensitive kid,” he said of Handke, describing him as “nervous, easily aroused with anger, or easily startled” and “totally a square peg in a round hole”.
Handke made his childhood a focus of his Nobel lecture, saying that his mother’s stories – about the tragic life of an “idiot” milkmaid, and the death of her brother – had “provided the impetus for my almost lifelong career as a writer”.
“He had the sense for Yugoslavia as this incredible, rich multicultural state that lacked the kind of nationalisms that he saw in Germany and Austria,” Abbott said. “It was almost a utopian place for him.”
When Yugoslavia collapsed, Handke saw that utopia disappearing, Abbott said.
Zarko Radakovic, a friend who has travelled in the region with Handke, and who has translated his work, said in a telephone interview that “Yugo-nostalgia” was central to the writer’s worldview.
“Of course it is very difficult to write about civil war,” Radakovic said. Handke, he added, “just wanted to be a counterweight to everything that had been written and said in the media. He went there and walked and described.”
Radakovic and other Handke supporters believe that the critics had focused on a few controversial passages in Handke’s works, but had not read enough to judge the author’s motives.
“Handke is such a complex, difficult author,” Radakovic said. “All of his 87 works are somehow connected.”
“I trust somebody who is so completely free of clichés and just sees the world and reacts,” he added.
Herwig said he had no problem with Handke’s criticism of journalistic language, but added: “He eventually did some of the things he accused journalists of: false bias, false contextualisation.”
But even many of Handke’s most ardent supporters have difficulty explaining why he spoke at Milosevic’s funeral. “I look at those photos of him, against that huge photo of Milosevic, and I just think, ‘What the hell?’” Abbott said.
He added that Handke has insisted his funeral speech was not an endorsement of Milosevic, but a lament for Yugoslavia. “But what he’s stepping aside from is that if he stands there, that means something, too,” Abbot said.
Other writers would have backed down in the face of such condemnation, but Handke has not. “I need not defend or take back a single word,” Handke wrote in the preface to the American edition of A Journey to the Rivers. “I wrote about my journey through the country of Serbia exactly as I have always written my books, my literature.”
Herwig said this was not arrogance; “It’s defiance,” he said.
Clearly, for the Swedish Academy, the work takes precedence. Rebecka Karde, a journalist who advised the committee that awards the prize, said that Handke had “said, written and done things I find hard to stomach”. But, she added, that did not mean he did not deserve the award.
Handke went to Serbia “trying to unlock the world through his unique, idiosyncratic, literary presence”, Knausgaard said. “But the ambiguity and complexity that language offered, charged with Handke’s sympathies, unlocked a Pandora’s box of grief, anger and despair instead.”
Viewing Handke as some sort of diabolical figure, Knausgaard added, was the opposite of the people in his writings. “The world and the people in it never are black, never are white, never are good, never are bad,” he said, “but all these things combined.”
If I am thinking of sending my three fountain pens to KG for care (after I'm gone) now, why not also think of sending her or someone else (Dennis?) the painting by Aho for safe keeping and care as well? Notice how the paintings hung on the walls do not seem to fit the same category for worry and concern as these three pens. Books, pens, paintings, weavings, knick knacks. What are "valuables" and how to worry about them and keep them until we die and until after we die? Even if I don't use the pens I could take them out of the box and hold and pet them. Or refill them with ink and draw a line or two. Write a word or two every day if not in a journal in a daily word ink day. Live Ink Lives! sort of day. That could just be the reason to keep them. That Japanese word for extra books that I have seen lately---Tsundoku, buying books that pile up and wait for you to read them. Some suggest it as a specific sort of pleasure, which seems right. Why not say the same for these three pens? They wait and serve in silence until something urges me to seek them out or one of them, rinse it and refill it with what ink is on hand (if it has not dried up) and then write something. Writing in flowing ink reminds both of dad and mother. Mimi was proud of her beautiful handwriting and loved using the turquoise Parker ink in her pen. Dad wrote/painted the big monthly window signs for the store with a collection of marking pens. Would have made a great art project to have bought some of those pens, big aluminum ones with heavy wide felt tips that held lots of ink so you could write Weekly Special Rib-eye steaks at $1.49 per pound or such. Green Giant Peas 6 cans for $3.00. Could google grocery window signs from 1950 to see what images might show up. This seems to be the opinion column of the day for the situation. Kossi's work on the chair has various pings and bells going on as he looks over the innards of the recliner with his tech apps. He says he's worked on lots of different variants. My consumerism has already gone hyper and has me going to Tema this Saturday and saying, as lord of the estate, which recliner is in stock and can you bring out within two weeks? Or to Lazy-Boy. But I know from previous years that all of these items are on back orders these days, or factory order waiting lists if you want a certain cover or color. Kossi has very long dreadlocks, early 40s?, thick black rimmed glasses, thin, muscular. Some accent, Jamaican? Not enough talk yet to hear enough to tell. From the sounds of the process so far it seems as though he might be fixing it.
Nice chat with Kossi. I am his first customer for the business he just put on Yelp for the first time. His glasses are horn-rimmed, readers, dark wine colored. Interesting background. Son of officials for IMF from Togoland. French colony in West Africa. He grew up in Bethesda, went to French prep school there. Some college but not enough. Got into working on tech, HDML, which got him good jobs fixing the stuff for big agencies and companies in DC.
Togo at heart of the slave trade for a few centuries. France took it over after Germany lost WWI. Fewer than ten million people. Kossi must be from a very elite family. IMF diplomats in DC.
Long naps this afternoon. Bela feeling more over the cold. Over the clock change too. Gray skies most of the day, windy outside now.
Enjoying Bay great deal. Slow read, intricate and dense in all the most enjoyable ways. Big hardback edition most satisfying.
and finally the morning star alone moved through his innermost being with the slowness of the universe and penetrated it. Such a caress the singer had never experienced before. My Year 203
yesterday Matei Varga playing Chopin and Brahms at Chatter
hardback copy of My Year arrived. Glad I bought it. Yes, larger print, easier on the eyes but more than that the gone world of book culture it conveys. Printed in 1998 (our S American year), Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Great blurbs from German literary sources. The old world. Aeons from the guidance we get daily on X. Remember when I wrote to the PSC library begging them to continue putting plastic covers on new books with the dust jackets because the jackets themselves conveyed so much to the reader both in information, context and cultural pleasure.
Wonder how close it might actually be? Bright sunny day off Saturday. I walk a bit near Piedras Marcads canyon without quite realizing it. Lunch at Thai Boran while I read the new Andre Aciman book, from FF in UK, hardback $, "Stowaway." It is a short story between boards. Novella? not quite enough? Is he creating a box of chocolates, a cache of jewels, a tray of jellied sweets. Each of his recent stories could be the basis of a screenplay. He knows his audience so well, a savy, knowing YA fairy tale for the sentimental 60-70 year olds. He comes up with quotable lines and easy to admire turns of phrase and thought. Stowaway it turns out is code of sorts for closeted bi/gay married man who commits suicide never having realized his loves or his life. The two figures who chat over coffee for a morning frame the fable, one the older woman, the other the clueless sort of handsome young lawyer the wonderful Paul was secretly in love with. If I let myself criticize too much, it is pretty cloying. Paul the great writer of brilliant journals, now available for discovery.
After lunch I went back out Piedra Marcada canyon and walked to the first view. I thought I was racking up footsteps but not nearly as many as I'd thought. Still it was fun to see the basalt boulders and the glyphs and markings. I wonder if Handke visited here? He would have loved the whole landscape and written about it brilliantly.
Aciman writes well about the nuances of feelings in relationships. And yet now I would look backward into his work and claim that Harvard Square is his best novel, better even than Call Me ByYour Name, because in that one he has sold out or honed his product into a perfect glovetail with the market hand. His memoir about the year in Rome is much more important. Or at least substantial.
Caved and ordered new edition, 30 years, of Gass's The Tunnel. He was born in 1924.
sinus headache killing me this morning, felt like a new cold last night but that feeling as diminished
allergies?
"This is one I I will never put in quotation marks. 157 End of chapter 1 Book Two in Handke. He has survived his one day of madness in the suburb. Still like him so much, speaks to me in so many ways. I guess I will give Gass a look but I remain skeptical about his big book. As much as I did enjoy many books by Antunes, never as much as Handke's.
We await Adriana's visit at 1 pm to see if she will be the one to take Va to swim once a week.
Found I still have a medical appointment on March 25, so I will now keep that, get a new doctor here.
Like learning about the petty prophet of Pontefontaine and all else in Bay. His voice, his explorations of interior states, his personas for himself. Personal
First of all a new title for my book thrust itself upon me. From "Prehistoric Forms" it was renamed "The Chimerical World." 167 of the Orinoco in the mountainous region of Guyana where my story continued to spin its spirals. 168 chimera spirals the writer storyteller at war with himself, expansive, free, contracted, anxious, obsessive, he has used often before "felt balls of air swelling in my armpits." the highest calling to be a storyteller
