RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,135
(around the big bend again)
Every so often it's been my
wont to go around the big
bend on something, some
subject : Riding the leading
crest of an idea that only
peripherally may touch on
others since it's otherwise
personal and quirky. It's
the type of dealing that
makes one solitary and
singular. It's another one
of those subjects that I'll
be touching on now. The
item in question here is my
re-read of Mr. Sammler's
Planet, by Saul Bellow,
from about 1969, as I
recall. I have any number
of books, mostly solid
fiction, that I return to now
and then, as re-reads - to
get a sense of my own
being. Re-reading often
allows a person a recall
of first reaction, and to then
balance where one is now.
I do that - a fairly numerous
canon of American authors,
and not. Orhan Pamuk, Fernando
Pessoa, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow,
Kanzaburo Oe, Peter Handke,
some John Updike and some
Salinger, to name but a few.
It's all in good taste and
always welcome : comparisons,
recollections and reminders;
if I ever met any of those guys
on the street (there are women
too, but no so much. It's harder
for me to read a woman author.
Don't know why, though I did
just read Mary Cantwell's three
memoirs, the middle one of
which I'd already read when
she was yet alive. Now she's
dead). And I've always treasured
'Nightwood' by Djuna Barnes,
as nearly impossible of any
description though it is.
-
If one considers, say, 'Harvest'
as Neil Young's high point and
all his output since then as a let
down, that logic would have you
compute, probably, 'Herzog' or
'The Adventures of Augie March'
as Bellow's. Certainly 'Mr. Sammler's
Planet' has a low reputation and place
with the Bellow canon. I don't really
know why. I find it fascinating. It
seemed to catch part of the 1960's
in ways, darker perhaps, or more
discursive, than the usual runs of
Updike or Roth. And now, 55
years later or whatever it is, it
stands as a beacon. If I were to
be writing descriptive draw-ins
for comment I would say it
'stands fast, today, like a
grommet.'
-
All three of the gents held fast
to a certain form of Jewishness,
which had fist to accepted and
mentally allowed - that was
oftentimes the most difficult
part, though once gotten over
it all came fairly easy; the Portnoy
perversities notwithstanding.
Handled as they were as 1960
lit-porn by the usual stupid
crowd, that too needed to be
overlooked. BUT, Bellow
was different and I always did
find substantive matter there.
After a while it was all clown
and circus prancing anyway;
the 1960' and '70's were, yes,
really that different from now.
-
There are so many entry points
to Mr. Sammler's Planet, and
they're all great : 'Shortly after
dawn, or what would have been
dawn in a normal sky, Mr. Artur
Sammler with his bushy eye took
in the books and papers of his
West Side bedroom and suspected
strongly that they were the wrong
books, the wrong papers. In a way
it did not matter much to a man
of seventy-plus, and at leisure...'
-
I guess there was little of today's
idea of 'culture appropriation
so that in those days, Jews having
already been established as the
most tough and most frank about
sex. 'Hey, it's a roll I was born
for!' would be the response. In
any case, the times were so weird
that Bellow's setting up of the
perfect Jew versus Black thief-stud
dichotomy - though a bit overdone -
probably works; but it's mixed
up as well with so many other fine
things that the woven pastiche then
comes up as a grandly knit fabric of
ideas and issues rather than merely
as a cranky diatribe of anti-black
street sentiment. The vividness, yes,
of the usual large-dick black guy
flashing it - though it reeked of a
certain Miles Davis like trumpeting
of the obvious, would probably not
be tolerated today; at least by any
of today's dot.com pussies anyway.
-
'For his height, he had a small face.
The combination made him conspicuous.'
That's Sammler, referring to himself,
or his image anyway, in the mirror. Not
the black guy - to whom it would be
totally displaced, by logic, to have seen
the word 'small as a referent, after the
exposure scene anyway. It's all, after
all, fairly funny. But it'' so obvious and
so leading, as to be skillful.
-
When I first read this book I was, say,
twenty. Now this guy Sammler is exact
to my age, or younger maybe, by the
time anyone reads this. That's pretty
strange. But I can identify fully: 'He
didn't in fact appear to know his age,
or at what point of life he stood, You
could see that in his way of walking.'
-
All in all, if one thinks of the 1940's
and 1950's by contrast, this makes
eminent sense, each of these writers.
There had been a dead, motley
formlessness to American writing,
at that point, for near 20 years,
and it did certainly need some
tearing up. Thank goodness these
guys came along to do some tearing;
a re-defining of the limits of both
taste and intellect was in due order.
There had been far too much, by then
of the treacle and the sentimentality
of putrid romances and American
situated tearjerker 'novels' of the ilk
of Keys of the Kingdom, Peyton
Place, or To Kill a Mockingbird.
Seven Days in May. Norman Mailer,
Truman Capote, and Joseph Heller,
at the least, were ready and waiting.
Ripe, pie-bald fodder for the chewing
gum of the American mind. Man oh
man, we all needed something.
-
When Sammler pulls that 'A wavering
morrice to the moon' line out, and
identifies it to his quizzical questioner
as having come from Milton's 'Comus,'
and meant to image-reference, in exact
wording (which he corrects) the movement
of fishes, by the billions, I believe, and
the seas themselves, performing the
dance.' [A Morris Dance. Jig. Reel.
With a hornpipe] - where else are
you going to find that stuff?
-
I get totally enraptured and elated by
all this - and as a writer, extended
re-readings in this manner allow for the
growth and extension of the writerly
skill, by 'seeing' how things are done,
or were doing, by 'observing' what it
was you as reader did NOT observe
last time reading through it. It's often
quite amazing but it's cumulative and
it takes a lifetime - years must pass
for these re-readings to gain value.
One of Bellow's tricks - I see only
now - is to over-observe everything,
and then, as well, nearly over-describe.
It's truly amazing how all that comes
to the fore and gets used as a background
of scene and observation is then put
together and stipulated for the reader.
Quite workmanlike, and charming.
It's all edifice - build the correct
mis-en-scene, and anything else gets
allowed in!
-
Two last notes on this, by way of
observation: 'This had to do with
Angela's trip to Mexico. She and
Horricker had had an unhappy
Mexican holiday. In January she had
had enough of New York and winter.
She wanted to go to Mexico, to a
hot place, she said, where she could
see something green. Then abruptly,
before he could check himself, Sammler
had said, 'Hot? Something green? A
billiard table in Hell would answer
that description.'
-
One last item, very 1960's (maybe?):
This rich kid, Wallace, had been set up
in his own law office, well-appointed,
by his father, to practice law, of which
he did none. He spent his time doing
crossword puzzles and wasting time;
locking the door, taking the phone off
the hook, lying on the leather sofa. 'That
was all. No, one thing more: he unbuttoned
the stenographer's dress and examined her
breasts. This information came from
Angela, who had heard it from the girl,
direct. Why did the girl permit it? Maybe
she thought it would lead to marriage?
Placing her hopes in Wallace? No sane
woman would. But the interests in the
breasts had evidently been scientific.
Something about nipples. Like Jean
Jacques Rousseau, who became so
engrossed in the breasts of a Venetian
whore that she pushed him away and
told him to go study mathematics.'
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