RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,211
(that fish, swimming in its own water)
Life is pretty crazy, I'll
admit to that. Things arise,
bump up, crash into each
other, and then just leave
you be. Gone! You think,
anyway. And then some time
far later, there it is again! It
re-enters like an early Mercury
spacecraft, when no one was
ever sure that re-entry or any
success was possible. Dogs,
people, they all got killed
in these tries. John Glenn
was just a lucky sonofabitch
from Ohio. I ran into this
myself, in a weirdly tangible
manner, just recently, in reading
a book by Don DeLillo. Right
there, on page 33. It reads, 'The
first sentence was 'A government
is a criminal enterprise.'' He's
talking about a book another
character wrote, and re-telling
how it opens. The DeLillo book
was written in, I think 2006. I'd
never seen this book before (called
'Point Omega,' but just earlier to
that, about 2003, when I joined
'facebook' my introductory BS
paragraph as 'profile' about
myself, as - which I've avoided
mostly since, because the crude
assault now seems brutal, 'The
Government of the United States
is a criminal enterprise, and
anyone who dies for it - or
would die for it - is a fool.'
In such a way the rod is bent,
yes, and although I still stand,
by that statement, I'm sort of
happy it's mostly hidden. BUT,
to see it or something close to
on DeLillo's page drew me up
short, and for sure.
-
The yardage gained has been very
little, since I wrote that, and the
impulse to write it is still vivid,
though it all now seems so used
and ineffectually. In those years
which have intervened, this country
has died, the result is a paltry mess,
and the audience to which I speak
is a merest remnant of what may
have before passed for quality. My
references and approaches are old
and dusty, people don't often relate
to the thematics - nor the ways -
of what I write. All of that is too bad
indeed, but there's supposedly now
some new, evolutionary, process
underway whereby all this old and
dated stuff is to be superseded by a
broader and wiser master-race of
electronic drone-type people who
can only feel and relate to distance
and irony within the catered space
of their own banquets. This is all
now described as being fairer and
wiser; a betterment. I won't be here
to see the yes or the no, but walking
away is like bearing a soiled diaper.
Except I don't think that's even done
any longer.
-
So, who knows what? 'I was thinking
when I was a small kid how I'd imagine
the end of the century and what a far-off
wonder that was and I'd figure out how
old I'd be when the century ended, years,
months, days, and now look, incredible,
we're here and I realize I'm the same
skinny kid, my life shadowed by his
presence, the same little kid, - won't
step on cracks on the sidewalk, not as
a superstition but as a test, a discipline
still to do. What else? Bites the skin
off the edge of his thumbnail, still do
it, loose piece of dead skin. That's how
I know who I am.'
-
I grew up in a household where no
one knew a second language. That
never bothered me one bit, but in
retrospect it seems so primitive.
Seminary gave me endless Latin,
and fortunately the best part of that,
'my dear friend Flatulus' [that's a joke],
is that Latin acts as the base of so many
other languages that it is actually useful
even if dead. People should have such
outreach! But, really, I wonder what
sort of a 'mark' such a mono-lingual
upbringing is, by today's standards?
Like a strictured and strait-jacketed
life? Like remaining moribund and
morose as the happy parade went by?
All those NYCity Puerto Ricans with
their rapid-fire, sure-shot spinning of
words and phrases; the heavy strings
of Hebrews and leftovers with their
harsh yet mournful litanies of Jewish
complaints; the staccato ribaldry of
Chinese. In every condition of their
personal management, these people
were at least bi-lingual. To the local
white-boy Avenel Catholic, 'Introibo
ad altare Dei' might as well have been
some filthy Greek curse to Zeus. My
travels and my learning, all these years
later, only brought me to the realization
that everything overlaps, that each
'God' is the same misinterpretation
of the real, everywhere. And that
everywhere another Don DeLillo
lurks.
-
I've liked the few Don DeLillo books
I've read, although these last few have
seemed lacking, stillborn, in a way,
in which to 'try' to grasp a cold and
icy present-day, but end up being
unable to do so. Sometimes hugging
the world and its alienation and
isolation and anxiety and angst is
not worth doing, and the mind
only remembers the failure, not the
fact of the attempt (for which, in a
writer's case, credit should always
be given). What is a writer's case
anyway? Something wherein the
pencils are kept? [joke, again].
-
Various authors, it's always
seemed to me, if not held in
isolation, have simply to be
held against one another so as
to get the balanced, cultural,
gist of what they were writing
about, in their own times, and
amidst one another. You can't
really presume to, say, put F.
Scott Fitzgerald up against
John Updike; or Philip Roth
against Upton Sinclair. It
just doesn't work that way
because the separate cultural
mixes out of which they were
produced are so different (as
if I am saying a fish can only
swim in its own water?). But
by putting contemporaries
alongside each other you can
get a more general feel for the
cultural direction of a decade
or an era. Times now make
this more difficult because the
'sweat-equity' which used to go
into the dedicated approach to
writing a piece has now been
mostly turned into media-fluff
hacks writing for cause and
agenda. I doff NO cap to that
sickening crowd.
-
Anyway, writing of the modern
in much the format of DeLillo
has as many misses as hits.
I am stuck in that darker and
more impressionable era, I
admit, of black and white
authentication of, basically,
an old world that I carry on
my back and write to, or for,
of gritty one-semblance NY
streets in a NY that no longer
exists and will never exist
again. And that's OK by me.
No comments:
Post a Comment