Parallel Stories

I'm reading Péter Nádas.  'I have spent my life between imagination and reality' is the translated catch-phrase that comes up in an internet search, from a widely-seen brief interview in his native language.  Years ago, I read the Book of Memories which was highly praised by Susan Sontag and described as Proustian; it was well worth the time investment. 

This time it's Parallel Stories--  received with mixed reviews. Among these were comments on the more-than-1100 pages as 'not quite the disaster of Brodkey's Runaway Soul' (which I managed to complete), but flawed.  It took 18 years to write. Like Mann's Joseph quartet-- also under-read at some 1500 pages, the author considers this his masterpiece.  I respect that, often consider the fact that the best songs I think I have ever written receive the fewest 'listens' on streaming media.  

It's hard to explain the attraction these huge novels have for me-- Proust, Mann, Bolaño, Gaddis, etc... even David Foster Wallace, more recently. As my personal hourglass runs down, the blessing of my well-stocked bookshelves and stacks and piles of run-over compels me... while I still have the bandwidth, although one never knows when one's capacity takes a hit; my memory for long-ago titles, plots, etc... is failing. 

More than any event in my life, the pandemic altered the wiring of my brain.  Grief, shock, solitude-- the coincidence of age and eventlessness... changed things.  I found myself distance-walking often-- monologuing, singing to myself-- inventing narratives and weaving a sort of quasi-literary alter-ego in my head.  Some of these voices wrote themselves into poems-- as though all I did was transcribe.  But once the trauma of grief left me with a little peace, I substituted the intimacy of authorial narrators of literature... they became my deep companions. 

Long novels allow the writers to wander down corridors of memory, to pursue tangents beyond what one normally allows in daily life. Some of these are obsessive and uber-technical; others autopsy old loves, bare and dissect already-naked moments to the point of repulsion.  Criticism of Parallel Stories highlights  the more awkward passages and there are some truly cringeworthy ones.  Readers who grew up on Joyce are accustomed to explicit familiarity with body functions and explorations.  Few pursue these long novels for prurience or eroticism; there is way too much of that imminently accessible in all media.

But generally, I trust these writers-- I forgive them their excesses and cannot fathom the editing.  Nádas alleges that he writes in longhand and an assistant transfers to computer.  Then there are the translators. Being a diligent reader, I sometimes look at maps of Budapest and Berlin-- I brush up on the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Politics, history--  are the fundamentals and rediscovering is part of the joy of unraveling these novels. European authors have wars and bloody legacies in their private visions. 

To put some disturbing icing on the 100-page chapter of tedious sexual excess I finished, last night I watched two Michel Haneke films.  My neighbor-- a writer-- is a huge fan of Funny Games and recommended these. So, The Seventh Continent was just a brilliantly visual piece of cinematic art with very little dialogue that pulled through to what you knew would be a horrifying end... but still you kept on.  These films of personal horror-- the exploration of the range of evil-- of cruelty and sadism-- done not like Hollywood but with a sort of chilling matter-of-fact quiet-- well, they haunt one.

My physical therapist and I spend most of our sessions talking about literature.  He has just finished Paradise Lost and went on to Céline and Henry Miller.  It occurs, as he torments me in the name of rehabilitation, there's a kind of ironic parallel to the things we watch and read.  The possibilities and random incidents in a city- -the falls, the accidents, the smashes and crashes.. and the episodic street violence... discourages some people from taking daily risks.  The catalogue of films and movies-- the gore and blood and terror-- has surely anesthetized us to the massive global human suffering we see on the news.  And still I heard my neighbor scream when she cut her finger mildly with a kitchen knife... and a woman who fell off her scooter today-- nothing besides a bruised pair of leggings.  But the screams-- they stayed with me. 

These massive historical novels, years past the events they reflect, remind not only of the horrific immediacy of battlegrounds-- of the aggressive and shameful human tendencies wars and violence force men to summon... but of the consequence... of the future.  It's not the event but the echoes, going forward-- the psychological scars and warped behaviors we humans tend to invent to somehow repair old wounds we never deserved in the first place.  Impossible to go through life unscathed, but so much we could do in the name of prevention. Football players wear so much padding; the rest of us-- especially the children of war... are so unprotected.  When the blood dries and the limbs heal-- or not-- there will be some indelible residue of evil-- of endless disturbing parallel stories. 

Trespassers

I was just derailed by the image of the winning World Press photo of the year-- a human Pietà, faceless Palestinian mother holding the lifeless shrouded body of presumably a child-- not an infant, but a person. Processing these human tragedies on the massive scale is impossible; yet the singular image of grief is shattering-- choking. Here it has become almost beautiful in its absolute clarity... it is somehow horrifying and familiar to us all, just weeks from Easter.  

Being one of those people connected intimately to some form of belief, I often find myself silently reciting the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary.  Criminals perhaps do this... churchgoers and pedestrians... most of them begging for celestial forgiveness, for we are all fallible and flawed and even the best-hearted among us is uncharitable and occasionally mean.  While we ask perpetually for mercy and grace-- we are not always good at giving it. 

At this very moment a memorial service is being held for someone I knew-- not well, but enough to chat on the street.  I was shocked by her unexpected obituary... thought about attending the chapel... and some mischievous memory came up like a small jolt.  This person had cheated me, years ago, when I was selling art honestly, in earnest.  I found out completely randomly-- met the ultimate buyer and was a little shocked. I never said a word... duly noted, is the expression one uses.  But some years later, I tiptoed back-- presented another project to her. Again, I learned, she'd neither informed me of the outcome nor paid me my commission.  When I actually wrote her, she sent me some token small check with a roundabout and inadequate explanation.  Fool me once, is the appropriate comment here...  So with these tiny resentments in my normally good heart, I decided not to taint the service with ambivalence.  I am a little sad, but still find myself uncomfortably unable to cremate these thoughts.

Several years ago, I went to Japan with Alan Merrill.  He'd been celebrated and revered there in the 1970's and our reception was unlike anything I'd experienced in the US.  A young family who'd been tourists at a show in New York even traveled hours by train to come see us. They were overjoyed... the daughter presented me with a traditional doll as a gift.  The whole audience was so gracious and enthusiastic.  Afterward, we were starving and a journalist took us to one of those tiny great bars in Shinjuku which seat about five people. It was past midnight on a weekday-- kitchens closed, but he spoke to the owners-- a family of which the grandmother-- maybe 80-ish (the Japanese are so well-kept it's difficult to 'age' them) was in traditional dress. After some coaxing and negotiating by Alan and the journalist, they seated us on straw mats on the small floor area toward the back and brought a few varieties of saki and some snacks. While the small savory dishes were like things I'd never experienced, I was still starving.  Then for some reason, the journalist explained, the grandmother was taking an uncharacteristic liking to me-- the aging rock and roller.. and began to cook. Bowing, she brought out dish after dish of exotic noodles, mushroom and vegetable creations-- sea animals and sauces and soups like nothing I'd ever seen or tasted. We left at dawn... stuffed and slightly drunk and the kimono'd grandma and I hugging and wiping tears. Nights like this-- part of the magic of being with Alan. 

In downtown Tokyo--galleries and shops-- generally the popular culture was a strange mixture of the very childlike and the highly sophisticated-- of soft-spoken and then edgy... sweetness and noise. I stayed awake for three days inhaling what I could... the traditional and the novel.  It was a revelation.  I went home and read Shiga Naoya... Murakami... I put my volume of Genji on a table; it beckons.

This last week or two, I've been reading some of the reactions to the showing of Oppenheimer in Japan-- fully eight months after the US release. The reception has been mixed.  Personally I feel sheepish and ashamed.  The unprecedented horror of Hiroshima, and the subsequent perhaps not-necessary Nagasaki  attack-- we have read the accounts, more disturbing than any science fiction or disaster film. I have watched The Thin Red Line recently-- my own father fought and was decorated for his bravery in the Pacific.  It is so hard to reconcile this violence with the gentleness and cordiality of the people I met.

Watching the Middle East simmering as it is-- the eruptions and outbursts-- the long, long-seated resentments and hostilities... it is hard to imagine how the Japanese seemed to forgive us, in this century-- how they became our ally, how our sympathies and innovations mutually interchanged.  It seems like a kind of audacity to release this film there... and yet... it is part of our culture; a few of the comments empathized with Oppenheimer's ambivalence and difficulty.  Still... there is nothing in our history that compares to the wound we left in Japan.

My father, in the late 1950's and 60's, traveled there often.  He developed friends and did much business there.  He brought back souvenirs; our living room was nearly entirely furnished with hand-carved tables and antiques-- a lovely huge screen, all of which he'd had shipped.  Today we are Japan's staunch ally.  The cross-pollination of culture post-war is obvious.  Major institutions feature exhibitions; art auctions are filled with highly prized Japanese collectibles. In the 1970's and 80's, when I worked at galleries, large Japanese corporations were filling their spaces with European and American art.  They loved Warhol-- Jasper Johns-- even the symbols of American capitalism and aggression were understood and collected.

Not the narrative in the rest of the world; there are tribal differences and deep resentments. Killings, kidnappings-- the Palestinian displacement and starvation... massive destruction.  We ask every day for divine forgiveness, and yet-- try as I might,  I am unable to forget a petty little offense by a woman who has now passed away.  Do I forgive?  I do, but not entirely.  These things haunt my dreams-- cumulative unacknowledged sins and white lies still give me a little shiver.  Some of them may be unintentional... like stepping on someone's foot on the street, or failing to help someone.  

Yesterday an older woman was struggling to get into a taxi on my corner. She'd managed to get her upper body onto the seat but her swollen legs were helplessly stuck on the curb.  Me with my bad arm... I lifted one at a  time into the car... and Thank you, she said... embarrassed and awkward.  Like a faux pas, I blurted out-- 'Forgive me'... to this woman.  For what? For perhaps adding to the pain her disability obviously represented?  In general? Like a Hail Mary?  I'm not sure.  But I've repeated it all day-- where it doesn't belong.  It does. It belongs.  Reciprocal mercy... we are all guilty, the Bible tells us... we repeat these little sins and insults. We perpetually ask for forgiveness and despite the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, we fail to forgive; I do, anyway.  Forgive me.