Spurious

How Are We to Disappear?

I never liked hoarders of books: old men and women who would never lend or give me, when I was young, what I wanted from their bookshelves. Hoarders, collectors, saving books - from what? for what? - and hence depriving them from me. How unreasonable I was (and am), but now I must turn my prejudice on myself. Have I not replaced old editions of my books with new, hardbacked ones? Am I not able to afford 3 or 4 pounds to buy a book out of curiosity? Have I not a row of unread books and that I might not read for many years - editions of Gaddis, Canetti, Milosz, Perec; and even Lydia Davis' Swann's Way, in the American edition? How deplorable!

I wonder whether I buy these books, and replace order ones in order to satisfy the victim of literary deprivation I once thought I was - and whether I've missed out on that kind of reading where a book can really be everything. But this, too, is absurd: how foolish to look for a Reading behind reading, and to think it lay there when I was young. I was as foolish a reader then as I am today - as distracted, as frivolous: then and now I felt I never really read a book, but only grazed its surface: that beneath, say, the printed pages of The Sleepwalkers, in that old, handsome Quartet Encounters edition, there was an experience of reading that I'd missed, as though the real book lurked there like a kraken.

I read it again, The Sleepwalkers - or almost all of it, and felt I'd missed it yet, and that I'd always missed my appointment with this, and other books. Maybe there was a time when reading was possible, I told myself, when my readerly ancestors in an older Europe were able to give such books the total attention they deserved. A Europe in which books were rarer, perhaps; a stiller Europe, without television and films and computer games. The Europe, perhaps, of the old Chamberlain who dies in Rilke's Malte Lauridds Brigge, and from whom the narrator of that poem-novel feels himself to be cut off.

And then reassurance: perhaps the books that I treasure because I want to treasure something - because I want to protect, if only my dream of a reading that was once and might be again possible - are those deprived of that unitary culture in which they might have been read. The books are on my side, and old Europe is on another, and both of us dream of the reading they might have welcomed, had they been written by those who lived more deeply in the nineteenth century and the centuries before them. But I think this, too is a dream, and Cervantes' was already a book written in the wake of a disappearance: this time of a world of heroes, of knights and quests and grails.

There is a tradition that says art, the creative is a sign of what is missing from our lives, and that we might fight to find it again, that old unity where life and creation are one. But when was that time, and how might it be refound? I think of the Greeks for the Romantic Germans. And I think of Hoelderlin dreaming of throwing down his pen to fight for some cause or another. Life is always on the other side of art. That's so for Kafka too - for him above all, with his dreams of Palestine, of becoming a manual labourer and forgetting the world of books. Art is only counter-life, its shadow ... but that, too is a myth.

Just as reading was never Reading, so life was never Life. All readings only graze the surface of their books. Every reading is a tangent, a way of touching. And every reading is complete, adequate to itself. There is nothing beneath the surface of the text ... Is this why there is something disgusting about the collector, the one who is surrounded by the substantiality of a library? Reading is light. It is inconsequential. What is less important than fiction, and especially that fiction that wants to be more than fiction, or that wants to speak fictionally of something greater, but of what it can only touch as fiction?

I would like to brush the books from my table. Or to put them outside, neglect them, until, water-damaged, sun-faded, they assume the modesty of rocks and lichen. Or I would like to lose each one of my books, as I left one behind on a plane the other day, in the pocket in front of me, along with a notebook and some in-flight magazines and entertainment guides. I had Swann's Way with me on that flight, but I watched Juno instead, and then No Country For Old Men. It was too dark to read, I told myself, and my neighbour didn't want to be awakened.

Hadn't I spent an hour in Barbara's bookshop at Chicago O'Hear, looking for a book? An hour ... there was Bataille, Accursed Share vols. 2 and 3 and The Tears of Eros in the Inspiration section. There was popular science, books of history. Novels ... including the newly translated Bolano, in a big, American edition. But I wanted a book written in the first person, I told myself. A book I imagined speaking softly to itself between its covers. I wanted to surprise, by reading, a kind of intimacy, a relation the book had to itself and that it would keep, like a secret.

Was it speaking, there in the pocket in front of me, between the safety card and the sickbag? Could I hear it beneath Juno and the Coen Brothers' film? Swann's Way now sits on the window sill in my living room, its pages being slowly beached by the sun. Swann's Way, with its floral spine, puce, and its fake cut pages. Haven't I read it before? The train from Guildford to ... where? And when? I was training as a teacher - wasn't it then?

I had the Moncrieff translation, amended by someone or another. I still have it, a pale green Penguin Modern Classic, now twisted out of shape. It's in the cupboard, back there. In the darkness, half forgotten. I should throw it away. There's something disgusting about it, like a half-crushed insect. I read it, I loved long passages of it, I put it aside, let its spine become twisted - when? how? - but I know, too, that I failed the book as I've failed every book. As I will fail the new Swann's Way on my sill, a book that will keep its secret as its surface, the fake cut pages I may never turn.

In my living room, I let my Beloved's books mingle with mine carelessly on the bookshelf she bought. There's no order on the shelves - only books I've read or will read soon; books on the Blues, books of philosophy and commentaries on philosophy. Novels - by V. S. Naipaul (my own edition of The Enigma of Arrival, I having only read the first third of the library edition), Janet Frame's Scented Gardens For The Blind (two pounds in our new secondhand shop. A Women's Press edition, an ironing board on the spine) ... my hardback The Last Man by Blanchot ... a few more.

My Beloved has her Austens and Trollopes in tiny, close printed editions - what, the whole of the Last Chronicle of Barset in there? - the little Dickens Christmas books ... I've an Everyman hardback of Rabelais, too - like my hardback Sentimental Journey I keep in the office (I'll never line them up, these Everymans, I promise myself that). Expensive enough (four pounds each) to demand I read them. Substantial enough to mock me for not having read them, and I feel the ghost of these books, and all the books I have read or wanted to read.

And now I imagine it is I who am too substantial, too real, and that, like Blanchot's narrator, their margins will widen when I disappear. Aren't they waiting for my body to become sun-bleached and broken-spined? - foxed as they say on secondhand book websites ... Foxed, what a word, a handsome edition, what a phrase, a reading copy, what horror! And now I want every line in my books to be part of an exorcism. How are we to disappear?, says Blanchot in the quotation that begins Montano's Malady. How indeed? How are we to allow our books to dazzle all along their surfaces, to join up into a great sphere like a planet of ice? How to let reading read only itself, turning in itself, obscure star?

Good Friday, afternoon. Weather changeable. I've written a long, stupid post. Instead of what? And for what? To find new words to same the same, and the Same of the same. What am I missing on the other side of writing? Life? Is that it? And what is lived if I press on with writing (but I'll finish this post soon; I'm running out of wind)? What do I want, and by way of reading, of writing? To give up reading, to give up writing, but only by way of reading, of writing.

Our Trip to Nashville

Day 1. Flew into Nashville airport. There are rocking chairs in the arrivals lounge. Our taxi driver detours to pick up his checkers board. He and the other taxi drivers play checkers together when it's quiet. One, from Somalia, is a checkers champion. Sometimes he wins 10 times in a row. This antagonises the Nigerian taxi drivers, who generally dislike the Somalians.

Day 2. A driving tour of the city. Our Canadian hosts are relieved when we tell them we dislike Nashville. The weird zoning that places a rubbish tip next to a pedestrian bridge next to a football stadium! Vast deserted car parks as the only public space! Mega churches deposited one after another in long strips!

It's a car city, our host tells us. You're nothing without a car. When they'd first arrived in America, they tried to do without a car, he says. They walked and rode the bus everywhere. The buses are great here, he says. You can have great conversations. Everyone talks, he says. But it takes hours to get anywhere, he says. They took up cycling. Everyone thinks you're crazy if you cycle here, he says. People yell at you. But he cycles to work nonetheless, he says.

In the evening, our hosts drive us out to La Hacienda for dinner. We are delighted by the warmth of the waitreseses and the excellence of the food. The only thing for them is to become Mexican, we tell our hosts. Learn Spanish. Learn to Salsa.

Day 3. Downtown Nashville consists largely of car parks. Odd bits of metal stick out of the ground at shin height. This is not a town for pedestrians. The honky tonks distress us with their noise and clamour. A fully outfitted cowboy walks down the street. 'Must be German', says W.

Later that day, lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant. It is delightful to tip a side plate of herbs into my ramen, and then to squeeze lime jouice over it. You'll have to become Vietnamese, we tell our hosts. It's the only way you'll survive here.

The size of the car park outside the restaurant distresses us. Madly, our hosts drives his car round and round in circles. I can't get over the amount of space here!, he says. It's madness!

We visit the full size concrete replica of the Parthenon. It sits vast and unapologetic in the sun. Why is it here? Why here, rather than anywhere else? These questions bewilder us. We are Old Europeans and this is the New World. People here are very proud of the Nashville Parthenon, says our host.

In the evening, he tells us about his project to photograph the old parts of Nashville before they are demolished. There's virtually nothing left of it, he says. It keeps him sane, he says, cycling around old ruins and finding a way to break in and take pictures of what he finds. That night he shows us a slide show of photographs on his laptop and trembles with melancholy. Where did it all go wrong?

Day 4. A trip by Greyhound bus to Memphis. An armed policeman behind the counter in the bus station watches us menacingly. On the way to the station, our taxi driver, a Somalian, tells us the USA is a third world country. That's what we were thinking, we tell him. He tells us about the lack of healthcare and the low wages. People kill themselves all the time, he says. They come to America for a better life, and they end up killing themselves, he says. They want to go to college for a better life and they're working three jobs. And then they kill themselves, he says. 

On the bus, we're sitting by the toilet, which was a terrible mistake. Something terrible happened inside. Passengers gasp when they open the door. One brings a portable air freshener, spraying it around her in the sign of the cross. We hold orange skins to our noses. What a smell! It's terrible!

Memphis, unexpectedly, is cold. The tax driver in Memphis tells us the weather doesn't know what it's doing. After lunch, we go to Gap to buy warm clothes. It was the last place we wanted to go, but here we are. The clothes are too cheap! Who made them? In what mess of exploitation are we caught?

Day 5.  We're heading to Graceland. Hearing Sal is from Nottingham, our taxi driver says he grew up on Robin Hood. he says he always asks his passengers from Nottingham whether there was a real Robin Hood. It's amalgamates several myths, says W., expertly. The taxi driver's brother rings. I have passengers from Nottingham, says the taxi driver. 'You remember: Robin Hood, his Merry Men and all that'. He and his brother grew up watching the adventures of Robin Hood on the TV, he recalls.

We learn from our taxi driver that Beale Street was almost entirely rebuilt in the 1980s. Back in '68, when Dr King was assassinated, he explains, there were no riots in Memphis, no trouble, but the city authorities took the opportunity to demolish Beale Street, home of the blues, and surrounding areas. At the Civil Rights Museum, sited next to the hotel where Dr King was shot, one woman has kept a 25 year protest against the demolition of black businesses. It's not what Dr King would have wanted, says our taxi driver.

We are quietly moved by Graceland, and wish we'd paid for the VIP tour, which includes the Elvis After Dark exhibit, full access to the aeroplanes and the jumpsuit museum. Sal buys 200 dollars worth of tat, but cannot find the Elvis tie she promised her dad. Discussion of the difference between tat and tack.

Our bus back to Nashville has been delayed for many hours. No one tells us. The lady in front of us was heading to a funeral; she won't make it now. I sit down with W. and tell him Hindu stories. Sal offers Gummi Bears to everyone in the queue. No one wants Gummi Bears. On the bus, which arrives 4 hours late at midnight, one passenger watches The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Fitful sleep haunted by screams.

Day 6. In a bar at the Five Points, W. berates the bartender about the poor choice of gin. Bombay Gin is terrible, he tells her. Tanqueray isn't bad, especially with tonic but Bombay Gin is a marketing gimmick. She says her customers like it. W. tells her to get Plymouth Gin. You can buy it in America, he says. Our bartender looks irked. She'll continue to buy what her customers like, she says.

Later, we sit out on our hosts' porch drinking Plymouth Gin. How have they ended up in America, wonders our host. It's a terrible country, he says. The guns! The churches! The poverty! In the evening, we listen to Barbecue Bob and Memphis Minnie (trading licks with Kansas Joe McCoy) and Big Joe Williams (with his nine string guitar) and sip bourbon. Our host makes us listen to the funk guitar style of the Mississippi Sheiks. He points out their sophisticated melodies (it's their microphone technique, he says).

In the string bands, you can find the ultimate blend of melody and rhythm, says our host. He's really an enemy of melody, he says. W. thinks he's gone too far. Fuck melody!, our host says. He hates dead syncopations, he says. He hates drums. Everything goes wrong when drums are brought in, he says. I'm swept up by his argument. Fuck melody!, I shout. Fuck drums!

Our host makes us listen to early John Lee Hooker. He plays electric guitar rhythmically, he says. Rhythm is everything, he says. He puts on Bukka White. The guitar produces the rhythm, says our host. 

Day 7. Through Sevier Country to a cabin in the Smokies, listening to rural blues and gospel. Route 441 takes us through the so-called Redneck Riviera -Pigeon Forge. Our host shouts and cries as we pass the mini golf courses, go-carts, water rides, laser games, motels, adverts for The Miracle Theatre and The Comedy Barn and then, finally, The Miracle Theatre which presents a show that includes an aerial battle of angels and a re-enactment of the crucifixion and the Comedy Barn, which presents an award winning family variety show for all the family one after another, one lined up after another. The buildings have been deposited here without sense or order. They are linded up in an endless strip. Kroger's. The Old Time Country Shop. Mini-malls. Huge crosses that loom out over nowhere. Is there no end? We're crushed. There's no room for him, says our host. This is auto-satire. It satirises itself. There's no perspective left from which to laugh. He cries and wails with pain.

Earlier, as we drove, our host and hostess tell us of the Yukon. Of the endless stretches of pristine forests, of deserted lakes where you could pitch your teepee and be undisturbed. Of the close harmony singing that would ring out in the Canadian night. How had they ended up here?

Night falls and we are lost in the mountains. Where's our cabin? Precipitous falls to the left and the right. Our host, the driver is edgy. We get out and walk - the road's too steep for the car. What are we going to do? Then we see it: the cabin. It's almost too late for our host. He's raving. What's he doing here? How did he end up here? He can't drive anymore, he, a non-driver! Not another mile! Later, he collapses on the balcony, still wet from the hot tub: the dying swan, half wrapped in a towel.

Only turnip greens can save us, he decides. He cooks a whole pan of them. Turnip greens!, he says. Plymouth Gin! Rural blues! Barbecue Bob! The Golden Gate Singers! These are the talismans that allow him to survive in the USA.

Day 8. Snow. W. is reading and writing in his notebook. Is he having any thoughts?, I ask him. The others have gone out. W. says his mind is a perfect blank.

That night we drink ourselves into oblivion. Our host's complaints rise to the same magnificent level as our Somalian taxi driver's. It's a third world country!, he says. It's gone mad!, he says. When they first arrived in America, he says, he saw two 12 year old kids held face down by an armed security guard. He was pointing the gun at their heads, he says. Our host went home and didn't come out for days. This country is insane, he says.

Back in Nashville, our host, our driver, falls out of his car. I can't drive anymore! We talk softly to him, and sit out on the porch with Plymouth Gin cut with water. This is yuppie hour, says our host, slowly recovering, when joggers and dog walkers fill the streets. He shows us his tattoo: workers of the world unite, it says.

Day 9. Our host talks movingly of the early blues players. They led such short lives! But life is short! There's not much time! He and our hostess reminisce about Canada. How have they ended up here? I think at night our open-hearted hosts dream of the endless stretches of the Yukon.

Day 10. Our last taxi driver, who is taking us back to the airport, is apocalyptic. In America, your teeth rot in your mouth, he says, because you can't afford healthcare. There's the rich and there's the poor, he says, and the poor have nothing and never will have anything but nothing. We drive through the Projects. There's no minimum wage here, he says. People are paid five - six dollars an hour, that's all.

Queues

The new world! We didn't think we'd make it, but here we are, dirty and dishevelled in the airport. We can't find an exit. Up the stairs and down the stairs. We sit in the rocking chairs and ask Sal to find the way out.

There's a lot of queuing in the new world, we decide. First of all, the security lines at the airport, which go on forever, and which everyone endures with great patience. Americans are a patient people, we decide. For his part, W. copes badly with queuing. He's visibly vexed. Sal is worse. She wants to punch someone, she says. W. notes that I don't seem to mind queuing. It's because you're a Hindu, he says. Hindus are a stoical people, he says.

In the Greyhound bus station, our bus is delayed for many hours. No one tells us over the tannoy. We're left to find this out for ourselves. Our fellow passengers don't care. They've seen it all. Nothing surprises them. They've always been treated like shit and it's likely they'll go on being treated like shit. A policeman with a gun in his holster stands behind a counter watching us all. Meanwhile a TV on Weather Channel blares out a documentary on plane crashes.

Sal offers everyone Gummi Bears. W. and I sit on the floor and eat barbeque flavour popcorn and he asks for Hindu stories. I tell him about Sati and Shiva, and how her father came back to life with the head of a goat. Then I tell him about Ganesha, and how it came about that he had the head of an elephant. The queue isn't moving. Nothing's happening. We Hindus are used to such things, I tell W.

The artist doesn't think, if by 'thinking' we mean the elaboration of a chain of concepts. In him thought is born from contact with the matter which it forms, like something auxilary, like the demands of matter itself, like the requirement of a form in the process of being born. Truth is less important to the artist than that his work should succeed, that it should come to life. My 'thoughts' were formed together with my work, they gnawed their way perversely and tenaciously into a world which gradually revealed itself.

Witold Gombrowicz

Ozu's most endearing characteristic, for me, is what Sato calls his "pillow shots." The term comes from the "pillow words" used in Japanese poetry - words that may not advance or even refer to the subject, but are used for their own sake and beauty, as a sort of punctuation. In Ozu, a sequence will end and then, before the next begins, there will be a shot of a tree, or a cloud, or a smokestack, or a passing train, or a teapot, or a street corner. It is simply a way of looking away, and regaining composure before looking back again. (via)

Ozu's use of "pillow shots," which unobtrusively break up the action and give the viewer a moment to contemplate or rest. The "pillow shots" consist of flowers or banners or whatnot ... (via)

Much has been made of Ozu's visual devices: the camera pitched to the eye level of an ideal spectator watching from the comfort of a tatami mat; the compositions that emphasize the geometric qualities of the Japanese interior, with its clean lines, right angles and frames within frames; the "pillow shots," as Ozu called them, of wind-rustled trees, passing trains, empty side streets, that provide buffers of silence and reflection between dramatic scenes. (via)

Ozu also developed a curious form of transition, which various critics have labeled "pillow shots" or "curtain shots." Between scenes, he would always place carefully framed shots of the surroundings to signal changes in setting, as well as for less obvious reasons. Basically a hybrid of the cutaway and placing shots, these transitions were considered unusual for extended length; they sometimes seem motivated more by graphic composition and pacing than by the demands of the narrative. (via)