Spurious

The Land Yacht

Wasn't I supposed to write something on 2666? I ordered it from the USA after all, to read it early. What foolishness: early. Why couldn't I wait? There is something disgusting about owning hardbacks. And it's worse when you order them from another country, when you're keen, when you really want to read them. And when you have enough money to do so. But really, you can only read when you're skint. And I'm not skint any more ...

Still, there it was, 2666, ready for me to take away for Christmas. I read it over 10 days or so, almost all of it, and then, sorry because it was soon to finish, I finished the last pages here in the office. And I was sorry, because that was about it for Bolano, I'd read everything I could find, and all in a row. Everything - and hadn't I waited until nearly everything was translated, until I get all of it and wolf it down, one book after another? One book after another ... at least I ddn't buy the first few, at least I borrowed them.

2666 ... I read it in the basement, taking a few hours a day. And I wrote pencilled notes on the blank first pages - what an idiot! Pencilled notes, and for what - a review? Was I going to write a review? Mocking laughter. What had I to say on the book of the season? What was I going to add? And that's a second disgusting thing: to read what everyone else was reading. And even to be out ahead with my reading, to have it a few weeks before it officially became available in the UK. More laughter ...

I look at my notes, wondering what I was thinking. Slog, says one. Wonders on every page, says another. Whimsically mad, says another. Keeping the wheels turning. Logorrhea - no doubt spelt wrong, and didn't I mean graphomania? But who knows what I meant. And then, literary splendour, with a dash to V. What could V mean? Ah yes, the fifth part of the book. And literary splendour, which must have been double edged. Splendour, to be sure, incidents and panoramas, wonders and splendours, all that: but of a literary kind. It was all too terribly literary: was that what I meant?

But then I enjoyed V, part five, I have to admit that. Part IV, The Part About the Crimes, was terribly boring. It must explain the word slog, and perhaps the misspelt and misused logorrhea. Admit it, you liked part five. Another note: V madness of narrative. And another V: narrative rush, anxious - where's it going?, almost too fast, almost outracing the narration. And then, so much happens anything could happen.

And I begin to remember: that was what I was going to write in my daft imaginary review. That was what I was dreaming about in the cellar. I would have said what drove me through this book and some other books by Bolano was that racing, racing narrative, out ahead of me and all of us and Bolano, who, after all, didn't have long to live.

A racing narrative - and racing against what? Death - he didn't have long to live, Bolano, everyone knows that. But perhaps there is a racing that has no against. A racing like that of the skywriter of the still-too-Magic-Realist Distant Star. Racing that is the life of writing, and that leaps out ahead of it. That mystic point ahead of writing and drawing it on, and drawing the whole of the narrative with it, magnetising every narrative filing.

How urgently Bolano wrote! How urgent, the need to write! So urgent, indeed that he sought too much to keep the wheels turning, to grind on the plot, to grind out the writing, page after dull page. And there are many, many dull pages here. Many longeurs, as you can say in reviewer-speak. So many pages that do not catch flame, which list and ramble and digress. But then, compared to that mystic point, what else is there but digression?

The novel is a mad walk. The novel is five mad walks - its five parts. And there are mad walks within those mad walks - endless interrupting monologues, so many speakers who speak at uninterrupted lengths. Who speaks like that? Have you ever met anyone like that? Monologuers who speak with whimsical madness?

I wrote this phrase on the blank first pages: careening monologues. I think I was pleased with the word, careening. I think it came to me on the way to the bathroom (I had a ferocious cold, and went there for more tissues). I think I was about to sneeze, and the phrase came to me: careening monologues.

What idiocy! What vanity! There is nothing more disgusting than a well-turned phrase. That is the third horror. And here's another phrase: furiously boring. What has that got to go with anything? And then, so much happens anything could happen. Yes, that seems right. Anything could happen. This book knows no law. Off it goes in a million directions.

Bolano prepares us for this. Most reviewers noticed it: the book of geometry hung on the washing line divided into three parts that, although they constituted a whole, nevertheless worked independently of one another. Look it up, you lazy fucker. Here's the phrase, 'each independent, but functionally correlated by the sweep of the whole'. That on the three parts of the geometry book. Amalfitano's book. Amalfitano's washing line a la Duchamp.

Didn't I rather like part two of the book, all about him? Not as much as I liked him, the melancholy professor, lost in a city that would always be foreign to him, and fearing for his daughter. Part two: I thought Amalfitano was like whatshisname the father in The Savage Detectives - look it up, I can't be bothered.

Wistfully mad. Whimsically mad. But there are dull, dull passages in part two too. Dull passages, too long, giving every detail, telling us everything, everything in a mad profusion. And then part two ends, just like that. Just like that, although Bolano tells us why in another much-quoted passage, where someone or other explains why he prefers novellas like Metamorphosis and Bartleby to total novels like Don Quixote or Sentimental Journey.

Something like that. Someone or other. Can't be bothered to look it up, I've got enough to do and not much time, and I want only to let my stupid review-post sail ahead of itself. To throw up one of those parascending parachutes to catch the wind, to let my writing be drawn along, what joy, as relief from a million administrative tasks, and besides isn't everyone getting bored with the usual posts, the interminable adventures of W. and I?

You owe something to what readers you have, I tell myself. You owe something to yourself, idiot, I tell myself, the caffeine singing in your bloodstream. Now, what else is disgusting? Your self-indulgence. Your self-flagellation, if that's what it can be called. Your parade of horrors ...

The second part of Bolano's 'modular epic' (someone clever called it that) ends too early, you're beached, and then comes the third flat-footed section, the third laborious section about Oscar Fate (a nickname) and his wanderings. His real name is Quincy Williams and he's a black man from the USA come south of the border, a correspondent for a black-interest paper.

What happens? A million details. Laboriousness. Some characters I didn't care about. And then Amalfitano's daughter Rosa who is called beautiful by the narrator. I cared about her (because she was Amalfitano's; because she was called beautiful). I thought: she's going to get killed. But instead, after too many pages, she escapes with Fate over the border. She gets out. She's not going to get killed with all the others, with so many others in the almost infnitely long part four of the book, the interminable The Part About the Crimes, which contain the most boring pages in literature (even post-literature literature, which 2666 itself is).

But nevertheless, but nonetheless, there's still something out far ahead of the narrative, drawing it on. Still a kind of racing, still an imperative to narrate that gathers up the details and digressions, still a mad forward movement, a momentum. I owe it to myself to finish the book, I said to myself, wanting to give up on part four. I owe it to the £20 I spent on it, and on shipping it from the States - what a disgrace!

But really I owe it to the book and to what is more than the book, the future that writes slantwise across its pages. A book to come in 2666, which is perhaps nothing other that 2666 itself, that unexplained date. 2666: the mystic point, the apocalypse when all is revealed.

For isn't it all bent towards that, Bolano's disarticulated novel? Doesn't it wing its way there, don't the piled-up paragraphs sing in its direction? Doesn't it sound itself there out in deep water? Doesn't it dream of itself in the reaches of space? Doesn't it stand out ahead of us, impassable destiny? Doesn't it promise itself, impossible redemption, a kind of messianism of narrative that would make sense of everything that has gone before, and even our own lives as readers?

And now, do you see, I've borrowed something of the same parascending parachute, the same out ahead that draws me along like those new-fangled racers on the beach, those wheeled chariots with a parachute out ahead of them, land yachts they're called I think, I even saw on on the moor the other day, a few of us watched it racing over the grass ... now I've the wind in my own stupid sails. What laughter, mocking laughter.

Is this really what I want to do with my day? Is this a good way to spend my time, to expend it, to pour it down the drain, to laugh at it and let it laugh at me, to die a little, to let death come close a little, to look out ahead of my life to dream of something that might redeem it, and writing all the while, writing that is my racing cart and chariot, writing that binds phrase to phrase, stretched sentence to sentence, that allows a post to scroll down the page as when you shoot a comedy gun and there unscrolls a written, bang! rather than a real bang.

No bullets here. Just comedy. Just grotesquerie. In truth, I'm bored, bored of the office, bored of administration, bored of dull northern days, bored of reading, bored of living, bored of interminable W.-and-I posts ...

But where was I? Part four was boring, yes, and part five? Part five began thrillingly. It was a thrilling adventure, literary style. A relief after the murders. A new character, in a new part of the world, sketched in a rather literary way, but with momentum nonetheless, with movement nevertheless, you could turn the pages again quickly, you could wander what would happen, your imagination ran ahead - how would part five bind the previous parts into a whole?

Ah Bolano, Bolano, off he goes again, the kite is up bobbing in the air, everything's fine, there's a rush of narrative, a new wind ... the novel's ablaze again, it's like a spaceship on re-entry, cone burning, brushing the edge of the atmosphere, returning to the world, to real life, to my life as a reader. That's how it was for many pages (the happiest).

And then? Too many digressions, too many over-articulate characters, too many 'careening monologues' (laughter). It's not a novel but a collage! It's all misdirection and decoys! And who is this character? Is he only a cipher? He doesn't seem real! I want Amalfitano back - what happened to him?

I don't care about the scholars in part one, nor about Fate. I suppose I'm mildly intrigued about Haas, he seems interesting enough, but Archimboldi (though he's not called that yet) is hollow, too hollow, and the narrative is all set-piece and flourish! 2666 ties up nicely enough in the last 20 pages. It's neat, it's nice, but it's over and the mystical point sails ahead.

Over - and where has it gone, that point, that urgency of narrative? Where's it gone? It passed with Bolano, or rather with the completion (pretty much) of reading Bolano. Gone ... Bolano's dead, and my reading of his books is dead, and when's the next writer like this going to come along (hope: Jonathan Littell with The Kindly Ones, Jacques Roubaud with The Loop)?

What else were going to share? What other great thoughts were you going to unfurl? The wheel's come off your chariot, hasn't it? Your land-yacht's bust. Put up the post and laugh at the typos (but they laugh at you). Put it up and laugh at the grammatical infidelities (but they find you funny, just hilarious ...) You're the ape of thought, the ape of writing, your fingers too big for the keys and all you do is hoot, hoot at big books and point at bigger ones, hoot and point, hoot and point ...

(The best review of 2666? Scott Esposito's.)

The Messiah's Trousers

Are you the Messiah? - Am I? The apocalypse is very close, we're agreed on that. The game's up ... the game that pushed us around on its table like counters. What good were we? What good did we do? Did we ever take a stand? Did we ever insist on a single point of principle?

Our endless chatter. Our inanities and idiocies ... Speech went one way and then another. I spoke to W., W. spoke to me, back and forth it went. We could always talk, grant us that. We were never entirely mesmerised by our own stupidity. But with what idiocy, with what stupidity! It was all a waste of time, a terrible waste. What was it ever going to come to? Where was it going to lead?

We ran our talents into the ground (but what talents did we have?) We wore our chances away (but did we ever have any chances?). We drove everyone away. Who was left but us? What were we left with but each other and our endless chatter?

Of course the Messiah would never wear a moldy jacket, W. says. Look at it, it's turned green. I point out I only bought it because of W.'s ceaseless complaints about my last jacket, my velvet one. - Your velvet jacket! It was shapeless and made you look obese, says W., whereas this one just makes you look cheap. Doesn't it bother you that your jacket's turned green and you've got stains down your trousers?

W. always carries a suit with him on our foreign visits. He doesn't want to insult our hosts, he says. I never had any concern about insulting our hosts, W. says, going on about blowholes and wearing one of my disgusting jackets. It's always been entirely up to him to make up for me, W. says. He brings respectability to our collaborations. And sartorial sense. What would I wear if I were the Messiah?, is always W.'s question to himself.

That's why he always carries two pairs of trousers, he says. For emergencies. What do I do to them, my trousers?, W. asks. Why are they always so stained? And why do they never sit properly on your waist? My trousers always sag, notes W. They're like a metaphor for my life. Could I be any less Messianic?

The Messiah at Primark

Are you the Messiah? Am I? W.'s drunk and confused, and I am drunk and confused. What's gone so wrong with our lives? How did we end up where we are? What are we doing here? What will we ever do? There's been madness and compromise every step of the way. We should hang ourselves immediately.

What's it all been for? Where will it lead? Could it ever lead anywhere? No! It's led us nowhere. It's always and already led us nowhere. And here we sit, two idiots alone with their idiocy. Oh God how did it get to this? At what point did we lose our souls? When did we give up all hope for cynicism?

These are the End Times, we are agreed on that. We're men of the End, of the Very End, a dreadful symptom, a dreadful malady. And it's not as if our extinction will make the world any better. It's not as if we could hang ourselves and be done. Everything's on fire and we're on fire. The oceans will boil away, the sky will burn red ... What's the point of it all? Where else could it go? How else might it have been otherwise? 

Are you the Messiah? Am I? Is W. really the Messiah for me, and I for him? Would the Messiah ever wear a shirt like that? Would he ever wear those trousers that are flapping round your ankles? The Messiah wouldn't buy his clothes from Primark, says W., he's sure of that.

W. wishes he hadn't left his suit behind at a bus stop in its carry case. He was going to get it dry cleaned, he says, his Messiah suit. He always looked like Gary Glitter in his Messiah suit, I tell him. Like Gary Glitter on trial. But I looked like M.C. Hammer in my interview suit with its tapered trousers, W. says. What were you thinking when you bought it? The Messiah doesn't wear parachute pants.

The Drunken Messiah

Every conversation can be driven towards the apocalyptic, W. says, the shared sense that it's all at an end, it's all finished. He loves nothing better than conversations of this kind, W. says, when everything's at stake, when everything that could be said is said.

That's when Messianism begins, W. says. You have to wear out speech, to run it down. And then? And then, W. says, inanity begins, reckless inanity. The whole night opens up. You have to drink a great deal to get there. It's an art. The Poles have it, W. says. They understand what it is to drink through the whole night. And that's what the Hungarians are doing in the bars in Bela Tarr films, W. says. Steadily, patiently, they're drinking their way through the night.

All drunks have something of the Messiah about them, W. says. They speak a lot, for one thing. They feel they're on the verge of something, some great truth. He does when he speaks, W. says. Once he starts drinking, says W., he can never stop, it's quite impossible. It's because of the faith it gives him, says W. It's because of what drinking opens: the whole night, the apocalypse, but also the patience to get through the apocalypse, to dream of the twenty-second century, or the twenty-third, when things might get better again.

You can't be alone to experience the Messiah, W. says. Not really. And you can't be sober. The Messiah is drunk, says W. Or he's what drunkenness allows. He's what you become when you're drunk and what I become. Anyone can be the Messiah when he's drunk, W. says. But of course, it all depends on a relation, W. says, a kind of reaching out. He's not the Messiah for himself, W. says, just as I am not the Messiah for myself. He's the Messiah for me, and I'm the Messiah for him. Do you think of me as the Messiah?, W. asks. Well, you should.

We have to live two lives, says W., one turned to the world and to the horror of the world, and one turned to our friends. Two lives! One turned to the apocalypse and the other to the Messiah, which is another name for the friend, but only the drunken friend, only the one with whom the night opens and the future opens even beyond the twenty-second century or the twenty-third ...

Eternity in time, that's the Messiah, W. says. Have you any idea what that means? Sometimes W. does, he says. When he's very, very drunk and just about to pass out. Of course, by then it's too late, much too late ...

The Idiot Messiah

There are two axes, notes W., the apocalyptic and the messianic. The apocalypse, W. says, is the time of capitalism: the catastrophe hidden by a sequence of events which is merely the projection of infinite credit and the ideology of progress.

The disaster's the imminent global catastrophe, W. says. The destruction of the climate equilibrium. It could happen at any moment, W. says. Now for instance. Or perhaps not for hundreds of years. A threshold will be crossed and after that ...

In the meantime, we think we can avert it. We think we might overcome the catatsrophe in an impossible present of the future perfect. In truth, the true catastrophe is hidden by these so-called events of our capitalism, W. says, and it is that which has to be redeemed.

You have to see the future as it could have been and not as what it became. It could have been otherwise, says W., just as the Messiah could arrive at any instant.

How are we going to redeem the catastrophe?, W. says. How are you going to redeem it, in your flowery shirt? Are you the Messiah? Am I? W.'s confused, he says.

But then we remember the conversation in the Talmud between the Rabbi and the prophet Elijah, who tells him he will find the Messiah sitting at the gates of Rome with the lepers and the cripples. When will you come?, the Rabbi asks the leper-Messiah. When will you come: the Messiah's there, he's no one other than the leper, but he's not there yet: what does it all mean?

Anyone might be the Messiah. The Messiah might be me, says one Talmudic commentary. Are you the Messiah?, W. asks me. Are you?, I ask him. It's all to do with the logic of relations, W. says, his favourite topic. I am the Messiah for you just as you are the Messiah for me not because of what each of us is for himself, but because of what we are for the other.

It's all about speech, says W. About speaking. We're very good at that, speaking. We're chatterers. Are we ever happier than in our chatter? That's always our high point, we agree, when we've worn speech away and there's nothing left to say. But we carry on regardless, we agree. We twitter like birds. We ascend to the highest, most rarefied plain of inanity.

W. says the Messiah will come through the gap that we open between us in our inanity. We're incapable of saying anything of interest about the Messiah, we're agreed on that. We've nothing to say on the topic, but that's what saves us. We're in the desert. The end is close. Idiocy is redemptive, W. says, but only for idiots. 

Teaching

'These are truly the last days ...' W. is making me listen to Godspeed's Dead Flag Blues again. 'Shut up and listen'. He plays this to the students, he says. And he makes them watch Bela Tarr. That's what he calls teaching, he says.

The last days! What are we going to do? 'We'll be the first to go under', says W., as we sit in the living room, shutters over the window. 'We're weak ... look at us'.

Misanthropy

One would think that with my simplicity I would have a simple love for humakind, says W., but that's not nearly the case. I'm full of hatred, aren't I? This as we tour the cloister at W.'s place of work, colleagues warmly greeting W., and W. warmly greeting them back.

Of course, I skulk around my place of work, W. says, doing anything to avoid human contact. He remembers how I told him of the circuitous routes I take through my building so as to avoid saying hello to anyone. I don't know why greetings are so difficult for you, says W.

He doesn't believe it's misanthropy, W. says, just as he's never believed that I'm melancholy. It's simply a low level awkwardness, he says, just as my so-called melancholy is no more than  few bad moods.

Or perhaps, then again, it's a kind of shame. You don't think you belong, do you?, W. says. You don't think you deserve to be there, which of course you don't. Nor for that matter does he, W. says. Perhaps he's more reconciled with his idiocy, W. says. Perhaps I haven't quite accepted mine.

Gibt sie auf!

There's something entirely lacking in us, W. says, although he's not quite sure what it is. Shame - is that the word? Anyone else would have stopped doing what we do. They would have known their inability to think and to write and given up.

But there's something missing in us, isn't there?, W. muses. What do you suppose it is? We don't stop, do we? On and on it goes, and we fall a little further every day. We don't stop, do we? Or something doesn't stop in us.

Perhaps it's a kind of reflex, W. muses. Some kind of automatic behaviour of the kind exhibited by those insects who continue to mate even when their heads are cut off.

Why don't we stop? There's a short story by Kafka, a fragment really,  W. says, that reminds him of our predicament. A man in a great hurry gets lots on the way to the station and asks a policeman the way. Gibt sie auf!, says the policeman, give it up! That's what we should do, says W. Give it up!