User Profile

It's not for me

I was brought to this author's work by a comment by Lydia Davis who found they had an impact on her writing, which I like very much. The way I think about these peculiar little prose poms is that the author was maybe not trying to write good poems according to usual standards. He wrote self-contradictory scraps of language that leveraged what our brains believe about story and poetry to produce a particular vertigo-inducing effect he was after. The way I can imagine writing in this style is to set out writing some lines that feel consciously bad, because violate rules about plot or motivation or decency or things that nobody's bothered to name because it's always been assumed. And in the course of writing, the idea is to stay conscious of the uncanny state you can get just before the piece collapses into ruin. You can con the reader to end up in this weird error state where it doesn't seem right, whatever you've read, and yet it still insists on its own existence.

The poems are often funny, disgusting, vapid, pathetic. They are peopled with characters and things who fail to connect with one another because they are more intent on following some ritual nobody's bothered to explain to the reader. Sometimes people dies in them and it's implied that everyone can die in a way that also makes no sense. It takes a poem that is bad by conventional standards to see how badness isn't something a person can avoid. Maybe you shouldn't even try, even if it makes you look and feel foolish. There is tension in our minds because we were endowed with confusing feelings that often don't line up with our confusing thoughts and confusing words. But it's possible to write something that feels like it went badly but also succeeds in putting a reader's mind someplace no sensible poem could have brought them to.

No poem here is longer than a few small pages, because it doesn't take more than that to lead a reader to a strange destination. They vary wildly in what I think of them - many strike me as almost worthless, but a few are the kind I want to save and re-read later to figure out what just happened there. But that could just be me. It won't take long to read through this collection and decide for yourself whether it says anything to you.

I picked up this book I had on my shelves five mnoths ago to read on vacation and only now got around to finishing it. It is told as three parallel stories told in stream of consciousness style about three women experiencing trouble following the prompts of their own hearts owing partly to the people in their lives. There are many colors of blue they feel, chronic barriers to communication, secrets they feel obliged to keep, regrets about the way life has gone, and so on. We start out with the famous one, Virginia Woolf, whose story Mrs. Dalloway informs the way we experience the other two, in a prologue at the very end of her life. There are echoes between the stories concerning mental turmoil, of illness, of self-harm, and more. At the end a link between two of the storylines is uncovered which did seem clever.

I never really felt in harmony with this book, from the opening prologue which felt manipulative to me, to the way dialogue was used to depict character. I know things don't have to be expressed in a naturalistic way in fiction, but I had a hard time entering into these characters' lives or taking them seriously. Even the scenes I thought were striking along the way felt more artificial than I prefer. I can imagine coming back to this sometime in the future from a different frame of mind and maybe having a more positive response, but it doesn't seem too likely. I don't fault the author's craft as much as feel that the tale is just not for me.

When I reviewed the English translation of this book by C. K. Scott Moncrieff (books.theunseen.city/user/4thace/review/79935/s/review-of-swanns-way-on-goodreads#anchor-79935) it was 2013, my Year of Reading Proust over at Goodreads. I gave it five stars then, after some hesitation, after I had even more time to think of what these books are trying to bring about in the reader. I originally read that older translation in the 1980s when I was in graduate school and remember that only in a hazy way, especially the long central section focusing on the inner life of Charles Swann. Now after having all the books in the series I know that character is not a central as I assumed before and have enough perspective now to concentrate on the language without being sidetracked by such assumptions. Also, I read the Collected Stories by Lydia Davis (books.theunseen.city/user/4thace/review/79794/s/review-of-the-collected-stories-of-lydia-davis-on-goodreads#anchor-79794), the translator of this newer edition, and was intrigued by the idea of someone well known for her very short gnomic stories tackling such a large, lush book as a translation project. It turns out she did so with consummate talent, showing the same sensitivity to word choice, rhythm, and mood that I liked in her collected works.

By way of comparison, I present a sentence in the last section of the novel, "Place-Names: The Name," in the two translations. First, the Moncrieff translation:

And when I recalled, later, what I had felt at the time, I could distinguish the impression of having been held, for a moment, in her mouth, myself, naked, without, any longer, any of the social qualifications which belonged equally to her other companions and, when she used my surname, to my parents, accessories of which her lips--by the effort that she made, a little after her father's manner, to articulate the words to which she wished to give a special value--had the air of stripping, of divesting me, as one peels the skin from a fruit of which one is going to put only the pulp into ones mouth, while her glance, adapting itself to the same new degree of intimacy as her speech, fell on me also more directly, not without testifying to the consciousness, the pleasure, even the gratitude that it felt, accompanying itself with a smile. (p. 308 in the paperback)

Next, the Davis translation:

And remembering later what I had felt then, I could distinguish within it the impression that I had been held for a moment in her mouth, I myself, naked, without any of the social terms and conditions that also belonged, either to her other friends, or, when she said my family name, to my parents, and of which her lips--in the effort she made, rather like her father, to articulate the words she wanted to emphasize--seemed to strip me, undress me, as one removes the skin from a fruit of which only the pulp can be eaten, while her gaze, adopting the same new degree of intimacy as her words, reached me more directly also, while at the same time showing its awareness of this, its pleasure and even its gratitude, by accompanying itself with a smile. (p. 420 in the hardback edition)

The way that characteristic confusion of syntax Proust uses when drilling into the precise nuance of some thought is maybe more unclear to my thought in the older translation. There are 24 commas in the Moncrief translation versus 18 in the Davis one and I think this is not just an accident. The Davis translation seems a bit more natural to me while still being faithful to the author's unusual style. I like how it give me more of a sense of shock in the way it uses the image of the figuratively naked narrator in the girl's mouth.

Glad as I am of having access to this new version in English, it is sad that there is no indication she will take on the other books in the series. The second volume is my favorite of all so I just have to imagine how she would have rendered the Normandy scenes with new, updated phrasing. If I could have had her take on the last book, in which the character Gilberte drops back in to the story after a very long absence and the theme of the turbulent passage of time comes out in full force, I think I would have been happy. It just feels as though the attention paid to freeing the words from older English prose conventions might have led there to a beautiful lyrical effect.

Here is another thin volume of this poet's work, which came out just a couple years before the large collection The Glass Constellation and contains the title poem in that work. I like how the poems are described as "braided" with images weaving through one another across line boundaries but remaining distinct. A poem might start out talking about the actions of some character, switch to the description of some saesonal ritual, then talk about a scene from nature, all without transitions or explanations. The reader experiences moments which might be in sequence or simultaneous, harmonious or discordant, which can take up some enormous space in the world. Life can bring experiences of peace and violence.

Last year this poet was honored by the Library of Congress with the Rebekah Johnson Babbitt prize for lifetime achievement. I find his work stimulating and enigmatic at the same time.

The last book I'm finishing at the current time, a skinny volume of poetry in English