Something of Myself
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Untravelled world & Colliding thoughts
Read a thoughtful interview at Guardian early this morn, when my mind was dazed and all confused. It's about an author called Philip Roth - seemingly popular. I want to read him now. Definitely. Excerpts:
Jews appear everywhere in Roth's books, but this one seems to be Roth's great Jewish history. "Jewish?" he says. "It's my most American book. It's about America. About America. It's an American dystopia. You would never tell Ralph Ellison that Invisible Man is his most Negro book, would you?" He looks at me. "Would you?"
"Maybe not ..."
"Those kinds of considerations are newspaper cliches. Jewish literature. Black literature. Everyone who opens a book enters the story without noticing these labels."
[...]
"Are you satisfied with your life?" I ask.
"Eight years ago I attended a memorial ceremony for an author," he says. "An incredible man full of life and humour, curiosity. He worked for a magazine here in New York. He had girlfriends, mistresses. And at this memorial ceremony there were all these women. Of all ages. And they all cried and left the room, because they couldn't stand it. That was the greatest tribute ..."
"What will the women do at your funeral?"
"If they even show up ... they will probably be screaming at the casket." He looks out of the window, across the buildings of midtown. "You know, passion doesn't change with age, but you change - you become older. The thirst for women becomes more poignant. And there is a power in the pathos of sex that it didn't have before. The pathos of the female body becomes more insistent. The sexual passion is always deep, but it becomes deeper."
[...]
"But you know that you can do it now, right?"
"I have no idea that I can do it again. How can I know? How do I know that I won't run out of ideas tomorrow? It's a horrible existence being a writer filled with deprivation. I don't miss specific people, but I miss life. I didn't discover that during the first 20 years, because I was fighting - in the ring with the literature. That fight was life, but then I discovered that I was in the ring all by myself."
He gets up. "It was the interests in life and the attempt to get life down on the pages which made me a writer - and then I discovered that, in many ways, I am standing on the outside of life".
So that is that. There have been myriad thoughts colliding in my head over the last few days. Thoughts of ordinariness. Thoughts of happiness. Of demystifying betrayal. It's like the molecular structure of an atom. Atoms. Drifting, jostling, colliding, rushing...In a way I guess it's ok. Way of life, is it?
Like they say, it doesn't really matter. Or may be it does. May be it matters so much that I am forced to belittle it. As if it were nothing. May be I am just trying to fool myself. Just trying to pretend, everything's alright. Who knows?
Life seems like an eternal wait. An empty drawing room. Ironed curtains. Polished furnitures. Crystal glasses. Fancy ashtrays.
And then, that most dreadful thing - The Wait. Reminds me of Samuel Beckett.
Read a thoughtful interview at Guardian early this morn, when my mind was dazed and all confused. It's about an author called Philip Roth - seemingly popular. I want to read him now. Definitely. Excerpts:
Jews appear everywhere in Roth's books, but this one seems to be Roth's great Jewish history. "Jewish?" he says. "It's my most American book. It's about America. About America. It's an American dystopia. You would never tell Ralph Ellison that Invisible Man is his most Negro book, would you?" He looks at me. "Would you?"
"Maybe not ..."
"Those kinds of considerations are newspaper cliches. Jewish literature. Black literature. Everyone who opens a book enters the story without noticing these labels."
[...]
"Are you satisfied with your life?" I ask.
"Eight years ago I attended a memorial ceremony for an author," he says. "An incredible man full of life and humour, curiosity. He worked for a magazine here in New York. He had girlfriends, mistresses. And at this memorial ceremony there were all these women. Of all ages. And they all cried and left the room, because they couldn't stand it. That was the greatest tribute ..."
"What will the women do at your funeral?"
"If they even show up ... they will probably be screaming at the casket." He looks out of the window, across the buildings of midtown. "You know, passion doesn't change with age, but you change - you become older. The thirst for women becomes more poignant. And there is a power in the pathos of sex that it didn't have before. The pathos of the female body becomes more insistent. The sexual passion is always deep, but it becomes deeper."
[...]
"But you know that you can do it now, right?"
"I have no idea that I can do it again. How can I know? How do I know that I won't run out of ideas tomorrow? It's a horrible existence being a writer filled with deprivation. I don't miss specific people, but I miss life. I didn't discover that during the first 20 years, because I was fighting - in the ring with the literature. That fight was life, but then I discovered that I was in the ring all by myself."
He gets up. "It was the interests in life and the attempt to get life down on the pages which made me a writer - and then I discovered that, in many ways, I am standing on the outside of life".
_______________________________
So that is that. There have been myriad thoughts colliding in my head over the last few days. Thoughts of ordinariness. Thoughts of happiness. Of demystifying betrayal. It's like the molecular structure of an atom. Atoms. Drifting, jostling, colliding, rushing...In a way I guess it's ok. Way of life, is it?
Like they say, it doesn't really matter. Or may be it does. May be it matters so much that I am forced to belittle it. As if it were nothing. May be I am just trying to fool myself. Just trying to pretend, everything's alright. Who knows?
Life seems like an eternal wait. An empty drawing room. Ironed curtains. Polished furnitures. Crystal glasses. Fancy ashtrays.
And then, that most dreadful thing - The Wait. Reminds me of Samuel Beckett.
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