by Alex Kovacs
The Repository of Words
(1972–1989)
Frustrated by the scarcity of print resources available to the public, Maximilian decided to found his own library. Once completed, it would be by some distance the largest free lending library in London. Admission would be open to anyone who had not yet proved themselves to be a troublemaker. All in all, it surprised him that such an important project hadn’t occurred to him sooner. In the midst of his furious researches in the British Museum Reading Room, he had discovered that the vast majority of published books were kept well hidden from public view. Knowledge was an asset extremely difficult for most people to acquire.
There were, after all, so many obstacles in place. Maximilian became very cynical when he took a moment to consider that this state of affairs was enforced by governments who routinely spent enormous sums on training and equipping their militaries, on building civic infrastructures more than a little harmful to the environment, on maintaining police forces that (as an aside to their other activities) helped to keep the population in a state of docile conformity; not to mention the fostering of economic systems which barely gave individuals the time or the energy to read—should many books even be available to them. As far as Maximilian was concerned, it was no mere accident that so few books were available at the public lending libraries of the British Isles. This was a subtle, probably unconscious method for exercising an instinctive and very powerful form of mind control, an activity perfected long ago by the ruling classes.
Maximilian firmly believed that books were the key to all genuine advancement, whether personal or societal. He created the library in order to enable a few more individuals to achieve forms of personal liberation one day, once his actions had been discovered. He firmly believed that it was only by presenting readers with row after row after row of inviting volumes that the full scale of existence could be successfully communicated to anyone. It was really only when books could be glanced at, picked up, flicked through, and smelt, that an individual might begin to piece together some idea of their metaphysical situation. He knew first-hand, from his own experiences as an adolescent, that a single book could bring miraculous transformative powers to bear on one’s life, leading towards the next text, and the next, until the contours of one’s world had widened.
As soon as the idea for the library had taken hold, he began to gather together copies of as many books as he could get his hands on, ignoring any obvious criteria for selection. Purchasing from all available sources, in enormous quantities, he often took to certain titles over others for what even he considered very dubious reasons. He might buy a book merely because the author’s name happened to appeal to him at the moment that he saw it printed on the spine, or because the cover illustration reminded him of the details of an afternoon from his childhood. Precious antiquarian volumes were placed beside modern illustrated DIY manuals; slim political tracts rubbed shoulders with books describing the habits of goldfish; there was an abundance of anthologies of Dutch anthropological writing, and various nineteenth-century dissertations on what ought to be considered the proper forms of social conduct when seated at table. Careful to include anything that anyone might have even a passing interest in, the collection soon expanded to include vast numbers of forgotten and unusual works.
So many titles passed through his hands that he developed a vertiginous dizziness. When enormous regions of knowledge are constantly hidden from view, the experience of discovering them can be quite a disconcerting one. All he had once taken for granted was now thrown into doubt. Words could no longer be relied upon to designate specific meanings, such was the previously unsuspected scale of their potential use. He could no longer think of the medium of text as he once had. Often now he felt absolute indifference towards authors whose work he would once have appreciated, and many “great” authors’ voices now seemed minute to him, like tiny islands possessing only a single inhabitant.
His collection was stored in a warehouse in Clerkenwell. He had a series of small rooms built up within the space, each of them holding different numbers of books, some with substantial holdings based around a particular theme, others containing just a few chairs and only three or four titles on their otherwise empty shelves. Each room was painted in a different shade; each had a different painting framed upon its wall. These few small rooms gave way to the enormous, largely unconverted spaces in which hundreds of books were piled on top of each other and could only be reached by ladders. Handwritten signs in ornate calligraphy encouraged different forms of loitering, browsing, dawdling, and mingling. Hammocks and sofas were scattered across the space so that visitors might feel invited to read for as long as they liked. Figurines, bowls, and plants served as a series of “real-life” adornments amidst so many words. Certain areas were set aside for serious forms of work and scholarship and these were to be entirely silent. Millions of volumes came to line the shelves, and Maximilian suggested (in a bound document entitled Proposed Rules of Conduct for the Library), that every ten years, on New Year’s Day, the majority of the books should be given away by lottery, to be replaced with a range of new, unexpected titles.
It was not meant to be a comprehensive collection. Whilst it would point the way towards the vast totality of printed matter available in the world, those seeking definitive collections would have to venture farther afield. Maximilian wanted the library to focus on the “random,” the masses of ignored authors and subjects that formed the basis of the majority of the collections in the world’s libraries. (When he had finished assembling the first catalogue of his institution, Maximilian realised that there were hundreds of volumes about the history of Hawaii, but not a single work that could be attributed to William Shakespeare.) Likewise, by making only haphazard acquisitions, Maximilian hoped to ensure his institution’s impartiality: it should, he believed, reflect no one’s taste and embody no sort of agenda. This was not something that he came even slightly close to achieving, but he thought that to at least aspire towards this aim was noble.
There was no question of using any of the standard methods of classifying and organizing the books. As far as Maximilian was concerned, the Dewey Decimal System made very little sense, with its frequent reliance upon obscure designations in order to create more and more precise, but no less arbitrary, categories. He gleefully put together a list of categorizations that he felt certain had no equal in any other library. His method was based on instinct; he would set aside groups of books, titles that he felt must exist beneath some as yet unknown heading that would in time occur to him if only he gave it enough thought. The essential ruling principal in his library’s organization was this: that all categories be as arcane as possible, even—perhaps ideally—meaningless. All other considerations were quite remote from Maximilian’s thinking.
There were, at the simplest level, the books that happened to have similar images on their covers, or which had been published during the course of the same year; but then there were the collections of books catalogued as “pleasurable articles devoid of all real suffering” (.2874639), books that “have most probably been read by fewer than one hundred people” (.9478250), that “may contain several references to tigers” (.6478933), that “could be used as evidence in support of the hypothesis that all human beings are secretly embarrassed by their bodies” (.0578239), or as “templates for future societies that our mothers never dreamed of” (.7826347), and then those that “might be worth a glance . . . but I wouldn’t know for sure” (.2784091).
Gradually he catalogued everything, typing up all of the details carefully onto individual file cards. Anyone who searched through the catalogue with care would discover that most of the categories merely involved the grouping together of titles that Maximilian had never read, but there were a few that involved highly personal and thoughtful selections of books that he evidently loved.
Books—as he had cause to consider, with deep sadness, at regular intervals—were crucial arbiters in determining class roles. Know
ledge of the true scale of literature was often dependent on the social strata that you happened to belong to from birth, the levels of education which you passed through, the pitch and style and content of the talking voices which you mingled with from childhood to death. Books would have to appear on the shelves in the rooms that you inhabited, would have to be read by those in your vicinity, forming an accepted part of the social interactions taking place around you whilst you were brought up. Otherwise it became more and more difficult to enter the labyrinth of words.
Again and again during the process of setting up his library, Maximilian found himself marvelling at the veritable endlessness of the medium of writing, of books and the writing of books. The body of literature was so vast that it could never be fully known; its character could never be clearly discerned, even its outlines could barely be grasped with any coherence. Nevertheless, and despite the state of near-continual neglect accorded most books, every one of them was of potential interest to somebody, and their authors could always be discovered in some form, living resident within the pages, where, for better or worse, so many people had deposited aspects of themselves for the duration of history. Their jokes, insights, prejudices, failures, and marvels lay there on the page waiting to be encountered. How remarkably unlikely it was that anyone had ever managed to communicate anything of value amidst such a gallimaufry, such a wild profusion—how incredible that anyone had managed, indeed, to convince readers like himself of the importance of these works, had managed to make readers see their own lives reflected in these texts. This struck him as a highly unlikely fact about the world.
On the Planet Everybody Calls Home
(1973)
(Maximilian was responsible for the composition of only a single song over the course of his career, which was performed on only one occasion, the 17th of August of the above year, in the immediate environs of Wimbledon Underground Station. Passers-by responded with a generosity that took him entirely by surprise.)
G Em D C
The treasures of the age are being buried in the ground
G EmD C
So that the myths forgotten will later on be found
Cm D7Asus4A
Debating has commenced about what to include
Cm D7Asus4A
Although no one wants to doubt the prevalence of solitude
G Em D C
The acrobats have all escaped from their tiny prison cell
G Em D C
Each one has a steel feather pinned to his lapel
Cm D7 Asus4 A
They have taken to the streets performing all their skills
Cm D7 Asus4 A
Distributing personas and gestures of goodwill
BmD C Em
CHORUS: On the Planet Everybody Calls Home (x 2)
Vehicles of transportation are zigzagging through the night Carrying abstract sentiments all glittering and bright Moving towards small villages selected only for their names Sent there by a gentleman pointing an old Malacca cane
In the temples groups of storytellers gather with their wares Their reverberating voices ringing loudly in the air The crowds that listen at their feet are hanging on each word Afterwards they’ll re-enact all that they have heard
CHORUS: On the Planet Everybody Calls Home (x 2)
Plans for new state institutions are created every day By the powerful and noble the one’s who have to have their say Fantasies operational for one week at a time Before tumbling into chaos having never reached their prime
The reporters are all busy gazing through long telescopes In the process they discover they have become misanthropes The visions that they’re seeing, have led them to believe That from many different angles they had all been quite deceived
CHORUS: On the Planet Everybody Calls Home (x 2)
In the thickly crowded taverns of forgotten villages The patriarchs and young men exercise their privilege In small rooms lit by lanterns they are rolling on the floors Sleeping under tables and breaking into snores
The Escapologist is trapped inside a giant silver bell Her time is nearly over she is not feeling quite well Remembering her past in thick and urgent waves She considers the mistakes she will be taking to her grave
CHORUS: On the Planet Everybody Calls Home (x 2)
Cities of the sacred hold great visions of allure Maidens line the alleyways all pouting and demure An opalescent tomb is lying in a hidden chamber Battalions of clowns are busy sweating with their labours
In the crystalline-blue bathrooms in the palace of the queen Take nothing for granted, things are not quite as they seem In the folds of the vast mirrors are the imprints of the dead Hiding traces of the men she killed for things that they had said
CHORUS: On the Planet Everybody Calls Home (x 2)
The streets are filled with signs that illustrate malaise With symbols formed from circles or a calculated phrase They appear at random junctures held aloft by metal poles Representing forms of warning, subtle systems of control
When a cat crosses a courtyard at the same time as a goat This is said to be propitious, a secret antidote To the evils that are spoiling, the lives of those who’d seen And for fifteen days they’ll prosper, becoming things they had not been
CHORUS: On the Planet Everybody Calls Home (x 2)
The prophecies of shoeshine boys spelt out with a trembling hand On a Ouija board at midnight in a brokendown bandstand Verbose communications causing bewilderment Provoking transformations leading to enlightenment Children run in circles, over an empty beach Making handstands and cartwheels, sprinting out of reach After building vast sand castles, crowned with seaweed and white shells They’ve agreed to leave their parents, without saying their farewells
CHORUS: On the Planet Everybody Calls Home (x 6)
Acts of Industrial Sabotage
(1974–1995)
From that year on, Maximilian commenced an impassioned and sustained campaign to sabotage the workings of capitalism. Of course, while he realised with some disappointment that it would probably be quite impossible for him to dismantle the entire edifice of capitalism single-handedly, he felt that he should at least make his own private protest. There was no reason he could think of, morally speaking, not to create as many problems as possible for the various big business concerns that he had chosen to target. He discovered that he had a positive genius for acts of deception and, broadly speaking, mischief. Making the lives of other people slightly more difficult proved far easier than making them slightly less so, and indeed helped Maximilian to achieve an equilibrium of his own, after several other projects failed to come to satisfactory conclusions.
Employing his customary discretion, Maximilian was again successful in keeping his involvement entirely secret. Over time he would come to compose many thousands of letters to business executives, outlining his deep disgust at their behaviour. Whilst he was aware that the majority of these communications would never reach their intended recipients, being seen and destroyed first by any one of an army of secretaries and other interceptors, he persisted in sending his letters, feeling that in forcing these sentiments into the grand organs of commerce, and with such regularity, he was despite everything pushing certain ideas into places where they would not otherwise be encountered. Short of engaging in direct or violent protest, which, as he had already noted, did little good, and often only encouraged oligarchs in their various vapid assumptions, he felt that this letter writing might if nothing else disrupt the thought patterns of those who worked within these influential organisations. To be told, he thought, on a regular basis, that one’s actions were corrupting the very nature of one’s soul, could surely not fail to have some sort of impact?
So much of his life seemed reducible to just such futilities. As some people are in the habit of speaking to dogs much as they would to other human beings, laying clause upon clause as though the canine species were fully capable of parsing such intricacies, so too did Maximilian continually persist in calling upon the deaf and un
comprehending, believing despite all evidence to the contrary that perhaps the essential spirit of his words would somehow be grasped. His letters were a veneer of diplomacy and politesse painted over a furnace of rage—though the former would have done little to hide the latter, had anyone given the letters their full attention.
The project soon evolved. Maximilian became a collector of secret information. In particular he began to enjoy compiling long lists of employees’ home addresses and details of company accounts. To gather such intelligence, it was necessary of course to break into factories and offices at night, evading the attentions of slumbering security guards, before rifling through sheaves of documents held inside enormous stacks of filing cabinets. Ever immaculate, he left no evidence and was never so much as suspected, although there were nights marked by the necessity of hiding in webs of shadows with a rapidly beating heart whilst probing beams of torchlight sought for his features in vain. On occasion there was the interesting experience of jumping out of a window in order to flee from what might have been a scene of no small tension; this accompanied by the awful piercing crash of shattering glass, a sound in which he did not often find occasion to indulge.
Before leaving any business premises to which he had gained entry, Maximilian would deposit a variety of objects meant to be discovered the following day by the employees of the organisation in question. He did this in an effort to enliven what were otherwise staid and colourless environments. Particular favourites included inflatable palm trees, volumes from his library touching upon the intricacies of breeding duck-billed platypuses in captivity, and a variety of paraphernalia related to one or another aspect of Ancient Egyptian embalming practices. Still, he was careful to form no definitive rules about what was and was not a suitable artefact to leave behind. Different things appealed depending on the occasion. After his break-ins he liked to imagine the facial expressions of those entering as normal the following day. He wanted the executives to feel the horror of intrusion, as if someone had left a trail of muddy footprints behind them upon an unblemished white surface.