Both Flesh and Not

by David Foster Wallace

  A little of this narcissistic echo goes a long way, and Markson is sometimes unkind, allusively, on the surface. Again, though, the mistress like the master invites you/me down: what’s ponderous on the first pass opens up later. It’s toss-offs like the last just above that are most interesting as invitations, less allusion to a genius than gauzy prefigures of Markson’s own meditations about & around some of the themes dominant in PI. What first strikes one as heavy or ponderous refines itself after time into a fragile note of resignation—i.e., weltschmerz as opposed to naïveté or hubris—in most of Kate’s speculations on the way a name tends to “create” an object or attribute45; albeit on the other hand a twinge of envy whenever she countenances the possibility of things existing without being named or subjected to predication. Why this battle occupies Kate & engages the reader has partly to do with the actual ethical pain that we may assume filled the long silence between the Tractatus and PI, but it’s also attributable to an original & deeply smart exploration by Mr. Markson of something that might be called “the feminization of skepticism.”

  Which is probably a bad term to start throwing around in this late inning, since it requires definitions & so on; this is already pretty long.

  But recall to this abstraction’s ambit prenominate stuff about Helen & Eve & Cassandra & the Tractatus, plus the longly discussed second half of the double bind that cingulizes solipsism: radical doubt about not only the existence of objects but of subject, self. Kate’s text, acknowledged within itself as writing, is a desperate attempt to re-create & so animate a world by naming it. The attempt’s desperation underlies her near-anal obsession with names—of persons, personages, figures, books, symphonies, battles, towns, & roads—and it accounts for what Markson communicates so well via repetition & tone: Kate’s extreme upset when she can’t remember—“summon,” “recall”—names well enough to make them behave. Her attempts at ontology-thru-nomination are a moving synecdoche of pretty much the whole history of intellectual endeavor in the whitely male West. She, no less than was Wittgenstein, or Kant, or Descartes, or Herodotus, is writing a world. The ingenious poignancy of Markson’s achievement here is that Kate’s modernly female vantage, in conspiracy with the very desperation that underlies her attempt at worldmaking,46 renders her project doubly doomed. Doom 1 is what’s evoked on surface: skepticism & solipsism: i.e., that there is no “world” to see itself mirrored in Kate’s text is unhappy enough. But in WM Kate’s memoir itself is “written in sand,” itself subject to the “deterioration”47 & dry rot that is such a dominant recurring image in the loops of recollection & assembly here.

  I’m going to shut up right after I make this idea clear. I’m pretty sure Wittgenstein’s Mistress is an imperfect book. Questions of voice, over-allusion, & “explanation” get to be aside, though, because of the novel’s terrific emotional & political/fictional & theoretical achievement: it evokes a truth a whole lot of books & essays before it have fumbled around: (at least) for the modern female—viz. the female who understands herself as both female & modern—both sides of the solipsistic bind:

  If I exist, nothing exists outside me

  But

  If something exists outside me, I do not exist48

  amount to the same thing—damnation to ghostliness among ghosts, curating a plenum of statues, mistaking echoes for voices. And, too, here both binds force on the subject just what her own dramatic predicament forces on Kate: a kind of parodic masculinization, one in which the Romantic Quest for the Absent Object, a desire for attainment w/r/t which unattainability is that desire’s breath & bread, replaces an ability to be-in-the-world as neither center nor cipher, neither all-responsible nor impotent, part of one great big Family Likeness. Markson’s Kate’s sudden loss of interest in roads once she’s found them & data once she’s “mastered”49 it is just as clunky & imperfect & human & real as say Stendhal’s rush to wind up The Charterhouse of Parma the minute Fabrizio finally nails Clelia.… And Kate’s valuation, finally, only of what’s unsaid, unread—burning pages once she’s read them, jettisoning family once she’s “responsible” for them; probably even fueling her epistle with the doomed/delicious knowledge that it’s headed toward nothing—summons perfectly, again, the terrible & moving final prescription of the master’s Tractatus. This, loosely translated, is “Anybody who understands what I’m saying eventually recognizes that it’s nonsense, once he’s used what I’m saying—rather like steps—to climb up past what I’m saying—he must, that is, throw away the ladder after he’s used it.”50 This passage, like most of W, is only indirectly about what it’s really about. It whispers & plays. It’s really about the plenitude of emptiness, the importance of silence, in terms of speech, on beaches. Markson nails this idea51; Kate’s monograph has the quality of speechlessness in a dream, the cold muteness urgency enforces, a psychic stutter. If it’s true her ladder goes no place, it’s also true nobody’s going to throw either book away. The end. 7 January ’90. Pax.

  —1990

  carnelian—pale to deep red / reddish-brown carnet—book of postage stamps caryatid—architecture: a supporting column sculptured into a draped woman Casanova de Seingalt—full name of Casanova the lover casuistry—specious or excessively subtle reasoning intended to rationalize or mislead casus belli—provocation or excuse for war catabolism—break down of complex molecules into simple ones catadromous—living in freshwater but migrating to sea to breed; could say of a guy who goes to Florida or CA to have debauches as a catadromous guy catalase—enzyme that causes hydrogen peroxide to decompose into water and oxygen catalpa—type of Midwest tree w/ long pods catamenia—menses catamite—boy who has sex with a man catamount—mountain lion cataplasm—poultice catenary—inverse parabolic; imagine curve of wire hung by endpoints (phone wires) catkin—drooping, non-petaled flowers as in willows, birches, oaks celadon—pale to very pale green celiac (adj.)—pertaining to abdomen or abdominal cavity cellarette—liquor cabinet cenacle—a clique or circle, especially of writers; small dining room on second floor cenotaph—monument erected to dead person whose remains are elsewhere cerements—burial garments certes (archaic adv.)—certainly, truly chamfer (v.)—to bevel, cut the edge off; “chamfered,” “chamfering” (the chamfering on wood edge, etc.) chamfron—armor for medieval horse’s head charcuterie—sau sage, bologna: processed meat stuff, or a deli proffering such stuff charnel—repository for bodies; related to death in general: “a charnelodor” chemotropism—movement or growth of organism in response to chemical stimulus chenille—fabric cords of silk or cotton, used for em broidery, fringing, bedspreads, rugs cheval glass—a long mirror mounted on swivels in a frame chinch (n.)—bedbug chine—backbone or spine of animal / cut of meat including the backbone chivvy (v.)—to vex or harass with petty attacks chlamydia—also causes conjunctivitis in cattle and sheep chloasma—patchy brown skin discoloration on woman’s face caused by hormonal changes, usually pregnancy chromo—prefix meaning color: “chromoplast” cicatrix—area of nasty scar tissue cinerarium—place for keeping ashes of a cremated body cinnabar—red pigment gotten from mercury ore circumvallate (adj.)—surrounded by a rampart citrine—light to moderate olive color clabber—curdled milk; to make (cloud) motions resembling curdling clarkia—show plants w/ lovely blossoms clathrate—having a latticelike structure: e.g., clath rate foliage clement—good (w/r/t weather) clepsydra—ancient device that measured time by marking the regulated flow of water through a small opening clerestory—upper part of wall containing windows to supply natural light to building clerisy—the literati; educated people as a class clevis—two-holed fastening device not unlike “hasp” and “staple” clinometer—device for measuring slope, angle of elevation… used in surveying cloaca—sewer or latrine clochard—tramp, vagrant

  MR. COGITO

  THE BEST BOOK OF 1994 is the first English translation of Zbigniew Herbert’s Mr. Cogito, a book of poems that came out in Poland in the mid-1970s, well before Herbert’s justly famous Report from the Besieged City and
Other Poems. Mr. Cogito’s a character who appears in most of Herbert’s best poems—he’s kind of a poetic Pnin, both intellectual and not too bright, both hopelessly confused and bravely earnest as he grapples with the Big Questions of human existence.

  Zbigniew Herbert is one of the two or three best living poets in the world, and by far the best of what you’d call the “postmoderns.” Since any great poem communicates an emotional urgency that postmodernism’s integument of irony renders facile or banal, postmodern poets have a tough row to hoe. Herbert’s Cogito-persona permits ironic absurdism and earnest emotion not only to coexist but to nourish one another. Compared to Mr. Cogito, the whole spectrum of American poetry—from the retrograde quaintness of the Neoformalists and New-Yorker-backyard-garden-meditative lyrics to the sterile abstraction of the Language Poets—looks sick. It seems significant that only writers from Eastern Europe and Latin America have succeeded in marrying the stuff of spirit and human feeling to the parodic detachment the postmodern experience seems to require. Maybe as political conditions get more oppressive here, we Americans’ll get good at it, too.

  —1994

  cloche—close-fitting woman’s hat, worn by e.g. flappers; a bell-shaped cover for plants during frost cloisonné—enamelware with bands of color separated by strips of metal cloistral/claustral—secluded, cloistered clomiphene—drug that increases ovulation clonidine—drug for hypertension and migraine clonus—in musculature, abnormally rapid contraction and relaxation closet drama—a play to be read rather than performed coaming—(nautical) raised rim or border around opening to keep water from coming in colloid—suspension of fine particles coloboma—birth defect of eye that reduces vision colposcope—magnifier/camera for examination of vagina, used by gynecologists colubrine—of or resembling a snake commandmental—imperative compleat—having a highly devel oped or wide-ranging skill confute (v.)—like refute, show to be false or contradictory, or to prevent, forestall coprolalia—uncontrollable use of foul language coprolite—petrified shit coulee—Midwest: a valley with a hill on either side coulisse—a grooved timber in which something slides couvade—culture dependent: when wife is in labor, husband takes to his bed as if he were having child cradle—like scythe, a bladed harvest tool you swing crazing (n.)—a fine crack in a surface or glaze crimp (n.)—ashanghaier, somebody who tricks or coerces people into soldiering/sailoring crocket—projecting ornament in architecture croker sack—Southern for gunnysack crosse—stick used in lacrosse culex—common mosquito culm—stem of grass or similar plant cunctation—procrastination, delay cuneal—wedge-shaped cupreous—containing or resembling copper cuspate—having a cusp or shaped like a cusp cuspidate (adj.)—tapering to firm solid point; a cuspidate leaf (head? penis?) cuspidor—spittoon cyan—greenish blue daltonism—red-green colorblindness davit—small cranes used to hoist cargo on and off a boat debouche—coming out of an enclosed area into a wider or open one deckle—frame for turning wood pulp into paper decollate (v.)—to behead décolleté—cut low at neckline decoupage—art of decorating a surface with paper or foil cutouts demotic—of or relating to the common people deracinate—to pull up by the roots; to displace one from his native environment dermatoid—resembling skin desquamate—to shed, peel, or come off in scales; (n.) desquamation detinue—act of unlawfully detaining personal property, or a legal action to recover property wrongfully detained dexter—of or located on the right side dharna—a fast conducted at the door of an offender, especially a debtor, as a means of obtaining compliance with a demand for justice dhoti—loin cloth worn by Hindu men in India diabase—dark gray stone mixture used in monuments and tombstones (the dark shiny gray w/ luster or sparkle) diadem—crown worn as sign of royalty; royal power or dignity dickey—woman’s blouse front worn under jacket, or men’s detachable shirt front, or driver’s seat in carriage, or special seats for servants in carriage (up top?) dieldrin—poison used in insecticide dimity—sheer, crisp cotton fabric woven in stripes or checks, used for curtains and dresses

  DEMOCRACY AND COMMERCE AT THE U.S. OPEN

  RIGHT NOW IT’S 1530H. on 3 September, the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend, the holiday that’s come to represent the American summer’s right bracket. But L.D.W. always falls in the middle of the U.S. Open1; it’s the time of the third and fourth rounds, the tournament’s meat, the time of trench warfare and polysyllabic names. Right now, in the National Tennis Center’s special Stadium—a towering hexagon2 whose N, S, E, and W sides have exterior banners saying “WELCOME TO THE 1995 U.S. OPEN—A U.S.T.A. EVENT”—right now a whole inland sea of sunglasses and hats in the Stadium is rising to applaud as Pete Sampras and the Australian Mark Philippoussis are coming out on court, as scheduled, to labor. The two come out with their big bright athletic bags and their grim-looking Security escorts. The applause-acoustics are deafening. From down here near the court, looking up, the Stadium looks to be shaped like a huge wedding cake, and once past the gentler foothills of the box seats the aluminum stands seem to rise away on all sides almost vertically, so vertiginously steep that a misstep on any of the upper stairs looks like it would be certain and hideous death. The umpire sits in what looks like a lifeguard chair with little metal stirrups out front for his shoes,3 wearing a headset-mike and Ray-Bans and holding what’s either a clipboard or a laptop. The DecoTurf court is a rectangle of off-green marked out by the well-known configuration of very white lines inside a bigger rectangle of off-green; and as the players cross the whole thing E-W to their canvas chairs, photographers and cameramen converge and cluster on them like flies clustering on what flies like—the players ignore them in the way that only people who are very used to cameras can ignore cameras. The crowd is still up and applauding, a pastel mass of 20,000+. A woman in a floppy straw hat three seats over from me is talking on a cellular phone; the man next to her is trying to applaud while holding a box of popcorn and is losing a lot of popcorn over the box’s starboard side. The scoreboards up over the Stadium’s N and S rims are flashing pointillist-neon ads for EVIAN. Sampras, poorpostured and chestless, smiling shyly at the ground, his powder-blue shorts swimming down around his knees, looks a little like a kid wearing his father’s clothes.4 Philippoussis, who chronologically really is a kid, looks hulking and steroidic walking next to Sampras. Philippoussis is 6'4" and 200+ and is crossing the court with the pigeon-toed gait of a large man who’s trying not to lumber, wearing the red-and-white candy-stripe Fila shirt so many of the younger Australians favor. The PM sun is overhead to the W-SW in a sky with air so clear you can almost hear the sun combusting, and the tiny heads of the spectators way up at the top of the W bleachers are close enough to the sun’s round bottom to look to be just about on fire. The players dump their long bags and begin to root through them. Their rackets are in plastic they have to unwrap. They sit in their little chairs hitting racket-faces together and cocking their heads to listen for pitch. The cameramen around them disperse at the umpire’s command, some trailing snakes of cord. Ballboys take crumpled bits of racket plastic from under the players’ chairs.

  A lady making her way in that sideways-processional way past seats in the row right beneath me wears a shirt advising all onlookers that they ought to Play Hard because Life Is Short. The man on her arm wears a (too-large) designer T-shirt decorated with images of U.S. currency. A firm/pleasant usher stops them halfway across the row to check their tickets. Fifteen hundred citizens of the borough of Queens are employed at the Open today. Weekend labor. The ushers are at their fat chains stretched across the Stadium tunnels, all wearing chinos and button-down shirts. The Security guys (all large and male, not a neck or a smile in sight) wear lemon-yellow knit shirts that do not flatter their guts. Chewing-gum seems to be part of Security’s issued equipment. The ballboys5 are in blue-and-white Fila, while the line judges and umpires are in (Fila) shirts of vertical red-black stripes that make them look like very hip major-sport refs. The Stadium’s capacity is supposedly 20,000 and there are at least 23,000 people here, mostly to see Pete. If there we
re rafters people would be hanging from them, and I will be shocked if there isn’t some major screaming fall-down-the-steps- or topple-backward-over-the-rim-of-the-wall-type disaster before the match is done. The crowd down here near the court is for the most part adult-looking, businessish—in the Box Seats and pricey lower stands are neckties, sockless loafers, natty slacks, sweaters w/ arms tied across chests, straw boaters, L.L. Bean fishing hats, white caps with corporate names, jeweled bandeaux, high heels, and resplendent feminine sunhats—with a certain very gradual casualizing as the fashion-eye travels up (and up) past the progressively cheaper seats, until the vertiginous top sections of the bleachers feature an NYC sporting event’s more typical fishnet shirts and beer hats and coolers and makeshift spittoons, halter tops and fluorescent nail polish and rubber thongs, w/ attendant coarse NYC-crowd noises sometimes drifting down from way up high overhead.6 But apparently over 50 percent of tickets for this year’s Open were pre-sold to corporations, who like to use them for the cultivation of clients and the entertainment of their own executives, and there is indeed about the Stadium crowd down here something indefinable that strongly suggests Connecticut license plates and very green lawns. In sum, the socioeconomic aura here for the day’s headline match is one of management rather than labor.