An Honest Ghost
Page 9
“What say you, Eleanor? And where have you been—if it isn’t indiscreet … ?”
She wore a blue dress and a white sailor hat. She did not know what to say, or how to express herself more genuinely. She dealt with moral problems as a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind. She reminded me of my mother, her infinite patience and the way she looked like a weeping saint asking to be slapped in the face. I can see her standing at the kitchen sink scraping carrots. She stands on the porch of her fabulous New England inn with her artificial dessert topping, made from lard, engine oil, preservatives extracted from offal and animal screams. History takes a certain course, and it adds up to New England. She highly disapproves of my deficiency (in household matters) and my (pathological) irresponsibility when it comes to heavy lifting, tidying up, cleaning and other domestic divertimenti, which, I admit, I hold in utter contempt.
It began to rain over the woods outside, and a mood of depression and of unspeakable loneliness suddenly felled me like a hammer-stroke. Soon I will be forty-four years old. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.
I have not a desire but a need for solitude.
How often we need to be assured of what we know in the old ways of knowing—how seldom we can afford to venture beyond the pale into that chromatic fantasy where, as Rilke said (in 1908!), “begins the revision of categories, where something past comes again, as though out of the future; something formerly accomplished as something to be completed.” I love the old questions. But if the acutest sage be often at his wits’ ends to understand living character, shall those who are not sages expect to run and read character in those mere phantoms which flit along a page, like shadows along a wall? But I will not philosophize.
I would like to be a gigolo offering myself to all. (Wilde speaks of his “curious mixture of ardor and of indifference … I would go to the stake for a sensation and be a sceptic to the last.”)
43.
David and I had a tremendous adventure. We had been to Chartres and were on our way back to Paris. (Talking, talking.) It seemed that the ride would never end.
“This traffic jam has a permanent look about it.”
Outside, the land stretches, empty, to the horizon; the sky opens, with speeding clouds.
“What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to write, is a book about nothing.”
44.
Something lovely happened last night. There was zest in the air and a sweet sadness like a hovering ghost. A policeman entered the courtyard and asked what was going on. With a stick in his hand, he kept vigil in the chicken coop until dawn, frightening away a skunk by barking like a dog. Here he drank several glasses of beer in rapid succession, and when he came out it was night. “Are you trying to get inside me?” he asked. “I came here to find myself,” he said as he walked from the front door of my apartment to the elevator across the hall, “but instead, I got lost.” He bowed and retired, a verse or two already beginning to creep into his head.
And that was it. And then there was nothing.
45.
Silence is a prophecy, one which the artist’s actions can be understood as attempting both to fulfill and to reverse.
I have a prophecy of my own: that soon the day will come when man shall bitterly repent having neglected, scorned, or renounced his duty to spread, wherever he might, the simple light of unbelief.
46.
I am writing this book near a monastery that stands deep in the woods, among rocks and thorns. And I’m still anxious. Always alone. This is a life of eternal longing. I move books from one place to another, myself as well, / I don’t know what to do with all of this. Our solutions are redescriptions of our problems. Man has become a counter-natural animal, and we have called that process the appearance of intelligence.
How did we come to these corrupted times? As the activity of the mystic must end in a via negativa, a theology of God’s absence, a craving for the cloud of unknowing beyond knowledge and for the silence beyond speech, so art must tend toward anti-art, the elimination of the “subject” (the “object,” the “image”), the substitution of chance for intention, and the pursuit of silence.
This is, as we have seen, an epic situation; but it is also an “Orphic” situation: not because Orpheus “sings,” but because the writer and Orpheus are both under the same prohibition, which constitutes their “song”: the prohibition from turning back toward what they love.
The only good thing about childhood is that no one really remembers it, or rather, that’s the only thing about it to like: this forgetting. It is endless.
Forget it; forget it.
Zee End.
The Books
The following pages contain all of the quotes, in order of appearance, that make up An Honest Ghost. Each quote is followed by the author who wrote it; the book in Rick Whitaker’s library from which the sentence was taken; and the page number on which it appears in that edition.
An Honest Ghost: William Shakespeare Hamlet Act 1,
Scene 5
Happiness is an: Thomas Szasz The Second Sin 36
1.
I am unpacking: Walter Benjamin Illuminations 59
I have been: Andre Gide The Counterfeiters 180
It is growing: Hart Crane Library of America: Complete
Poems and Selected Letters 358
There are limits: Rob Stephenson Passes Through 26
Life lived by: Susan Sontag I, etcetera: Stories 15
You go back: Samuel Beckett Nohow On 46
The subjective universe: Ludwig Wittgenstein Notebooks
1914-1916 41
There was an: Teju Cole Open City 166
It seemed neither: Carl Van Vechten Parties 105
“How can you: Max Ewing Going Somewhere 47
He was twenty-four: Max Ewing Going Somewhere 22
At the moment: Adam Thirwell Delighted States 38
David said, “I: Don DeLillo The Names 260
My splendid David: J. M. Barrie The White Bird 274
My daily recreational: Charles Kaiser The Gay Metropolis
243
“What color were: Don DeLillo The Names 108
Our little love: Alfred Chester Looking for Genet 161
“Oh! How long: Andre Gide The Counterfeiters 165
Well!: Jacques Lacan Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis 109
I was dealing: Glen Baxter Returns to Normal (no page
numbers)
He was really: David Wojnarowicz Memories That Smell
Like Gasoline 39
I wrote in: Benjamin Sonnenberg Lost Property 93
There was something: D. H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers 99
To be in: Anita Brookner Look at Me 92
Sometimes he purred: Lincoln Kirstein By With To and
From 37
He often pretended: Ben Marcus Notable American
Women 130
The action signaled: Elizabeth Hardwick Sleepless Nights
15
I could spare: Thomas Bernhard “The Joiner”, German
Short Stories (Ed. David Constantine) 271
I would lie: Virginia Woolf Orlando 90
I have never: Graham Greene Travels with My Aunt 3
A few years: Albert Camus The Fall 17
I lived in: Theophile Gautier Mademoiselle de Maupin 144
It was very: W. Somerset Maugham The Razor’s Edge 187
These arrangements turned: Edmund White Nocturnes for
the King of Naples 2
Few men have: Charles Baudelaire The Mirror of Art 192
Occasionally I had: Robert Bolaño By Night in Chile 85
David frowned: Eleanor Porter Just David 202
He was not: John Banville Doctor Copernicus 123
It had been: Brenda McCreight Parenting Your Adopted
Older Child 187
When his friends: Robert Bolaño Amulet 79
His irony, intended: Susan Sontag I, etcetera.: Stories 48
Prodded by his: Nathanael West Miss Lonelyhearts 39
Once when I: Richard Gilman Common and Uncommon
Mass 49
His rage had: John Banville Doctor Copernicus 78
The most innocent-seeming: John Banville Doctor
Copernicus 112
Cops always questioned: Alfred Chester The Exquisite
Corpse 27
His early childhood: James Schuyler Alfred and Guinivere
viii (introduction by John Ashbery)
He was a: Rick Whitaker Assuming the Position 128
He died of: Alex Ross Listen to This 8
He lived a: Gilbert Highet Poets in a Landscape 174
Shall I describe: Neil Bartlett Ready to Catch Him Should
He Fall 240
I found it: Theophile Gautier Mademoiselle de Maupin 317
His mother had: Don DeLillo The Names 225
After one first: Max Ewing Going Somewhere 51
She attended to: Max Ewing Going Somewhere 50
The immense accretion: Susan Howe My Emily Dickinson
105
She could be: Lydie Salvayre The Power of Flies 1
She drank, she: Elizabeth Hardwick Sleepless Nights 19
Her clothes seemed: Victoria Redel The Border of Truth 39
She had a: Djuna Barnes Nightwood 84
Her family, her: Willa Cather Youth and the Bright Medusa
85
David admires her: J. M. Barrie The White Bird 132
How tender people: Maximilien Robespierre Virtue and
Terror 28
“I’m rough and: Rudy Wilson The Red Truck 140
One often makes: Ludwig Wittgenstein Notebooks 1914-
1916 42
“What a sweet: Nathanael West Miss Lonelyhearts 29
Her voice was: Nathanael West Miss Lonelyhearts 49
I will not: Jane Gardam The Flight of the Maidens 211
David leaned my: Don DeLillo The Names 131
He was stretched: Colette The Pure and the Impure 44
He puts on: Ludwig Wittgenstein Lectures on
Philosophical Psychology 1946-47 63
If there is: Samuel Beckett Disjecta 65
Though he was: Voltaire Zadig 21
Even more commendable: Voltaire Zadig 21
Very quickly, he: James Blake The Joint 183
He talked incessantly: Virginia Woolf Orlando 91
He was adequately: Andre Gide The Counterfeiters 205
Flushed with his: F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby 137
I’ve been told: Montaigne Selected Essays 15
David recalled dimly: Andre Gide The Counterfeiters 205
Not that there: Edmund White City Boy 80
That is how: John Banville The Infinities 7
He spent his: Alan Bennett Writing Home 570
A bell beat: James Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man 191
Although none of: Susan Sontag I, etcetera: Stories 15
I am interested: Susan Sontag I, etcetera: Stories 72
But it could: Joseph Breuer and Sigmund Freud Studies in
Hysteria 189
Some of my: Robert Frost The Notebooks of Robert Frost
299
It is impossible: David Lehman, ed. Great American Prose
Poems 221
Today is not: Gioia Timpanelli Sometimes the Soul 14
I swear I: Elizabeth Bishop One Art 529
But what kind: Adam Phillips Going Sane 17
We long for: Robert Lowell Collected Prose 192
Life and death: Gertrude Stein Wars I Have Seen 121
I believe in: Noel Coward Lyrics 73
My life is: David Lehman, ed. Great American Prose
Poems 146
I live in: Susan Howe My Emily Dickinson 38
(Like Holden Caulfield: James Blake The Joint 234
All of us: W. G. Sebald Austerlitz 71
The Zen masters: Daisetz T. Suzuki Zen and Japanese
Culture 7
All work is: David Lehman, ed. Great American Prose
Poems 112
Shall we make: Maximilien Robespierre Virtue and Terror
115
The story that: Danilo Kiš A Tomb for Boris 1
To say that: Jorge Luis Borges Collected Fictions 480
This is my: Christopher Priest The Glamour 2
Not my usual: David McConnell The Firebrat 3
2.
Day before yesterday: Elizabeth Bishop One Art 336
I got drunk: Paul Klee The Diaries of Paul Klee 186
I wasn’t good: August Kleinzahler Cutty One Rock 80
That was about: Jean Echenoz I’m Gone 12
Soon I’d be: Edmund White My Lives 221
I took a: Charles Henri Ford Like Water From a Bucket 198
A black man: Virginia Woolf Orlando 56
The world to: Thomas Bernhard Prose 127
A part of: Glenway Wescott Continual Lessons 318
I didn’t want: David McConnell Firebrat 2
I was amazed: Shohaku Okumura Living By Vow 133
I was lost: Dante trans. Mary Jo Bang The Inferno 15
Loneliness rose to: George W. S. Trow In the Context of No
Context 49
When I got: Alfred Chester Looking for Genet 162
A sound of: Robert Bolaño Amulet 27
Who comes here: Jacques Lacan Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psychoanalysis 113
Sometimes a venturesome: Mark Merlis American Studies
59
(O the weakness: Maximilien Robespierre Virtue
and Terror 104
Still, the only: Mark Merlis American Studies 57
Ding-dong: Richard Rodriguez Brown 51
A minute later: Nathanael West Miss Lonelyhearts 139
I blushed intensely: Robert Bolaño By Night in Chile 14
Moving, as I: Fran Lebowitz Reader 137
The child was: Djuna Barnes Nightwood 68
We shook hands: Gore Vidal Palimpsest 122
He seemed bloodless: Paula Fox Poor George 18
I was all: Rob Stephenson Passes Through 27
Silence: Theodore Dreiser An American Tragedy 7
The uncertainty lasted: Danilo Kiš A Tomb for Boris 11
I would not: Darcy O’Brien A Way of Life, Like Any Other
5
There are only: Jean Genet The Declared Enemy 10
A shiver ran: Robert Bolaño By Night in Chile 84
It was a: Vladimir Nabokov Laughter in the Dark 21
He looked extremely: James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son
157
“Joe, how are: Charles Dickens Great Expectations 255
The visitor glided: Aidan Higgins Notes from a Receding
Past 146
He gives me: Anne Landsman The Rowing Lesson 177
“I haf someding: Darcy O’Brien A Way of Life, Like Any
Other 23
He looked at: Fyodor Dostoevsky The House of the Dead
230
“Please answer me: Albert Camus The Plague 50
How can I: Theophile Gautier Mademoiselle de Maupin
134
The question was: Sylvia Townsend Warner Summer Will
Show 122
I do not: Diane Williams It Was Like My Trying to Have a
Tender-Hearted Nature 85
I don’t want: Ivy Compton-Burnett Darkness and Day 7
Absolute silence: Darcy O’Brien A Way of Life, Like Any
Other 49
“And besides, don’t: Evan S. Connell Mrs. Bridge 122
This is a: Denis Donoghue American Classics 238
“Well well well: Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange
147
Unconditional surrender: Gertrude Stein Wars I Have Seen
110
Is that right: Mary McCarthy The Group 310
“You bet!” Joe:
Ken Kesey Sometimes a Great Notion 492
“No harm in: F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby 60
“I guess some: David McConnell The Silver Hearted 125
He noticed then: Kenzaburo Oe A Personal Matter 86
“Don’t worry,” I: Geoff Dyer Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling
with D. H. Lawrence 26
“Daddy was talking: Noel Coward Pomp and
Circumstance 86
“Your father is: Darcy O’Brien A Way of Life, Like Any
Other 24
This was all: Kenzaburo Oe A Quiet Life 3
“I am the: Italo Calvino Invisible Cities 152
“I like your: Plato Collected Dialogues 587
“De bargain it: Darcy O’Brien A Way of Life, Like Any
Other 25
It was the: Giacomo Casanova History of My Life 932
One is always: James Lasdun The Horned Man 125
All was greyness: W. G. Sebald After Nature 65
“I haven’t figured: Binnie Kirshenbaum Pure Poetry 50
“But you really: Dezso Kosztalanyi Skylark 76
And so we: James Danziger American Photographs
(introduction, no page numbers)
Phew: James Joyce Finnegans Wake 522
That night, after: Kenzaburo Oe A Quiet Life 125
The twilight desert: Kenzaburo Oe A Quiet Life 127
What does this: Daniel Dennett Consciousness Explained
130
The rain beat: Anton Chekhov The Portable Chekhov 384
All night long: Philip Roth Professor of Desire 262
The dream is: Bruce Duffy The World As I Found It 31
The lamp is: Samuel Beckett Disjecta 22
3
But whirligig Time: Richard Rodriguez Brown 143
I awoke, yet: John Ashbery Flow Chart 192
Lost in darkness: David Lynch Lost Highway xi
Living with a: Chris Kutschera The Kurdish National
Movement 94
The first three: Amy Hempel At the Gates of the Animal
Kingdom 43
My artistic nature: Lydie Salvayre Portrait of the Artist as a
Domesticated Animal 23
It was my: Andrew Holleran Nights in Aruba 31
Suspense is fascinating: Nick Piombino Contradicta 20
It is fear: Montaigne Selected Essays 25
I regret sometimes: Guy Hocquenghem Screwball Asses 16
The taboo gives: Adam Phillips Equals 58