Asymmetry
Page 24
INTERVIEWER: You’re not decrepit.
EZRA BLAZER: I am the soul of decrepitude.
INTERVIEWER: Last record. What are we going to hear?
EZRA BLAZER: Something from Albéniz’s Iberia, which he wrote in the last years of his life—he died in his late forties, of kidney disease, I think—and bear this in mind, while you’re listening to it: that it sprang from a mind, a sensibility, that so soon afterward would be snuffed out, leaving behind this magnificent burst, this smoking flare . . . If I were in charge, we’d sit here and listen to the whole hour and a half of it, because each of the pieces builds on the last, they’re discrete and yet all the richer for being heard together, and you just ache with the mounting intensity of it. The vibrancy. The innocence. The concentration. I like Barenboim’s version, partly because of his association with Edward Said, who of course before he died wrote an essay on late style—the notion that an awareness of one’s life and therefore one’s artistic contribution coming to an end affects the artist’s style, whether by imbuing it with a sense of resolution and serenity or with intransigence, difficulty, contradiction. But can you call it a “late style” if the artist died at only forty-eight years old? How did he compose such a marvelous, buoyant, triumphant masterpiece while contending with the excruciating pain of kidney stones? As I said, I’d like to listen to the whole thing with you, but as you’re motioning for me to wind this up, let’s go with the second track, which is called “El Puerto.” The technical term, I understand, is zapateado, which I suspect is Mexican for tap music.
INTERVIEWER: “El Puerto,” from Isaac Albéniz’s Iberia, performed on the piano by Daniel Barenboim. Now tell me, Ezra Blazer. Why not monogamy?
EZRA BLAZER: Why not monogamy. That’s good. Because monogamy is against nature.
INTERVIEWER: So is writing novels.
EZRA BLAZER: Agreed.
INTERVIEWER: But certainly you’ve experienced benefits, pleasures, from monogamy.
EZRA BLAZER: When I’ve been monogamous, yes. But now I’m celibate, and have been, for some years. And to my astonishment celibacy is the greatest pleasure. Wasn’t it Socrates, or one of his ilk, who said that the celibacy of old age is like finally being unstrapped from the back of a wild horse?
INTERVIEWER: Surely celibacy is against nature.
EZRA BLAZER: Not in the old. Nature loves celibacy in the old. Anyway, I contributed my twins to the longevity of the species. They’ve contributed their children. I did my job.
INTERVIEWER: Unwittingly.
EZRA BLAZER: Which is perhaps the best way. I’ve enjoyed being a tool of evolution. Usually it’s when you’re young, young and charging, that Evolution says, “I want YOU.”
INTERVIEWER: Like Uncle Sam.
EZRA BLAZER: Yes, like Uncle Sam. Not bad for a Scot. Evolution dons his top hat and tugs on his goatee and he points at you and he says, I. WANT. YOU. It is in the unwitting service of evolution that people are crazed by sex.
INTERVIEWER: Which I suppose makes you a highly decorated soldier.
EZRA BLAZER: I saw some action. I have a Purple Heart. I hit the beaches. Long before the sexual revolution began in the sixties I was one of the generation who hit the beaches in the fifties and struggled under fire up the shore. We valiantly fought our way up the beaches against heavy opposition and then the flower children traipsed right over our bloody corpses having their multiple orgasms along the way. But you asked about decrepitude. What it’s like to be so old. The short answer is that you go about your business reminding yourself to look at everything as though you’re looking at it for the last time. Probably you are.
INTERVIEWER: Do you worry about the end?
EZRA BLAZER: I am cognizant of the end. Maybe I have three, five, seven years, at most nine or ten years. After that, you’re beyond decrepit. [Laughs.] Unless you’re Casals. Casals, who also played the piano, by the way, once told a reporter when he was in his nineties that he had played the same Bach piano piece every day for the past eighty-five years. When the reporter asked whether this didn’t get boring, Casals said, No, on the contrary, each playing was a new experience, a new act of discovery. So maybe Casals never became decrepit. Maybe he took his last breath playing a bourrée. But I’m not Casals. I didn’t draw the Mediterranean-diet straw. What do I think about the end? I don’t think about the end. I think about the totality, my whole life.
INTERVIEWER: And are you happy with what you’ve accomplished over your whole life?
EZRA BLAZER: I’m satisfied that I couldn’t have done any better. I never shirked my duty to my work. I worked hard. I did the best I could. I never let anything out into the world that I didn’t think I had taken as far as I could. Do I regret the publication of certain lesser books? Not really. You only get to book three by writing books one and two. You’re not writing one long book; that’s too poetic a way of looking at it. But it’s a single career. And each piece is, after the fact, necessary to going on.
INTERVIEWER: Are you working on something now?
EZRA BLAZER: I’ve just begun a massive trilogy. In fact I wrote the first page earlier today.
INTERVIEWER: Oh?
EZRA BLAZER: Yep. Each volume is going to be 352 pages. The significance of the number I needn’t go into. And I’m writing the end first, so it’ll be end, beginning, middle. The first two books will be middle, beginning, end. The last will be only beginnings. And this is a scheme that I think will prove to the world that I don’t know what I’m doing, and never have.
INTERVIEWER: How long do you think it will take you?
EZRA BLAZER: Oh, a month or two.
INTERVIEWER: And tell me, Ezra Blazer, if the waves were to crash upon the shore, threatening to wash all of the discs off your desert island, which one would you run to save?
EZRA BLAZER: Oh my. Only one? Where is this island?
INTERVIEWER: Very far away.
EZRA BLAZER: Very far away. Is there nobody else around?
INTERVIEWER: No.
EZRA BLAZER: Just me on a desert island.
INTERVIEWER: That’s right.
EZRA BLAZER: What else can I take?
INTERVIEWER: The Bible. Or the Torah, if you prefer. Or the Koran.
EZRA BLAZER: Those are the last books I would take. If I never see those books again I’ll be quite happy.
INTERVIEWER: The Complete Works of Shakespeare.
EZRA BLAZER: Very good.
INTERVIEWER: And one more book of your choosing.
EZRA BLAZER: I’ll come back to that. What else?
INTERVIEWER: A luxury.
EZRA BLAZER: Food.
INTERVIEWER: We’ll take care of food. Don’t worry about food.
EZRA BLAZER: Then I’ll take a woman.
INTERVIEWER: I’m sorry, I should have said. You can’t take another person.
EZRA BLAZER: Not even you?
INTERVIEWER: No.
EZRA BLAZER: Then I’ll take a doll. A blow-up doll. Of my own choosing. In whatever color I want.
INTERVIEWER: We’ll give you that. And your record?
EZRA BLAZER: Well, I’ve chosen only ones I truly love, so it’s hard to say what I would like to hear over and over. Some days you’re in a Finian’s Rainbow frame of mind and other days the mood is Debussy. But I think it would have to be one of the great classical pieces, and that I could always appreciate the soaring—that’s S-O-A-R-I-N-G—in Strauss’s Four Last Songs. May I take all four of them with me?
INTERVIEWER: I’m sorry . . .
EZRA BLAZER: You drive a hard bargain.
INTERVIEWER: I didn’t make the rules.
EZRA BLAZER: Who did?
INTERVIEWER: Roy Plomley.
EZRA BLAZER: Is he Scottish?
INTERVIEWER: I’m afraid we’re running out of time.
EZRA BLAZER: Fine. “Im Abendrot.” And with that I think I would have the spirit to get through my island days, me and my blow-up woman. We might even have a nice life together. Very quiet.
EZRA BLAZER: Well, certainly not any of my books. I suppose I’d take Ulysses. Which I’ve read twice in my life. So far. It’s endlessly rich and endlessly baffling. However many times you’ve read it, you confront new enigmas. But it yields its pleasures up to steady concentration. And I would have plenty of time, of course, so, yes, Joyce’s Ulysses, with the notes. And I’ll tell you why you need the notes. His genius, his comic genius, keeps you splendidly entertained, the erudition is exciting, and then this city of Dublin, which is the landscape of the book, it is the book, is not my city. I wish I could have done as he did with Pittsburgh. But I could only have done this if I’d stayed in Pittsburgh with my sister and my mother and my father and my aunts and my uncles and my nephews and my nieces. Not that Joyce did that, mind you; as soon as he could get out of Dublin he fled, to Trieste, to Zurich, and then eventually to Paris. I don’t think he ever went back to Dublin, but he was obsessed with the city and its billion particulars all his life. Obsessed with capturing it in a way utterly new in fiction. The erudition, the wit, the richness, the great novelty of it all . . . My God, it’s magnificent! But without the notes I’d be lost. The Homeric analogue doesn’t interest me too much, by the way. In fact, it doesn’t interest me at all. But I suppose on a desert island it would start to, because what else would? You can only spend so much time with your blow-up woman, perfect though she may be. So yes, I’ll go out with Joyce.
INTERVIEWER: Thank you, Ezra Blazer, for letting us hear your—
EZRA BLAZER: The thing I like best about a blow-up woman, though, is that—and I don’t mean this in the physical sense, I mean it in the emotional sense—there’s no friction. Much as I loved my darling dancers, there was friction constantly. Because they belonged to Mr. Balanchine, not me.
INTERVIEWER: . . . Do you always use the language of possession when talking about love?
EZRA BLAZER: It’s impossible not to! Love is volatile. Recalcitrant. Irrepressible. We do our best to tame it, to name it and plan for it and maybe even to contain it between the hours of six and twelve, or if you’re Parisian five and seven, but like much of what is adorable and irresistible in this world it eventually tears free of you and, yes, sometimes you get scratched up in the process. It’s human nature to try to impose order and form on even the most defiantly chaotic and amorphous stuff of life. Some of us do it by drafting laws, or by painting lines on the road, or by damming rivers or isolating isotopes or building a better bra. Some of us wage wars. Others write books. The most delusional ones write books. We have very little choice other than to spend our waking hours trying to sort out and make sense of the perennial pandemonium. To forge patterns and proportions where they don’t actually exist. And it is this same urge, this mania to tame and possess—this necessary folly—that sparks and sustains love.
INTERVIEWER: But don’t you think it’s important to cultivate freedom in love? Freedom and trust? Appreciation without expectation?
EZRA BLAZER: Next record.
INTERVIEWER: Now that we know you do have children, Ezra Blazer . . . Any regrets?
EZRA BLAZER: That I didn’t meet you sooner. Is this what you do for a living?
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
EZRA BLAZER: Do you enjoy it?
INTERVIEWER: Of course.
EZRA BLAZER: Of course. You know, I know a poet, who lives in Spain, a wonderful Spanish poet who’s in her sixties now, but when she was in her thirties, late twenties or early thirties, she was extremely adventurous, and she went around to all the bars in Madrid, trying to find the oldest man there, so that she could take him home with her. That was her mission: to sleep with the oldest man in Madrid. Have you ever done something like that?
INTERVIEWER: No.
EZRA BLAZER: Would you like to begin now?
INTERVIEWER: . . . That would be with you?
EZRA BLAZER: That would be with me. Are you married?
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
EZRA BLAZER: Married. Well. That didn’t stand in Anna Karenina’s way.
INTERVIEWER: No.
EZRA BLAZER: It didn’t stand in Emma Bovary’s way.
INTERVIEWER: No.
EZRA BLAZER: Should it stand in your way?
INTERVIEWER: Anna and Emma came to no good end.
EZRA BLAZER: Children?
INTERVIEWER: Two.
EZRA BLAZER: Two children and a husband.
INTERVIEWER: Correct.
EZRA BLAZER: Well [laughs], let’s forget about him. I find you a very attractive woman and I’ve enjoyed this enormously. I’m going to a concert tomorrow night and I have two tickets. A friend of mine was going to go with me but I’m sure he’ll be content to go another time. Pollini is here, the wonderful Maurizio Pollini is here, and he’s playing Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas. So, my final question for you? On Desert Island Discs? Tomorrow night, Maurizio Pollini, at Royal Festival Hall, and I can bring only one woman, and I would like that woman to be you. So. What do you say, miss? Are you game?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The two passages read by Alice on pages 19 and 20 are from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, specifically the Modern Library paperback edition published in 2001.
The passage on pages 20 and 21 is from The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet, specifically the Grove Press edition reissued in 1994.
The second passage on page 21 is from The First Man by Albert Camus, specifically the First Vintage International edition published in 1996.
The third and fourth passages on page 21 are from Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, specifically the Grove Press edition reissued in 1994.
The passage on pages 22 and 23 is adapted from the text of an information pamphlet provided by Parkmed Physicians of New York.
The passage read aloud by Ezra on page 37 is from a letter written by James Joyce to his wife, Nora, on December 8, 1909. It is quoted from Selected Letters of James Joyce, originally published by Faber and Faber Limited in 1975 and reprinted in 1992.
As Alice says, the lyrics Ezra sings on page 39 are from “My Heart Stood Still” and “September Song.” “September Song” is from the musical Knickerbocker Holiday, with lyrics by Maxwell Anderson and music by Kurt Weill. Copyright © 1938 (renewed) Chappell & Co., Inc. and Tro-Hampshire House Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Publishing, LLC. The lyrics to “My Heart Stood Still” are by Lorenz Hart, with music by Richard Rodgers. Copyright © 1927 (renewed) WB Music Corp. and Williamson Music Co. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Publishing, LLC. Copyright © 1927 Harms, Inc. Copyright renewed. Copyright assigned to Williamson Music and WB Music Corp. for the extended renewal period of copyright in the USA. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
The passage underlined by Alice on page 47 is also from The First Man by Albert Camus, specifically the First Vintage International edition published in 1996.
As Ezra notes, the “bargeman” passage he reads aloud on page 48 is from The Personal History of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, specifically the Bradbury & Evans edition published in 1850.
The lyrics on page 55 are from the song “Beyond the Blue Horizon.” Ezra sings along to the Lou Christie version. “Beyond the Blue Horizon” is from the Paramount Picture Monte Carlo. Words by Leo Robin. Music by Richard A. Whiting and W. Franke Harling. Copyright © 1930 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. Copyright renewed. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN, 37219. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
The passage read by Alice on pages 58 and 59 is from Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience by Gitta Sereny, specifically the First Vintage Books edition published in 1983.
The first passage on page 60 is from Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt, specifically the Penguin Classics edition published in 1994.
The se
cond passage on pages 60 and 61 is also from Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience by Gitta Sereny, specifically the First Vintage Books edition published in 1983.
The passage on pages 63 and 64 is from Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity by Primo Levi, specifically the Collier Books/Macmillan Company edition published in 1993.
The lyrics sung by Alice on page 66 are from the “Nonsense Song” performed by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, with music composed by Leo Daniderff and lyrics by Charles Chaplin.
The passage about Jordy the Tailor on page 74 is from an issue of Lickety Split published in 1978.
The voiceover quoted on page 107 is from the jury duty orientation film entitled Your Turn, written and produced by Ted Steeg.
As Amar notes, the lyrics quoted on pages 174 and 175 are from the song “They All Laughed,” performed by Chet Baker with minor modifications. Music and Lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin. © 1936 (Renewed) NOKAWI MUSIC, FRANKIE G. SONGS, IRA GERSHWIN MUSIC. © 1936 (Renewed) IRA GERSHWIN MUSIC and GEORGE GERSHWIN MUSIC. All rights for NOKAWI MUSIC administered by IMAGEM SOUNDS. All rights for FRANKIE G. SONGS administered by SONGS MUSIC PUBLISHING. All rights on behalf of IRA GERSHWIN MUSIC administered by WB MUSIC CORP. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of ALFRED PUBLISHING, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
The Desert Island Discs episode summarized and quoted from on pages 186 through 189 is Sue Lawley’s interview with Joseph Rotblat, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on November 8, 1998.
The poem referred to by Alastair on page 215 is an untitled one by Osip Mandelstam. The English is Alastair’s paraphrasing of a translation from the original Russian by Leeore Schnairsohn.
As Ezra recalls, the poem he paraphrases on page 256 is by E. E. Cummings: #24 in the book No Thanks, originally published by Cummings himself in 1935.