Parlabane laughed. “Of course you can’t appreciate the sweep of it, because you haven’t seen it all,” he said. “The plan is there, but it reveals itself slowly. This isn’t a romance for holiday reading, you know. It’s a really great book, and I expect that when it has made its first mark, people will read and reread, and discover new depths every time. As they do with Joyce—though it’s my ideas that are complex, not my language. You are deceived by its first impression, which is that of a life-story—the intellectual pilgrimage of an uncommon and very rich mind, linked with a questing spirit. I can say this to you because you’re an old friend, and up to a point you comprehend my quality. Other readers will comprehend other things, and some will comprehend more. It’s a book in which really devoted and understanding readers will find themselves, and thus will find something of the essence of our times. The world is drawing near to the end of one of the Platonic Aeons—the Aeon of Pisces—and gigantic changes are in the air. This book is probably the first of the great books of the New Aeon, the Aeon of Aquarius, and it foreshadows what lies in the future for mankind.”
“Aha. Yes, I see. Or rather, I haven’t seen. Frankly, it seemed to me to be about you and everybody you’ve locked horns with since your childhood.”
“Well, Sim, you know I don’t mean to be nasty, but I’m afraid that is a criticism of you, rather than of my book. You’re a man who uses a mirror to see if his tie is straight, not to look into his own eyes. You’re no worse than thousands of others will be, when first they read it. But you’re a nice old thing, so I’ll give you a few clues. Perhaps another drink, just to start me off. I wish you wouldn’t measure drinks with that little dinkus. I’ll pour my own.”
Helping himself to what was really a tumbler of Scotch, with a little water on top for the sake of appearances, he launched into a description of his book, most of which I had heard before and all of which I was to hear several times again.
“It’s extremely dense in texture, you see. A multiplicity of themes, interwoven and illuminating each other, and written so that every sentence contains a complex nexus of possible meanings, giving rise to a variety of possible interpretations. Meaning is packed within meaning, so that the whole thing unfolds like the many skins of an onion. The book moves forward in the ordinary literal or historical sense, but its real movement is dialectical and moral, and the conclusion is reached by the pressure of successive renunciations, discoveries of error, and what the careful reader discerns to be partial truths.”
“Tough stuff.”
“Not really. The simple reader can be quite happy with a literal interpretation. It will seem to be the biography of a rather foolish and peculiarly perverse young man, born to live in the Spirit, but determined to escape that fate or postpone it as long as possible because he wants to explore the ways of the world and its creatures. It will be quite realistic, you see, so that it may even appear to be a simple narrative. A fool could find it idle or even tedious, but he’ll press on because of the spicy parts.
“That’s the literal aspect. But of course there is the allegorical aspect. The life of the principal character, a young academic, is the journey of a modern Everyman, on a Pilgrim’s Progress. The reader follows the movement of his soul from its infantile fantasies, through its adolescent preoccupation with the mechanical and physical aspects of experience, until he discovers logical principles, metaphysics, and particularly scepticism, until he is landed in the dilemmas of middle age—early middle age—and maturity, and finally to his recovery, through imagination, of a unified view of life, of a synthesis of unconscious fantasy, scientific knowledge, moral mythology, and wisdom that meets in a religious reconciliation of the soul with reality through the acceptance of revealed truth.”
“Whew!”
“Hold on a minute. That isn’t all. There’s the moral dimension of the book. It’s a treatise on folly, error, frustration, and exploration of the blind alleys and false theories about life as currently propagated and ineffectually practised. The hero—a not-too-bright adventurer—is looking for the good life in which intellect is at harmony with emotion, intelligence integrated through recollected experience, sentiment tempered by fact, desire directed towards worldly objects and controlled by a sense of humour and proportion.”
“I’m glad to hear there is going to be some humour in it.”
“Oh, it’s all humour from start to finish. The deep, rumbling humour of the fulfilled spirit is at the heart of the book. Like Joyce, but not so confined by the old Jesuit boundaries.”
“That’ll be nice.”
“But the crown of the book is the anagogical level of meaning, suggesting the final revelation of the twofold nature of the world, the revelation of experience as the language of God and of life as the preliminary to a quest that cannot be described but only guessed at, because all things point beyond themselves to a glory which is greater than any of them. And thus the hero of the tale—because it is a tale to the simple, as I said—will be found to have been preoccupied all his life with the quest for the Father Image and the Mother Idol to replace the real parents who in real life were inadequate surrogates of the Creator. The quest is never completed, but the preoccupation with Image and Idol gradually gives way to the conviction of the reality of the Reality which lies behind the shadows which constitute the actual moment as it rushes by.”
“You’ve bitten off quite a substantial chunk.”
“Yes indeed. But I can chew it because I’ve lived it, you see. I gained my philosophy in youth, took it out into the world and tested it.”
“But Johnny, I hate to say this, but what you’ve allowed me to read doesn’t make me want to read more.”
“You haven’t seen the whole thing.”
“Has anyone?”
“Hollier has a complete typescript.”
“And what does he say?”
“I haven’t been able to tie him down to a real talk about it. He says he’s very busy, and I suppose he is, though I think reading this ought to come before the trivialities that eat up his time. I’m shameless, I know. But this is a great book, and sooner or later he is going to have to come to terms with it.”
“What have you done about publication?”
“I’ve written a careful description of the book—the plan, the themes, the depths of meaning—and sent it to all the principal publishers. I’ve sent a sample chapter to each one, because I don’t want them to see the whole thing until I know how serious they are and what sort of deal they are prepared to make.”
“Any bites?”
“One editor asked me to have lunch with him, but at the last moment his secretary called to say that he couldn’t make it. Another one called to ask if there were what he called ‘explicit’ scenes in it.”
“Ah, the old buggery bit. Very fashionable now.”
“Of course there’s a good deal of that in it, but unless it’s taken as an integral part of the book it’s likely to be mistaken for pornography. The book is frank—much franker than anything else I’ve seen—but not pornographic. I mean, it wouldn’t excite anybody.”
“How can you tell?”
“Well—perhaps it might. But I want the reader to experience as far as possible everything that is experienced by the hero, and that includes the ecstasy of love as well as the disgust and filthiness of sex.”
“You won’t get far with modern readers by telling them that sex is filthy. Sex is very fashionable at present. Not just necessary, or pleasurable, or natural, but fashionable, which is quite a different thing.”
“Middle-class fucking. My jail-buggery isn’t like that at all. The one is Colonel Sanders’ finger-lickin’ chicken, and the other is fighting for a scrap of garbage in Belsen.”
“That might sell very well.”
“Don’t be a crass fool, Sim. This is a great book, and although I expect it to sell widely and become a classic, I’m not writing nastiness for the bourgeois market.”
A classic. As I looked at him,
so unkempt and messy in the ruin of a once-good suit of my own, I wondered if he could truly have written a classic novel. How would I know? Identifying classics of literature is not my job and I have the usual guilt that is imposed on all of us by the knowledge that in the past people have refused to recognize classics, and have afterwards looked like fools because of it. One has a certain reluctance to believe that anybody one knows, and particularly anybody looking such a failure and crook as Parlabane, is the author of something significant. Anyhow, he hadn’t permitted me to read the whole thing, so obviously he thought me unworthy, a sadly limited creature not up to comprehending its quality. The burden of declaring his book a great one had not been laid on me. But I was curious. As custodian of The New Aubrey it was up to me to find out if I could, and record genius if genius came into my ken.
Identifying classics may be considered outside my capacity, but several fund-granting bodies are prepared to take my word about the abilities of students who want money to continue their studies, and after Parlabane had left I settled to the job of filling in several of the forms such bodies provide for the people they call referees, and the students refer to as ‘resource persons”. So I turned off whatever part of me was Parlabane’s confidant, and the part which was the compiler of The New Aubrey, and the part—the demanding, aching part—that yearned for Maria-Sophia, and set to work on a pile of such forms, all of which had been brought to me at the last moment by anxious but ill-organized students, all of which had to be sent to the grantors immediately, and upon which it was apparently my task to affix the necessary postage; the students had not done so.
Outside my window lay the quadrangle of Ploughwright and although it was still too early to be called Spring, the fountains which never quite froze were making gentle music below their crowns of ice. How peaceful it looked, even at this ruinous time of the year. ‘A garden enclosed is my sister; my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.’ How I loved her! Was it not strange that a man of my age should feel it so painfully? Get to work, Simon. Work, supposed anodyne of all pain.
As I bent over my desk, my mood sank towards misanthropy. What would happen, I wondered, if I filled out these forms honestly? First: Say how long you have known the applicant. There were few whom I could claim to know at all, in any serious sense of the word, for I saw them only in seminars. In what capacity do you know him/her? As a teacher; why else would I be filling in this form? Of the students you have known in this way, would you rank the applicant in the first five per cent—ten per cent—twenty-five per cent? Well, my dear grantor, it depends on your standards; most of them are all right, in a general way. Aha, but here we get down to cases; Make any personal comment you consider relevant. This is where a referee or resource person is expected to pour on the oil. But I am sick of lying.
So, after an hour and half of soul-searching, I found that I had said of one young fellow, “He is a good-natured slob, and there is no particular harm in him, but he simply doesn’t know what work means.” Of another: “Treacherous; never turn your back on him.” Of a third: “Is living on a woman who thinks he is a genius; perhaps any grant you give him ought to be based on her earning capacity; she is quite a good stenographer, with a B.A. of her own, but she is plain and I suspect that once he has his doctorate he will discover that his affections lie elsewhere. This is a common pattern, and probably doesn’t concern you, but it grieves me.” Of a young woman: “Her mind is as flat as Holland—the salt-marshes, not the tulip fields—stretching towards the horizon in all directions and covered by a leaden sky. But unquestionably she will make a Ph.D.—of a kind.”
Having completed this Slaughter of the Innocents—innocent in their belief that I would do anything I could to get them money—I hastily closed the envelopes, lest some weak remorse overtake me. What will the Canada Council make of that, I wondered, and was cheered by the hope that I had caused that body a lot of puzzlement and confusion. Tohubohu and brouhaha, as Maria loved to say. Ah, Maria!
Next day at lunch in the Hall of Spook I saw Hollier sitting alone at a table which is used for the overflow from the principal dons’ table, and I joined him.
“About this book of Parlabane’s,” I said; “is it really something extraordinary?”
“I’ve no idea. I haven’t time to read it. I’ve given it to Maria to read. She’ll tell me.”
“Given it to Maria! Won’t he be furious?”
“I don’t know and I don’t much care. I think she has a right to read it, if she wants to; she seems to be putting up the money to have it professionally typed.”
“He’s touched me substantially for money to have that done.”
“Are you surprised? He touches everybody. I’m sick of his cadging.”
“Has she said anything?”
“She hasn’t got far with it. Has to read it on the QT because he’s always bouncing in and out of my rooms. But I’ve seen her puzzling over it, and she sighs a lot.”
“That’s what it made me do.”
But a few days later the situation was reversed, for Hollier joined me at lunch.
“I met Carpenter the other day; the publisher, you know. He has Parlabane’s book, or part of it, and I asked him what he thought.”
“And—?”
“He hasn’t read it. Publishers have no time to read books, as I suppose you know. He handed it on to a professional reader and appraiser. The report, based on a description and a sample chapter, isn’t encouraging.”
“Really?”
“Carpenter says they get two or three such books every year—long, wandering, many-layered things with an elaborate structure, and a heavy freight of philosophy, but really self-justifying autobiographies. He’s sending it back.”
“Parlabane will be disappointed.”
“Perhaps not. Carpenter says he always sends a personal letter to ease the blow, suggesting that the book be sent to somebody else, who does more in that line. You know: the old down-ready-pass.”
“Has Maria got on any farther with it?”
“She’s beavering away at it. Chiefly because of the title, I think.”
“I didn’t know it had a title.”
“Yes indeed, and just as tricky as the rest of the thing. It’s called Be Not Another.”“
“Hm. I’m not sure that I would snatch for a book called Be Not Another. Why does Maria like it?”
“It’s a quotation from one of her favourite writers. Paracelsus. She persuaded Parlabane to read some of Paracelsus and Johnny stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum. Paracelsus said, Alterins non sit, qui suus esse potest; Be not another if thou canst be thyself.”
“I know Latin too, Clem.”
“I suppose you must. Well, that’s what it comes from. Rotten, if you ask me, but he thinks it will look well on the title-page, in italic. A hint to the reader that something fine is in store.”
“I suppose it is a good title, if you look at it understandingly. Certainly Parlabane is very much himself.”
“I wish people weren’t so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard. I’m surer than ever that McVarish has that manuscript you didn’t dig out of him. I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s becoming an obsession. Have you any idea what an obsession is?”
Yes, I had a very good idea what an obsession is. Maria.
Sophia.
3
“I’ve been seeing something of that girl who was here last time you visited me,” said Ozy Froats. “You know the one—Maria.”
Indeed I know the one. And what was she doing in Ozy’s lab? Not bringing him a daily bucket for analysis, surely?
“She’s been introducing me to Paracelsus. He’s a lot more interesting than I would have suspected. Some extraordinary insights, but of course without any way of verifying them. Still, it’s amazing how far he got by guesswork.”
“You won’t yield an inch to the intuition of a great man, will you Ozy?”
“Not a millimetre. No, I guess I have to hedge
on that. Every scientist has intuitions and they scare the hell out of him till he can test them. Great men are rare, you see.”
“But you’re one. This award has lifted you right above the clutch of Murray Brown, hasn’t it?”
“The Kober Medal, you mean? Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“Puts you in the Nobel class, they tell me.”
“Oh, these awards—I’m very pleased, of course—but you have to be careful not to mistake them for real achievement. I’m glad to be noticed. I have to give a lecture when I get it, you know. That’s when I’ll find out what the boys really think, by the way they take it. But I haven’t shown all I want to show, by any means.”
“Ozy, the modesty of you great men is sickening to those of us who just plug along, doing the best we can and knowing it isn’t very much. The American College of Physicians gives you the best thing they have, and you demur and grovel. It isn’t modesty; it’s masochism. You like suffering and running yourself down. You make me sick. I suppose it’s your Sheldonian type.”
“It’s a Mennonite upbringing, Simon. Beware of pride. You people are all so nice to me, I have to watch out I don’t begin patting myself on the back too much. Maria, now, she insists I’m a magus.”
“I suppose you are one, in her terms.”
“She wrote me a sweet letter. A quotation from Paracelsus, mostly. I carry it around, which is a sign of weakness. But listen to the quote: ‘The natural saints, who are called magi, are given powers over the energies and faculties of nature. For there are holy men in God who serve the beatific life; they are called saints. But there are also holy men who serve the forces of nature, and they are called magi. . . What others are incapable of doing they can do, because it has been conferred upon them as a special gift.’ If a man started thinking of himself in those terms, he’d be finished as a scientist. Doubt, doubt, and still more doubt, until you’re dead sure. That’s the only way.”
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