He Posted My Comment

What Wood Did to Bolaño

http://contrajameswood.blogspot.com/2009/01/gutless-realism-james-woods-housebroken.html

Magniloquence. Courtliness.

This essay does a good job of locating my unease with James Wood's reviews of Roberto Bolaño.

Perfume Review: Salvador Dali pour Homme

Salvador Dali pour Homme smells just like the mythical Babylonian beast, forget its name, that was supposed to be unwashed bull from the waist up and overripe persimmon from the waist down. He could neither walk nor roll and so tragically took his own life by chain-smoking and wearing too much Halston Z-14. With our modern knowledge of mythical composite creatures, I like to believe that he could now be saved. Alas, we are too late, and all we can do is write copiously and resolve, particularly at this blessed time of year, to be kind to our loved ones, to dumb beasts, and to people who smell weird.

This Little Girl. Roma, I Guess

What was it like? When you're a filmmaker you're always late for someplace else when the real shot shows up. There's never enough money or time. It's cold or it's hot; I'm late; no one will hold still or they won't keep doing what they were just doing that was actually interesting, and then something shows up in shit light or smiles at me, right there, and I don't see it because the film is already about something else.

The girl was about 12. Or maybe older and just small. There was food there and everything but all the people were small and hard, and looked older than they were, although I had no way of knowing how old they were. But even the children looked old. Not old with time but stamped with age to which time only needed to be added. The Roma aren't like the Czechs who age into good-humored cynics, or the Americans who age into surprised children. There always seems to be some chance that an American might escape mortality. On film they mostly look busy or surprised.

The gypsy camp was an ugly maze and I was late and lost. Men kept hitting on me, asking if I would take them home to America. I live in London, I said. Take me to London they said. And then this one little girl. She had very dark eyes, and it struck me enough to check what I was seeing without the camera. Although when it's bright like that the world disappears for a moment anyway when your eye leaves the camera. But it was impossible to see anything but shy darkness in her eyes. I mean their invisibility was palpable. And I couldn't look away. You can see how the shot wobbles. There.

And then I realized that we had surprised each other--my rush and her tears--she was weeping. They were all dusty, and the tears left channels of girlish skin down one cheek that spread to one side of her Roman nose as she wiped her face with her knuckles. We were hurrying away from each other the whole time but we did this dance, which I mostly got on film. She was hurrying back to conceal her tears, and I was hurrying to be wrong about what my film was about.

'Are you crying? Why are you crying?'
She looked away and looked back which was a kind of answer. I think she meant that I wouldn't understand, or that's what I imagined. On the film, she looks away and when she looks back she has decided that her eyes will be less opaque. She looks into the lens and the autofocus flickers and then she is gone again.
'Why are you crying?' I ask, and she shrugs. And then, "What is your name?"
'What is your name?" she says, and her voice is small, only the voice of girl, although very husky.
'Pavla.' And then, 'What is your name.' Now coaxing, which she likes, and smiles.
'Pavla?'
'What's wrong?' again. And she looked at me blackly and answered in some language I assume was Roma. I couldn't understand, of course. I speak English and Czech and some Russian but no Roma, of course, if that's what it was.
She said whatever it was again, looking at me as though it were impossible to say it in any other language.
She shrugged and--although it doesn't seem to show up on the screen--through the lens her face was a child's face and her eyes were green.

The Verse About Blake

Salt for what I can't see,
Sage for the ghosts in me,
Ginger to clear my mind,
Cream almost all the time.
Bowls full of blossoms blend,
bitter then sweet again.
Peppers for a rosary.
Friend, come and sit with me.

Geoffrey Prince, Salt Lake City, Utah, January 4

Mr. _______________,



As we discussed when you called, I am not comfortable with your request to speak to these matters informally, as I believe there is too much oportunity for mischief and error in the transcription, interpretation and, possibly, in the editorial contextualization that inevitably your duties require. Therefore, I require that you publish this written statement in its entirety or not at all, as I have written it here. Of course, I will maintain a dated copy in my records and will contest any attempt to cite me except by including the complete, unaltered text of this letter.



My name is Geoffrey Fielding Prince. I resided near Kolob, Utah from March 15 of last year through the end of November. I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Utah, and spent those eight and a half months in Kolob managing fieldwork on a dig near Kolob, located on Bureau of Land Management land. As is generally the case with such work, my crew and I spent nearly all of our time at the dig site. We returned to Kolob Town only to pick up our mail, send and receive e-mail, and meet our suppliers. During these brief hours in Kolob, I met only a few residents: Dotti Lyman at the gas station; Dorothea [whose last name I don't know] at the Post Office; a young farmer named Lauro, whom I picked up hitchiking on 144 on July 4; and Officer R. Lyman of the Pierce County Sheriff's Department, who gave me a speeding ticket [four miles per hour over the posted limit] on July 5. I recall two or three brief conversations and verbal acknowledgements, too, but I do not remember with whom I spoke. I never lingered in Kolob more than two hours, and spent the night there only once, the night of July 5, at the Black Bear Mesa Motel.

In our conversation yesterday, you asked about the location of the dig site. I am forbidden by the terms of my contract from providing this information. Kolob was the nearest town, and we were on Federal land.

As we discussed, I require that all future communications be in writing through the attorney advising the University on these matters. His contact information is attached.

Sincerely,

Geoffrey F. Prince,
Associate Professor of Archaeology
The University of Utah
Salt Lake City

Five Failed Sonnets, FWIW

1.



The lover wants what he does not have.

You know those squirrel-proof bird feeders?

The lover is like a squirrel: have

You seen his eyes? His focus? His ears

Cocked forward, his tiny brain mighty

In concentration, devising a way

to get those seeds? What he wants is right

There but he is confounded, stuck, may

Never figure it out. Something like

A miracle, an act of God, a

Eureka moment, a lightning strike

Is what he needs. He can't hold still, stay

away, or ask for help. This is a prize

He cannot share. He would rather die.



2.



All our desire is poised on an axis

Of paradox, lack and ownership

Its poles, lust and death its steep taxes,

Love and hate in circular orbit,

Strangeness and familiarity,

Familiarity and strangeness,

Round and round with the regularity

Of our backs' heaving under duress.

We pray, ask for help. This is the prize

We cannot share. We never arrive.



3.



In the City of God we built His house

To house His absence. And we filled the

Empty spaces of our hearts with busts

Of heroes, memorials to the

Dead, and monuments to the utterly,

Unutterably lost and insolvent.

We filled the bland domestic quarters

House by house, with grudging affection,

Needing the walls and roofs, but doubting

Their security. We checked out our

Neighbor's wife in the market counting

her coins, her skirt handprinted with flour.

Help her carry that home. Don't be shy.

You'll walk her home but never arrive.



4.



This place is a mere crossroads, a pile

Of coincidence, an eddy in

The torrent of commerce. Some square miles

Of zones of uses held in position

By regulatory agencies

Beholden to the insurance and

Underwriting industries, finance

Interests; and the soulless strip malls and

Secure compounds are from elsewhere, or,

At best, from nowhere, from some ether

Of algorithmic blind groping after

Profit, multiplying to the last sure

Decimal the civic futures sold short

For private gain, a vast edgeless space,

A res publica without a face.

5.

Around the squalid center, [a pit

of pestilential poverty, too

intractable to fix, too unfit

for investment or civic ado],

spread the compounds of the like-minded,

those whose politics are hog-tied, bought

and sold, whose speculation reminded

Pound of lost pride in good craft, whose

Neuroses play out in spas and bedrooms

and restaurants and spasms of lust in

the glow of monitors and dread and

anxiety and sadness too remote

for drugs to fix. They fill their houses,

vast and cheap, with their longing and they

turn up the volume, hold it barely together

with the tight twine of indignation.