Misreadings Read online

  Re, gretfully, We Are Returning Your . . . Latin and adding pseudo-folk talk that is hardly proper for the positive heroes the public is eager for. Having just finished that fluent and flavorsome little book, Hewlett's The Forest Lovers, I read this Pro- messi sposi with considerable effort. You only have to turn to page one to see how long it takes the author to get to the point. He starts with a landscape description whose syntax is so dense and labyrinthine that you can't figure out what he's saying, when it would have been so much easier to write, "One morning, in the Lecco area . "Well, so it goes: not everybody has the narrative gift, and even fewer have the ability to write in good Italian. Still, the book is not totally without merit. But I warn you: it would take forever to sell out a first printing. Proust, Marcel, A la recherche du temps perdu This is undoubtedly a serious work, perhaps too long, but as a paperback series it could sell. But it won't do as is. It needs serious editing. For example, the punctuation has to be redone. The sentences are too labored; some take up a whole page. With plenty of good in-house work, reducing each sentence to a maximum of two or three lines, breaking up paragraphs, indenting more often, the book would be enormously improved. If the author doesn't agree, then forget it. As it 43

  MISREADINGS stands, the book is too--what's the word? matic. asth- Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical Reason I asked Susan to take a look at this, and she tells me that after Barthes there's no point translating this Kant. In any case, I glanced at it myself. A reasonably short book on morality could fit nicely into our philosophy series, and might even be adopted by some universities. But the German publisher says that if we take this one, we have to commit ourselves not only to the author's previous book, which is an immense thing in at least two volumes, but also to the one he is working on now, about art or about judgment, I'm not sure which. All three books have more or less the same title, so they would have to be sold boxed (and at a price no reader could afford); otherwise bookshop browsers would mistake one for the other and think, "I've already read this." Re- member the Summa of that Dominican? We began to translate it, and then we had to pass the rights on to Sheed and Ward because it ran way over budget. There's another problem. The German agent tells me that we would also have to publish the minor works of this Kant, a whole pile of stuff including something about astronomy. Day before yesterday I tried to phone him directly in Koenigsberg, to see if we could do just one book, but the cleaning woman 44

  Regretfully, We Are Returning Your . . . said the master was out and I should never call between five and six because that's when he takes his walk, or between three and four because that's nap time, and so on. I would advise against getting in- volved with a man like this: we'll end up with a mountain of his books in the warehouse. Kafka, Franz, The Trial Nice little book. A thriller with some Hitchcock touches. The final murder, for example. It could have an audience. But apparently the author wrote under a regime with heavy censorship. Otherwise, why all these vague references, this trick of not giving names to people or places? And why is the protagonist being put on trial? If we clarify these points and make the setting more concrete (facts are needed: facts, facts, facts), then the action will be easier to follow and suspense is assured. These young writers believe they can be "poetic" by saying "a man" instead of "Mr. So-and-so in such-and-such a city." Genuine writing has to keep in mind the old newspaper man's five questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? If we can have a free hand with editing, I'd say buy it. If not, not. Joyce, James, Finnegans Wake Please, tell the office manager to be more careful when he sends books out to be read. I'm the English- 45

  MISREADINGS language reader, and you've sent me a book written in some other, godforsaken language. I'm returning it under separate cover. I972 46

  Esquisse d'un nouveau chat Count six paces from the corner of the room to the table. From the table to the rear wall, five paces. There is an open door opposite the table. From the door to your corner, six paces. If you look ahead, your gaze crossing the room diagonally toward the opposite corner, when you are crouched against the wall, your mask to the room, your curved tail brush- ing both walls where they meet to form the corner, you will then see, six paces before you, at the level of your eyes, a cylindrical form, shiny, dark brown, carved in a series of fine furrows with a whitish line in the cleft. A peeling surface about five centimeters from the ground spreads in an irregular circumfer- ence, tending to an imprecise polygon, its maximum diameter six centimeters. It has a base, also whitish, but a dimmer white than that of the furrows, as if the dust had settled there for a longer period and at a greater rate over the days or months, centuries or millennia. Over the peeling surface the cylinder rises, its shiny brown still marked by furrows, until, at a 47

  MISREADINGS median height of one hundred twenty centimeters from the ground, it ends, surmounted by a much larger form, apparently rectangular, although your eye, beholding the object along the diagonal that runs from your corner to the corner opposite, sees it as a rhomboid. And now, extending your field of vision, you discern three other cylindrical bodies arranged in symmetry with one another and all symmetrical with respect to the first, so that they seem the three vertices of another rhomboid, and therefore if they all support, as you believe they do, the large rectan- gular object at one hundred twenty centimeters from the ground, they are probably positioned also at the four corners of a perfect rectangle. Your gaze does not see precisely what is resting on the rectangular surface. From it, in your direction, a reddish mass protrudes, its entire width surrounded by a whitish material. The reddish mass rests on a yellow, wrinkled sheet of paper dotted with red at several points, as if the mass were something live that has left part of its vital humor on that rough yellow surface. You, who have constantly before your pupil the filiform and confused curtain of the hairs of your brow, which descend to protect the almond-shaped eyeball, and, farther, as if in perspective, the imper- ceptibly vibrating long whiskers, now suddenly and obliquely see beneath your nose a red and wrinkled mobile surface, a brighter red than the red of the mass that rests on the rectangle. Now you lick your whiskers at the lure of the large reddish mass; now the reddish mass, prompted 48

  Esquisse d'un nouveau chat by your gaze, lets fall drops of humoral liquid on the crinkly yellow sheet; now both you and the reddish mass participate in a reciprocal attraction. It is futile for you to be hypocritical: once again you are staring at the meat on the table. So you are about to make a leap that will enable you to take possession of the meat. From the epicen- ter of your leap to the surface of the table is six paces; but if you turn your gaze again to the table leg, you will now see, beside it, two other tubular surfaces also brown but less solid in appearance, more fluctuating. Now you become aware of the presence of a complementary entity that is not the table and not the meat. Below this entity you note at ground level a pair of vaguely ovoid brown shapes, the upper surface breached by a broad gap'whose lips are connected by a pattern of strings, also brown. Now you know him. He is beside the table, he is beside the meat. You do not leap. You ask yourself if you have not been in this situation once before, and if you have not witnessed a similar scene in the large picture that decorates the wall opposite the table. The picture shows a crowded tavern with a child in the corner; in the center there is a table with a big piece of meat on it, and beside the table the figure-of a soldier is visible, erect, wearing loose, flapping trousers and brown shoes. In the far corner a cat can be seen preparing to leap. If you take a closer look at the picture, you will discern, in the cat's pupil, the image of an almost empty room, in whose center stands a table with cylindrical legs, and on it is a large piece of meat on a sheet of 49

  MISREADINGS butcher's paper, yellow and rough, stained here and there with the meat's bloody traces. There is no one beside the table. Suddenly the cat that appears in the clear reflection of the pupil of the cat in the picture makes a leap toward the meat; but at the same time the man beside the table in the picture grabs at the cat, and now you do not know if the cat that flees is
the cat reflected in the pupil of the cat in the picture or if, instead, it is the cat in the picture. Probably it is you, who now flee with the meat in your mouth after you have made the leap. The one chasing you is the child who was standing in the corner of the tavern, diagonally opposite the cat in the picture. From your eyes to the table it is five paces; from the table to the far wall, six paces; from the wall to the door, eight paces. On the table the large reddish mass of meat, still intact, cannot be seen. On the table in the picture the meat is still visible, but beside the table now you see two men in baggy brown trousers. In the corner opposite the cat in the picture the child can no longer be seen. In the reflection of the pupil of the cat in the picture you no longer see the cat in the corner, five paces from the table. This is not reality. You would seek desperately an eraser to rub out this memory. Your tail drags in a slovenly way against the ninety-degree angle formed by the two walls that meet behind your back. You ask yourself if it is your feline condition that leads you to see the world in this objective way, or if the maze in which you find yourself is your habitual space and also the 50

  Esquisse d'un nouveau chat maze of the man beside the table. Or if you both are only the image in the eye above you, which subjects you both to this tension as a purely literary exercise. If that is the case, it is not fair. There should be a relationship that will allow you to unify the things that you have witnessed, the things that have wit- nessed you, and the things you have been. The things in which you have seen yourself motionless mu,st have some ambiguous connection with both the things that have been seen and with you who have seen. If the man made a leap toward the picture and gripped the child with his teeth, you then pursued him into the picture, beyond the door of the tavern and into the road over which whitish flakes of snow flutter, first slanting then increasingly straight and closer to your eyes, like filiform, darting shadows, vague dots that vibrate before you. They are your whiskers. If the man took the meat, if you made your leap, if the meat was on the table, and the child fled among the flakes of snow, who has taken th meat that you will devour and that now remains on the table where you did not see it? But you are a cat, probably, and you remain an object in this situation. You cannot alter it. You want the situation altered, but that would mean an altera- tion of yourself. This is your universe. What you are contemplating is a human universe of which you know nothing, just as They know nothing of yours. Still, the idea tempts you. You contemplate a possible new novel, with yours as the ordering mind, but you do not dare carry this further, because you would inevitably introduce the 51

  MISREADINGS horrible disorder of the evident into the tranquil improbability of your maze. You consider the story of a cat, a respectable cat of noble birth, whom no one would expect so many and such dreadful adventures to befall, though in fact they do. This cat suffers various vicissitudes and surprises, unexpected agnitions (he has lain with his own mother, or killed his own father to gain posses- sion of the large red chunk of meat), and as these trials multiply, the audience of cats witnessing the play feels pity and terror; until the 1ogica? develop- ment of events culminates in a sudden catastrophe, a final denouement of all tensions, after which the cats present, and you who have ordered their emotions, enjoy a purification, a catharsis. Now you know that such a resolution would make you master of the room, and of the meat, and perhaps of the man and the child. No denials: you are mor- bidly drawn by this path for a future cat. But then you would be tagged a member of the avant-garde. You know you will never write this story. You have never even considered it, never told anyone you might have considered it while watching a piece of meat. You have never crouched in the corner of this room. Now a cat is in the corner of the room where the walls meet to form a ninety-degree angle. From the tip of his whiskers to the table it is five paces. 1961 52

  The Latest from Heaven The passages that follow are taken from the notebook of the reporter John Smith, whose lifeless body was found on the slopes of Mount Ararat. The newspaper that em- ployed Smith confirms that he was sent to Asia Minor on a special assignment, but refuses to disclose the nature of that assignment. Since Ararat is on the Armenian frontier, the media blackout was probably imposed by the State Department, anxious to avoid an international incident. Smith's body showed no wound beyond some severe burns, "like he'd been struck by lightning," to quote the shepherd' who found him. But the Erzurum Meteorological Bureau informs us that for the past six months the area has had no storms of any kind, not even heavy rains. This text evi- dently represents a serie of statements made to Smith by an unidentified source not named elsewhere in the note- book. Rain! It's this damn government! You see? That cloud over there. It never stops dripping. But just try complaining. There must be more than a hundred 53

  MISREADINGS of them around here. They spend a fortune to set up those big picturesque cirrus. Public relations, they say. While everything's going to pot around here, falling apart. Look, I'm telling you these things, but don't put down my name: I'm not asking for trouble. Besides, I'm the lowest rung on this ladder. I've been here two thousand years, but I arrived with that whole batch of Christian Martyrs, and they treat us like dogs. It's no merit of yours, they say, you have the lions to thank. You know what I mean? Except for the Holy Innocents, we're really the bottom of the heap., But what I'm saying now you can hear from ten thousand times ten thousand others, even higher up, because discontent has spread everywhere. So write it down, write it down. Falling apart, I say. This huge bureaucracy, but nothing solid, concrete. That's the story. And He doesn't know. Not one thing. It's all run by the Higher Echelons; their word is law, and they never let us in on anything. The machine just keeps cranking along. You want to know something? Even today anyone who's killed ten Moslems can get in automatically: it's a rule that dates back to the First Crusade and nobody's ever bothered to repeal it. So every day twenty, thirty parachute troops come marching in, and nobody lifts a finger. I'm telling you. And there's still a Bureau for the Elimination of the Albigenses. There's no knowing what goes on there, but it exists, with its own letterhead and all the special benefits. Try doing something about it. The Domina- tions . they're a terrible clique--won't let anybody 54

  The Latest from Heaven get a foot in the door. Big or little, all requests get the same treatment. Consider the fuss raised over the rehabilitation of Satan. Easy nough, wouldn't you think? You open a communicating passage below, and the whole problem of evil is settled. Actually, this is what the young Thrones are after, but you see how they've been shut up. And the Guardians? Have you read about that? They were far down, very close to humans; they understood them, and naturally took their part. Well, some Guardians may have gone too far in fraternizing; class solidarity, it's only natural. So? Off they went, reassigned to the Boiler Room of the Primum Mobile. And nobody knows--I repeat, nobody! if He was told anything. They do as they like, issuing their decrees and heir lette rs, and noth- ing budges. Not an inch. Look how many centuries it took them to accept the Ptolemaic reform. When Ptolemy died, they still hadn't ratified the Pythagorean reform, holding on to that barbaric model with the Earth flat as a dish and the edge of the abyss right beyond the Pillars of Hercules. And you know something else? When Dante arrived here, they were barely finishing with Ptolemy, there was still a Music of the Spheres De- partment-they hadn't realized that if each planet in its revolutions made different sound of the scale, then all together they'd be like a kitten on the key- board, one hell of a racket. Pardon the expression. I meant to say: infernal din. And another thing. Just listen to this: When Gal- ileo published the Saggiatore, here they were still circulating a pamphlet denouncing the Counterearth 55

  MISREADINGS of Pythagoras. But He never heard the story of the Counterearth--I know this from a thoroughly reli- able source. Throughout the entire Middle Ages He was kept in ignorance; the Seraphim gang worked hand-in-glove with the Theology Faculty in Paris, and they took charge of the whole question. In the old Eden days He was a different being. He was something to be seen, they sa
y! He rose in person, descended upon Adam and Eve, and you should have heard Him! And earlier still? Totally self-made, He is, with His own hands. That talk about resting on the seventh day? Ha! That's when He did His filing. But even then, yes, even then . To put His hands on Chaos, what He had to go through! There was Raphael and another ten or twelve bigwigs who were opposed; they had inherited Chaos, which was then divided into estates. It was their reward for driving out the Rebels . . So He had to use force! You should have seen Him! Moving on the face of the waters and all that: like the cavalry arriving in an old Western. Nobody who saw it has ever forgotten. Ah, the good old days. The Rebels, you ask? Well, you know how these things go. There's the Official History now, so there's just one version, the Choirs', but as far as the truth is concerned They've turned Lucifer into a premature anti-Fascist, a crypto-Communist. At most he was a Social Democrat. An intellectual with ideas about reform, that's what he was, the kind who always gets killed in revolutions. What did Lucifer want, actually? A broader representation, and the 56

  The Latest from Heaven fair division of Chaos. And wasn't He then the very one who then divided up Chaos? You see how it goes, He catches on Himself finally, but nothing must be said to Him directly. Enlightened, oh yes, He's that, to be sure; but paternalistic, first and foremost. Representation, on the other hand, is still far in the future, and that's where it'll stay. I think He'd favor change. But the Higher Orders, they whisper in his ear. Just look at what's happening with this Relativity. Would issuing a decree be all that much trouble? He knows that the space-time observations made in the Crystalline are different from those made in the Sky of Mercury. You know what I mean? Of course He knows. He made the Universe, right? But try saying so. They'll send you straight to the Pri- mum Mobile Boiler Room. There's no way out: Once He admits the expanding universe and curved space, He'll haveto abolish the departments of the Heavens and replace the Primurn Mobile with a con- stant and diffused energy source. And then all the positions and posts will be superfluous: the Powers of the Sky of Venus, the Central Cherubinium for Firmament Maintenance, the Chief Executive Offi- cers of the Heavens, the Seraphic Foundation of the Primum Mobile, and the Wardens of the Mystic Rose! You see what I mean? The old organization is out and a new decentralized staff chart has to be established. Ten big Archangels without portfolio: that's what'11 happen. In other words, nothing will happen. Just drop by the Primum Mobile control room 57