A strange brew is this, and not all of it is pretty. Partially a record of a crackup and partially a tale of rising from that crackup back into a useful life; and part of that is how I decided writing was necessary to my life and recovery; and another part is just keeping a record of where I have been and what I have learned. You can see the topics I cover the sidebar. The hope is to help others; the purpose is figuring out where I am going. Thank you for dropping by. Feel free to comment.
The movies have mined his work, but as a novelist he comes across as a one hit wonder. That seems like a mistake. Even more than Grass or Mann, he faced down the Nazis. Those worrying about the current rise in fascism would do well to read hm.
What I have read of Understanding Erich Maria Remarque follows what I understood from my reading - he was not creating allegories or philosophical masterworks, but drawing upon his own experiences. Unlike Hemingway in that way. My recollection of his style it is akin to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I will go out here suggesting the man must have been something - an affair with Marlene Dietrich and a marriage to Paulette Goddard.
I read Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front in high school. I read more of Remarque in prison. As for his writing, I think he was a fine writer, but All Quiet on the Western Front is the one for which he will be remembered. What is hard to believe is that the Germans never filmed the novel until now: All Quiet on the Western Front review – anti-war nightmare of bloodshed and chaos. Now, I wish I had Netflix!
In 1944, Hans Fallada was committed to a psychiatric prison after shooting a pistol off during an argument with his wife. He was to remain there for observation for an indefinite period of time. While there, he asked for pen and paper—a request that was surprisingly granted. Ninety-two sheets of paper, to be precise, on which he wrote a number of short stories and one novel. In addition, he kept a diary wherein he poured out his distain and hatred for the Nazi regime. He knew the risk, but forged ahead regardless. In order to conceal his words, he wrote in a mix of abbreviations and micro/calligraphic cryptography, turning the pages upside down and writing in the spaces between the lines in order to save paper. Two months later he was released, smuggling the diary out of the prison under his shirt. In writing the diary, his purpose was clear.
“I’ve told the story at some length in order to give the reader some idea of how, under the National Socialist regime, every artistic activity was inhibited and rendered almost impossible by the need to defer to the tastes and prejudices of senior government figures . . . They systematically took away from us our real work, they wouldn’t allow us to follow the call of our own heart. For them there was only one call, and that was the sound of them calling the shots. They are frightened of the individual and individuality, they want the shapeless masses into which they can drone their slogans. And they’ve done very well with that, especially during the war.”
One more book I would like to read and for which I have no time!
Another writer I read in prison was Balzac. Finally, I think that somewhere along the line, I may have tried reading him. Anyway, I read what I found in the prison library and, in my opinion, found where Faulkner got the idea for settling his novels in one local. He is worth reading. Then today, The Guardian sent its books newsletter and listed there was Balzac’s Paris: The City as Human Comedy by Eric Hazan review – street spirit.
Hazan’s peregrinations culminate in a thoughtful disquisition on literary realism, in which he suggests that the term itself is misleading. He points out that Balzac’s novels make no mention of the railways that were then proliferating in the city, or the new fortifications built in the 1840s; people with chestnut hair – the majority – are conspicuously under-represented in the Human Comedy, as Balzac preferred to populate his stories with characters who have either blond or jet-black hair.
Were this any other writer, the appropriate response would be: so what? He was a novelist, not an archivist. But something about the panoramic breadth and descriptive detail of the Human Comedy, with its cast of about 2,500 characters, has tempted generations of readers and critics to view it as something akin to a factual chronicle. Of course, the novels were only intended as entertainment. “Balzac,” Hazan quips, “is no more of a realist than Scheherazade”. Even so, the mythos of great literature bleeds into our sense of history.
Is any fiction, regardless of how much it is grounded in reality, not a fantasy?
I have mostly forgotten Zardoz, other than a very strange (the strangest?) Sean Connery movie. I have not seen it in over 40 years, then it was on HBO (I think). Now it is fifty years old, and Oscar Mardell has written an essay for 3am Magazine, Zardoz at 50. If you have ever seen the movie, read the essay. In my opinion, it is a movie that should be seen, so that people can see just how challenging film can be. There were plenty of films like this in the early Seventies before Star Wars proved there were big bucks to be made in mindless nostalgia.
Why can I get nothing done? I get headaches and crashes for two hours. Then the computer gets balky.
After adjustments, "Road Tripping" went out to the Miami University Press Novella Prize, and to Sarabande Books. I sent "No Ordinary Word."
The latter acquired another rejection:
Hello! Us at the Groke want to thank you for taking the time to send over your writing. In our humble opinion, all writing is good writing and all art is good art. Unfortunately, though, we will have to pass on your submission. Please do not feel discouraged! We’d love to hear from you again! All the luck and best wishes,
Yeah, he may be old, but he speaks more cogently than Donald J. Trump ever did; he is a canny old man who might everyone underestimates (that's you Mr. Putin); and he has a sense of humor: Biden makes fun of his age at the White House Correspondents' dinner. I would like him younger, I would like the Democrats developing a solid bench for the future, but point out anyone who can pull off what Biden has done these past two years?
An hour nap became two hours. The headache passed, but the sourness in my stomach remains.
I finished reading up on William James. William James's Pluralisms by Russell B. Goodman. Ideas keep cominglike a cattle prod. Revisions to "Road Tripping" are coming. I want to do them now, only to tell myself get done with one thing first.
It is looking wet and cold outside. Just another night in Muncie.
5:27
Eaten dinner, have not even touched the screenplay. I have been dogin though my notes and finishing out posts for May.
The restaurant let me go early. I thought to get my hair cut but the place was jam packed. Too bloody cold today. I came back to wrestle with the last ten pages of Louis-Ferdinand Céline'sJourney to the End of the Night (1932).
The last time a novel took this long to read was when I re-read Raintree County. This novel was 509 pages.
It was not a slog, quite the opposite, but a very thick read. If I had a real computer rather than this miserable phone, I would be writing several posts populated with quotes. Even in translation, there is much that is quotable for its turn of phrase, for its sardonic ideas.
Starting with World War One, I thought I found a precursor to Joseph Heller's Catch 22. These chapters lack the idealism of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and/or John Dos Passos's1919.
When the protagonist goes to French colonial Africa, it is a The Heart of Darkness for the mendacious.
The echoes disappear as the protagonist goes to America and then back to France. The lack of idealism continues. Life is a Death-haunted mess. It seems fitting that he helps run a madhouse at the end.
Since I cannot do justice myself, I will be dropping posts about Celine in the next few days. Just click on the Books label below.
