Review, Sweet Charity

I watched a play, Sweet Charity, so full of social choreography and the edges of emotion, so typical a musical with everything on display, pleasantly raw, that I forgot for two hours, even more, that I was there alone.  Intermission reminded me, temporarily, while the house filtered into the lobby and the actors were left stuck in an elevator in the dark, but fifteen minutes later I sat down and got right back into the play, naively sweet yet cloyingly real how he was afraid to kiss her and she was avoiding the backstory.  And I admit, I was even close to tears, close to feeling my feet in their shoes, until the ending, oh.  An artless set of lies, an unrelented pause in the music, and awkward, beatless moves from stage left to stage right, until...  an hour later I'm alone, and painfully aware.


from Turning the Metaphor

Dictapoem 1990

You can write about

a despondent woman wanting

to give up on life. But

leave out the names.

Tell them about her

problems, her woes... 

Tell them how she 

wasted a whole day just 

crying her eyes out 

apparently for no reason 

at all. And then the next 

morning she started 

panicking because she 

had to study for her finals 

You’re not really 

writing this, are you? 

...now I’m afraid to speak.


from March to December

Moleskin 4.1: Audience

Audience

But where was I? Yes, the point. As I proceed past sixth grade, I begin beyond all whims and maybes to realize what wasn’t clear on the earlier pages: that I have a story to tell, a singular tale, and there is a point to it. In the summer before seventh grade I start to see past the nothing and everything of my memories that I have words that need to be said, and a narrative to lead me through my hesitations. And here is where I find myself turning, once again, to my audience. You are the point. You are the only reason I am writing, the prompt to get me to remember my lines, the pull that hooks me onto the stage and sets me before the spotlight. My better instincts would keep all this to myself and wallow in a comfortable shadowy shyness, but you, out there in the darkness, are why I have taken to these pages. All of you, in ways. But one of you in particular.

The Disappearance of Walter Herring

Walter Herring, age 29, was doodling on paper yesterday when he got carried away. Literally. According to witnesses, Herring had been scribbling on a paper place mat in a local restaurant when two men in collar-up overcoats came in and stood on either side of him Herring and the men had a brief moment of what seemed to be conversation, then suddenly the men took hold of Herring’s arms, stood him up and walked him out of the restaurant. They pushed Herring into the back seat of a black car and inconspicuously drove away. 

Tom Smith, the restaurant’s manager, had been working in the back when the incident occurred, but he was immediately called into the dining room after the abductors had left. “Everyone was gabbing away about what they had just seen,” said Smith. “After a few minutes I was able to piece together what had actually happened. ”

“It was Walter Herring, he’s my neighbor,” said Mrs. Harriet Lockwert of 872 Maplecourt Road. “He lives right next to me, so I know it was him. Yes, 874.”

“Oh, he was just sitting there, doodling, you know,” said Trent Dagnow. “What? Oh yes. He had this kind of absent face on, so he couldn’t have been writing anything seri... What? Oh, well, yes. No, you don’t need my address.”

“They just talked in whispers for a while and then they grabbed him,” said Archie Baldwin of Bensenville. “Yes, I was at the next table.”

“They looked like mobsters,” added Archie Baldwin’s wife, who asked to remain unnamed. 

“Oh, Marcy, no, they were G-men, I’m sure,” said Constance Labelle. 

“No, you didn’t get a good look at them,” said Mrs. Baldwin. “One of them had a scar.”

“They were from the State Department,” said Jack Lloyd. 

“How do you know?” an unidentified voice in the crowd asked. “It was on their license plate. A government seal,” said Lloyd. 

“Jack, you wouldn’t know a government seal if they stamped it on your forehead,” said another unidentified voice. 

“Maybe so, but I saw it. It said, ‘U.S.A. State Department, Secret Service.’” said Lloyd. 

“Jack, sit down,” said William Richter of Peoria. “Last I checked, you couldn’t even read.”

“Shut up, Billy, I can read.” 

“What’s that say,” said Richter. 

“I don’t have to prove anything,” said Lloyd. 

ζ

Detective Morley Bright of the Chicago Police Department arrived approximately forty five minutes after Herring’s disappearance. Bright questioned the several restaurant patrons who had remained behind waiting for him, then he talked with Tom Smith, who had taken notes from the diners who had left. 

“Very concise report, Tom. ” 

“Thank you. ” 

“But I hate to tell you...” 

“What’s that, detective?”

“The Secret Service is part of the Department of the Interior.” 

“I know. I was just reporting what I heard.” 

“So do you put much value in what Jack Lloyd said?”

“No.”

“Why did you record it then?” 

“Oh I don’t know. ”

After further questioning, Detective Bright determined that only the quotes from Harriet Lockwert and Trent Dagnow were of any worth in Smith’s report. It was certainly Walter Herring, and he had apparently been doodling. 

The other witnesses, whom Bright had interviewed directly, were able to confirm many facts about themselves and that they had all been eating lunch at Denny’s on 1213 Rowday Drive when “the hell had broken loose.” They used these words several times, but no one would elaborate. They asked Bright if he thought the TV news was going to come, but Bright was already done talking to them. 

ξ

“This is Brad Kopak of the Channel 4 Eyewitness News Team, live at the scene of Denny’s Restaurant at 1213 Rowday Drive, where just moments ago a most unusual abduction occurred. Behind me are Jerry Lyman and Mimi Peters. Jerry, Mimi, can you tell our viewers what just took place here.”

“Hi.” 

“Hi.”

“Uh, Jerry, Mimi, we understand that a Mr. Walter Herring of 874 Maplecourt Road was forcibly dragged out of here tonight by two mysterious men. Can either of you confirm this?”

“Today.”

“Pardon me?”

“It happened today, not tonight. About eight hours ago. The hell broke loose.”

“So you’ve been here since two o’clock?” 

“Well, sure.” 

“Why not?” 

“Uh, right, well —then what happened?” 

“Since two o’clock? Not a whole lot.” 

“What happened at two o’clock?” 

“They took Walter Herring...” 

“He was just sitting there doodling away...” 

“And then the hell broke loose...”

“...And?”

“And that’s it.”

“Uh, well! So there you have it. Obviously not all has been answered yet, but we’ll keep you posted. From the Denny’s at 1213 Rowday Drive, this is Brad Kopak, investigative reporter. Back to you, Judy.”

ϰ

“What was Walter Herring doodling? That is the question —the mystery of the week here in Chicagoland, and it is very mysterious indeed. Mr. Herring had been at Denny’s waiting on a late lunch last Friday. The meal had not yet come and he took out a pen and started drawing on his place mat with what one witness called an “absent” face. Suddenly, two men wearing trench coats and dark glasses burst into the restaurant. They went immediately to Mr. Herring and picked him up out of his chair, talked to him for a minute in hushed tones and then escorted him out of the restaurant. But here’s what no one noticed right away: They also took the place mat! It was not until after they had left with Mr. Herring that anyone noticed that the place mat was gone!

“What was Mr. Herring doodling? We may never know for sure, but that is the question we will try to uncover in this week’s episode of... ‘It Really Happened.’

“We will return to ‘It Really Happened’ after these messages.”

ϕ

“Hey Obert, will ya take a look over here?” Harrient Lockwert of 872 Maplecourt Road was leaning over her sink, peering out the kitchen window. “There’s somebody snooping around at Walter Herring’s house.”

“Let it be, Har. Stop snooping.” He was reading the paper. 

“But Obert, they look like criminals.” 

“Exactly. Don’t get involved.” 

“Don’t you care, Obert? Don’t you want to help Walter?” 

“Harriet, I barely know Walter Herring. In the five years he’s lived next to us, we’ve barely waved at each other.”

“Yes.” Harriet pondered, went back to the window, this time peeking more discreetly through the curtains. “But suppose they come here next?”

“Why would they do that?”

“They’ve got my name in the police report.”

“Harriet, will you get away from the window.” Obert put his paper down. “Look, Har. You saw that show on the television last night. Those guys are all concerned about a doodle, right? But it has nothing to do with us, so let’s keep it that way!”

Harriet went back into the kitchen and closed the curtain all the way. But she couldn’t resist one last peek.

Ω

from March to December

Scavengers

I’ll start this one in the middle:
We’re fighting even though, or just because,
We both believe in the same things
     And nothing really matters
Beyond the business at hand.
     We jump into our wars

And pick every little battle
As scavengers collect aluminum:
No scrap is too small
     As long as it’s redeemable;
Never mind how silly we look
     Dragging garbage down the street;
     They’ll weigh it in the end

And we’ll have some money to eat.
Here’s one of those positions, by the way,
We share but fight about endlessly:
     Having enough tender
To pay the bills, a little more
     To get through rainy days,

That, and being allowed to be a dreamer:
See, I’ve, and you’ve, had dreams of better days
And both of us are wondering
     And worrying the same things:
About the balance of suffering,
     Today and tomorrow, and how
     We’ll bear it now
     And weigh it in the end.


from Calendrums

Notes from "Notes from Underground"

     The Underground Man perceives the prostitute Liza as being a creature and a victim of debauchery, which itself exists, according to his  perception, in lovelessness, with a general lack of all feeling.  (The quoted translation uses the phrase “at the culmination point” of love.  Another text, translated by David Magarshack, says “consummation” (339), which seems to imply that the vice is less a result of true love’s previous existence as an aspect following its absence.)  This perception differs from that of one of Liza’s more ordinary clients in that the Underground Man sees into this “general picture” and stays conscious of it, instead of merely being a “course and shameless” part of it.
     To the ordinary man —the “plain man” or the “man of action” (269) —vice is just another stone wall before which he invariably yields.  As the Underground Man had described, to such a man of action “a stone wall is not a challenge as it is, for instance, to us thinking men... and it is not an excuse for turning aside.... No, [the ordinary man] capitulates in all sincerity” (269).  In other words, such a man yields to his debauched desire and lets himself be calmed by its effectual wall.
     The Underground Man, a thinking man, sees debauchery here as  “inane... revolting... coarse... shameless;”  in another translation, “hideous... gross... absurd” (339).  In his mind he seems to turn away, repulsed —and yet he, too, is a living part of it.  The spider of vice even makes him feel “creepy” (339), as if he were the spider himself.  Indeed, he has spent two hours “capitulating” with this as yet nameless prostitute, and still he continues to ‘lie next to her and look into her eyes.  But he is not calmed by her in any way.  The ordinary man is not revolted and pretends that there is a kind of consummated love in the prostitute’s bedroom; he becomes sincerely soothed by this lie.  But the  Underground Man  is cursed by a continually sensitive conscience; he is painfully aware of this reality of absent love; and if he has paused at this wall, it has not been for “cheap happiness,” but rather “exalted suffering” (376).

from March to December, Dostoevsky Final (Russian 141, 11/30/90, Prof. Rubchak)

Mr. Eugenides

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 207-214 






          Unreal City

                    See TWL 61, setting the city in the fog of a winter dawn.  Time is not linear,
                    however, and memories are fragmented; compare TWL 202, 222, 263. 

                    The UNREAL CITY recurs at TWL 60, 207, 259 and 377; see also
                    TWL 374-376 and the note at TWL 434, and see the note at TWL 66 for 
                    specific London references.

          Under the brown fog of a winter noon

                    The noon fog rolls in just as we are about to meet Mr. Eugenides.
                    By his name alone, MR. EUGENIDES would seem to be one who is well-bred
                    (eugenetic), but the image here of an unshaven, demotic London currant 
                    merchant is unmitigatedly negative. His no-credit sales suggest a lack of 
                    trust; he chooses to speak a base version of French instead of the Greek or 
                    Turkish of his native Smyrna or the English of his clientele; and he operates 
                    within the prevailing brown fog of an unreal city. Even the product he sells, 
                    small dried grapes, are far from what one would hope to find in a healing holy 
                    grail. In his notes, Eliot marked him as the “one-eyed” merchant in the Tarot 
                    deck (see TWL 52 and note at TWL 46) and his invitation directly follows an 
                    oblique reminder of Philomela’s rape (see TWL 203-206), suggesting that this 
                    too is the woven tapestry and birdsong of a victim’s report. But Eliot’s notes 
                    also associated the merchant with victims, identifying him as one who “melts 
                    into” the sailor who drowned and lost his looks and stature (see note at TWL
                    218 and see TWL312-321) and who in turn is tied to the drowned hyacinth girl
                    (see note at TWL 126). The merchant's one eye may also allude to the Norse 
                    god Odin, who gave up half his sight in exchange for a drink from the Well of 
                    Wisdom; see Storri Sturluson, The Prose Edda (ca. 1300 AD). This 
                    ambiguity of identity, a continuing feature among all of the poem’s characters 
                    (see note at TWL 38), will culminate in the next scene with Tiresias, an 
                    androgynous blind observer whom Eliot cryptically asserted was highly 
                    important and yet “not indeed a character” (see note at TWL 218).

          Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
          Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
          C.i.f. London: documents at sight,

                    Eliot's note: 

                    The currants were quoted at a price ‘carriage and insurance free to London’; 
                    and the Bill of Lading, etc., were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of 
                    the sight draft.  

                    I.e., shipping costs were built into the price, payable on delivery. 

          Asked me in demotic French

                    Demotic means common, of the people. Demotic and demobbed (TWL 139)
                    were the only specific words Ezra Pound had suggested to improve the poem, 
                    but he also offered general encouragement and suggested broad edits.  
                    See note at the Dedication and see T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land, a Facsimile 
                    & Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra 
                    Pound, edited and with an Introduction by  Valerie Eliot (1971).

          To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel 
          Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

                    The Cannon Street Hotel, a hotel frequented by businessmen commuting to 
                    and from the Continent, was also reputed to be a homosexual rendezvous; 
                    the Metropole was a luxury resort hotel on England’s southern coast. The 
                    merchant’s homosexuality might also be inferred by the currants in his 
                    pockets (TWL 210); see Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: These, I, Singing 
                    in Spring (1892), in which currants are among the wild plants being 
                    “collect[ed] for lovers” as “the token of comrades”: 

                    Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but soon I pass the gates,
                    Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little, fearing not the wet.

                    In the gathering of WEEDS AND WILDFLOWERS, there is a more somber 
                    parallel, however: Compare the merchant’s currants with the “weedy 
                    trophies” that Ophelia reached for at her watery death (see notes at TWL
                    172 and 378), or Cornelia’s leaves and flowers covering unburied men (see 
                    note at TWL 74). See also Walt Whitman, Memories of President Lincoln 7: 

                    Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes
                    With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,

                    and compare the plants that drain their forgetfulness along the River Lethe 
                    (see note at TWL 4). See also the death and mourning ties of the lilac (TWL 2),
                    the hyacinth (TWL 35) and the violet (note at TWL 378). 


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Good People of Chicago

Good People of Chicago, you and I 
Belie our nature to categorize 
By last names and colors of opacity:
Though I am see-through and you are tag-defined, 
We all share the streets, the weather and time.

Good People, look beyond Division Street, 
Past the iron gates and the cul-de-sacs:
We share main roads and fenceless avenues, 
Undenied paths and ways to get home
Through this grand maze of lines: we need to share— 

Good People, look beyond the lake effect 
And local winds that vary by degrees:
We share the winter freeze that shuts us in 
Till summer sends us out, year after year 
To spraying hydrants, Michigan waves, escape— 

And as we share time, Good People, you and I, 
As the roads stretch on and on with potholes 
And snowbanks, as seasons run their cycle,
Time touches all, heals all, moves all, tolls for all, 
And here we are, Chicago, until we die.


from March to December

Citybird

And who would believe the outcome of this gathering babel?
Observe Sturnus vulgaris, everywhere, A bird become too ubiquitous to deserve The usual refuge of conserving care, And so it’s granted air without reserve, Thanks to the Bard for having Hotspur teach The bird to speak the single word of Mortimer, Which led old Eugene Schieffelin to reach Across the Great Atlantic to import ‘em here; He may have heard in turn of Laurence Sterne, Once troubled by a caged bird that would shout For freedom: “Can’t get out!” the starling churned; “God help thee!” said he, “but I'll let thee out.” Thus Eugene did release his forty darlings, Progeny to a quarter billion starlings.


from Thirty Birds

Moleskin 3.10

But this is —I am —more than a collection of anecdotes, so let me get to the point.  Chapter One: I was born; Chapter Two: I am alive; and Chapter Three:  ...It’s true, I don’t want to leave chapter two. I want to stay a little more in the trump of innocense and recreate those days with a parade of self-told anecdotes; let me tangent off in a dozen directions: friend Paul raising my musical awareness of Elton John; four square and fart jokes at school; the discovery, by a friend’s Hanukkah/Christmas present, of Pachinko; the legend and tribute of the kid squished by a steamroller; the Easter snowstorm of ‘74; regularly visiting our Chicago cousins; the all-orange decor of our living room; playing ice hockey on a frozen pond, without blades or proper sticks; the odd, sad story of the Zilligans; having, briefly, a dog and a cat at the same time; being given a punching bag for Christmas; being served Rommegrot on Lenten Wednesdays; weekends with Dad at the library; afternoons with Mom at the nursing home...

A Novel Without a Hero

“Maybe a story is better without any hero,” scrawled Ernest Hemingway in an early manuscript of The Sun Also Rises. He was well into a story in which his narrator, his omnipresent point of view, was a man who was made sexually dysfunctional from a war wound; at this point heroism, though it might have been difficult, still could have been reached by circumvention. But a line of thought had been running through Hemingway’s head and was already woven into the novel, and perhaps he already had in mind the epigraph to this thread: an opening passage from the book of Ecclesiastes. This, with that passage in mind, would have to be a heroless novel; it would have to continue in the direction of thought of Qoheleth, the biblical philosopher [Qoheleth is the Hebrew equivalent to the Greek “Ecclesiastes,” which means preacher or leader of the assembly], because after all, whether it was written down or not, the epigraph was already being followed.

   Rather than scrutinize those several famous verses from which the novel’s title came, and from which the standard Hemingway theme of a generation passing away was also born, the point might be made as clearly by looking at the verses in Ecclesiastes all around those of the epigraph and seeing how Hemingway did in fact parallel the philosophy of Qoheleth. Consider the two verses preceding the epigraph’s source: “Sheer futility, Qoheleth says. Sheer futility: everything is futile! What profit can we show for all our toil, toiling under the sun?” (Ec. 1:1,2, New Jerusalem Bible)  In other words, the Hebrew preacher asks, How can a story of a suffered life ever have a hero? “What was, will be again,” the preacher continues after the epigraph verses, “what has been done will be done again and there is nothing new under the sun!” (Ec. 1:9)

   On the surface, Jake Barnes is not nearly as pessimistic about life; but then, as always, there is that Hemingway iceberg, looming largely under the surface. Jake Barnes only occasionally lets show the “feelings of things coming that you could not prevent happening” (146), but in the same breath he reveals an “ignored tension” built around a memory of the war; and after the war he is emasculated, a fact he rarely talks about in the novel. “It’s all right,” he tells Bill, who had touched on the subject, “I don’t give a damn anymore” (124).

   Qoheleth continues, and it might have been Jake himself writing at this point: “What is twisted cannot be straightened, what is not there cannot be counted” (Ec. 1:15). And in the second chapter the preacher finds, with less than heroic gesture, an ever-temporal solution: “I decided to hand my body over to drinking wine, my mind still guiding me in wisdom; I resolved to embrace folly, to discover the best way for people to spend their days under the sun” (Ec. 2:3).

   In The Sun Also Rises, chapter two is devoted to a comparison between the philosophies of Jake and Robert Cohn. They are in a bar, “a good place,” with “a lot of liquor” (11). Cohn opens the discussion: 

          “Listen, Jake. . . Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is

     going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve

     lived nearly half the time you have to live already?” 

          “Yes, every once in a while."
          ”Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we’ll be dead?”
          “What the hell, Robert,” I said. “What the hell?”
          “I’m serious. “
          ”It’s one thing I don’t worry about,” I said.
          “You ought to. “
          ”I’ve had plenty to worry about one time or another. I’m through 

     worrying.“ (11)

   Qoheleth, too, had come to this. Everything, even worrying, is futile and even vain, and it is better just to eat, drink, and enjoy whatever lies under the sun.

   In the same chapter, Robert Cohn wants to go to South America, and Jake discourages him. 
“I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.... If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same” (11). As if one mirrored the other, Qoheleth writes “Better the object seen (the here and now) than the sting of desire; for the latter too is futile and chasing after the wind” (Ec. 6:9).

   It is clear that Robert Cohn, a hopeless worrier and a futile dreamer, cannot be the hero of Hemingway’s novel, but there are several other possibilities, and in the course of the book Jake briefly considers each of them. Mike? He practically boasts that he is a loser with no medals, and most of the time he is “tight.“ Bill? He is a “lazy bum,” and usually ahead of Jake and Mike in the “utilization” of wine. Brett? No, Jake decides. “To hell with women, anyway. To hell with you, Brett Ashley” (148).

   Again the mirror: “This is what I think, says Qoheleth, having examined one thing after another to draw some conclusion, which I am still looking for, although unsuccessfully: one man in a thousand, I may find, but a woman better than other women---never. This alone is my conclusion: God has created man straightforward and human artifices are human inventions” (Ec. 7:27-29).

   Then Jake considers the bullfighter Pedro Romero, and at first he idolizes him, standing him next to erstwhile hero Juan Belmonte, who doesn’t stand a chance. Pedro Romero, though, has an unseen iceberg himself: he will one day be, provided he survives the cycle, an aging Belmonte to some other rising star. Furthermore, even within the novel and on the surface, he is shown to be painfully human. His face swells up from Robert Cohn’s punches, and in the end even Romero cannot hold on to Brett for very long.

   “Another thing I have observed under the sun,” muses Qoheleth once more, “that the race is not won by the speediest, nor the battle by the champions; it is not the wise who get food, nor the intelligent wealth, nor the learned favor: chance and mischance befall them all”(Ec. 9:11). 17.

   In Jake’s story, Romero almost got away with becoming the hero. He did in fact fight the battle and win the race, and as in a stereotypical hero-novel he even left town with the girl, riding off, as it were, into the sunset. But Hemingway devised a staggered ending to work against Romero. First we learn that his victory gift, the ear of the bull, was allusively left behind in the back of a bed stand drawer. And then we are shown, after everyone has gone off in different directions, Bill here and Mike there and Romero and Brett together and Jake alone, that just as the title told us from the beginning the setting sun also rises and continues on its never-ending cycle. Brett comes back to visit Jake and Romero is left to his bulls. “How sweet light is, how delightful it is to see the sun!” (Ec. 11:7).

   The two enjoy their impossible life together again, and in the end, for a brief moment, Brett considers how sweet---and heroic---it might have been if their own sun would never have set at all. “We could have had such a damned good time together,” she says, and Jake replies with the book’s famous close: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” (247) In this we can hear Qoheleth’s closing comment, too, sounding less pessimistic and more matter of fact, concerning the mere prettiness of dreams and “couldabeens. “ ”Sheer futility,” he says once again, “everything is futile” (Ec. 12:8). There are no heroes, and isn’t it futile to pretend?

An Additional Thought for an Extended Paper 

   Certainly there is plenty to The Sun Also Rises that does not match directly with the book of Ecclesiastes, just as there is much in Ecclesiastes that doesn’t even get skimmed by the citing of several scattered verses, or the incorporation of four verses into a book’s epigraph. By the same token, there is much more that is comparable that1haven’teventouched on. For instance, Qoheleth’s and Jake’s ideas on fishing and solitude and companionship, on love and hate and on the contemplation and deference to God. But then, as Jake says, “You’ll lose it if you talk about it” (245), and as Qoheleth says, “Be in no hurry to speak. . . (and) be sparing of speech.”

Engl.355, 7/9/90, Prof. Messenger


from March to December