A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty

"A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security."

~~ from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

his symptoms

GUILDENSTERN: We got his symptoms, didn't we?

ROSENCRANTZ: Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all.

GUILDENSTERN: Thwarted ambition—a sense of grievance, that's my diagnosis.

~~ from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

Lewis Lapham, R.I.P.

I will always associate Harper's Magazine with Lewis Lapham more than any other writer.

May Mr. Lapham rest in peace.

Alice Munro

John Barth, Paul Auster, Alice Munro—who's next?

And who did we forget so soon?

The Goodbye

 Remember my dear, remember my dear,

    We've both been here before.

Remember my sweet, close to your death,

    Beyond us lies so much more.

The pain is over, the sadness ended,

    The crippled body gone.

A new one waits, God's next creation,

    Life does go on and on.

So rest my sweet, I'll hold your hand,

    And send you on your way.

I'll see you later, don't wait for me.

    I'll be home at the end of my day.

~~from Becky Jane: Memoir of an Incredible Life by Nick Delmedico

caretaker

"The two met in 1999, when Roth called Murdock to chat about fixing up the old stone walls. Murdock had worked for a number of famous people in the area — the actor Sam Waterston, the Muppets puppeteer and actor Frank Oz — but Roth’s call awed him. A lifelong reader, particularly fond of the novelists Larry McMurtry and Elmore Leonard, Murdock had always dreamed of working for a writer. He’d read some of Roth’s books, and disliked all of them except Patrimony, Roth’s 1991 memoir about the death of his father, Herman. Even so, Murdock just couldn’t believe who he was talking to. When he got over the shock and began the work, he found that he and Roth got along just fine. By the end of the summer, Roth asked him to be the property’s caretaker."

Harry Mathews

Harry Mathews, noted here previously and a novelist I'll always associate with Frank Reeve, is no longer among the living. I read and enjoyed this Mathews interview in The Paris Review several years ago.

Dan Fante, writer

The writer Dan Fante joined his father John Fante this week. Both were novelists of Los Angeles championed in France for their "down and out in America" themes. Dan was published in French before he was published in English, and his best works were Chump Change and the family memoir, Fante. Mostly off the beaten path as an adult, Dan was teaching at the UCLA extension school for writers in some of his last years. Possibly his father would be seen as the more "important" literary figure (Ask the Dust, Brotherhood of the Grape, Dreams of Bunker Hill, screenplay credits including one for Algren's Walk on the Wild Side), and Dan was quite proud of his father's accomplishment and his Italian heritage. Late in life, Dan was partnering with his native province in Italy and getting his works translated into Italian. I discovered Chump Change in a Barnes and Noble across the country, back when small-press titles had a shot of sneaking into the chain stores, even if the authors weren't "local." Fifteen years later it would be far more difficult to learn of writers like the Fantes although since I found Chump Change in Philly, I've seen that Dan has had most of his books reprinted by a New York big, and almost all of John's titles have stayed in print and seem to be selling as well as ever. Famously, it was Charles Bukowski who discovered John Fante in the Los Angeles library, and would help revive interest in the author years later. They're all gone now, but not forgotten.

Guardian obituary: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/25/dan-fante-underground-writer-legacy-chump-change-mooch

My interview with Dan in 2009: http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2009/05/21/an-interview-with-author-dan-fante/

Dan Fante articles in the L.A. Times: http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/dan-fante

Other obituaries: 

Examiner: http://www.examiner.com/article/daniel-smart-dan-fante-february-19-1944-november-23-2015

Italoamericano: http://www.italoamericano.org/story/2015-12-11/dan-fante

with a side of Celine

A few days ago, I finished Charlotte Mandell's French-to-English translation of Mathias Enard's Zone, which has several wonderful references to and anecdotes about Celine, and then, this evening I began Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and it takes me only to page 19 to find Celine once more:

My other book was Erika Ostrovsky's Celine and His Vision. Celine was a brave French soldier in the First World War--until his skull was cracked. After that he couldn't sleep, and there were noises in his head. He became a doctor, and he treated poor people in the daytime, and he wrote grotesque novels all night. No art is possible without a dance with death, he wrote.

The truth is death, he wrote. I've fought nicely against it as long as I could. . . danced with it, waltzed it around. . . decorated it with streamers, titillated it. . . 

Time obsessed him. Miss Ostrovsky reminded me of the amazing scene in Death on the Installment Plan where Celine wants to stop the bustling of a street crowd. He screams on paper, Make them stop. . . don't let them move anymore at all. . . There, make them freeze. . . once and for all! . . . So that they won't disappear anymore!

*Note: On Monday, between Enard and Vonnegut, I read and enjoyed Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Self-Portrait Abroad.