Gerald Murnane - A History of Books

When the young man had fastened to his wall the photographic portrait of the much-praised author, he, the young man, had been trying for several years to write one or another poem or short story worthy of being published in one or another literary magazine. Afterwards, whenever he looked at the image-shirt or the image-cigar in the portrait, the young man envied the much-praised author his being able to wear such a shirt and to hold such a cigar in his mouth as though the colours of the shirt and the bulk of the cigar were signs of the contents of the author’s mind — contents so rich and various and distinctive that he had been able first to write nearly a hundred thousand words of fiction, then to have the fiction published in New York City as a hardcover first novel, and then to announce that he was close to having finished his second work of fiction.

Something else that caused the young man to envy the published author was his having been born and spent his childhood and youth in Virginia, which existed for the young man as a desirable image-landscape in his mind: a landscape of mostly level green countryside with fold after fold of dark-blue hills in the background. The mostly level green countryside was variegated with dark stripes and patches that were plantations or clumps of trees. Somewhere in the level countryside was the image-racecourse that had appeared in the first coloured feature film that the young man had watched. He had been no more than five or six years at the time and had understood nothing of the narrative. The only images that he later recalled were of perhaps twenty racehorses jumping one after another quickset fence during a famous steeplechase. The jockey astride each horse wore a jacket of various colours variously arranged. All of the jockeys appeared to be men, although one jockey was actually a young woman, hardly more than a girl. The young man seemed sometimes to remember a series of images connected with this young woman, although he supposed few of the images would have appeared in the film. The series included images of the disguised young woman’s falling from her mount at one of the fences, of the disguised young woman’s lying injured or unconscious on the grass, of her lying afterwards on a bed or a stretcher, of a pair of hands unfastening button after button at the front of a richly coloured jacket, thereby exposing a singlet or undergarment faintly rounded at either side by a female breast.

The man aged somewhat more than sixty years was hardly surprised at his failing to recall even one word or phrase from the work of fiction by the much-praised author that the young man of somewhat more than twenty years had read. The young man had read the work of fiction during the first week of the long summer holidays of the first year when he had been a teacher in a state primary school. He had worked for five years as a state public servant after he had left school but then he had completed a course lasting one year for mature-age persons wanting to train as primary teachers in state schools. As a public servant, the young man had tried to devote evenings and Sundays to writing fiction and poetry but had written little. As a primary teacher, he was on holiday for nine weeks of each year. He had hoped to devote these weeks to writing fiction and poetry. During the first- and second-term holidays, he had written little but he still hoped to write much during the summer holidays. He hoped to write for most of each day and then to read during the late afternoon and the evening.

The young man had spent most of the first two days of the summer holidays reading the work of fiction by the much-praised author mentioned above. In the afternoon of each of those days, the young man began to drink beer while he read. Often, he held his glass of beer so that the afternoon sunlight passed through the beer and onto the page that he was then reading. The young man had, as yet, only a vague understanding of what took place in his mind while he was reading one or another work of fiction, and so he supposed that his enjoyment of the book by the much-praised author was caused by the rich imagery of the book, and whenever he had reached a state of mild drunkenness he would celebrate what he thought of as the richness of the imagery by causing a yellow glow to fall on one or another page of text.

The image-rays of sunlight mentioned in the first sentence of this section of the present work of fiction seemed to the man remembering them to have been more richly coloured by far than the sunlight mentioned in the previous paragraph. The man recalling the image-rays forty and more years after they had first appeared in the mind of the young reader of fiction — that man saw the image-rays as falling through one or another upper window of a house of two storeys in the countryside of Virginia. The house belonged to the parents of one or another of the two young persons who were asleep on a double bed in one or another room on the upper storey of the house, but the parents were in Europe for the time being and the house had been empty until the two young persons, a young man and a young woman, had arrived there a few hours before the image-rays mentioned had fallen through the upper window mentioned and onto the bed where the young persons had first discussed several matters and had then copulated and had afterwards fallen asleep.

The man aged more than sixty years seemed to remember also another sort of image-ray as having fallen in the mind of the younger man. The much-praised author of the book of fiction mentioned had seemingly tried to report to his readers some of the images that had appeared in the mind of the young female person while she slept. The older man could hardly believe that the younger man had been impressed by the attempted report but he, the older man, remembered that the younger man had wished that he might one day write in some or another work of fiction a passage half so impressive as the passage reporting the appearance of pale image-rays in the dark image-water where the young image-woman lay in her mind while she dreamed after she had first discussed several matters and had then copulated and had afterwards fallen asleep.

In the mind of a man aged forty and more years, image after image appeared of glass after glass containing one or another golden-brown alcoholic drink. One of the image-drinks the man recognised as beer. Others of the image-drinks he supposed were whisky or rye or bourbon. The man himself had sometimes drunk whisky, but the other two drinks he had only read about in works of fiction by authors from the United States of America, where he had never been. The image-glasses were only a few of those that were reported as having been drunk on most days by the narrator of a certain book that the man had finished reading a few days previously.

The book mentioned had been praised as a work of fiction and had been awarded a prize that was awarded only to works of fiction, but the man mentioned believed many of the reports in the book to be accurate reports of events from the life of the author of the book.

As the man aged forty and more years chose to understand the matter, the author of the book mentioned had stayed at home alone on day after day during one period of his life while his wife was at work. The author and his wife had agreed that she would work for a year and more so that he would be free to write at last the work of fiction that he had wanted for many years to write. On most of the days when his wife had gone to work, the author had tried for a few hours but had failed to write what he had hoped to write. He had then typed a thousand and more words from the English translation of one or another of the many volumes of a famous work of fiction in the French language. He had then added the typed pages to the stack of similar pages that he kept in a folder in his desk. He had then visited one or another bar in his neighbourhood and had drunk there until an hour before his wife was expected to return home.