Gilbert Sorrentino - The Moon In Its Flight

To the narrative, then, or parts of it, of the whole, of that which may ultimately “become” the whole. To that blessed narrative that may almost write itself. Then “control” would seem to be the word, although it is not the precise word, nor, for that matter, is “word.” No matter, of course, for all may be corrected, changed, polished, all made clear in revision, revision, the handmaid of “the writing process,” for which nobody is too good. Writers often insist that they revise, again and again, everything that they write, for writing must be heartbreakingly difficult to be authentic, heartbreakingly and exhaustingly demanding. Even this small item will be, and has been revised, or is in the process, even as I “speak,” revised to a fare-thee-well, an odd phrase, that, but one that comes to mind, another curious phenomenon of writing, the things that come to mind. That such things, or “phrases,” are mostly old and warm and as well-worn as an old shoe is part and parcel of that inevitable process, so dear to life, called, well, called something. Perhaps good writers don’t revise everything, but they do revise a good deal, a lot, actually, if they are to be believed. Even the lacerating yet redemptive personal memoir, chockablock with scenes of guilt-ridden incest and battered puppies must be revised, revised and “touched up” and, well, fucked with, so to speak.

One of the many reasons that the demanding heartbreak of revision is so necessary is its role in making the absolute falsity of the representation of reality more precise; that is, to enable the falsity of the narrative, by dint of laborious revision and the odd polished phrase, to gleam with what seems to be — and why not? — truth. Or at least something that may well be mistaken for it, gleam to a goddamned fucking fare-thee-well, for that matter. So to speak, as it were, after all, in sum, and finally. To insist that the perfection of the false is much closer to the imperfection of the something or other is awkward, yes, but natural and casual. The phrase may be corrected, or course, in revision, or it already has been. Writing takes many drafts, usually, to emerge victorious — well, not precisely victorious — unless the writer is Proust, who was satisfied with one draft, and that a rough one. And, too, there are Moby-Dick and Ellen Finds Out. Look at them! Book reviewers are often cognizant of such phenomena, but rarely give us the benefit of their profound knowledge, given space restrictions, the demands of commerce, and what readers prefer in the way of a good read. They know what makes a good read, else what’s a heaven for, and know, too, that good reads make them — and us, always us — feel as if they know the people within the reads and have spent time with them, for instance, Holden Caulfield and others, good pals all. They will not be duped by cheap falsifications of reality, two-dimensional characters lacking not only flesh but blood, and always insist on well-written representations of the real, representations that read as if seeing something or other for the first time. Craft! Well-written craft! That’s — or they’re — the ticket. Life that throbs is also a big winner in these serious purlieus. And what of characters who, while throbbing, are redeemed, brought to justice, and speak nothing but the crispest dialogue? Take Sarah Orne Jewett. Take Minister Handy. Authors who have made a world that one can reach out and touch, gingerly, to be sure, but touch nonetheless. Living, loving, lolling, losing, and hating. It’s not only as good as life, some argue, but better, at least in selected passages. Can the remarks on Dark Corridors of Wheat, pointedly made by Patricia Melton Cunningham, be easily forgotten? Huh? Well, this is what one may call, with little fear of contradiction, writing that matters on writing that matters. Consider The Paris Review, and other items, if you dare.

So that one evening, sitting at my desk, a comforting pipe glowing near at hand, a hand that seemed to belong to someone else, as did my face, yes, some other face, or, perhaps, the face of the Other, I put the final touches on a letter to a friend, Pat Cunningham, to be precise, a woman who knew the meaning of trust, friendship, log-rolling, and the lunge for the main chance, when I noticed some impedimenta on the desk, impedimenta that I gazed at as if gazing at them for the first time. Slowly, I came to realize that if I could find a language that permitted these items representation, I could, perhaps, reach out and touch them in all their flesh and blood and flawed humanity. But I had to overcome the terror of the blank page, that famous blank page which all writers confront each and every day that they sit down to cover that blank page with love and laughter, brooding despair and so on and so forth. There is nothing as terrible as the blank page, and so I had informed Pat in my letter, a letter that lay, somewhat forgotten, near the blank page that, too, was slowly in danger of becoming somewhat forgotten. On the other hand, the blank canvas, the blank music paper, the blank notebook are all equally terrifying to the painter, the composer, the notebook-keeper, and there looms, too, the blank stage for the actor, the dancer, the monologist, the hilarious comic. Yet who was it who pointed out that “empty” in such instances would be more precise than “blank”? Good friends are rare, and even rarer are those who pop up just when things are going fairly well. You can count on it, or them.

Could a character be evoked who might evoke the items or disjecta on my desk? A simple noun for each, if properly “handled,” might do the job. And yet, what job was it that there was to be done? Lest confusion reign I decided on a handful of nouns, or, as the blank page demanded be uttered, the substantive. Should I show rather than tell, or, better yet, better yet infinitely more difficult, display rather than show? If I could succeed in displaying, or even showing the spondulicks on my desk, in context, in picture language, i.e., language that is like a picture, or pictures, lots of them, of course, colorful when needed, it goes without saying, perhaps the reader, ever hungry for actual experience, will be able to reach out and touch them in all their flesh and blood and interesting formal qualities, not to mention all the other things. I know, of course, that the awesome powers of revision may abrogate or defer or even occlude, occult, and abort such heady fantasies of literary perfection, yet I feel that I have no choice but to press on. Revision, as noted by Gide, Irving, Bly, Tough, and Lombardo is a harsh mistress, finally. Consider the work, the entire opus of the “vagabond prose master” of the Western reaches, or at least the reaches of Los Altos, the town whose motto wisely states, “Our Cars Are O.K.,” that wise yet warm penman, Wallace Stegner, of whom his various assistants have noted, as one, that even his first drafts were revisions, as were, doubtlessly, his ideas, of which there were plenty. Yet the hot, quick tears kept falling. This was what no-nonsense people called “writing, man.”

But how to handle items, memorabilia, flotsam, and the like? How to approach the unforgiving blank page with ideas about such a pasticciaccio, if you’ll pardon my French. For instance, is it enough to say “globe,” “pen,” “letters,” or is that not enough? These sound rather haphazard, at best. How about: “Lifting my eyes from the plebeian fastnesses of the worn carpet, I found myself gazing, as if for the first time, at the moon, sailing through the cloudy skies like a bark of yore, like a kind of globe, a globe that had been sketched on the heavens by a ghostly pen, one used not to the demands of art but to the humble task of writing letters.” The clock ticks quietly as the fly buzzes against the window globe, the sun warms my letters. All is but a dream.