Paul Auster: Invisible

Just because I teach international relations and write about government and public policy doesn’t mean I’m a philistine. I care about art as much as you do, Mr. Walker, and I wouldn’t ask you to work on a magazine if it wasn’t a literary magazine.

How do you know I can handle it?

I don’t. But I have a hunch.

It doesn’t make any sense. Here you are offering me a job and you haven’t read a word I’ve written.

Not so. Just this morning I read four of your poems in the most recent number of the Columbia Review and six of your articles in the student paper. The piece on Melville was particularly good, I thought, and I was moved by your little poem about the graveyard. How many more skies above me / Until this one vanishes as well? Impressive.

I’m glad you think so. Even more impressive is that you acted so quickly.

That’s the way I am. Life is too short for dawdling.

My third-grade teacher used to tell us the same thing-with exactly those words.

A wonderful place, this America of yours. You’ve had an excellent education, Mr. Walker.

Born laughed at the inanity of his remark, took a sip of beer, and then leaned back to ponder the idea he had set in motion.

What I want you to do, he finally said, is draw up a plan, a prospectus. Tell me about the work that would appear in the magazine, the length of each issue, the cover art, the design, the frequency of publication, what name you’d want to give it, and so on. Leave it at my office when you’re finished. I’ll look it over, and if I like your ideas, we’ll be in business.

Young as I might have been, I had enough understanding of the world to realize that Born could have been playing me for a dupe. How often did you wander into a bar, bump into a man you had met only once, and walk out with the chance to start a magazine-especially when the you in question was a twenty-year-old nothing who had yet to prove himself on any front? It was too outlandish to be believed. In all likelihood, Born had raised my hopes only in order to crush them, and I was fully expecting him to toss my prospectus into the garbage and tell me he wasn’t interested. Still, on the off chance that he meant what he’d said, that he was honestly intending to keep his word, I felt I should give it a try. What did I have to lose? A day of thinking and writing at the most, and if Born wound up rejecting my proposal, then so be it.

Bracing myself against disappointment, I set to work that very night. Beyond listing half a dozen potential names for the magazine, however, I didn’t make much headway. Not because I was confused, and not because I wasn’t full of ideas, but for the simple reason that I had neglected to ask Born how much money he was willing to put into the project. Everything hinged on the size of his investment, and until I knew what his intentions were, how could I discuss any of the myriad points he had raised that afternoon: the quality of the paper, the length and frequency of the issues, the binding, the possible inclusion of art, and how much (if anything) he was prepared to pay the contributors? Literary magazines came in numerous shapes and guises, after all, from the mimeographed, stapled underground publications edited by young poets in the East Village to the stolid academic quarterlies to more commercial enterprises like the Evergreen Review to the sumptuous objets backed by well-heeled angels who lost thousands with every issue. I would have to talk to Born again, I realized, and so instead of drawing up a prospectus, I wrote him a letter explaining my problem. It was such a sad, pathetic document- We have to talk about money -that I decided to include something else in the envelope, just to convince him that I wasn’t the out-and-out dullard I appeared to be. After our brief exchange about Bertran de Born on Saturday night, I thought it might amuse him to read one of the more savage works by the twelfth-century poet. I happened to own a paperback anthology of the troubadours-in English only-and my initial idea was simply to type up one of the poems from the book. When I began reading through the translation, however, it struck me as clumsy and inept, a rendering that failed to do justice to the strange and ugly power of the poem, and even though I didn’t know a word of Provençal, I figured I could turn out something better working from a French translation. The next morning, I found what I was looking for in Butler Library: an edition of the complete de Born, with the original Provençal on the left and literal prose versions in French on the right. It took me several hours to complete the job (if I’m not mistaken, I missed a class because of it), and this is what I came up with:

I love the jubilance of springtime

When leaves and flowers burgeon forth,

And I exult in the mirth of bird songs

Resounding through the woods;

And I relish seeing the meadows

Adorned with tents and pavilions;

And great is my happiness

When the fields are packed

With armored knights and horses.

And I thrill at the sight of scouts

Forcing men and women to flee with their belongings;

And gladness fills me when they are chased

By a dense throng of armed men;

And my heart soars

When I behold mighty castles under siege

As their ramparts crumble and collapse

With troops massed at the edge of the moat

And strong, solid barriers

Hemming in the target on all sides.

And I am likewise overjoyed

When a baron leads the assault,

Mounted on his horse, armed and unafraid,

Thus giving strength to his men

Through his courage and valor.

And once the battle has begun

Each of them should be prepared

To follow him readily,

For no man can be a man

Until he has delivered and received

Blow upon blow.

In the thick of combat we will see

Maces, swords, shields, and many-colored helmets

Split and shattered,

And hordes of vassals striking in all directions

As the horses of the dead and wounded

Wander aimlessly around the field.

And once the fighting starts

Let every well-born man think only of breaking

Heads and arms, for better to be dead

Than alive and defeated.

I tell you that eating, drinking, and sleeping

Give me less pleasure than hearing the shout

Of “Charge!” from both sides, and hearing

Cries of “Help! Help!,” and seeing

The great and the ungreat fall together

On the grass and in the ditches, and seeing

Corpses with the tips of broken, streamered lances

Jutting from their sides.

Barons, better to pawn

Your castles, towns, and cities

Than to give up making war.

Late that afternoon, I slipped the envelope with the letter and the poem under the door of Born’s office at the School of International Affairs. I was expecting an immediate response, but several days went by before he contacted me, and his failure to call left me wondering if the magazine project was indeed just a spur-of-the-moment whim that had already played itself out-or, worse, if he had been offended by the poem, thinking that I was equating him with Bertran de Born and thereby indirectly accusing him of being a warmonger. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. When the telephone rang on Friday, he apologized for his silence, explaining that he had gone to Cambridge to deliver a lecture on Wednesday and hadn’t set foot in his office until twenty minutes ago.

You’re perfectly right, he continued, and I’m perfectly stupid for ignoring the question of money when we spoke the other day. How can you give me a prospectus if you don’t know what the budget is? You must think I’m a moron.

Hardly, I said. I’m the one who feels stupid-for not asking you. But I couldn’t tell how serious you were, and I didn’t want to press.