John Leonard
Another post whose innermost being was forged in the conference mentioned in !-2: one of the readings suggested was Wolfgang Iser, the chapter How Acts of Constitution are Stimulated
from The Act of Reading and the eighth of that volume. I found the whole discussion of "blanks" as manifested or not in literary and nonliterary (can't recall the term he used for this, but it was a specific sort of nonliterary, explanatory or persuasive, I think) texts extremely odd, not least because it was quite obvious that making the blanks the hallmark of literary texts and interpretation leads swiftly to enshrining certain sorts of novels as succeeding better at just plain being novels than others (didactic novels, for instance, are barely novels). But! What I really wanted to say was that reading it and thinkin' thereon made me remember, as I occasionally do, "First Catch Your Puffin", from the 1995 Food number of Granta. I infer from the way the extract (with which the explanation for my dislike of the games of the sort the narrator discusses therein may lie) is introduced that it is in fact an autobiographical essay, but for quite a while I was really unsure. It's true that as a short story it would have lacked somewhat in point, but I don't see that that should disqualify it; after all, it could just have been a clever exhibition of a character. Or something. (Similarly, I recall wondering, around the time the reviews for Wieseltier's Kaddish came pouring in, what sort of reactions it would have gotten had his father not died—not, you understand, that Wieseltier would have put it forth that his father had died, but that it would be a work of fiction, not quite purest since I'm sure that it included elements à clef, but pure as to the grief, mourning, transformation of life, and actual saying of the Kaddish itself—whether the artistry would have been thought all the greater for Wieseltier's lack of direct acquaintance with the subject matter, I suppose. I can't now remember exactly what possible change in reception I was thinking of, but cut me some slack; that was nine (! And the Granta issue is twelve years old—I wasn't even in high school yet!) years ago.) The last time I was home I looked for the issue again, thinking my Advanced Skillz could discover the truth of the matter, but it was not to be found, my mother presumably having gotten rid of it.
That issue also, I see online, contained Georges Perec's "Attempt at an Inventory" (of everything he ate during a particular period, I think a whole year but perhaps only a month); that may have been my first encounter with anything Oulipian, since, although I did read A Void I can't remember when I actually got it, though I do have a hardback. I know I read about it when the NYT reviewed it (I recall the reviewer noting that it did not contain, among other things, any sex, or perhaps any "sex") but also think that I forgot about it for a while; perhaps it was, in fact, that very issue that prodded my memory. (I went to check my copy to see what printing it was, as that could at least establish an earliest point, but I can't locate it; I assume it's still in SoCal and has not, like Embers, The Wanderer, and, I fear, My Life in CIA, simply vanished.)
That issue also contained a story that I assume went on to be part of The Last King of Scotland and which contained two moments which, since I don't think I reread it more than once, and that not long after the first reading, have endured in memory a surprisingly long time: first, one character telling another, at a banquet, that in France he'd be called monsieur rosbif; second, Idi Amin announcing that he has tasted human flesh, pausing, and describing it as "salty". (This might have been in the service of a comparison to monkey meat, though I can't remember that far.) Also also, a story bearing some relation to John Lanchester's first novel, and the only one I've read, The Debt to Pleasure. Oh, 1995 Food issue of Granta, what a matrix of reading you were!
There was also a photograph of a naked anorexic woman standing upright in a bathtup, accompanying Jane Rogers' "Grateful".
I leave you with something totally unrelated, from the 2006 Christmas Cracker of Mr Norwich: an "epitaph quoted by Robert Byron in First Russia then Tibet."
Here lies buried one Captain Shilling
unfortunately slain by the insulting
Portugall; but that his bones want
sence and expression, they would tell
you the earth is not worthy of his recep-
tion, and that the people are blockish,
rude, treacherous and indomitable.
I find that a fine epitaph, and would find it much finer were "the people" revised to merely "people".
Comments
on 2007-06-26 9:51:11.0, ben wolfson commented:
"!-2" s/b "!-3".
and, further, on 2007-06-26 15:02:57.0, Craig commented:
So Ben, what's with all the John Leonard?
and, further, on 2007-06-26 17:06:50.0, standpipe commented:
John Leonard
and, further, on 2007-06-26 21:52:36.0, bitchphd commented:
Dude, your memory is wacked.