Reading Swim by Avi Duckor-Jones

Avi's book came out five years ago in 2018 - with brioBooks in Australia. Immersed in the writing of my own book at the time, I was not aware of his work. I ran into him a few months' ago .

I borrowed the book from the library and read it quickly. I asked his mother whether he himself swam like the main character in the book (what is his name?) in the sea, for long distances. He occasionally allows himself to sink into the depths, his knees "tucked" to his chest, "holding [himself] there, suspended, and weightless". My book group will discuss the book in February and I am re-reading it in preparation. 

I ordered my own copy: it arrived with an upside down cover. I've complained to the publisher and hope they'll send me another one, to be lent to other members of the book group.

As a reader I have a weakness for the story: I need to know what happens before I can pay proper attention to the writing itself. (Should the writing be very bad, I'd quit). Otherwise I zip along and decide later whether to read it again for a better appreciation of the book's structure and style.

Having re-read the first four chapters of Swim, I'm looking forward to the rest. Avi has a light touch and lets the reader do some of the work, which I enjoy.

For instance, at the end of the very first paragraph; "Of course, after the letter arrived, none of that mattered anymore." 

Because of this letter, a young man living in California abandons a major project to return home to NZ. His mother is sick. 

In the second chapter, he's at home. Seen through his eyes, his mother is manipulative, fake. She was always that way. There's not much love. Nevertheless, he abandoned his previous plan. Why did it 'no longer matter', I wonder.

Childhood photos of him cover the interior of a closet in his room, a room within a room, every inch covered by photos. On every photo, the boy holds a wounded bird, occasionally a different animal, a mouse, or a ferret. He cares for the sick. This is hidden, though not from the mother.

We learn that his father committed suicide. I should not write any more.

An ordinary day

The painters have been here for four days, and there's more to come. They're in the lounge, in the hall, on the stairs, removing the old paper and plastering. Yesterday, a miracle happened: Peter and I agreed on new wallpaper, easily. It was not our first attempt. The paper may take a month or so to arrive, a breather from the tradies.

Since returning to my study, I have yet to clear my desk. Piles of papers. I don't know what they are. Somewhere among them is a request from the pension fund to attend to some admin. I am several months behind with this. I need to throw at least 50% away, clear space so that the children will not have to do it. I have a box of books for a 2nd hand bookshop. It is too heavy for me to carry.

Two days ago I attended Renee's memorial. After mentioning Nicola Easthope because she couldn't make it, I read out the text Renee sent me when I was struggling with the book, telling me off for not working hard enough. It went down a treat, gales of laughter. Adrienne Jensen told me about the Landfall Press she and others have started. They are doing very well!

I have booked myself in to have my eyebrows and eyelashes dyed ('tinted')  - no makeup at sesshin. Left to their own devices, they are invisible and I look washed out, androgynous. Sessin starts on Monday, at Lake Rotoiti, by St. Arnaud.

I decided to keep a diary, to write like this every day as often as possible. I have now read two of Ian McEwan's books. He introduces evil into his stories, realistic and creepy. Not what I want, though I believe people tend to underestimate both its presence in our lives and its power. Then read Maggie O'Farrell's book I am, I am, I am. Seventeen brushes with death (Tinder press, 2017). Well written, but doesn't contribute anything, doesn't enlighten or surprise me: I'd been writing up my own. Only five that I can remember. A little miffed she got there first - and much better! Her early years, before she became ill, resemble mine, desiring to be free, to follow whatever impulse arises, a need for stimulation, for excitement. 

Many criminals have the same urge; one theory claims it lies behind the impetus to offend. In one of McEwan's books, the criminal character displays it, in his case due to Huntington's.

Harold Pinter's poems on death (p. 263 and 221)

Meeting

It is the dead of night,

The long dead look out towards

The new dead

Walking towards them

There is a soft heartbeat 

As the dead embrace 

Those who are long dead

And those of the new dead 

Walking towards them

They cry and they kiss

As they meet again

For the first and last time

(No full stop at the end...)

  

Death

(Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953)

Where was the dead body found?

Who found the dead body?

Was the dead body dead when found?

How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother

Or uncle or sister or mother or son

Of the dead and abandoned body?

 

Was the body dead when abandoned?

Was the body abandoned?

By whom had it been abandoned?

 

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?

How well did you know the dead body?

How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body

Did you close both its eyes

Did you bury the body

 Did you leave it abandoned

 Did you kiss the dead body

I was careful about the punctuation. Neither poem ends with a full stop.

Harold Pinter's Old Times

 

I'm surprised. It was established today - via competitions - that I'm the worst player at the table tennis club. I thought I was progressing. Peter had warned me. He was right.

I picked up a book by Lady Antonia Fraser about her marriage to Harold Pinter Must you go? (2010, Weidenfeld & Nicolson). This copy has been withdrawn from New Plymouth library and there's no indication of its home. I don't know where I got it. I enjoyed much of it – how they met and their powerful rapport, the difficulties of managing a transition from their previous marriages to this one. The book is based on her diary, and some of it is tedious because this happened almost 50 years ago, many people are named who are no longer famous or well-known. I enjoyed the end of the book, where there's more detail about events. Also loved the poetry. The poem about death, which her son or her nephew (not his) read to the registrar for births and deaths. His own son was a tragedy.

Their meeting was serendipitous, in their 40s, both successful writers, though in different fields. Their backgrounds were also different. From what she wrote and from the photos in the book, they seem very close. They remind me of my own marriage, though Peter and I are not geniuses! We met at a party given by two people who lived in adjacent apartments which were open to everyone. He was invited by one and I by the other. On our first date, we experienced a strong connection and moved to live together soon after.  No other marriages needed dissolving, fortunately. We were also around 40 years old.

I find gifted people a mystery. Antonia Fraser writes that Pinter is a genius. So is she - many of her books best-sellers, on meaty historical subjects which others had written about already, less successfully.

The many authors and playwrights mentioned triggered a bout of book reservations from our public library: as I write this, I'm tempted to dip into one of Ian McEwan's books which I picked up yesterday. Wellington Library is an extraordinary resource. They always seem to have whatever book I read or hear about. I have four books on the go, and am about to pick up a fifth. My walk for the day.

I've now started reading Pinter’s plays. She mentions them often, from the sometimes inconvenient moment of inspiration, when they both hunt urgently for paper upon which to write the initial thought, until the play is performed. I've not read or seen them, but I've seen some of the films he wrote for.

The first play in the book of Pinter's plays is Old Times (1970, before he met Antonia). It's full of jolts and unexpected turns of phrase, in what seems on the surface an ordinary conversation between three people, a couple and the wife's best friend. I read it again, and then again. The commentary on the Wikipedia page contains factual errors, and anyway I don't agree with their analysis. 

Pinter was concerned with the unreliability of memory. In the play one person talks to another about the time they killed them, “and then you opened your eyes…” Was there a murder or not? Were there two murders? The wife is described as beautiful. She appears empty, hardly knowing how to express herself. Her language is bland, inexact.She says she prefers things damp, that water blurs things, like raindrops on eyelashes. Rather than the sharp edges of city life, she likes a reality with vague boundaries, the beach and the sea.

The husband is often away. He travels the globe, a word he prefers to the word ‘world’. The word ‘globe’ is also used to describe women’s buttocks. In a separate conversation, the husband and the visitor deplore the fact that the wife does not dry herself well after a bath (but we know she likes dampness, and wonder what business it is of theirs anyway) – particularly her buttocks. They agree easily, seeming well suited as a couple though they are not a couple. They sing phrases of the familiar old songs, which the wife says she's forgotten. 

I don't know why he cries. Twice. He sits 'crumpled' in a chair, which reminds me of a tissue, which absorbs damp...

There's also a game with the word 'proposing'. I must re read the play. Wikipedia reports that Anthony Hopkins, playing the husband, asked about the meaning of the ending. Pinter said, "Just do it."

A shocking success

The contract has been sent by the publisher and I have only to sign it. She and I talked on zoom for over an hour, getting on very well. P was by my side and the children were in the room too, listening.

The questions only arose later. I want to tweak it a little, nothing significant. I have not done a thing. I am paralysed. She has been in touch and I told her I needed more time. I could not tell her how completely floored I am by this success. At least it looks like  it might be the beginning of success. I have another month before the contract lapses. I may need it.

I am so anxious. I have become sick, nauseous, the kind of feeling you get from eating food which is too rich, something to do with the bile. I cannot eat much, and then only stuff without nutritional value. Tinned tomato soup. Crackers with fake butter. Only peppermint tea because I don't like ordinary tea without milk and I cannot tolerate milk right now. Coffee is out of the question. My lovely doctor said it might be a stone, a gallstone. Apparently I have the classic symptoms.

The blood tests have all come back saying I am A OK. The ultrasound is in a week's time and will probably also say that I am fine.  I feel like a fraud. Am I a fraud?

This acceptance of my work has come as a rude shock. My mind is not used to it. I go through ugly spaces. Paranoia, nothing will come of it, the publisher will not perform, the cover will be ugly, or worse, boring, no one will buy it. Or megalomania, the world will beat a path to my door, Peter Jackson will want to make the movie. I spent two days in bed sleeping or reading about the 1918 flu epidemic. It's a good book, informative, but not cheerful.  It is now 4 o'clock in the morning and I am writing  because I cannot sleep any more and at this ungodly hour I can't ring anyone.

I would like to call my sister in Israel but it is Shabbat and she won't pick up the phone on Shabbat. Or rather she will pick up the phone because this being NZ, we are ahead of Israel and it is not yet Shabbat there and when she hears it is me, she will say: "Isn't it Shabbat with you now?" and when I say it is, she'll slam the phone down, fast. I have another sister in Holland who is an angel, always kind and helpful,  but last time we spoke I said things in the wrong way and now I have to wait for her to forgive me. I have to give her time.

I don't know how to get through this. My friend L  who  knows about this situation from the inside said I could ring her, but I'll have to wait for daylight before I can do that.

Some friends wanted to celebrate, meet for lunch, but I could not do it. I am in shock. I need time to get over this. Or maybe just get used to it and get to work, because I have a lot to do before that book is fully fledged and ready to fly.

The compulsion of disgust

I am better, though still coughing. This morning I intended to resume my routine of meditation, breakfast and writing, but it was not to be. I was wiping the kitchen bench and the top of the cooker, for they were strewn with crumbs.

Crumbs?

The crumbs were alive, they moved, they wriggled! Maggots, white squirming maggots!
Another fell onto the surface as I leant over examining them. It arrived from above: I looked up and backed away: more were dangling from the interstice between the light fitting and the ceiling itself,  about to fall. I stood further back, revolted. I didn't want a maggot to fall on me.

P normally sleeps till late but I went to wake him.
I told him he had to come, come and see, which he did.
He stood in front of the cooker in his dressing gown, his hands in his pockets, observing the maggots. After a while he said: "They're falling at a rate of three a minute."

We fetched our nice clean white dustpan and white brush and swept up the maggots, tossing them out of the adjacent window. More kept coming.We called our tall son for help.

He stood on the kitchen ladder and removed the light fitting, while I tutted and fretted below: in a cloud of dust (old insulation foam), among a myriad of blind writhing maggots, the corpse of a rat thudded onto the cooker . The men dealt with it, business like.
As for me, I was not business-like.
                                                                           
                                                                          * * *

It is past midday. We have been cleaning and cleaning. P has taken a long shower. My turn next.

Sick on the sofa

I have been too sick for the last two weeks to do any sensible writing. But today is better. Still on the sofa, but able to sit up and type.

I have been enticed away from Knausgaard and have not finished The End. He mentions writers I have not heard of whom I discover to be giants in their country of origin and I feel obliged to try them out. Have given up on Broch and his Virgil, the language too intemperate for my liking, endless neologisms which irritated in the long run, and the story stalling. I did finish a book by Peter Handke  The Moravian Night: A Story, (translated by Krishna Winston, 2016) which is a meander through parts of Eastern Europe, or rather the story of a man who used to write and is telling his friends, during a night on the river Morava, about his meander. Except that the title is not to be taken literally: yes, there are people on a boat moored on the Morava, during the night. But the tale is of the darkness and the disappearance and the horror and pain that happened there over the last century, if not earlier. This dawns on one gradually. I found  I had to stay with it until the bitter end, though not sure what was so compelling. I have known people from that area, damaged by their experiences, who have committed acts of evil - vengeance or is it retribution?

The book has won many prizes. I shall read more Handke if the opportunity presents itself. I tried to resume reading The End but either too much time had gone by or I am still not well enough: I was unwilling to do the work.

What delights me at the moment is re-reading Colm Toibin's The Master. Whole sentences had stayed in my mind from the first reading, some 12 years ago, and whole scenes too.

Meanwhile, my editor E has looked at my manuscript and critiqued it and inserted commas everywhere. I am not protesting: this is what I want her to do. She does not like my ending, quite rightly, because it reflects a withholding on my part.

I chose to end the story when a character we like is intensely alone and suffering. This is the unadorned lot of the exile and refugee, I thought:  a reader should not be allowed to believe all ends well, because it does not.

Though she did not use those words, E may have recognised my punitive intent. I caved in: I have already written material for the ending,which was not included in the MS because it requires more work. I have been sick now for 2 weeks, so things are at a standstill.

The burble of Virgil's mind

The last volume of The Struggle (by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Harvill Secker, 2018) is titled The End. I am reading it very slowly. It's practically a stand-alone book, even though it's the last in the series. I don't think one needs to have read the previous five volumes to understand this one. 

He roams all over the place. I am reminded of the way Talmudic scholars allow themselves the luxury of tangents: he explores to the right and to the left, wandering off to both sides of the path he is on before going forward, analysing Hitler's Mein Kampf on the one hand and Paul Celan's Death Fugue on the other.

I read at night when I'm tired so I don't read for long and I miss getting a sense of the broader sweep of his writing. I do feel that he writes without restraint, no shyness, no reserve, it is all on the page: I read to celebrate his courage hoping maybe to learn how to do something like that one day, though I do not have his intellect. I shall reread him in due course, I'm already looking forward to it.

In the course of his artful rambling, he mentions Hermann Broch, of whom I had never heard. Our wonderful Central Library - closed two days ago because the building has suddenly been deemed unsafe in an earthquake - our wonderful Central Library had duly produced their old (1946) and battered copy of Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil for me, which I am now reading, alternately wanting to throw it across the room and becoming more and more enamoured of the characters. 

Yet another Jew forced to flee Germany. Broch's book was first published in the US in English rather than German, thanks to Eva Starr Untermeyer, a gifted translator who was also a poet. His language is florid, to say the least, his sentences long, one could say that he indulges in perseveration  - same words and terms repeated with slight variations as if they were being examined with care from all possible aspects - and yet.

Almost at random from the middle of p. 54 - the text flowing without a break, without paragraphs, one solid bloc on the paper -

'...the square patch of heaven stretched over the court now permitted the stars to be seen again, their breathing light once more visible though occasionally dimmed by the smoke-clouds trailing beneath them, but even these were permeated by the soft, drizzling tone-mist, sharing in the wandering-weaving misty murmur which impregnated the courtyard and shrouded each single thing, objects, odors and tones blended, mounting towards heaven in the stillness of the night...'

One has to work one's way through this - what does the 'breathing light' of the stars mean, or a 'drizzling tone-mist'mean? Until Virgil's thoughts become more interesting, such as the moment when, deathly tired, he enters the room which has been allocated to him courtesy of Augustus Caesar, and finds everything perfectly suited to his state of mind and his state of ill-health:

'Nothing was lacking, an armchair for contemplation stood near the bay-window and the commode stood in the corner of the room; the luggage was piled up in a way easy to handle, the manuscript-chest was pushed by special order near the bed, everything fitted so neatly, so noiselessly, exactly as an invalid could have desired it, but still this was no  longer the beneficence of Augustus, this was just the smooth planning of an irreproachable, fully equipped, royal household, there was no friendship in it.'

I understood that the extreme sensitivity and great attention to detail which characterise the previous descriptions are entirely Virgil's. (Another reader would probably have realised this sooner.) This one simple sentence: 'there was no friendship in it' stands alone and strong against all the previous burbling. The burbling is the burbling of Virgil's mind, his on-going response  to whatever happens around him, a burbling which, unsurprisingly, is different in quality, more precise, more focussed, more insightful, than that of an ordinary person's mind.

I am hooked. 

I want the opportunity to think about the way Broch writes in comparison with Knausgaard. I am only half-way through The End and find myself now immersed in The Death of Virgil. I shall reread what Knausgaard says about Broch, it may help me understand them both better.