Encounters

Kundera's voice--he's a grown up--comes wonderfully out of the blue. The topics are erudite, but immediately brought down to earth.

Here's something from Encounter amidst a discussion of 19th Century French novelists being ignored by the Académie Française, page 53:

"For the figure of a novelist did not fit the notion of a person who by his ideas, attitudes, his moral example, could represent a nation. The status of 'great man,' which the Académie quite naturally required of its members, is not what a novelist aims for; by the nature of his art, he is secretive, ambiguous, ironical (yes, ironical, the Surrealist poets in their pamphlet hit it on the head); and above all: concealed as he is behind his characters, it is difficult to reduce him to some particular conviction or attitude.

So although a few novelists have entered the collective memory as 'great men,' this is only through the play of historical coincidence, and for their books it is always a calamity."

Here he is, rehashing his side of an argument about Hrabal, page 111:

"What absurdity to speak of collaboration when the spirit of Hrabal's books, their humor, their imagination, are the absolute opposite of the mentality ruling over us, trying to strangle us with their straightjacket! A world where a person can read Hrabal is utterly different from a world where his voice could not be heard! One single book by Hrabal does more for people, for their freedom of mind, than all the rest of us with our actions, our gestures, our noisy protests!"

"... it was the disagreement between people for whom the political struggle is more important than real life, than art, than thought, and people for whom the whole meaning of politics is to serve real life, art, thought."


I think of Twain. I think of Chekhov. The writer's engine is different from that of statesman. And yet, the writer is essential to a state, the pinnacle of its offer of life and liberty, etc. When things are bad, it's good to turn to the novel.

And when a writer realizes he's not to be a so-called great man, but a human being, he stands a chance to do his work.


This to me is a universal. It's what makes Rainy Night in Soho, written by Shane MacGowan, fleshed out by the Pogues, such a monumental achievement of common culture, a recognition of what common people carry around with them, from lackey waiters, to lost young people, to the skeptical of the church, to drunks, to loners, to those in love with something. And who better to come up with the song. A shorthand of literature, and indeed MacGowan is well-read, much more than I, and knew when to say 'fuck off' to menial labor. The same beauty we wouldn't expect from Huck or Hrabal, somehow distasteful to those who pay attention to all the news, but miss something.

MacGowan writes music and reads literature as a way of dealing with a basic nervousness that could not be assuaged in any other way. The tangible beauty of his music shows that there's nothing else for him to do to feel satisfied.

Working as a barman has trained me to stay up late, and it doesn't really bother me. I've had many conspirators over the years, fellow restaurant people living on an edge of some sort, indulgent, but soulful and full of stories.