NO EXPECTATIONS

No Expectations -- The Rolling Stones (Link)

HARD IS THE GOOD (THE ART OF FICTION, NO. 9)

GEORGES SIMENON

Just one piece of general advice from a writer has been very useful to me. It was from Colette. I was writing short stories for Le Matin, and Colette  was literary editor at that time. I remember I gave her two short stories and she returned them and I tried again and tried again. Finally she said, “Look, it is too literary, always too literary.” So I followed her advice. It’s what I do when I write, the main job when I rewrite.

INTERVIEWER

What do you mean by “too literary”? What do you cut out, certain kinds of words?

SIMENON

Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just to make an effect. Every sentence which is there just for the sentence. You know, you have a beautiful sentence—cut it. Every time I find such a thing in one of my novels it is to be cut.

INTERVIEWER

Is that the nature of most of your revision?

SIMENON

Almost all of it.

INTERVIEWER

It’s not revising the plot pattern?

SIMENON

Oh, I never touch anything of that kind. Sometimes I’ve changed the names while writing: a woman will be Helen in the first chapter and Charlotte in the second, you know; so in revising I straighten this out. And then, cut, cut, cut.

INTERVIEWER

Is there anything else you can say to beginning writers?

SIMENON

Writing is considered a profession, and I don’t think it is a profession. I think that everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else. Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don’t think an artist can ever be happy.

 

Note:  Yesterday evening I was reading in an online literary magazine the poem written by the daughter of an old acquaintance.  The subject was sex and the poem contained the line: "Her calves say/mid and west, which is where we are, her body/ as smooth and forgiving as the land outside."  We talked about it over dinner -- we hadn't seen our mutual friend for a long time and we're naturally curious about her life -- and we agreed that the poem was terrible (the description of the girl's calves is forced and absurd; the land simile is forced and phony), which made me recall my own bad and abandoned poetry and how certain fields require very rare and specific talents, i.e., diligence isn't enough.  This isn't intended, by the way, as commentary on the dam-building beavers above, photographed last year in a part of England where they were thought to be extinct for centuries.  Beavers are industrious and diligent, of course, but are also enormously talented.  Another friend of mine, a world expert on dams, once showed me a couple of slides he was planning to use in an exam-essay question.  Previewing the assignment for me, he queried:  "Beaver dams:  Monumental or bucolic?"  I answered "Both" and received a verbal "A."  "Paris Express" was the U.S. title of the 1952 British film adaptation of Georges Simenon's 1938 novel "L'Homme qui regardait passer les Trains," which was originally released in the U.S. under its English translation title "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By."  It's supposed to be a terrific movie version of Simenon's "roman dur" and features an early performance by the 20-year old Anouk Aimée.

Rolling Stones: Take It Or Leave It (Link) 

SEPTEMBER 11TH (2) -- O! UNHAPPY DAY -- WHY DON'T WE SING THIS SONG ALL TOGETHER

Like many people, I’m certain, I dread the 9/11 anniversary. 

Several years ago I posted the reminiscence included below in a piece called Some Places I Would Like To Revisit, But Can't, which summarizes things that happened to us that day and tries to relate them to feelings I had concerning the World Trade Center buildings and site. 

Obviously it’s an incomplete account.  To fill in its spaces adequately, I would need to describe the lapses and voids the 9/11 events opened in me and showed me existed around me. 

The moorings all slipped that day.

People familiar with our prior kidnapping in Mexico tend to assume that was the crux event you don’t come back from, but they’re mistaken. 

The kidnapping actually revealed to me some unrecognized strengths I possessed (more apparent in the aftermath period than during the abduction itself; while the crime was in extended progress, Caroline was the indomitable lioness).

9/11 was like the day my brother was killed in 1970.  Everything was smashed to atoms. 

And like a nuclear event, all that remained, it seemed, were and are cockroaches shifting and scuttling.

 

   From:  Some Places I Would Like To Revisit, But Can't.

   Like most New Yorkers, I always had mixed feelings about the World Trade Center.  Tall buildings are cool and impressive and, although the WTC’s architecture wasn’t a patch on the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Flatiron Building or the other buildings New Yorkers really love, the place was spectacularly tall.  Attending business meetings at WTC was always an incredible hassle, both in terms of getting downtown and the security that was (necessarily) put into place after the first World Trade Center bombing in the mid-1990s (the “Blind Sheikh” attack), and the subway was more than your usual nightmare. (Too many lines running, too many people going too many places.)   

However, on a personal level, I remember a fancy party my parents gave for my grandparents at Windows On The World in honor of a big wedding anniversary that seemed to mean a lot to the people who attended.  I remember having cocktails in the bar with Caroline and other friends and, especially taking Caroline’s mother there for drinks at sunset, which she enjoyed immensely.  The view was really incomparable – much better than from the John Hancock in Chicago or One Liberty Place in Philadelphia, for instance. I remember especially a wonderful celebration dinner Caroline and I enjoyed at Cellar In The Sky, Windows’ “oenophile prix-fixe restaurant” and an amusing  business dinner a long time ago where Caroline entertained Tim White and Chuck Young, then young journalists from Musician magazine, who were good dinner companions.  

Psychotic al-Queda terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, destroying the Twin Towers and some nearby buildings and killing thousands of helpless, innocent victims.  It was a beautiful late summer Tuesday morning and we were returning to work from a weekend at the beach in Avalon, New Jersey.  About 1000 feet before the George Washington Bridge toll booth, they stopped our car and we saw a new illuminated bridge sign saying “Bridge Closed”.  That sounded crazy (it translates as "New York City Closed"),  but we turned on the radio and soon figured out what was happening.  When we arrived home about four hours later (they had to literally turn around the highways leading into Manhattan), the two Brazilian women who were taking care of Jane greeted us with some shock and disbelief.  They were under the impression that World War III had broken out and thought we were as likely dead as alive.    

Obviously, since that day, nothing has been quite the same.

    

Rolling Stones: Why Don't We Sing This Song All Together (Link)