The Ones Not Chosen

While we are on the subject of how to stay sane while rehabbing and regaining the full flexion, extension and strength in one’s right knee, I should point out that I have had an unequalled opportunity to sink and swim in Belgian writing.

The theme to be explored, elucidated, exhausted and ultimately wrung dry in our Literature Club this year is “Literature of Our Ancestors”. As with more or less every theme we devise, this one can be interpreted in multiple ways. It can be the literature written by a particular ancestor. It can be the literature written by fellow countrymen of your ancestors. It may be whatever literature your ancestors chose to read. But which ancestors? Your parents may have been reading Ladies’ Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, John Updike and John Cheever; while your great-great-great grandparents back in the swamps of Wallonia were reading Balzac by gaslight; while your other great-great-great grandparents on the Norman coast were reading ships’ manifests and not much else. You just hope they were reading at all.

I could complicate the matter endlessly, but this year I will not. Or not entirely. Because no one else has Belgian ancestors (how odd that I feel confident this is the case) I have decided to present a program on Belgian writers, or a Belgian writer.

The first Belgian writer I considered was Maurice Maeterlinck. But several years ago, when our theme was Science and Literature, I presented a program that included Maeterlinck’s classic Life of the Bee. So forget Maurice, even if he and his lover, Georgette LeBlanc, did live for several years in a ruined abbey (Abbey of St Wandrille in Normandy) so vast that they went from room to room on roller skates.
Then I happened to hear of Emile Verhauren (1855-1916). I had never in my life heard of Emile Verhauren, but according to Stefan Zweig, who knew a lot, Verhauren was supremely important, the Francophone equivalent of Walt Whitman, and a founder of the school of Symbolist poetry. Arthur Symons wrote that Verhauren’s poetry “is made directly out of the complaining voices of the nerves.” He also wrote of Verhauren, that “there is something lacerating, and the same time bewildering, which conveys to one the sense of all that is most solitary, picturesque, and poignant in the transformation of an intensely active and keen-sighted reason into a thing of conflicting visionary moods.” Could this be fated? Many years ago, when our theme was Latin American Literature, my subject was Ruben Dario (1867-1916), who created the Spanish Modernismo movement, akin to Symbolism.
But I happened to have dinner soon thereafter with Annabelle, Marc and Maude, all genuine Belgians. Neither Annabelle or Marc (no slouches) had ever heard of Verhauren; Maude said she had read him in school and that he was very boring.
The next writer I considered presenting was Georges Simenon. The creator of Inspector Maigret, Simenon wrote at least 500 books and at some time in the 1960’s he was the most translated writer in the world. Yet for all that, nowadays he doesn’t even consistently make the list of Top Ten Most Famous Belgians.
Simenon wrote all the time, and he wrote a lot. He also had a lot of sex. In 1977, Simenon told Fellini that, according to his calculations, since the age of 13 and a half [I like the distinction of the half] he had sex with 10,000 women. If my math is correct, that is 61 years, or 22,265 days. So, he could have had sex with a different woman every other day, religiously, for 61 years. All while being married, serially, to two women and having two or three long-term and devoted extra-marital relationships.
Another interesting fact about Simenon is that his very first novel, Au Pont des Arches (never translated into English) was partially set in an apothecary specializing in laxatives for pigeons.
If you, like me, cannot fathom why a pigeon would need a laxative, or how a pigeon would express the need for a laxative, you will perhaps understand why I will not be presenting a program on Georges Simenon to Literature Club this year.

STAY TUNED FOR THE BELGIAN WRITER ACTUALLY CHOSEN…

Why H.G.Wells, or What is Missing

So the venerable and august Literature Club’s theme for 2011-2012 will be “Literature as a Lens of History”. Initially I wasn’t at all clear what was meant by this topic (having missed a key meeting, apparently) but I quickly overcame that difficulty. It means whatever one wants it to mean. That is the beauty of many of our Literature Club themes.
When the theme was “20th Century Masterworks”, the programs ranged from Kingsley Amis to Gertrude Stein to the 13 volumes of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage. In our year of “Seeds of Self,” we heard papers on such disparate characters as Sylvia Plath, Mabel Dodge and Kim Philby. It is true I might have had a hard time making a case for Balzac when the theme was “Voices of Islam”, but I did manage a paper that discussed Virgil and Nick Flynn when the topic was “Science and Literature.”

So what literature shall cast its lens on what history?
I am considering, H.G. Wells, and my family history.

Now I often start my research with a look at what the Encyclopedia Britannica (15th edition) has to say, because a) It is a good place to begin, b) they list sources, c) the articles are well written, and d) I feel relatively confident that the articles are unprejudiced and unbiased, which is not always the case with Wikipedia (though I am also a fan of Wiki) because in Wiki, devotées or disciples can write entries about their favorite person, book or battlefield. How do I know this? Because my devoted son wrote the Wiki entry for yours truly.
So I went over to the encyclopedia shelf to find the final volume (V to Z), and ..... it was not there.
The row of tomes ended with Volume 18, Taylor to Utah. I have searched high and low, in all the places where an encyclopedia might find itself (attic, wine cellar, under the bed, laundry basket, next to the observation hive) and others spots less likely, and I have not found it.
CSB has been enlisted to the cause, he too has sought the errant volume, in places too vertiginous for me, and also in vain.
We are flummoxed and bamboozled. We are at a loss and at sea. How can a single volume of the encyclopedia be missing? And no, I would not have loaned it to someone. I am not that sort of person.
It’s not just the salient facts about Herbert George Wells that are missing. That is bad enough, but the true state of affairs is far worse. We are also missing the Vatican, venereal diseases, verdigris and volcanoes. We are lost without wages, Wales, wallpaper, Walloon literature, Whig, wig and writ. Where are Xanthippe and x-rays? We are desolate without yachting, yak, yeomanry and Yiddish. But worst of all, we have nowhere to turn for Zacatecas, Zend-Avesta and Zero.
If you have seen this final volume of the Britannica, Vacuum to Zygote, please tell me where it is. There will be a reward: I will share with you everything I learn about H.G. Wells.

Why H.G.?
Wells is best known for his science fiction,and I don’t even like science fiction. I have tried to like it, or at least read it, because I am closely related to some benighted souls who really like sci-fi; but I have never succeeded. So why am I doing this?

Because my paternal grandmother (mentioned most recently in this blog in the tale of the mystery picture that turned out to be the Summer Institute for Social Progress) was passionate about H.G. Wells. At the time of her death she owned no less than 36 of his books, all showing the wear of multiple readings and bearing her tiny marginalia.
From the early 1930’s, when she and my grandfather separated (exact date unknown or untold), until the early 1960’s when she made the Vendôme Hotel on Commonwealth Ave in Boston her permanent residence, my grandmother traveled: she crossed the continent by trains, she crossed the ocean by ships and she crossed back, again and again. I know this because in the parental basement I found the ships’ manifests, from the S.S. President Coolidge, the S.S. Bremen, the S.S. Lapland, the S.S. Empress of Britain, the R.M.S. Caronia, the T.S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam, the Triple-Screw Pennland and so and on; I found a stack of menus from the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (“Scenic Line of the World”); and I found her Intourist’s Pocket Guide to the Soviet Union and her 1933 receipt from the Hotel Astoria in Leningrad. I don’t know what she did when she got to Leningrad or Göteborg or Helsinki or Naples; all I know is that she read H.G. Wells repeatedly, as well as Theosophical tracts and Numerology books and books by Krishnamurti and Tagore, Rudolph Steiner and Oliver Schreiner.
So I will be tackling H.G. Wells, with trepidation. Aside from the unfortunate science fiction, many of his books have titles that make me nervous, titles that more than hint of a message, or even worse, a moral. Titles such as Will Socialism Destroy the Home? or God the Invisible King or Socialism and the Scientific Motive or Crux Ansata – An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church or The Outlook for Homo Sapiens or A Year of Prophesying. You get the picture.
Having written the above, I have started with a very short book (98 pages) with the benign title of The Croquet Player. And I was encouraged to find the following sentence: “There were one or two sets of niceish people with whom a little light conversation was possible without entanglement.” And also delighted to read that the vicar, a key character in the story, presides over the church of Cross in Slackness.
Then I went to Crux Ansata, which, I am sorry to report, is the kind of diatribe that makes me want to actually defend the papacy and sale of indulgences.
I think my next effort will be First and Last Things.

It seems I am missing more than the final volume of the 15th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Old books, their writers and readers

I have spent much of the past 2 months reading the minutes of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson, from 1909 to the present, and to show for it I have a crick in my neck, a better appreciation for good penmanship and a pile of books from the library, books that were read and discussed by the ladies but have since been forgotten, only to be found in library stacks and dusty book sales.
You recall Louis Adamic? If not, see February 22. I have discovered Oliver Onions (not the Oliver Onions with a Dune Buggy video on You Tube) who wrote what some consider the best horror story ever, The Beckoning Fair One. (I would demur but then what do I know about horror stories? I find them unreadable.) I read about Agnes Keith and immediately got her memoir of Japanese prison camp in Borneo from the library. More on that another time. I asked myself, Who was Malvina Hoffman? It turns out she was a sculptor who created a series of life size sculptures of the various races (105) for the Field Museum, as chronicled in her book, Heads and Tales. All of them are now mothballed, being profoundly un-politically correct.
If you are from South Africa or England you probably know all about Laurens van der Post, but I was ignorant. Just yesterday (in the creepy waiting room of a retina specialist that I eventually fled, having decided that I didn’t want to see this doctor who kept very elderly people, and me, waiting for untold hours) I started reading The Lost World of the Kalahari, and discovered the honey hunting Bushmen. They are valiant honey hunters, climbing up rock faces and tall trees with their bare hands and feet to extract honey from hives in crevasses. They use special herbs to smoke the bees. These are African bees, feistier and fiercer than our gentle Italians, but according to van der Post they rarely sting the bushmen, just enough to remind them that they are bees. In her classic reference work, Beekeeping and Honey Hunting,the late lamented Eva Crane discusses in great detail the African honey hunters, but that was not read by the ladies of the Literature Club.

I was especially delighted about the bees because for a while now – often as he rubs the aforementioned crick in my neck – CSB has questioned where I am going with this project. Good question, of course. What are they paying you?” he asks. Very funny, I say. The pleasure of it. I know that deep in his heart – very deep, China perhaps – CSB too thinks this is a fascinating task. But discovering the Bushmen honey hunters felt like an excellent bonus.

Possibly Adamic

Have you ever heard of Louis Adamic? I never had until his name jumped out at me from the yellowing pages of the Literature Club archives, and I began to regret my lacuna.
His death remains a mystery, while his books are – alas – out of print.

On account of the Literature Club’s centennial (previously mentioned and sure to be mentioned again) I have been reading the minutes – inscribed in anachronistic penmanship in log books carefully tended at the Historical Society – and trying to form an accurate record of all the annual programs since our inception. In the course of which I am constantly impressed by the studious intentions of the ladies, as well as their musical talents (most meetings included a recital of appropriately relevant music, anything from Southern spirituals to Verdi arias) and I am constantly discovering the names of popular writers and poets no longer popular, or even read.
One name has cropped up enough times to make me curious, not least because of its prelapsarian intimations, that of Louis Adamic. On various occasions, the ladies read and discussed his books, including, The Autobiography of an Immigrant in America (1932), The Native’s Return: An American Immigrant Visits Yugoslavia and Discovers his Old Country (1934) and The House in Antigua (1937) .
Born is what is now Slovenia, Adamic came to the US right before WW I and eventually worked as a journalist. Not having read his work, I am guessing that his novels were of the social realism school of Upton Sinclair.
He died in 1951 by gunshot. But whether it was self-inflicted or whether he was assassinated by a Balkan faction angry with his stand against King Alexander, has never been determined.
If you look up Louis Adamic, as I did, you will discover that he has quite a lengthy FBI file, and that much of it is redacted.