Paul Maliszewski
RE: kin
Dear James,
It was hot here, too. Not sure of the temp, so I won’t try to go toe-to-toe. Still, I did, you’ll be glad to hear, hoof it to the Library of Congress for László Krasznahorkai. Nice guy. Spoke to him briefly after, about semicolons of all things. Nice people in line, too. One guy knew Krasznahorkai while he was writing Satantango, which the Hungarians pronounce not with that long, drawn-out American a—I hear the Church Lady crying out, Satan!—but with a short initial a, so that Sa-, tan-, and tan- very nearly rhyme, at least to my ears. Anyway, the guy had a first Hungarian edition of the book. They’d been in the military together—I think I have this right—and he said he remembered Krasznahorkai as a guy with a guitar who wrote poems, and this guy, the guy with the first edition, remembered one of the poems and recited it back to Krasznahorkai, who seemed happy to see him and happy to record the poem as his inscription. The guy lives in Washington now. I asked him what he thought of D.C., because we’ve been kind of down on it, Hadley and I, and he said, It’s a good place to live if you have money, and my wife makes a lot of money, and I said, Yeah, I know how that goes. A woman in line—we were all at the end, straggling, me, this woman, and the guy with the first edition—said she was a student here, I didn’t get where. I asked her if Krasznahorkai was taught in schools over there. I don’t know why that was my one burning question, but I was curious. She said she didn’t know; she was born there but is doing her studies here. Anyway, made me want to visit Hungary, talking to these people. Like all lines there would be like this.
#
Need to collect thoughts on Krasznahorkai. Sorry so slow. Yesterday was a rough day. Bad headache. Constant running around from about 9:30, when I left the house with Elliot to go to a kids’ reading, until 6 or so, when I got back home from Krasznahorkai. In between, we drove home, picked up Hadley and James, took them to an appointment, and then stayed out in downtown for two hours, occupying ourselves with lunch at the grocery store and then a visit to a newsstand I like, which I think I convinced Elliot to think of as interesting. Then we fought crosstown traffic to get home again, in order for me to turn right around and leave for the Library of Congress. I had the headache pretty much all day, and it just got worse. I took two of those migraine-strength Excedrins before the reading. The only thing that works sometimes. It’s like acetaminophen plus caffeine. And I guzzled water the whole way there. I was in a fog is what I’m saying. I finally located the passage he read, though—not easy to do, with no paragraph breaks. I want to reread it now.
#
Krasznahorkai read in Hungarian and English. I liked hearing the Hungarian. It’s hard writing to listen too. Honestly, the Hungarian made as much or more sense to me than the English. It’s just hard to follow, spoken. Reading it is fine. It’s not the densest stuff you’ve ever read. And actually, it flows along pretty readily, carrying you. But having found the passage in the book, I’m amazed at how little I remembered/grasped/followed. I wish I were sharper.
#
He did things with his voice in Hungarian, things he didn’t do when reading in English. He made apologies for his English, which he called Hinglish, but like all international speakers, you just have to wonder what they’re apologizing for. I mean, his English was fine, a bit like Werner Herzog’s English, perfect English, almost too perfect—more perfect than we customarily hear it spoken—with just a few pronounced twists. When he read in Hungarian, though, his voice sounded, I thought, like a friend telling you something secret. There was a quiet, insistent tone, even confessional. Not a whisper, exactly, but talk coming from somewhere near to you. And there was something else, too: an overlapping, as if the writing were moving quickly from register to register, shifting, as if new voices were cutting in before the old voice ended. Hard to describe, sorry.
As he read, he made these gestures, too. Some of it, I think, was to help the audience through the text, with the gestures acting as reminders. He had read the English first. So he would, for instance, outline physically what was being described in words, like he was tracing something laid out on the lectern, or pointing to something near or far, that kind of thing. It’s like how, if you’re trying to learn a song, someone can bring the melody out a bit more, exaggerating it, so you get where the chord changes fall. But he also made the and-so-on gesture, first with his finger and then with his whole hand. I think of it as and-so-on anyway. It’s like he was reading, and then with his right hand, he traced this casual circle in the air, beside his papers, like a wheel was there upon which the whole machine could roll forward and just go like that, rolling on and on.
#
I couldn’t always see Krasznahorkai. The event began with a discussion between him and Kenneth Nyirady, a reference specialist from the library’s European Division. I was sitting in the fourth of I think five rows. It was a room longer than it was deep, much longer, like a room made using a tie box as an architectural model, and there were quite a few people in front of me, and when Krasznahorkai and Nyirady talked, they sat at our level, and this one guy in particular, who looked from behind like Don DeLillo with a pageboy haircut, was right in my line of sight. I could tell Pageboy was going to be a problem before the discussion started, so I was shifting between two chairs, trying to find the one position that would allow me to see around his hair, until this person on my row shot me a look, and I just took what I could. Which meant, as I said, that I couldn’t always see Krasznahorkai. But I could hear him fine, and due to a quirk of the lighting, I could see his shadow cast onto the wall. For long stretches then, I watched the shadow of Krasznahorkai speak, saying, among other things, that the translation of Satantango, by George Szirtes, was so good that it was like its own work, as if, Krasznahorkai said, holding up a copy of his novel, it were the book Satantango by George Szirtes. He had chosen Szirtes to translate it, and when Szirtes came back and said he would do it, but he couldn’t work on a deadline, Krasznahorkai told him, George, we have nothing but time. The publisher, of course, held to a less cosmic view of time, but Krasznahorkai was prepared to forego English publication. It was Szirtes for him, or no one. Krasznahorkai was asked, too, about Béla Tarr, and about writing for film, etc., the questions you’d expect. He’s written several screenplays for Tarr, and spoke of him in similar terms as Szirtes: Tarr’s Satantango, seven and one-half hours long, was brilliant but its own thing.
Nyirady mentioned that while preparing questions for their talk, he perused the library’s collection for some of Krasznahorkai’s earliest writing. By the way, he said, the library has a great collection of Hungarian samizdat on microfiche. He said this like helpful information. Think of that for a second, because it’s what I admire so much about the Library of Congress. They don’t have the samizdat tucked away in some archival box, and you have to make an appointment just for the privilege of delicately paging through the stuff with white cotton gloves. It’s already on microfiche. Learning this made me very happy.
After the discussion, Krasznahorkai read from the novel. Having spent I don’t know how much time looking at his shadow, it was a shock, a bit, to be able to view him whole, unobstructed, so part of the time while he read, I went back to looking at his shadows. There were at least three shadows that I could see. It was all that spot lighting, beaming from several directions. To the right of Krasznahorkai, there was a shadow of him that faced the wall, as if addressing some hidden audience located on the other side. This shadow was thicker than the man himself, bulky all around, heavyset. Even his gestures appeared heavy, like he was lecturing, haranguing. On Krasznahorkai’s other side, there was a fainter shadow, more like a wispy impression of himself. The shadow I liked best, however, was directly behind him, the combination of all these lights and one light (I’m guessing) that shone more or less directly at him. This shadow looked like a mound, like mud, more mud, in any case, than man. It hardly moved. It had no features. It was just behind him, squatting, like a little hill some animal made in the night, digging in, tunneling, laying its eggs, doing God knows.
Krasznahorkai read the part of Satantango about the girl and her cat, a part titled, provisionally, for the reading, There Was Rat Poison in the Paper Bag. It made me think of our cat. I feel ashamed to say that, but I will, because I’m also through with being ashamed, or trying to be through with it, anyway. She died this year, our cat, on Ash Wednesday of all days. I mean to say that I had her put to sleep, killed. You know this, though. I hope you get to see Krasznahorkai in San Francisco.
Paul
RE: kin
Dear James,
It was hot here, too. Not sure of the temp, so I won’t try to go toe-to-toe. Still, I did, you’ll be glad to hear, hoof it to the Library of Congress for László Krasznahorkai. Nice guy. Spoke to him briefly after, about semicolons of all things. Nice people in line, too. One guy knew Krasznahorkai while he was writing Satantango, which the Hungarians pronounce not with that long, drawn-out American a—I hear the Church Lady crying out, Satan!—but with a short initial a, so that Sa-, tan-, and tan- very nearly rhyme, at least to my ears. Anyway, the guy had a first Hungarian edition of the book. They’d been in the military together—I think I have this right—and he said he remembered Krasznahorkai as a guy with a guitar who wrote poems, and this guy, the guy with the first edition, remembered one of the poems and recited it back to Krasznahorkai, who seemed happy to see him and happy to record the poem as his inscription. The guy lives in Washington now. I asked him what he thought of D.C., because we’ve been kind of down on it, Hadley and I, and he said, It’s a good place to live if you have money, and my wife makes a lot of money, and I said, Yeah, I know how that goes. A woman in line—we were all at the end, straggling, me, this woman, and the guy with the first edition—said she was a student here, I didn’t get where. I asked her if Krasznahorkai was taught in schools over there. I don’t know why that was my one burning question, but I was curious. She said she didn’t know; she was born there but is doing her studies here. Anyway, made me want to visit Hungary, talking to these people. Like all lines there would be like this.
#
Need to collect thoughts on Krasznahorkai. Sorry so slow. Yesterday was a rough day. Bad headache. Constant running around from about 9:30, when I left the house with Elliot to go to a kids’ reading, until 6 or so, when I got back home from Krasznahorkai. In between, we drove home, picked up Hadley and James, took them to an appointment, and then stayed out in downtown for two hours, occupying ourselves with lunch at the grocery store and then a visit to a newsstand I like, which I think I convinced Elliot to think of as interesting. Then we fought crosstown traffic to get home again, in order for me to turn right around and leave for the Library of Congress. I had the headache pretty much all day, and it just got worse. I took two of those migraine-strength Excedrins before the reading. The only thing that works sometimes. It’s like acetaminophen plus caffeine. And I guzzled water the whole way there. I was in a fog is what I’m saying. I finally located the passage he read, though—not easy to do, with no paragraph breaks. I want to reread it now.
#
Krasznahorkai read in Hungarian and English. I liked hearing the Hungarian. It’s hard writing to listen too. Honestly, the Hungarian made as much or more sense to me than the English. It’s just hard to follow, spoken. Reading it is fine. It’s not the densest stuff you’ve ever read. And actually, it flows along pretty readily, carrying you. But having found the passage in the book, I’m amazed at how little I remembered/grasped/followed. I wish I were sharper.
#
He did things with his voice in Hungarian, things he didn’t do when reading in English. He made apologies for his English, which he called Hinglish, but like all international speakers, you just have to wonder what they’re apologizing for. I mean, his English was fine, a bit like Werner Herzog’s English, perfect English, almost too perfect—more perfect than we customarily hear it spoken—with just a few pronounced twists. When he read in Hungarian, though, his voice sounded, I thought, like a friend telling you something secret. There was a quiet, insistent tone, even confessional. Not a whisper, exactly, but talk coming from somewhere near to you. And there was something else, too: an overlapping, as if the writing were moving quickly from register to register, shifting, as if new voices were cutting in before the old voice ended. Hard to describe, sorry.
As he read, he made these gestures, too. Some of it, I think, was to help the audience through the text, with the gestures acting as reminders. He had read the English first. So he would, for instance, outline physically what was being described in words, like he was tracing something laid out on the lectern, or pointing to something near or far, that kind of thing. It’s like how, if you’re trying to learn a song, someone can bring the melody out a bit more, exaggerating it, so you get where the chord changes fall. But he also made the and-so-on gesture, first with his finger and then with his whole hand. I think of it as and-so-on anyway. It’s like he was reading, and then with his right hand, he traced this casual circle in the air, beside his papers, like a wheel was there upon which the whole machine could roll forward and just go like that, rolling on and on.
#
I couldn’t always see Krasznahorkai. The event began with a discussion between him and Kenneth Nyirady, a reference specialist from the library’s European Division. I was sitting in the fourth of I think five rows. It was a room longer than it was deep, much longer, like a room made using a tie box as an architectural model, and there were quite a few people in front of me, and when Krasznahorkai and Nyirady talked, they sat at our level, and this one guy in particular, who looked from behind like Don DeLillo with a pageboy haircut, was right in my line of sight. I could tell Pageboy was going to be a problem before the discussion started, so I was shifting between two chairs, trying to find the one position that would allow me to see around his hair, until this person on my row shot me a look, and I just took what I could. Which meant, as I said, that I couldn’t always see Krasznahorkai. But I could hear him fine, and due to a quirk of the lighting, I could see his shadow cast onto the wall. For long stretches then, I watched the shadow of Krasznahorkai speak, saying, among other things, that the translation of Satantango, by George Szirtes, was so good that it was like its own work, as if, Krasznahorkai said, holding up a copy of his novel, it were the book Satantango by George Szirtes. He had chosen Szirtes to translate it, and when Szirtes came back and said he would do it, but he couldn’t work on a deadline, Krasznahorkai told him, George, we have nothing but time. The publisher, of course, held to a less cosmic view of time, but Krasznahorkai was prepared to forego English publication. It was Szirtes for him, or no one. Krasznahorkai was asked, too, about Béla Tarr, and about writing for film, etc., the questions you’d expect. He’s written several screenplays for Tarr, and spoke of him in similar terms as Szirtes: Tarr’s Satantango, seven and one-half hours long, was brilliant but its own thing.
Nyirady mentioned that while preparing questions for their talk, he perused the library’s collection for some of Krasznahorkai’s earliest writing. By the way, he said, the library has a great collection of Hungarian samizdat on microfiche. He said this like helpful information. Think of that for a second, because it’s what I admire so much about the Library of Congress. They don’t have the samizdat tucked away in some archival box, and you have to make an appointment just for the privilege of delicately paging through the stuff with white cotton gloves. It’s already on microfiche. Learning this made me very happy.
After the discussion, Krasznahorkai read from the novel. Having spent I don’t know how much time looking at his shadow, it was a shock, a bit, to be able to view him whole, unobstructed, so part of the time while he read, I went back to looking at his shadows. There were at least three shadows that I could see. It was all that spot lighting, beaming from several directions. To the right of Krasznahorkai, there was a shadow of him that faced the wall, as if addressing some hidden audience located on the other side. This shadow was thicker than the man himself, bulky all around, heavyset. Even his gestures appeared heavy, like he was lecturing, haranguing. On Krasznahorkai’s other side, there was a fainter shadow, more like a wispy impression of himself. The shadow I liked best, however, was directly behind him, the combination of all these lights and one light (I’m guessing) that shone more or less directly at him. This shadow looked like a mound, like mud, more mud, in any case, than man. It hardly moved. It had no features. It was just behind him, squatting, like a little hill some animal made in the night, digging in, tunneling, laying its eggs, doing God knows.
Krasznahorkai read the part of Satantango about the girl and her cat, a part titled, provisionally, for the reading, There Was Rat Poison in the Paper Bag. It made me think of our cat. I feel ashamed to say that, but I will, because I’m also through with being ashamed, or trying to be through with it, anyway. She died this year, our cat, on Ash Wednesday of all days. I mean to say that I had her put to sleep, killed. You know this, though. I hope you get to see Krasznahorkai in San Francisco.
Paul
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