Cover image: Jack Ross / Cover & Book design: Massey printery(June 6) To Terezín. Poems & Travelogue by Jack Ross, with an Afterword by Martin Edmond. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132. Auckland: Massey University, 2007. ii + 90 pp.
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Preface (3/07)
- Auckland – Bangkok – Frankfurt (21/3-3/4/05)
- Farrell said … (21-22/3/05)
- Planet … (10/12/04-1/4/05)
- The Apartment (29/3-3/4/05)
- John on Prague (26/12/04)
- Jana’s Note (15/12/04)
- England … (23/3/05)
- A legless woman … (13/12-23/3/05)
- Matchboxes (22-23/3/05)
- Gypsies … (21/12/04-3/4/05)
- The Resistance (21/12/04-3/4/05)
- Voyeur (21/12/04-5/4/05)
- John on computer dating (15/12/04-23/3/05)
- Hospitality (31/3-1/4/05)
- First Attempt (22-23/3/05)
- The Ossuary – Das Beinhaus in Sedlec (18/12/04-23/3/05)
- Second Attempt (22-23/3/05)
- Black Light Theatre (22/3-2/4/05)
- We walked across … (28/12/04)
- Composed … (28/12/04)
- Signs (28/12/04)
- Terezín Memorial (28/12/04)
- Ghetto Museum (28/12/04)
- Creepsville (28/12/04)
- One Day to Go (28/12/04)
- Prisoner of Paradise (22-23/3/05)
- Prague Novel (29/12/04-31/3/05)
- Frankfurt (31/1-31/3/05)
- They’ve (20-22/4/05) 1 – Heteronyms
- If (29/3-3/4/05) 2 – Matchboxes
- Trying to Write (24/2-22/4/05) 3 – How to be Alone
- Tension (11/7/04-21/4/05) 4 – The Original
- Our Lady (1/10/04-21/4/05) 5 – Europe after the Rains
- No (25-26/2/05) 6 – Nine Great Reasons to Visit Prague
- Your Past Life Ghosts (27/10/04) 7 – Feet of Clay
I – New Europe (21/3-3/4/05):
II – The Golem (3-22/4/05):
Works cited
For John and Jana
- Thanks for everything -
Blurb:
Voyeur
Why would you want
to go there?
I think
sometimes
you’ve got to see
the nightmare
for yourself
If the survivors
told me
not to go
I’d stay away
“Your irritation at the disunity is, justifiably or not,
the effect I intend.”
(Quoted in Mendelson, 2000, p. 230).
So W. H. Auden to one of the first critics of The Sea and
the Mirror (1944), his wartime verse commentary on Shakespeare’s
The Tempest. More specifically, Edward Mendelson, the poet’s
literary executor and most astute interpreter, responded in this
way to criticism of the discordant moment in the poem when Caliban
addresses the audience in the urbane, prosy accents of Henry James.
Despite the artifice of Caliban’s voice, he embodies
everything that is not artifice. The id is one name
for him; he identifies himself at one point as Eros,
son of Venus; and Auden identified him … as the
allegorical figure of ‘the Prick.’ (Mendelson, 2000,
pp. 230-31).
Auden himself went on to explain: “Since Caliban is inarticulate,
he has to borrow, from Ariel, the most artificial style possible.”
The most natural style for talking about the horrors of Nazi
oppression during the Second World War has come to be the clipped,
gnomic phrases of Paul Celan or Nellie Sachs – both camp survivors
who managed thus to refute Adorno’s famous dictum that “writing
lyric poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”
Whatever the possibilities for Celan and Sachs, it seems (to
say the least) rather presumptuous to attempt to walk in their
footsteps so many decades later.
When I first went to Prague, at the end of 2004, I certainly had
in mind the possibility of writing something about it. I didn’t
feel exactly committed to the idea, as there’s a certain danger
in visiting countries merely to write about them. I was, however,
keen to remain open to the possibilities of the place.
My subject declared itself pretty early on in the inability
of (at least some) of my hosts to understand my motives in wanting
to visit Theresienstadt. This led me to question why it had become
so important to me to go there, and (especially) what I hoped to
find there to justify the effort. It was so difficult for me to
find answers to their questions that I realised I had inadvertently
struck a personal nerve.
What I had in mind, at that early stage, was an essay discussing
that visit as well as my feelings about the “holocaust industry”
(so-called). I’d been very impressed by the quality of the
Montana Estate essay series edited by Lloyd Jones and published
by Four Winds Press, and my intention was to discipline my
observations into something which could be shrunk into that
small compass.
The notes for the essay soon began to take the form of short
verses, though – a process I found myself unable (or unwilling) to
resist. The essay turned into of a commentary on these verses.
This raised its own problems of genre-labelling. Both of the
poetry publishers I approached with the completed ms. complained that
their readers would find it difficult to categorise. One, in fact,
reproached me with a lack of boldness in insisting on justifying
myself in prose rather than simply letting the poems speak for
themselves.
She may well have been right. In any case, I’m left with my own
version of Auden’s defence to justify the rather unusual and
unclassifiable form of this book. Rightly or wrongly, it was my
intention to emphasise the discontinuity between the two sections.
What I want most to say is concealed in the gap between them.
Readers, so far, have tended to prefer the swift movement of the
verses in Part One, and to feel a little bewildered by the rather
Jamesian periphrases of the essay sections of Part Two. The fact
that the poems do sound so “natural” should give you pause, though,
especially when you consider their subject matter.
It’s fatally easy for writers to subdue recalcitrant material
technically without ever engaging, or getting their readers to
engage, with its more jagged and irreconcilable aspects.
My book, the only “Prague novel” (see below, p. 46) I’ll ever
write, now finds its place in a series of monographs published by
the School of Social and Cultural Studies where I work – a school
which includes Anthropology, English, History, Linguistics, Māori,
Media Studies, Politics, Sociology, Social Work and Social Policy
among its areas of expertise. This seems to me a pleasing symmetry.
My problem was to write “naturally” and approachably about one of
the most unnatural acts of modern times – without a distinct personal
axe to grind and with full awareness of my temerity in doing so. If
the result seems smooth, seamless and entirely self-justifying then
I will have failed. My interest is more in the questions I raise than
in the answers I’ve attempted to provide.
– Jack Ross, Massey Albany
(3/2007)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 5-6.
Notes:
- All inline citations (in APA style) are keyed to the Works cited list at the end of the book.
•
I
New Europe
(21/3-3/4/05)
•
Catwoman Halle Berry Sharon Stone Sharon’s great stone face gapes down at us Something there that I can’t read not yet not cramped into three feet of seat six feet of air
(21/3-3/4/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 9.
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You should go to Theresienstadt while you’re there in Prague I nodded hardly knowing what he meant The idea somehow took root
(21-22/3/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 10.
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of the huge faces under your granite stare Why keep it a secret? That’s who’s under there? Stop using Beauline and your face disintegrates Like living marble I can’t feel a thing
(10/12/04-1/4/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 11.
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Český Krumlov (South Bohemia)Photograph: Jack Ross (December, 2004)
Wandering through cold streets tangled like old string,
Coming on fountains rigid in the frost,
Its formula escapes you; it has lost
The certainty that constitutes a thing.
– W. H. Auden, “Brussels in Winter” (Auden, 1991, p. 178).
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an ex-brothel (four doors off one corridor) faces the local police-station The combination is their street address
(29/3-3/4/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 13.
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Too much smoking Too much spitting Too much graffiti Too much dogshit in the streets
(26/12/04)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 14.
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JACK – also the landlord Olda is coming this morning to have a look at the leaking toilet and 2 radiators in our bedroom that do not heat Sorry I forgot to tell you Have a nice day
(15/12/04)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 15.
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Strahov Monastery: Symbolical Map of Europe as a Virgin (1592)Photograph: Stanislav Némec
VAMPIRES WANTED
for serious magazine article
Call 0131 477 2404
Before 12th January
– Westport Books, Edinburgh
•
is the chip on Europe’s shoulder Bohemia the heart
(23/3/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 17.
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climbs off the tram up by the castle shoes strapped to her hands
(13/12-23/3/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 18.
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Golem t-shirts Golem playing-cards matchboxes Jewish cemetery the tourist paths marked out with string small pebbles by the headstones Rabbi Löw creator of the Golem Bored curators tossing coins
(22-23/3/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 19.
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Paul Polansky: Living Through It Twice (1998)Photograph: Karel Cudlín
During President Havel’s reign, over
2,000 Gypsies have been attacked by
Czech skinheads.
– Paul Polansky, “Postcard from Prague”
(Polansky, 1998, p. 12).
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are thieves dishonest from birth You have to see the way they live to believe it The parents refuse to send their kids to school Nothing can be done for them When they move in everyone else moves out
(21/12/04-3/4/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 21.
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The trouble started early in my stay What would you like to see in Prague? The castle The Charles bridge the Jewish quarter Theresienstadt (Terezín in Czech) Why would you want to go there? I tried some explanations heard so much about it seen the films read books some friends had mentioned it before I left
(21/12/04-3/4/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 22.
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Why would you want to go there? I think sometimes you’ve got to see the nightmare for yourself If the survivors told me not to go I’d stay away
(21/12/04-5/4/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 23.
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Matyasz Braun: Bethlehem Sculptures (Jičín)Photograph: Jack Ross (December, 2004)
we know nothing and we are in the deepest night
– Georges Bataille, Madame Edwarda
(Bataille, 2004, p. 318).
•
Always include a photo sell yourself include a list of things that interest you reply in more than one line don’t send a picture of your cock
(15/12/04-23/3/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 25.
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Carp gasp in plastic tubs for Christmas dinner
(31/3-1/4/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 26.
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Our trip to North Bohemia Lost in the labyrinth of Jičín going round in circles The detour to the forest to see statues in the snow Braun’s Bethlehem The suspiciously long lunch
(22-23/3/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 27.
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Ossuary Chapel of all Saints (Sedlec)Photograph: Jack Ross (December, 2004)
righteousness is immortal
– Wisdom of Solomon 1, 15
[Old Testament Apocrypha]
•
Adults Erwachsene You are entering a pious space Conserve please respekt to the dead Do not touch the bones Do not enter outside the reserved place THANK YOU FOR YOUR VISIT
(18/12/04-23/3/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 29.
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Getting snow tyres for the car west of Prague No, if anything it’s harder to get there from here Press on the pressure point because it hurts
(22-23/3/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 30.
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Dinner with Jana’s sister and brother-in-law He wanted to come with us She would not let the subject drop Why do you want to go? Why would you want to dwell on all that suffering? Another tack: Why don’t we all go? What time are you leaving? That’s not convenient Finally John turned This isn’t going to work We were glad of it next day It’s not the place for scenes
(22/3-2/4/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 31.
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Matyasz Braun: Bethlehem Sculptures (Jičín)Photograph: Jack Ross (December, 2004)
Omit to transmit my name to the ages
– Robert Desnos, “Infinitif”
(Quoted in Bataille, 2004, p. lxxxii).
•
We walked across the moat and through the walls into the town, then went through the museum, first. It’s good and well-arranged. There are children’s drawings and poems on the lower floor, more detailed information up above. Characteristic Czech curator women banging and bustling around the whole time. We were the first visitors for the day. The parking area – huge – was completely deserted when we turned up. Everything looked closed. But it wasn’t. The exit from the upper gallery of the museum was covered with shiny metal. I don’t know if this was intentional, but it had the effect of showing you yourself, as if in a mirror, when you turned back to look. Around lunchtime we tried to find something to eat. No luck. Finally we found a grocery. It was a bitterly chilly day, with flakes of snow coming down. The cooling cabinet was warm. My coke was completely flat, as if it had been frozen and then thawed out again. The bottle-tops looked a bit deformed, as if they’d been tampered with. The bread was stale. We walked to the Small Fortress, the Gestapo prison, outside the main walls. A truly Apocalyptic site. There’s a museum there, too, superb and well-appointed, but we only came to it after walking along a tunnel running half a kilometre through the walls (unconsciously our steps took on the rhythm of a jackbooted march). We simply wandered, and somehow everything revealed itself to us. The pitiful bunks and tables, the wash hand stands, the low-roofed bunker chambers – and the cells.Ici mourut Le Poète et résistant Français Robert DESNOS le 8 Juin 1945It horrified me to see the place where Robert Desnos was killed. I honestly had no idea. There are some beautiful statues and memorials there – all anonymous (a half-naked kneeling woman with bound hands and a shrouded face in front of the museum). Some bozo was having an exhibition in one of the cells. John remarked, as we walked on, that taking snapshots there would just seem wrong. One could perhaps photograph the place, but only after studying it thoroughly. I agree. In retrospect, I’m glad I neglected to bring my camera – what could a few pictures convey of the atmosphere of that place? The cemetery outside is beautiful, well-tended and well laid-out. The whole town is dead, actually: the people who live there ghosts. Paradoxically, the impression given by the various museums was vitality – the will to live. The children’s magazines, the daily theatricals and discussions, the escape attempts, the selfless acts of courage and help given to the helpless – above all, the children’s drawings.
(28/12/04)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 33-34.
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Dora Zdekauerová: Princess & Dragon (1944)Photograph: Židovské museum v Praze (2004)
It wasn’t physical strength that kept them on their feet but something greater
– Vedern Children’s Magazine, Terezín (April 9, 1943)
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in Terezín Viktor Ullmann’s opera The Emperor of Atlantis was never publicly performed The Emperor sounded too much like you-know-who
(28/12/04)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 36.
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One German photographs another under the sign ARBEIT MACHT FREI They chatter and laugh Later in the museum we see a photo Five Gestapo officers underneath ARBEIT MACHT FREI a cringing dog
(28/12/04)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 37.
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Matyasz Braun: Bethlehem Sculptures (Jičín)Photograph: Jack Ross (December, 2004)
As if a poet wrote his greatest poem in disappearing ink
– Milan Kundera, L’Ignorance
(Kundera, 2003, p. 168).
•
No refunds even if you don’t see everything There must have been requests
(28/12/04)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 39.
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At the end of the display a silver-painted mirror wall
(28/12/04)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 40.
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The inhabitants (there are very few) glare at us They know what we’re thinking They know what we’ve come to see How could you live there? said John as we drove out again
(28/12/04)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 41.
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Matyasz Braun: Bethlehem Sculptures (Jičín)Photograph: Jack Ross (December, 2004)
I’m alive as long as I’m creating
– Terezín Ghetto Museum
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Stressed, said John There’s something on my mind and I don’t know what it is Work? Yeah, work He didn’t sound convinced
(28/12/04)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 43.
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Fat Kurt Gerron made his name in slapstick starred with Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel) sang the shark has pretty teeth dear for Bert Brecht escaped to France ahead of Hitler had a chance to go to Hollywood but missed it They sent him to the camps Theresienstadt the model ghetto made him shoot their film (The actors all went east within two weeks) They killed him too
(22-23/3/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 44.
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Jana’s mother asked if I’d found anything to write about in Prague? I had to answer, yes Jana’s sister asked if I was in the habit of writing funny stories about people that I met I told her that my books were rather morbid which seemed to reassure her They asked to see a copy when it appears My Prague novel To Terezín
(29/12/04-31/3/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 45.
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Steigenberger Airport Hotel (Frankfurt)Photograph: Jack Ross (January, 2005)
passport stamped by the last clerk in line walk through the deserted customs post no signs no directions running hard along steel corridors up flights and flights of stairs locked doors on every level one gave out on a vast airfield heaped with snow almost lost it then tears streaking my cheeks asked cleaners security guards closed kiosks everyone alive in this empty long-past-midnight echoing barn of a mega- airport Go straight up one more floor to find the cattle trucks
(31/1-31/3/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 47-48.
•
II
The Golem
(3-22/4/05)
•
created a traffic jam and called it Constellation Drive ABM840 squeezes in ahead of me Roberta Flack sings The first time that ever I saw your face Atlas bearing the weight of the world A concrete emblem ever I kissed your mouth She doesn’t get it yet / but some day soon she will
(20-22/4/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 51.
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Michael Chabon: Summerland (2003)Photograph: Fourth Estate
When I am thinking about a new novel, I always think of Auschwitz
– Imre Kertesz (Reuters, 2002).
On the copyright page of my paperback edition of Michael Chabon’s
novel Summerland, published by Fourth Estate (London) in
2003, appear the following words:
The right of Jonathan Franzen to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988. (Chabon, 2003, p. ii).
Jonathan Franzen? But isn’t the book by Michael Chabon? Maybe they
collaborated on it. Perhaps one is a pseudonym (the Portuguese poet
Fernando Pessoa referred to his various literary personae as
“heteronyms”) for the other. In that case, which is which? More
to the point – which one is real?
Michael Chabon, a consultation of various blurbs and internet sites
informs me, was born in 1963 in Washington D.C. He grew up in
Columbia, Maryland – according to the blurb for Kavalier and Klay
(Chabon, 2001) – or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – according to the
blurb for The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Chabon, 1988).
In any case, he now lives in Berkeley, California with his
wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their four children. He is
the author of four novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000), a novella,
The Final Solution (2004), two collections of short stories, a
“serial novel,” Gentlemen of the Road, appearing at present in
the New York Times magazine, and the novel The Yiddish Policeman’s
Union, promised for May 1, 2007 ("Michael Chabon," 2007).
Jonathan Franzen, by contrast, was born “near Chicago” in
August 1959. He grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, but now lives
in New York City. He is the author of three novels, including the
National Book Award-winning The Corrections (2001), a collection
of essays, How to Be Alone (2002), and – most recently – an
autobiography, The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History (2006)
(Franzen, 2007).
Let’s make a little chart:
1959 Jonathan Franzen born (Chicago)
1963 Michael Chabon born (Washington, DC)
1987 The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
1987-92 abortive work on Fountain City
1988 The Twenty-Seventh City
1992 A Model World and Other Stories
–– Strong Motion
1995-2001 working on The Corrections
1995 Wonder Boys
1999 Werewolves in Their Youth: Stories
2000 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
2001 The Corrections
2002 Summerland
–– How to Be Alone
2003 (ed.) McSweeney’s Treasury of Thrilling Tales
2004 (ed.) The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist
–– The Final Solution
2006 The Discomfort Zone
2007 Gentlemen of the Road (15-part serial novel)
–– The Yiddish Policeman’s Union
There’s nothing actually impossible to reconcile here. If we assume,
for the sake of argument, that relaxed (Jewish) family-man Michael
Chabon acts as the mask for tortured (WASP) loner Jonathan Franzen,
then we can see at once that Chabon’s alleged traumatic battle with
his abortive second novel Fountain City – “Where Mysteries had been
a kind of Drake’s voyage, a wild jaunt in a trim ship to make
marvelous discoveries and conduct raucous pirate raids on the great
ports of American literature, Fountain City was more like the journey
of Lewis and Clark, a long, often dismal tramp through a vast terrain,
in pursuit of a grand but fundamentally mistaken prize. Mosquitoes,
sweltering heat, grave doubts, flawed maps – and, in my case, no
Pacific Ocean at the end” (Chabon, 1995) – coincides with Franzen’s
own fictional debut. Similarly, while the latter spent seven years
grappling with the intricacies of The Corrections, the former was
dashing off two novels and a collection of short stories.
The suspiciously long gestation periods in both author’s careers
are thus neatly plugged by the conjecture that they are one and the
same person. As Chabon remarks in Wonder Boys, his novel about an
author obsessed with an unfinishably vast master-work:
Motivation, inspiration were not the problem: on the contrary
I was always cheerful and workmanlike at the typewriter and
had never suffered from what’s called writer’s block; I didn’t
believe in it.
The problem, if anything, was precisely the opposite. I had
too much to write: too many fine and miserable buildings to
construct and streets to name and clock towers to set chiming
… it stood, as of that morning, at two thousand six hundred and
eleven pages, each of them revised and rewritten half a dozen
times. (Chabon, 2000, pp. 11-12).
Like Stephen King’s “Richard Bachman,” like Evan Hunter’s “Ed
McBain,” like Ruth Rendell’s “Barbara Vine,” Jonathan Franzen
appears to have constructed an alter-ego to draw off the flak,
to divert attention from himself, above all (perhaps) to justify
his inexhaustible creative fecundity. “Mr Difficult” (the title
of a new essay added to the 2003 paperback edition of How to Be
Alone) may well be, at the same time, America’s sweetheart:
“nominated by The New Yorker as one of twenty writers for the
21st Century,” according to the blurb for Wonder Boys (Chabon,
2000).[1]
It’s as if Mark Twain and Henry James turned out to have been
the same person all along.
(3-22/4/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 53-55.
•
Stanley Kubrick had shot remarked
Altered States the bookshop guy
he might have focussed on who sold me
the exploitation Primo Levi’s
of the Indians Collected Poems
instead of seeing it Fitzcarraldo
as one more – oh,
New Age yes –
romp & Spartacus
(29/3-3/4/05)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 56.
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Golem stories are all hard telling.
– Gustav Meyrink (Meyrink, 1972, p. 43).
But I can see that I’ll have to go back a bit in time to explain
this sudden interest in Summerland and the other works of Messrs
Chabon and Franzen.
While collecting various bits-and-pieces of local ephemera to
bring back as presents from the Czech Republic (as one tends to do
in exotic places), I came across a display-case full of Golem
matchboxes. There were also Kafka T-shirts, Prague Castle tea-
towels, Charles Bridge coasters, Metamorphosis mugs, but I won’t
bother you with those. (Funnily enough, I was actually looking for
pieces of Jaroslav Hašek – Good Soldier Švejk – memorabilia, but
that’s another story …)
The Golem matchbox defeated me. Its jaunty, kitschy absurdity
seemed pleasingly at variance with the heavy-handedness of so much
of the official culture I’d run into there: ostentatiously
“post-modern” plastic statues of President Havel with a bra and
suspenders, automobiles made out of toilet-rolls, pictures of
scruffy losers participating in happenings … all the stuff that
would have seemed so daring in the days of Yoko Ono. I bought it.
It wasn’t expensive.
What’s more, I had the perfect recipient in mind: my friend
Sarah Shieff of Waikato University, who makes a speciality of
Golem lore (one of her more daring conjectures is the relationship
between the Golem of Jewish legend and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Gollum,
that cringing, treacherous, slimy little sneak … (but see further
Shieff, 2006).
Sarah seemed inordinately pleased to get the matchbox (if I’d
known just how pleased she’d be, I might also have presented her
with the set of Golem playing cards which had been given away to
another friend). It looked like a fairly paltry offering to me,
but she repaid it by lending me two things: one a rather blurry
dub of the German expressionist film The Golem; the other a copy
of Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
The film proved to be a bit of a disappointment. I’d heard
it was a classic, but it was actually long, static and boring
(though the Golem himself has a kind of loony zest about him).
Predictably, I discovered later that there are in fact two films:
the 1915 Der Golem, dir. Henrik Galeen and Paul Wegener, based
loosely on Gustav Meyrink’s novel, and a 1920 “prequel” entitled
Der Golem, wie er in der Welt kam [The Golem: how he came into
the world], dir. Karl Boese and Paul Wegener (Internet movie
database, 2005). Both are generally entitled The Golem in English,
but the first – fabulously rare – is set in the present day, while
the second – described by one critic as more impressionist than
expressionist – takes place in 16th-century Prague. They’re
often confused with one another. It was the second one that Sarah
lent me.
Chabon’s book, by contrast, was a revelation. I started to read
it the evening I got it out of a tepid sense of duty to my hosts,
but was immediately glommed. For those of you who don’t know, it’s
the picaresque tale of the intertwining lives of two cousins,
American-born Sam Clay (Samuel Louis Klayman), and his Czech
cousin Josef Kavalier, set in the 1940s and 50s, spanning two
continents, a host of minor characters etc. etc. Your typical
Pulitzer-prize winning pap, in other words. What made it stand
out, for me, was the author’s obsessive interest in Golden Age
American comics (his heroes first create, then make a living
writing and drawing the adventures of a costumed super-hero
called “The Escapist” ).[2] That, and the marvellous opening
sequence where Josef, a trained escape-artist, makes his exit
from Nazi-occupied Prague in the same crate which is being used
to ship the original Golem to safety in the Baltic states … Well,
you’ll have to try it yourself to see what sets it apart from
other sprawling epics of the same ilk.
As I read on, I began to realise just how much this Michael
Chabon had been dogging me. His first novel, The Mysteries of
Pittsburgh, had usurped a title which I very much wanted to use
for my own unpublished (and probably unpublishable) first novel.
The Mysteries of Auckland, my anticipated homage to the world of
Eugène Sue, had to give way to the Borgesian Keep Reading as
the Day Declines …
Then there was Wonder Boys, one of my all-time favourite
American films. I hadn’t made the connection, hadn’t even realised
the film was based on a novel, let alone one by Michael Chabon.
This saga of Michael Douglas’s Lost Weekend on an American college
campus seemed to me at the time (2000-2001, around the turn of
the millennium) to have rolled every cliché about hard-bitten
American writers into one pleasing package. They all used
typewriters rather than computers, they were all drunk or
stoned almost all the time, everyone admired them and hung
on their every word, and they always got the girl … In short,
however hungover, down-and-out, stubbly or ill-dressed they might
be, they were the epitome of cool. What more can you ask for in
a fantasy?
Then, hunting through a second-hand shop for a copy of Kavalier
and Clay (having had, reluctantly, to return Sarah’s copy), I
came across Chabon’s Summerland, a curious amalgam of Harry
Potter and Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which
uses the metaphor of baseball to motivate its juvenile hero and
heroine’s journey-of-self-discovery. And that, of course, was the
coincidence which alerted me to the Jonathan Franzen connection.
(3-22/4/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 57-59.
•
Trying to write a poem called “Things
to Do in Auckland When You’re
Dead” while watching Barton
Fink I find the pencil
necks are ganging
up on me
again
de-
vising
scripts for a-
ments to deform
unlike the other writers
hard at work on Wallace Beery
wrestling flicks … Let’s put a stop to that
right now
(24/2-22/4/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 60.
•
In his various entities he created his own epics.
– Jack Vance, The Killing Machine (Vance, 1997, p. 286).
So what of Jonathan Franzen? What’s his part in this equation?
When I say that he’s the man who dissed Oprah Winfrey – or, rather,
the man who had his novel unselected for Oprah Winfrey’s bookclub
– I imagine you’ll remember what I’m talking about.
His website (Jonathan Franzen, 2001) still provides links to a
lengthy debate on the subject:
Jonathan Franzen stands accused of insufficient Oprah
gratitude. And since his infamous banishment from the
Winfrey polis on Oct. 12 [2001], that sin, in turn,
has dilated into nearly every character flaw imaginable
— he’s arrogant, elitist, hypocritical, snobbish, and
flat-out stupid. Such, at any rate, has been the verdict
of nearly every commentator since the curiously inert
affaire Oprah has exercised the literary world and its wags. …
But what, exactly, has he said? He’s ambivalent,
that’s all. In an interview with the Portland Oregonian,
he did utter the fateful characterization of himself as a
writer “solidly in the high art literary tradition.” …
Likewise, his other infamous pronouncement, on the Powell’s
bookstore Web site, bespeaks less foppish disdain for the
besotted taste of the masses than simple bewilderment.
Yes, he said that Oprah has “picked enough shmaltzy
one-dimensional [novels] that even I cringe.” But he
also rushed to remind his interviewer that “I think she’s
really smart and fighting the good fight. And she’s an
easy target.”
[Chris Lehmann, Posting Thursday Nov 1, 2001]
and so on …
Newsweek quoted a literary agent as saying, “Most of the
people I hear talking about all this now refer to Franzen
along the lines of ‘that pompous prick.’ ” Another agent,
quoted in the New York Observer, called him an “ungrateful
bastard.” What publishing person in his right mind would
get on the wrong side of Oprah, when she has the power to
make your career with a single phone call?
And any writer who defends Franzen in this fight does
so at the risk of ruining his own chances of ever scoring
that cash cow. Why else would Rick Moody and Harold Bloom
tell the New York Times’ David Kirkpatrick that it was
hypocritical to object to Winfrey’s logo?
[Eliza Truitt, Posting Thursday Nov 1, 2001]
It isn’t that Franzen actually refused Oprah Winfrey the right to
“select” The Corrections for her book-club; the problem is that
she “disinvited” him after hearing some of his negative comments
about 1/ her irritating logo, and 2/ the quality of some of the
earlier selections. As a result, he became America’s pre-eminent
example of an élitist literary snob.
That damning central accusation informs most of Franzen’s essay
collection How to be Alone. Am I or am I not a snob? Is it or is it
not possible to write “well” – or to the best of one’s ability – and
“accessibly” at the same time?
In some of the essays he comes across as the worse kind of
hypocritical fencesitter: “To the man-in-the-street who, I’m sorry
to say, / Is a keen observer of life, / The word intellectual
suggests right away / A man who’s untrue to his wife” (Auden, 1991,
p. 298). “Sifting the Ashes,” for example, where he begins by
pointing out all the myriad evils of smoking, and then justifies
the fact that he still smokes by suggesting how nobly the act
“[inhales] contradiction and [breathes] out ambivalence.” (Franzen,
2003, p. 168). Yeah right.
In others we come, I suspect, a little closer to the heart of
his dilemma. In “Mr. Difficult,” for example, he points out to a
correspondent who described him as “a pompous snob, and a real
ass-hole” that “Even as an adult, I consider myself a slattern
of a reader”:
I have started (in many cases, more than once) Moby-Dick,
The Man Without Qualities, Mason & Dixon, Don Quixote,
Remembrance of Things Past, Doctor Faustus, Naked Lunch,
The Golden Bowl, and The Golden Notebook without coming
anywhere near finishing them. (Franzen, 2003, p. 241).
Just plain folks, in other words – not one of those fancy-pantses
who actually get to the end of “high art literary” novels … He
proceeds to damn with faint praise the career of William Gaddis,
author of The Recognitions, which Franzen did once succeed in
reading by dint of taking ten days off from his own work. Gaddis,
the “Mr. Difficult” of the title, was – in Franzen’s view at any
rate – a genuinely snobby, élitist ass-hole who wrote genuinely
difficult books. By contrast, despite his admitted use of “fancy
words … like “diurnality” and “antipodes” [and] phrases like
“electro-pointillist Santa Claus faces” (Franzen, 2003, p. 238),
the author of The Corrections is a positive W. C. Fields!
In “Meet me in St Louis,” Franzen chronicles in embarrassing
detail the lengths he actually went to in order to placate Oprah’s
Book Club before the final débâcle of the “disinvitation.” He
allows himself to be poked, prodded and packaged by a film crew
until the reader positively longs for him to grow a backbone
and tell them to back off. No dice. The ghastly travesty
continues. His excuse is that he’s the kind of person “who
instantly acquires a Texas accent in Texas”:
When I talk to admirers of Winfrey, I’ll experience a glow
of gratitude and good will and agree that it’s wonderful to
see television expanding the audience for books. When I talk
to detractors of Winfrey, I’ll experience the bodily
discomfort I felt when [during the filming] we were
turning my father’s oak tree into schmaltz, and I’ll
complain about the Book Club logo. (Franzen, 2003, p. 300).
As a result, “my sense of dividedness will only deepen.”
It’s easy to make fun of this beginners’ treatise on Alienation
for Beginners: “How to sound like a tormented intellectual in
fifteen easy lessons.” One has to remind oneself constantly that
this was a real dispute, with serious repercussions. The inherent
absurdity of jumped-up talk-show host Oprah Winfrey as arbiter
of American letters (with the apparent endorsement of such
luminaries as Harold Bloom) should not obscure the difficulty of
Franzen’s task. He’s forced to explain the inevitable trahison
des clercs: the tendency of all writers to bite the hand that
feeds them, to an audience of Dr. Phil watchers. He doesn’t make
a very good job of it, but who would?
Without the Chabon connection, one might be tempted to write
off Jonathan Franzen as one more victim of the increasing
impossibility of communication between high culture and low
culture. How can the Blooms and Franzens speak meaningfully
to (let alone for) the people who attend Monster Truck rallies?
Franzen’s alter-ego, however, his Golem, Michael Chabon, can
chatter on about baseball and comics to the manner born. His
dividedness has deepened, all right – for a moment there, in
2001, as the Twin Towers fell and L’Affaire Oprah ground on,
it must have threatened to swallow him up.
Then came the National Book Award, and – above all – the
Pulitzer Prize.
(3-22/4/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 61-64.
•
fear – lunacy … Where’s this
going? as the radiator clicks
off. I used to play cards
in the winter now
I simply play
the odds
she
counters
– icy calm
(surprisingly,
for such a one-eyed
suck) I thank God I was born
with a beady-eyed sneer – so Lee
Van Cleef
(11/7/04-21/4/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007):65.
•
Gustav Meyrink: The Golem (1972)Photograph: Mudra
One person is the whole world
– Rabbi Hillel
But why do I refer to Chabon as Franzen’s Golem? Who, or what, is
the Golem? It is, to begin with, one of the central metaphors in
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
There’s a lot to be said on the subject, and very little consensus,
it seems to me, but I’ll begin by quoting an encyclopaedia entry
about it:
Golem, in Jewish legend, an image or form that is given
life through a magical formula. A golem frequently took
the form of a robot, or automaton. The word means “embryo”,
or anything that is not fully developed. In the Hebrew
Bible (see Psalms 139:16)[3] and in the Talmud, the term
refers to an unformed substance. Its present meaning
developed during the Middle Ages, when legends arose of
wise men who could instil life in effigies by the use
of a charm. The creatures could be used to carry out
their creators’ commands and were later conceived of
as offering special protection to Jews. The best-known
of the golem stories concerned Rabbi Juda Löw of Prague,
who was said to have created a golem that he used as his
servant but was forced to destroy it when it became unruly.
Der Golem (1916) by Gustav Meyrink takes the legend
of the golem as its theme. (Microsoft Encarta, 2003).
The Golem, in other words, is a kind of mystical Frankenstein’s
monster, always liable to turn on its creator.
The Golem had no inclinations, either good or bad. Whatever
action he performed he did under compulsion and out of fear
lest he should be turned again into dust and reduced to
naught once more … nothing would stop him in the execution
of anything that he had undertaken. (Rappoport, 1937).
Rabbi Löw (allegedly) had to remove the “tablet on which he had
written the Ineffable Name from under the Golem’s tongue,” every
Friday, “as he was afraid lest the Sabbath should make the Golem
immortal.” On one occasion he forgot this duty, and as a result
it ran amok.
There are many other versions of the legend. In the 1920 silent
film, the Golem saves the Emperor Rudolf from a grisly death, thus
persuading him to rescind his decree to banish all the Jews from
Prague. All the commentators do agree on one thing, however – the
creature was designed to protect the Jewish communities of Eastern
Europe from accusations of ritual murder and bloodshed. Where
opinions differ is on how well it fulfilled this task.
Gustav Meyrink takes a rather different slant. For him the Golem
is a kind of psychic doppelgänger. On the few occasions it
actually manifests itself in his strange, elliptical prose
fantasia, it has the narrator’s own face, for:
as that same Golem stiffened into clay the instant that
mysterious phase was removed from its lips, so must, I
thought, these humans dwindle to soulless entities so
soon as was extinguished within them some slightest
spark of an idea, some species of dumb striving, however
irrelevant, already deteriorated with most of them, from
the look of it, into a mere aimless sloth (Meyrink, 1972,
p. 26).
We are all lifeless Golems, the author implies, unless we are
engaged in the quest for transcendence. The novel ends with a
vision of the perfect alchemical union of man and woman,
accomplished under the twin sign of Isis and Osiris: “a
hermaphrodite in two halves, the right female, the left male
… its golden head is in the form of a hare. The ears of it
stand up high and close together, giving the semblance of two
pages of an open book.” (Meyrink, 1972, p. 287).
That book, presumably, is the book IBBUR, repeatedly invoked
in the text, a kind of super-Kabbalistic ritual volume, written in
Hebrew, and containing a whole variety of mumbo-jumbo fin-de-siècle
secrets of the universe. In another sense, it is perhaps Meyrink’s
own book, a runaway success in the feverish, super-charged psychical
atmosphere of First World War Austria.
Michael Chabon has another, even more ingenious take on the Golem.
When the young Czech artist Josef Kavalier, early in The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is asked to draw his own idea of
a comic-book Superman for a prospective publisher, he produces a
sketch of a “tall, brawny man … [with] four Hebrew characters
etched into his forehead.”
“Is that the Golem?” said Anapol. “My new Superman is
the Golem?”
“I didn’t – the conceit is new to me,” Joe said, his
English stiffening up on him. “… To me , this Superman
is … maybe … only an American Golem.” He looked for
support to Sammy. “Is that right?”
“Huh?” said Sammy, struggling to conceal his dismay.
“Yeah, sure, but Joe .. the Golem is … well … Jewish.”
(Chabon, 2001, pp. 85-86).
The name of the original Golem, Rabbi Löw’s bond-servant, was
Joseph. Sam has Americanised his surname from “Klayman” (Clay-
man) to Clay. The symbiotic relationship of the two cousins –
their friendship and artistic collaboration – culminates in love
for the same woman, Rosa Luxemburg Saks (named for the leader of
the abortive Spartacist revolution in post-war Germany), and in
a child, Tommy, fathered by Josef but brought up by Sam.
Which is the original and which the copy?
Neither, one is forced to conclude. And both.
(3-22/4/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 67-69.
•
of Perpetual Tension intercede for me when the dehumidifier kicks the bucket & there’s nowhere else to go but Tamaki hunting for head-office ‘up the stairs – just ask for Craig’ a girl xeroxing in her tracksuit bottoms her colleague who can’t work the cash machine Our Lady of Perpetual anxiety when the calendar skips two beats two months’ marking jammed into two days Our Lady when you find you’ve got to buy those spines you eyed up hours before then get to K Rd half a quark too late the bus doors are wedged open the men in silver suits unzip their skin
(1/10/04-21/4/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 70.
•
We finance your future, not your past – Trustbank TV Ad Terezín, or Theresienstadt, was built as an Austrian garrison-town in the late eighteenth century. The whole area was surrounded by deep ditches and immense earth and brick fortifications. The smaller, satellite redoubt outside the main walls came, over time, to be employed as a prison. During the First World War, Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was incarcerated in it. He died there of influenza in 1918. After the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, Terezín was turned into a concentration camp. It was actually used as a marshalling point for the death-camps further east, but the Nazis went to great lengths to persuade foreign observers, especially the International Red Cross, that it was a kind of idyllic spa-town: hence the lying propaganda film (directed by Kurt Gerron) about the so-called “Paradise Ghetto.”Of the 140,000 people who were interned at Terezín, 33,000 died and 87,000 were transported to Nazi death camps elsewhere. Of those, 15,000 were children. Only … 132 children lived. (Fields, 2005).The concentration camp command made little or no attempt to combat the various epidemics that broke out periodically in the overcrowded ghetto, but conditions there were generally more tolerable than in the other camps. There was a lively cultural life, including lectures, concerts and even hand-copied magazines, and the children were able to continue their education in makeshift schools. Thousands of their drawings and poems still survive, and can be seen on display in the Terezín Memorial museum in the centre of the town. The small fortress became an SS prison, and was used for recalcitrant prisoners (including the poet and resistance leader Robert Desnos) from all over Europe. Brutal executions and torture were commonplace. Many of the cells and dormitories still remain in their original condition. In August 2002, during the unprecedented floods that inundated much of the Czech republic, including the centre of Prague, the Elbe overflowed its banks and drowned the lower floors of the Terezín Memorial museum. The damage was even worse in the small fortress, which was almost entirely under water. A concerted international effort has, however, succeeded in restoring most of the exhibits.
(3-22/4/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 71-72.
•
music lots of fear as the motor-mowers start up The Big OE we got on really well driving round Paris on the wrong side of the road That was amazing Montmartre there the locals very very kind
(25-26/2/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 73.
•
Kidnapped by communism for 40 years, [Prague has] opened its
gates to a flood of happy-go-lucky tourists
– Kris Dando, “Nine Great Reasons to Visit Prague” (Dando, 2005).
Recent visitor Kris Dando’s nine “reasons” are arranged under the
following headings:
• Getting Around
“One of the features of Prague is that it is compact and simple
to find your way around.”
It’s interesting to recognize – and not recognize – your own
experiences in getting to know a new place when reading about it
afterwards. My main memory of the trams is the strange whistling
clangour they made gliding past the windows of my room late at night
(they can’t have stopped running till the early hours, if at all).
As for the metro, what struck me about it was the steepness of
the escalators angling their way down deep under the earth. On one
occasion one of them seized up, forcing all of us to climb back to
the surface. Louts riding in the opposite direction hooted and jeered
to see so many elderly, heavily-laden ladies and gentlemen struggling
wearily up the precipitous incline.
• Cuisine
“The food is overall pretty bland and basic, involving uninspiring
meats like sausage and dumplings and the vegetables are pretty scarce.
Cabbage is very popular.”
The food is a bit on the heavy side. The beer, however, is
excellent, and cheaper than any other beverage (including water). As
a result, I put on a lot of weight while I was there. Almost every
pub seemed to offer cheap, reliable food all through the day.
It was, however, rather appalling to see so many prosperous-looking
Czechs sitting proudly in McDonalds or KFC, scarfing down gourmet Big
Macs and chicken nuggets.
• Guided Tours
“We had a diverse mix of people: singles and couples, Germans, Aussies,
Brits and an obnoxious cabbie from San Francisco.”
I didn’t go on any tours while I was there, preferring to walk
around on my own. Perhaps my most interesting encounter was with
a pair of young Japanese at the foot of the castle, vainly trying
to make sense of a truncated tourist map. They asked me for
directions in German. Having ascertained that they spoke no
English, I was forced to admit that I, too, was a stranger
(Ich bin auch Ausländer) in town …
• Castles, castles, castles
“With a magnificent cliff-top outlook, a 1000-year-old history
going back to a simple walled-in compound in the 9th century,
and a breathtaking scale that qualifies it as the biggest ancient
castle in the world, Prague Castle is the indisputable centrepiece
of the Czech capital.”
It’s actually more like a small town than your normal image of
a castle. Wandering through it, I began to understand what Kafka
(who lived for a time in Golden Lane, a little cul-de-sac running
down the side of the walls) had in mind when he wrote, in Der
Schloss, of an immense administrative labyrinth unreachable by
any but the elect.
• Take A River Cruise
“The price included a few free drinks and buffet dinner but
sitting on the boat’s top deck, gazing at Prague by night was worth
the admission alone.”
I didn’t do this, either, even though a river cruise is usually
my favourite thing to do in a new place. Perhaps the city streets
were just too fascinating. Perhaps (it was Midwinter) the waters of
the Vltava / Moldau looked just too cold and grey.
• Prague Memorials
“Small prayer papers covered with small stones and coins adorn
many tombstones [in the Old Jewish Cemetery]. One of the most
adorned is that of 16th century scholar Rabbi Low about whom
many legends are told, most notably that he created the ‘Golem’,
a servant made of mud who later went on a destructive rampage and
had to be destroyed.”
• Museums
“Objects from 153 Jewish communities throughout Bohemia and Moravia
were brought to Prague by the Nazis in 1942, to be used in a planned
‘museum of an extinct people’ after their extermination programme
was complete.”
• A Bit Of Entertainment
“I wasn’t too sure I’d enjoy it but was it was good wholesome fun:
two princes fighting over the same girl, duels, wrath of the Gods,
soaring violins – I forgot I was watching string-led puppets after
a while!”
I missed the puppet theatre – though a good impression of it is
given by Jan Švankmajer’s 1994 feature-film Faust – but we did go
to the Opera, the Ballet, and the Black Light Theatre, where objects
float about the stage as if by magic. One of the pieces there was
about a love affair between a taxi driver and a mermaid, unable
to settle on whether to live under water or in the world above.
• The Countryside
“Undoubtedly the highlight (well, for me anyway) was the cemetery
at Sedlic [sic], just a few minutes out of Kutna Hora. Macabre
is an understatement - the place has an ossuary, a huge building
filled with the bones of over 40,000 people. Yes, bones.”
“More than a tad creepy,” Kris Dando calls it. Again, I was
alerted to its existence by one of Jan Švankmajer’s films, the
ten-minute short “Kostnice” (1970). “You can smell the death,”
as one commentator remarks (Internet movie database, 2005).
(3-22/4/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 74-76.
•
Sun in Scorpio (Tropical zodiac)
At times you may be considered by others as
somewhat different, although on your own
part, when those of comparable mental ability
are part of your experience, you are known as
a soul with nobleness of purpose and high-
mindedness of principles. …
Long ago you may have been part of the
once mighty Mongolian people of the ancient
Gobi desert, or among the culturally advanced
Chinese. From such lifetimes as these, you
have the ability to perform what is expected of
you and to do what is necessary without being
held back by your feelings or by
considerations of a personal nature. This is a
strength you inherited from one or more past
lives in these remote Asian cultures, whose
people shared this self-denying trait. …
Perhaps you were once a young Chinese
woman who gave birth to many children, ran
a large household and pleased the master of
the house. You may have done all this while
quietly enduring the agony of brutally bound
feet, which was once a cultural requirement
for the true ladies of ancient China. …
– Online Horoscope (Oct 27, 2004)
(27/10/04)
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- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 77.
•
The real question about Auschwitz is, not why did it happen,
but why doesn’t it happen more often?
– Woody Allen, Hannah and Her Sisters
But maybe you knew all this already. Maybe I’m the last person on
earth to whom this is news. I haven’t actually seen any references
to the Franzen-Chabon double-act anywhere, but that doesn’t prove
anything.
Whether or not Jonathan Franzen actually is Michael Chabon
(and there are an appalling number of doubles, masks, deceptive
resemblances, and completely counterfeit pasts in the latter’s
books – one reason why I read him as the carbon-copy and Franzen
as the fons et origo), the question remains why it should mean so
much to me to demonstrate the fact.
The Summerland copyright page is, after all, my only smoking gun
– all the other evidence is completely circumstantial. It could be
a mistake, a mere misprint. Franzen would have to have been very
busy indeed to create two thriving literary careers in the time it
normally takes to jump-start one.
On the one hand, of course, I’m fascinated by literary impostures
and doubles, by the way in which they can release a kind of energy
unavailable to the everyday self.
I’ve created a fair number of pseudonyms and alter egos myself –
or, rather, found myself writing in someone else’s voice. Lorraine
West, author of Everything a Teenage Girl Should Know (2004) and
Wendy Nu, co-author of The Britney Suite (2001) are two who have made
it between covers, but there are, I’m afraid, various others still
lurking in the back issues of small magazines.
“Every woman adores a fascist,” said Sylvia Plath (with doubtful
veracity) in “Daddy” (Plath, 1974, p. 55). Every writer adores the
double. It stands for so much! It can act as the voice of conscience
(Poe’s “William Wilson”), dramatise the split psyche (Gogol’s “The Nose”),
or simply point to the crucial disjunction between the worldly and the
artistic selves (Henry James’s “The Private Life”).
On the other hand, there’s the Golem itself – that brute lump of
clay brought to life by a few scrawled hieroglyphics.
The Golem, as we’ve seen above, can be seen as a type of the
superman – a projection of our own idealised strengths and
aspirations. But it also dramatises our Jekyll-and-Hyde duality –
the masks we use to reveal a hidden self.
I’ve already talked about Jonathan Franzen’s attempts, in How
to be Alone, to explain (indeed, embody) the “treason of clerks,”
their general untrustworthiness and tendency to be members of the
awkward squad. Why do they always seem to satirise their patrons
(Oprah) and speak up for their foes (William Gass)?
Where is that betrayal more apparent than in my response
to Terezín?
Even before I saw the place – Terezín, Theresienstadt, whatever
you want to call it – I knew I had to write about it. I knew I
had to write about it the moment I saw that it would be difficult
to get there – that there was a resistance to overcome. “Press on
the pressure point because it hurts,” is what I wrote about it.
Press on the pressure point because it hurts. No matter who it
hurts. In a sense it’s easier if it’s only oneself.
The Holocaust is such a simple morality tale to those of us
born so long after the war, so far away from its physical legacy.
It’s so easy to paint the protagonists in black and white, Oskar
Schindlers and Josef Mengeles, oppressors and victims.
Everything’s more complicated when you’re on the spot, in the
New Europe, that constantly-expanding superstate which swallowed
up (took in?) the Czech republic just a couple of months before my
arrival, surpassing the wildest dreams of the Holy Roman Empire.
I knew, of course, that the real story of the Terezín ghetto
was far beyond my powers. I had no right to tell it – no angle
of engagement with it beyond normal human sympathy with the
suffering that went on there. Watching Prisoner of Paradise
(2002), the Oscar-nominated documentary about Kurt Gerron,
the infamous director of the Theresienstadt propaganda film,
had given me some idea of the facts about the “model ghetto”
before I left New Zealand. Reading the book I have not seen
a butterfly around here (1993), available in numerous languages
from the Jewish museum in Prague, made me aware of the heart-
wrenching character of the site itself.
It was difficult to get there, though – it did turn into a quest
– and that made me suspect there must be something behind this
apparent reluctance to face up to the past. There was something
there needing to be examined. For my own satisfaction, if for
no other reason. “Nothing if not curious,” that’s my motto. Nosey,
some people would call it.
The Māori politician John Tamihere landed himself in the doghouse
in mid-2005 for suggesting that enough has already been said and
written about the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. He claims that
it’s time to move on, that dwelling on past injustices tends to
foster a “victim” mentality. I can see his point, but I don’t
really agree. I wouldn’t necessarily accuse Tamihere of this,
but I suspect that it’s generally those who’ve done well out of
the past who are most eager to forget it.
Nevertheless, I think he speaks very strongly for our collective
will to forget. It seems to be almost a biological necessity in the
aftermath of tragedy to hide and lick your wounds and turn your thoughts
elsewhere. It’s no coincidence that “war literature” tends to appear
either during a war or twenty years afterwards. The books that came out
a year or two after the First and Second World Wars were mostly ignored
or damned with faint praise.
My Czech hosts in Prague must feel something similar. In their case
there is the additional injustice that half a century of suffering
under Russian occupation is mostly overshadowed, in the eyes of the
world, by the events of 1938-44 (don’t forget that the war began a
year early in Czechoslovakia, as a result of the betrayal of Munich …).
It must seem, to them, the height of bad manners for people to come
barging into their country demanding a package tour of the murder
sites. “Tourist,” after all, equates pretty closely with “voyeur.”
One local analogy that occurred to me at the time was a foreign
visitor to Auckland, eager to see the sights, asking to see Bastion
Point first of all (“I hear your police force brutally manhandled a
mass of peaceful Māori land protestors there; I’ve always wanted to
see the place …”) I imagine that most of us might want to downplay
the incident, put it in perspective, explain its larger implications –
reroute them to a nice beach like Piha or Wenderholm, basically.
I’ve never been welcomed more heartily, or with more open arms,
than by my hosts in the Czech republic. Not only my friends John
and Jana, but Jana’s family went out of their way to make me feel
at home. Why, then, do I still feel compelled to touch on the sore
point – to take a gawk inside Bluebeard’s chamber, brave the
forbidden door, the one place they least wanted me to see in the
cornucopia of wonders that is Prague?
How can I possibly justify that lack of good manners?
I’m forced back, once again, onto the metaphor of the Golem: the
emissary you send out to do your dirty work, that other whom you
suppress or deny at your peril. Socrates called it his Daemon.
It prompted him to ask all those awkward questions which led to
a death sentence for “corrupting youth.” Then it demanded that he
stay and take the hemlock rather than fleeing into exile.
It was that same still, small voice that prompted Jonathan
Franzen to open his fat mouth and denounce Oprah Winfrey. “There’s
something in you that’s like biting on tinfoil” (King, 1990, p. 59),
as one of the characters in Stephen King’s The Stand says to the
closest thing to an artist in that book.
There’s something in every writer, I’m afraid, that’s like
biting on tinfoil: a basic ingratitude, a cold calculation of effect:
The Golem had no inclinations, either good or bad …
nothing would stop him in the execution of anything that
he had undertaken.
As a human being, I have absolutely no right to sit in judgment
on the people who live in or near Terezín or the thousands of
other camps lying like unhealed scars on the body of Europe.
No right and no inclination. As a writer, though, I have to poke
in my nose. If one could feel sure that it really was all in the
past, that such things could never recur, then it would be easier
to leave it alone.
It’s not all in the past, though. It’s now. In the Czech republic
itself (as in many other parts of Europe) the victimisation of the
Romany continues (See further Polansky, 1998). That’s one small
example. If we continue to conspire to forget the enormities we’ve
committed in the past, where’s the incentive to rein ourselves in
right now? As the children starve in the Congo and the bodies pile
up in Iraq (or Israel/Palestine), we’re in no condition to pat
ourselves on the back just yet.
The Golem, to be sure, is a dangerous type of Superman. As a
truth-seeking crusader, it has an unfortunate tendency to get
distracted, run amok. But maybe that’s why it’s such an appropriate
symbol for most of us. The Man of Steel makes a pitilessly rigid,
inhuman model to live up to (you’d think even the “world’s policemen”
would have noticed that by now). Personally, I agree with Chabon /
Franzen: it’s better our heroes should walk on feet of clay.
(3-22/4/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 78-81.
Notes:
[1] The same disparity is maintained in their respective “official” websites. www.jonathanfranzen.com opens onto a chummy set of bio-bibliographical details; www.michaelchabon.com leads to nothing but a promotional poster for the 1977 Sitka World’s Fair, and a schedule of upcoming “Chabon dates.”
[2] Now the hero of a series of real (albeit pastiche) comics, collected in Michael Chabon Presents (2004): The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist. 2 vols. Milwaukie, Oregon: Dark Horse Books.
[3] Psalms 139: 16: "Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” [King James / Authorised Version (1611)].
•
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- Volavková, H., Franková, A., & Povolná, H. (Eds.) (1993). I have not seen a butterfly around here: Children’s drawings and poems from Terezín. Trans. J. Kadečková, J. Nĕmcová & E. Pargeretová. Prague: The Jewish Museum.
(3-22/4/05)
Publications:
- To Terezín. Poems & Travelogue by Jack Ross. Afterword by Martin Edmond. Social and Cultural Studies, 8. ISSN 1175-7132 (Auckland: Massey University, 2007): 82-83.
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Ossuary Chapel of all Saints (Sedlec)Photograph: Jana Hašková (December, 2004)
Jack Ross teaches Academic and Creative writing in the School of Social and Cultural Studies at Massey Albany. He is the author of various books of poems, including City of Strange Brunettes (Pohutukawa Press, 1998) and Chantal’s Book (HeadworX, 2002), as well as four works of fiction: Nights with Giordano Bruno (Bumper Books, 2000), Monkey Miss Her Now (Danger Publishing, 2004), Trouble in Mind (Titus, 2005), and The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis (Titus, 2006).
He also edited, with Jan Kemp, the spoken-word anthologies Classic NZ Poets & Contemporary NZ Poets in Performance (AUP, 2006 & 2007).
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