A little while ago I did a favour for my publisher and sold books at the launch for another one of her authors: Aaron Peck. It was a very interesting evening at Art Speak in Vancouver. I find it fascinating to be a witness at any sort of intimate event such as this. Particularly something so specific as a book launching. Having had my own book launches, I was curious about observing it from such a unique position. Of course I have been to other book launches by other authors, whom I either know or do not, but as a member of the audience, or a supportive friend. Here I was a book seller, supporting the press and a fellow colleague, whom I did not know.
It was interesting to try and guess the various relationships different people at the event might have with the author. I found I could guess with some apparent accuracy by way of their countenance, their disposition, how close they were. There is a reverence in launches, palpable, not unlike a graduation, a coming out party, or a bar-mitzvah/bat-mitzvah. I liked Aaron immediately because I could tell that he was both thrilled and embarrassed by the attention, an ambivalence I can relate to. I grew more interested in the prospect of the book as I sussed out the atmosphere of the launch and of Aaron himself. There is much to be gleaned from atmosphere.
I am always interested in Pedilar Press authors, partly because of vanity, I’ll warrant, but also because I know that Beth Follett has very exacting taste, and her choices, as far as I have sampled them, have not disappointed me yet. Her press is revered by many, as is the work of her designer Zab, whose work I was drawn to before I was even aware of the press. But there was something about this work that I was curious about in the same way that another Pedlar author, Lorenz Peter’s work immediately captivated me. In both cases, I felt in the presence of a kindred spirit. Sitting at the table with his books flying off of it, during lulls from people-watching and selling, I started to read the book: The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis. I thought, this is a writer after my own heart.
I commend Aaron Peck for his reading that evening. After a fine introduction to his work, he nervously, yet charmingly read from what I now realise is a book that could be tricky to decide what to read from. And indeed, he prefaced his reading with an acknowledgement of some controversy between he and some others who apparently had weighed in on the consideration. I believe he choose wisely. He read well, albeit briefly, and then left the stage and vanished largely from my view and from the room at large. Later, he showed up around my table, after I had the benefit of having read perhaps the first 15 pages or so, and of course having heard him read some of the same pages aloud.
By this point many of the people who had come to the launch had dispersed. I completely understood his inclination to stay away from the main room and harbour himself near to where the wine was being sold. I would have done the same. I have done the same. Once the coast was more or less clear, however, and he ventured out to meet me, we spoke amiably, and I in a congratulatory manner. We both agreed it was good to meet another Pedlar author, and wished to speak with one another again and further, which we did later in the week when more Pedlar authors launched and read more books, this time with Beth Follett in the house. I have more to say about that, and the books that came of it, as well as with regard to Beth’s fine novel Tell It Slant, from Coach House Press, later. For now, here are my reflections on Aaron Peck’s book.
There are some very nice sentences in the book. Like: In Yaletown the glass towers seem vulnerable. - And one of which, I thought went right to the heart of the writing itself; a line spoken by a character to Bernard Willis: Do you always tell stories that have no point? - It is meant, I think, to be a cutting question, but it is treated as a fair one, one to properly take into consideration, rather than responded to it as though it were ironic, like as though the question were really a directive that might have been heard as: Don’t tell stories that don’t have a point to them.
It might have well been the character’s point to have her question so received as such a directive, although with some humour. Regardless, the character receives it in two ways. One, yes, as her gesture, signifying an opinion characteristic of her disposition and challenging the parameters of the relationship between them, and thus calling into question his sense of his interest in her, and of hers in him; but also two, as a personal challenge to the value, quality, interest of stories, which is to say writing, without a point, or any obvious one in any case.
This is a bracketed novel, and in many ways I believe that bracket, that contextual frame, is a faux placement of a point, answering to the challenge, appeasing the call for it, while at the same time annexing it, marginalizing it in a manner of speaking. The bracket, as I call it, is the set up for the manuscript, the said bewilderments, which are constituted as a found manuscript published posthumously by “the editors,” who are themselves clearly a fiction. It is not at all as if Aaron Peck wishes you to believe it. It is only a device. And by extension, I really like to think that it being clearly a device, is precisely the point about what you might call the point of the writing (perhaps any writing), or the point of the story. The point is a device, a lure.
Is it writing, or is it a story? This is always an interesting question for me. I like writing and I like stories, and although stories of course must be written, I do see them as distinct practices, things, gestures, aesthetic operations, orientations, whatever. Sometimes something (a book, a piece, etc.) is both, at once or periodically throughout. Usually, actually, most books I do enjoy are both in some measure.
There is a story, or stories, here in this book, and the frame, bracket, context, is a story with a point, but mostly the book, as far as I’m concerned, is writing, which needn’t have a point, because the point is in the writing itself, in the sense of: the point of the story is in the telling. This is very much writing that is reading. There is a way of writing where what you are doing is reading the world, the things, the relationships, or whatever around you, and that is what the Bewilderments of Bernard Willis is doing. I quite like the way it does it. It has a pastoral quality about it, which extends its interest in landscapes to those of both an exterior and interior nature.
What is the relationship between the two? What associations are drawn between these landscapes, the objects, buildings, people and spacial arrangements within them and their perception, their perceiver? These are things to think about while reading the book. Who is the narrator? This is also interesting to wonder about.
There are switches in the pronoun case, which makes the narrator slip from an inferred first person to third and even second person form. The narrator is ostensibly Bernard Willis, that is, in the Bewilderments manuscript, but it is not clearly always so, and why should it be, when he is a fiction anyway? This kind of slippage, which I like to perform myself, can have the effect of making a reader cognizant of the writing as writing, as in: the writer is doing something here to call attention to the writing itself, and to the devices, the tricks of the trade, used as conventions, and by revealing those conventions, it brings the reader a view into the creation itself, and to the reader’s role or relationship with/in it. The writing is like letter writing to me, which is to say that it has that quality of personal address, intimate, poetic, expressive, playful, sharing a confidence. This book is charming.
Now, any book, or any thing, can remind you of another. This can be a thing to celebrate or not. I do celebrate it sometimes and not other times. This time I do celebrate the way that it reminds me of Jack Kerouac. This is not obvious. I do not expect that anybody else would necessarily share this observation, this association. It has simply stirred me in this way. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because it made me feel reflective in a similar way that the sketch writing in Kerouac’s brilliant Visions of Neal did. It made me quiet reflective observing. It made me nebulous in a pleasant way. Like idyl reading of papers, magazines on Sunday, while thinking perhaps of going for a stroll, and chatting now and then a little bit about the things you read the things you see whatever you happen to be thinking about in an idyl way. It’s the gesture that counts, the intimacy of the sharing. It’s the saying that is the mystery.
No comments:
Post a Comment