Sunday Poetry XVI -- FICTION'S FICTION and POETRY

One of my favorite fictional fictions (yes) is Michael Chabon's "In the Black Mill," by August Van Zorn (pseudonym (and so now a fiction within a fiction's fiction) for one Albert Vetch, chronic sufferer of the Midnight Disease), which shows up as the final tale in Chabon's collection, Werewolves in Their Youth.  Van Zorn, a fictional horror writer, reputedly of the same mold as H.P. Lovecraft, is first mentioned by Chabon via his fictional novelist Grady Tripp in Wonder Boys.

Chabon quotes Tripp in his introduction to "In the Black Mill":

The first real writer I ever knew was a man who did all of his work under the name of August Van Zorn.  He lived at the McClelland Hotel, which my grandmother owned, in the uppermost room of its turret, and taught English literature at Coxley, a small college on the other side of the minor Pennsylvania river that split our town in two.  His real name was Albert Vetch, and his field, I believe, was Blake; I remember he kept a framed print of the Ancient of Days affixed to the faded flocked wallpaper of his room, above a stoop-shouldered wooden suit rack that once belonged to my father.


This isn't a new idea--the creation of a fictional artist who inhabits the background or history of a story.  What I love about this story at the end of Werewolves, however, is that it's set out as further evidence that Van Zorn was real, and it's crazy fun!

As Chabon is perhaps the most outspoken "serious" writer championing genre fiction, which I've indicated here before, I think it's funny that I find my next favorite fictional artist, similar though not as fully realized as Van Zorn, in the pulpiest genre fiction I've ever read: Harry Stephen Keeler's The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, also which I've very recently discussed, and as comparison, no less, to James Joyce's abysmal "After the Race."

Keeler's fictional poet, and with her equally fictional (and gleefully dreadful) poetry, is one Miss Abigail Sprigg (Keeler shows himself equally skilled in the naming of characters as Thomas Pynchon, by the way).

As much as I want to tell you all about this awesome book and its awesome writer (as in, I'm-in-awe kind of awesome), I will refrain from the plug until I finish it, at which point I'll offer a complete review, and now simply quote this woman's "poetry."

Poor Pickings
A burglar entered by mistake
     A poetess's room one day.
And finding there was nothing else
     To steal, he stole away.

* "Poor Pickings" was extemporaneously reviewed before publication in the new quarterly publication Verse by Clay Calthorpe, protagonist of The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, self-professed poetry loather, and candy salesman:  "It's short, brief, and to the point.  With no flubdubbery.  Frank and honest.  Poetess money no has got.  Burglar no can steal nothing!  That--that appeals to me.  And because of it honesty--and simplicity--I--I call it one of the best poems I've ever read.  A fact!  Im a man in the street, am I not?  So if it scans all right--and rhymes correctly--for I'm not authority there, I say--mark her 100 per cent."

If His Love Dies--So Mine!
A Sonnet
He's gone: I would he had my wounded heart
That, by its aching beat, he might remember,
In these days of Passion's dead December,
The love of Passion's June.  I would the art
Of Cupid might rekindle with my fire
That heart of his, and light it through and through,
The flaming of my own heart to renew
Again, igniting all my first desire.

But his heart's whole, and mine is in my breast,
And every hour is filled with fear for me
Lest anguish, through each hour, become distress,
And then, by slow degrees, forgetfulness.
For every sun expires in the West,
And lo!  a new moon shines above the sea.

RELATIVE!
The sun was brighter, the air was cleaner,
     The skies were bluer
     When I was young;
The task of lighter, the grass was greener
     And love was truer,
     More sweetly sung!

The maids were fairer, the men were braver,
     The sages wiser
     in days of old;
Now joys are rarer, and cares are graver,
     And life a miser
     Who hoards his gold!

* I've been reading up on Keeler here and there in the few hours since I posted this entry.  It turns out that Keeler's first wife, Hazel Goodwin, wrote "If His Love Dies--So Mine" specifically for this particular novel.  In a biography posted HERE it's stated that Keeler was particular enamored of Hazel's writing, and somewhat regularly included her work within his own.  This, of course, explains why the in-text review by Clay Calthorpe of this second Miss Sprigg poem is so favorable and even possibly, and by degrees, converting Calthorpe to poetry.

DUBLINERS, by James Joyce: "After the Race"

I am often--nearly always--very interested in the author behind a text, sometimes so much so as to let the actual text fall under shadow of a perhaps unmerited eclipse.  I want to know what the author's life was that brought about or at least influenced the work; I want to know which elements are autobiographical, which are more Freudian (inasmuch as such elements, unintentionally or subconsciously and then later permitted to remain, reveal the writer's psyche), and which are, well, anything else.  Basically, I want to know the why and how that made the work what it is: why it's so great, and how did he/she do it?  My "thing" for this is on full display in my current reading of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Why is it such a big deal?  I think it's most likely because I want desperately to be a "successful" writer myself, and I think (random extended metaphor approaching) that the fountain, the tectonic pressures, and mineral content are so much more validly inspected than the water that issues from them.  I think this might be why "After the Race" is, so far, my least favorite of Joyce's Dubliners tales: balance of intranational power and political posturing have never borne any kind of interest in me (yeah, yeah, I know: not very responsible) --less so still, the politics that don't necessarily affect me or within which I have no personal history.

"After the Race" is not a bad story.  It's every bit as sharp, I think, as, say, "An Encounter."  Topically, I just don't like it, and this point of author-behind-the-text in general, and specifically here, does make me think, in this case, about Joyce the author.  Does he display himself through the text of this story?  Creative writing--expressive writing--of any kind is, after all, a personal razing of the walls and masks, a rendering vulnerable of whatever some astute reader may be able to cull from the words.  Does Joyce hide timidly behind his words, or flagrantly streak before the world's crowded, ogling literati.

More than any of the others thus far, "After the Race," is an allegory, its title contextualizing perfectly the contents: various countries involved, some directly (France and Germany), some indirectly (the USA), and some not at all (Ireland).  What kind of race?  That of POWER!  And now that the race is over, what are the socio-political effects for the countries' citizenries?

The story begins and ends with the compromise of the Irish family--Doyle's family (and that's the big breakdown here: each family behind the individuals in the car are the respective countries and their histories; the boys in the car are the current citizens of each).  It's important to note that the value (self-perceived) of this Irish family's station will never hold comparable intrinsic valuable as that of any of the Continent's or English families, for the Doyle's homeland is forever second-rate.  Such a position among the social strata makes those who care care all the more because they'll never have what they want (for example, Seguoin doesn't even consider money, because he's never worried about it): the potential class position of the rich French, or the rich British, or the brute strength of the USA.  Meanwhile, the poor who accept their poverty, like Villona, are a bunch of happy, positive out-looking pianists.  Money and influence (translation: freedom) come from the powers; art from the poor-yet-positive; and the middle--the ascendant Irish--are but nothing, and since they'll never be more than nothing, no matter how strong the family business or anything else, they get drunk and stagger around until morning.  (So what then of the "gratefully oppressed" who are indeed Irish?  I see them as Villona, and I think that there's some derision here from the hiding Joyce.  Is he Doyle?)

This is an over-simplification, I know, but I think it gets to the core of the issue here: Ireland is repressed and poor, and it's all their own fault.  Any liner notes, no matter how brilliant the sentences and allusions they indicate (and certainly there are some true gems here--as brilliant as any), will do nothing, as far as I can see, but emphasize those famous trees in the forest, and we know already how Joyce paints his trees: from genius, certainly, but I just can't bring myself to care.  I don't feel sorry for Ireland.  I don't feel sorry for Doyle.  I don't blame the French or the Germans or the British or the Americans or the Hungarians.

I've talked before about that required "spark of life" that is so absent from Joyce.  I started to get my hopes up in "Evaline," but all hope for life is lost in "The Race," which is as devoid of it as an audit.  Joyce--the objective, albeit metaphoric, reporter--by all evidence, doesn't care.  Why should I?

As always I invite your thoughts and critique.  I know this is a very negative review.  I would love to be wrong.