“How, he asked, could these people prate of realism when they had never even begun to understand what goes on in a painting? That’s what reality is.”
(Pierre Daix, Picasso: life and art, trans. Elizabeth Emmet (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 320, quoted in William S. Wilson, “Picasso”, College Art Association Art Journal, Spring 1997)
“‘To the pure, all things are pure,’ an artist said to me in 1955, while gathering art supplies in the gutter as part of an apologia for anomalies.”
(W. S. Wilson, “Report from New York: Abstract Expressionism, on a Manhattan ice floe II”, Artspace, July/August 1992)
“[Jasper] Johns lets the conventional laws of thought lapse in order to be in more direct touch with his experience. ‘”Looking” is and is not “eating” and “being eaten.”‘ This thought, uninhibited by the laws of thought, can be compared with a tragic European thought of a woman who later died of malnutrition. Simone Weil writes that the great sorrow of humans – La grande douleur de l’homme – which begins in childhood and lasts until death – qui commence des l’enfance et se poursuit jusque à la mort – is that to look and to eat are two different operations – c’est que regarder et manger sont deux opérations différentes. Eternal bliss is a state in which to graze is to eat: La béatitude éternelle est un état où regarder c’est manger. Weil had to go to the sphere of the eternal, to logical space, where ideas can be turned that they fit upon each other, where looking can be eating.”
(Wilson, ibid)
“The generation is unceasing. Beauty, as both Plato’s Symposium and everyday life confirm, prompts the begetting of children: when the eye sees someone beautiful, the whole body want to reproduce the person. But it also – as Diotima tells Socrates – prompts the begetting of poems and laws, the works of Homer, Hesiod, and Lycurgus. The poem and the law may then prompt descriptions of themselves – literary and legal commentaries – that seek to make the beauty of the prior thing more evident, to make, in other words, the poem’s or law’s ‘clear discernibility’ even more ‘clearly discernible.’ Thus the beauty of Beatrice in La vita nuova requires of Dante the writing of a sonnet and the writing of that one sonnet prompts the writing of another: ‘After completing this last sonnet I was moved by a desire to write more poetry.’ The sonnets, in turn, place on Dante a new pressure, for as soon as his ear hears what he has made in meter, his hand wants to draw a sketch of it in prose: ‘This sonnet is divided into two parts . . .’; ‘This sonnet is divided into four parts . . . .’
(Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just, Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 4–5.)
Is Mississippi Mississippi? Is there a Petula in Indiana? I was told by an art editor from Harper’s Bazaar I spoke with clarity.
I clipped a page from Life magazine showing Marilyn Monroe’s tomb stone which read Em Em 1926-1962. I was impressed by her dates. Like Joe. (Joe D.). Joe De Em. Joe Death. A playing card figure this way also that way. The card part of the Cardinals, a baseball team.
As William Wilson signing off on the telephone wittily said Tah Tah I did not get it and he said it was hat hat backwards. There is no necessity for two hats one does not have two heads but in scarpbook I kept as a a child (yes, scarpbook, not scrapbook. I did not glue down crap but carp. Now those fish did struggle with Elemrs glue in that book!) I treASUREd a photo of a two-headed turtle. ASURE is a mistake in useing the typewriter.
Marianne Moore is certainly not Marilyn Monroe. In collage, Marilyn’s head could be but on Marianne’s body. One could pretend to be someone one is not. Children’s play. I’ll be you and you be me. Be my valentine. Ray Johnson wearing Marianne Moore’s hat. Lend me your ears. May I have a pint of your blood? Can you lend me a dime? Can you spare a brother?
(Ray Johnson, typescript sent to William S. Wilson, November 2, 1966)
“Everything is contaminated. It seems, though, that the favorite domain of tragedy is the narrative complication, the romanesque. From all mistresses-turned-nuns to all detective-gangsters, by way of all tormented criminals, all pure-souled prostitutes, all the just men constrained by conscience to injustice, all the sadists driven by love, all the madmen pursued by logic, a good ‘character’ in a novel must aboce all be double. The plot will be ‘human’ in proportion to its ambiguity. Finally, the whole book will be true in proportion to its contradictions.”
(Alain Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel (trans. Richard Howard), p.62)
“Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for being vague. After all, the true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection. I feel that especially about representations of women. As if a woman were a mere coloured superficies! You must wait for movement and tone. There is a difference in their very breathing: they change from moment to moment. – This woman whom you have just seen, for example: how would you paint her voice, pray? But her voice is much diviner than anything you have seen of her.”
(George Eliot, Middlemarch, chapter 19)
“We’ll have some wine,” he said. “And promise me you’ll forget the ugliness for a little while. You know, as long as you remember the ugliness, you might as well live in oblivion, because there’s nothing for you in life. The ugliness is everywhere, and you just have to overlook it.”
“Someone else said that to me once,” she said.
“It’s quite right,” he said. “And you have to face that truth before you can live with yourself even for a short time. Otherwise you will be in constant search of escape.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
(Pamela Moore, Chocolates for Breakfast, p.116)
Quelle est la raison d’être d’une préface? Apologie? Explication? Commentaire? Indice de faiblesse ou de mauvaise foi – si elle est écrite par l’auteur –, éloge de complaisance parfois, si elle est due à quelqu’un d’autre. Je n’ai jamais compris l’utilité des préfaces, j’ai peu de goût pour en écrire une. Une pote pourtant s’impose ici.
La première édition française de mon livre a été traduite de la version américaine que je n’ai jamais considérée comme complète. Je me trouvais à cette époque-là aux Etats-Unis et il ne me semblait pas possible d’y faire paraêtre mon livre dans sa version intégrale. L’occasion de publier cette dernière me fut offerte lorsque j’ai rencontré à Paris mon éditeur français.
Voici donc l’édition non expurgée. Est-ce à dire que la version américaine avait subi des altérations arbitraires? Certes non. Il s’agissait plutôt d’une contrainte que je m’étais à moi-même imposée et que je voudrais pouvoir nommer : une censure par anticipation. Cette même contrainte existe dans l’esprit de beaucoup d’écrivains américains qui sont conscients de préférences du public à propos duquel ils écrivent et qui connaissent bien aussi l’idée que se font de notre public ceux qui le servent.
Il est difficile chez nous de servir à chacun ses quatre vérités, surtout lorsqu’il s’agit de ce conflit essentiel qui existe entre les principes de notre mode de vie et les exigences de la condition humaine. Ce conflit est latent dans tous les cœurs de notre pays, et il tourmente beaucoup d’entre nous. Nous nous détournons de cette vérité terrifiante avec ce que j’appellerai une sorte de mauvaise foi commune. C’est ce qui m’a poussé à m’exprimer avec certaines réticences au cours de mon travail initial. Mais après y avoir réfléchi, j’ai senti qu’il me fallait tenter de parvenir jusqu’aux causes de cette crise morale dont souffre tant la jeunesse que je décris ici.
P. M.
I read maps, worldwide earthquake bulletins, I read what I want to find out about. Government lies. Structural materials. All this can be used against me. I read newspapers. I read reviews which are sometimes about the reviewer pretty much. I write a few reviews a year and almost endlessly reread drafts of them to make sure they describe the book. I’m told it’s a waste of time, but it all helps me learn to write.
Somewhere in me there’s the employer whom I ask what is my job who answers, A little bit of everything.
(Joseph McElroy, interview with Trey Strecker)