Two books came in the mail a couple of weeks ago as I began my participation in the Covid Virus Quarantine. One was Garry Apgar's Quotes for Conservatives, and the other was a book by an associate professor of English at the University of Maine, Laura Cowan, titled Rebecca West's Subversive Use of Hybrid Genres. (The book to your left is not related to this post except obliquely.)
I gave Garry's book a short rave review on Amazon, because I think it is a wonderful book. O.K., Garry is a friend, but, take my word for it, it's terrific.
I gave Garry's book a short rave review on Amazon, because I think it is a wonderful book. O.K., Garry is a friend, but, take my word for it, it's terrific.
These two books came before April 1, so I'm using that date for a new book ban. No more buying books until May 1st. So far, so good.
I was very much looking forward to the Cowan book because I have read enough of West's writing to know that I am a serious fan, and have decided to become a West expert, at least in my own little world. I have no-one to impress but myself, and yet that will by no means stop me.
That having been established, I dove into the Cowan book a couple of days ago, I'm now a few chapters in, and am up to where Cowan is talking about West's novel, The Return of The Soldier, a book which is built around a case of Amnesia.
In a sense, the novel is about reaching out for something that is not there. It is a certain kind of gesture, one filled with longing, frustration, sorrow, but those are my words. Prehensile is a case in point for the way that West uses metaphor. It might help a little to quote this short West paragraph taken from Cowan's book; the narrator, a female cousin of the absent soldier is speaking;
"That day its beauty was an affront to me, because like most Englishwomen of my time I was wishing for the return of a soldier. Disregarding the national interest and everything except the keen prehensile gesture of our hearts towards him, I wanted to snatch my cousin Christoper from the wars."
It so happens that I have had the topic of Amnesia stuck in my craw for some time, for the following reason. My own life history, which I've been mining as a resource for my writing, (about which I must refrain from apologizing at some point), is peppered with cases of alcoholic amnesia. Which is to say, because so many people seem to misrepresent this symtom of alcoholism, the loss of memory associated with the imbibing of an amount of alcohol that one's brain could not tolerate at a given time, which loss of memory seems to be absolute and unrecoverable for that specified time. For me those "black-outs" were frequent, usually occurring at least several times a year.
In a sense, the novel is about reaching out for something that is not there. It is a certain kind of gesture, one filled with longing, frustration, sorrow, but those are my words. Prehensile is a case in point for the way that West uses metaphor. It might help a little to quote this short West paragraph taken from Cowan's book; the narrator, a female cousin of the absent soldier is speaking;
"That day its beauty was an affront to me, because like most Englishwomen of my time I was wishing for the return of a soldier. Disregarding the national interest and everything except the keen prehensile gesture of our hearts towards him, I wanted to snatch my cousin Christoper from the wars."
It so happens that I have had the topic of Amnesia stuck in my craw for some time, for the following reason. My own life history, which I've been mining as a resource for my writing, (about which I must refrain from apologizing at some point), is peppered with cases of alcoholic amnesia. Which is to say, because so many people seem to misrepresent this symtom of alcoholism, the loss of memory associated with the imbibing of an amount of alcohol that one's brain could not tolerate at a given time, which loss of memory seems to be absolute and unrecoverable for that specified time. For me those "black-outs" were frequent, usually occurring at least several times a year.
For a long time I've wanted to write about a blackout experience that occurred while I was in the Army in Alaska, in the mid-1960s. Briefly, I was in a bar downtown, and lost a period of time beginning while I was dancing with myself in that bar, The Crossroads, in downtown Anchorage. I came-to snuggled up to an unknown woman who was in the driver's seat of what I assume was her car. Her right leg, her gas peddle leg, was in a cast from toe to hip. She was a handsome woman, with shoulder length brunette hair, earings I think, and a nice smelling perfume which I began to inhale. She was asleep. She woke up when someone, a Military Policeman, began wiping the snow off the windshield. The car was blanketed in snow. The woman woke up just in time to hear the Policeman tell me to get out of the car and then tell me to get into the barracks fast. I didn't have time to say goodbye or "Who are you?"
It was a week-end, so I was able to get back to my own living space, my bunk, and sleep off the rest of my still drunkeness. The after-affect was mostly a feeling of disappointment that I had probably found the love of my life and would never know who she was. In fact I went back to the Crossroads several times and never saw her. I began to wonder if the whole thing had been a hallucination.
Another black-out experience, though, is the one that really bothers me. I want to be able to write about that time, or at least, mine it, for a possible story, but there is too much blur, too much lost time.
It was still the sixties, I'd been out of the Army for a couple of years, (1968?) ...I was living in a run-down apartment on the lower East Side of Manhattan, with a friend and his seventeen year old wife, hanging on to a job doing past-ups and mechanicals, a simple form of commercial art, at a mid-town ad agency, when I was invited to a wedding.
The Groom to be was my Godmother's nephew, Julian. My Godmother was the ex-wife of a friend of my father's. She had been part of Dad's heavy drinking party crowd during his and my mother's glory days as illustrator and model couple in glamorous Beekman Place. Everyone was glamorous, successful, and heavy drinking. A world I was forever locked out of by fate.
Julian was going to marry his girlfriend Mandy, and they were going to live in France. Mandy was Catholic, and they needed to both be Catholic in order to live in France and receive some sort of tax benefit. He was on a skimpy trust fund, and Mandy I assume had some money. He and I didn't know each other that well, but we had somehow discovered a bond, which was binge drinking. We'd been on several binges over the past six or eight years, when Julian was visiting Aunt Kitty, or, in one case, when I was living in London. Our only real tie was that we had somehow begun to think of ourselves as relatives, cousins perhaps, because we expected Aunt Kitty to die someday and leave us a bunch of money. We assumed she was loaded. She was, but that's another story.
Julian was going to marry his girlfriend Mandy, and they were going to live in France. Mandy was Catholic, and they needed to both be Catholic in order to live in France and receive some sort of tax benefit. He was on a skimpy trust fund, and Mandy I assume had some money. He and I didn't know each other that well, but we had somehow discovered a bond, which was binge drinking. We'd been on several binges over the past six or eight years, when Julian was visiting Aunt Kitty, or, in one case, when I was living in London. Our only real tie was that we had somehow begun to think of ourselves as relatives, cousins perhaps, because we expected Aunt Kitty to die someday and leave us a bunch of money. We assumed she was loaded. She was, but that's another story.
He had been born and raised in England, (though his mother was an American, aunt Kitty's sister), gone to Eton and Cambridge, been in lots of prankish trouble, been kicked out of Cambridge, and since then had worked sporadically as an editor. He was staying in Manhattan with an Eton buddy, Peter Davies, who had a unique claim to fame.
Peter Theodore Davies was the son of Peter Llewelyn Davies. If you Goggle the father you will find a wiki called Peter Llewelyn Davies - Neverpedia, the Peter Pan wiki; It's three pages but I'll just quote from the first paragraph, then you can decide if you want to read on:
"Peter Llewelyn Davies, (February 25, 1897 - April 5, 1960) was the middle of five sons of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, one of the Llewelyn Davies boys befriended and later informally adopted by J.M. Barrie. Barrie publicly identified him as the source of the name for the title character in his famous play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. This public identification as "the original Peter Pan" plagued Davies throughout his life, which ended in suicide."
Peter T.'s father had killed himself in 1960 by throwing himself under a train at the Sloane Square Underground Station in London. The father was an alcoholic and probably drunk at the time. Peter T. was married and living in Manhattan, somewhere below 14th St.
"Peter Llewelyn Davies, (February 25, 1897 - April 5, 1960) was the middle of five sons of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, one of the Llewelyn Davies boys befriended and later informally adopted by J.M. Barrie. Barrie publicly identified him as the source of the name for the title character in his famous play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. This public identification as "the original Peter Pan" plagued Davies throughout his life, which ended in suicide."
Peter T.'s father had killed himself in 1960 by throwing himself under a train at the Sloane Square Underground Station in London. The father was an alcoholic and probably drunk at the time. Peter T. was married and living in Manhattan, somewhere below 14th St.
I remember meeting Julian at a bar, it might have been 1 Fifth Avenue, having a drink or two and then going to Peter's apartment, to meet Peter, his wife Frances, and Mandy. The idea was that at Aunt Kitty's suggestion, since she was under the impression that I was a good church goer, that I was to be Julian's Godfather and assist at his baptism, which would follow immediately. A little about Peter T. and his siblings, again from Neverpedia:
"Peter's [Llewelyn], wife died not long after his suicide. His sons all chose not to have children, to prevent passing Huntington's* to another generation. Ruthven (Rivvy") developed Huntington's (and his wife Mary Bridget Pearce suffered from Multiple Sclerosis), and became depressed and bitter about what he perceived as Barrie's negative impact on his father's life before he died in 1995. George did not marry, leaving the UK for New York, traveling extensively in South America, and returning to Brooklyn where he died. Peter Junior, [Theodore], married Frances Jane Carson in 1965, but had no children. He committed suicide in 1990, at the age of 47."
We had a few drinks at Chez Davies and took a cab to the church. The church was run by Dominicans. The priest to be involved met us at the door and gave us a short speech. (He was by the way a handsome guy, possibly Italian, with black hair, wearing a brown wool robe with a hood, which was down, and he had on a cool pair of brown winged-tipped cordovan shoes. He said something to the affect, (probably noticing that we were drunk), that we shouldn't worry about the religious or spiritual part of the ceremony, that that would all be taken care of by him. I found that re-assuring. We, he or I, I don't remember, poured water over Julian's head as he leaned into some sort of fount, and I think I said something like I baptize you in the name of The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Then we went on to the marriage ceremony which must have been blessedly fast so that I don't remember it, and then we went back to the Davies and drank some more. The blackout must have started during the wedding. The next thing I remember is that it was morning, Monday morning, and I had just arrived back at my atrociously low-class apartment. It was time to go to work and I decided that now was the time to quite my job. There was no other choice. I was quite incompetent at the paste-up trade, and they would probably fire me soon, and anyway, my friend Einar thought I could make more money working with him at the Village Moving and Firewood Company. And therefore, as Einar and his Wife and I concluded, I might as well have a medicinal dose of LSD before I leave for work. I took the acid, had a light breakfast somewhere on the way to the subway, and at the 42 st. Station, with the acid beginning to kick in, I bought myself an Orange Day-Glo necktie. I was still wearing my lightweight herringbone suit jacket, which was rumbled from 24 hours of carousing. I appeared at work, went up to one of the partners and informed him I was quiting, to which he said, "Good, I was just going to fire you anyway." I said goodby to my fellow bull-pen employees and went off to the next stage of my life.
My hesitation to write about the wedding, which included members of such a noteworthy family, is I expect obvious from the lost time that started during the very wedding of which I have spoken. I felt though, that I should give it a try.
*Huntington's - Huntington's Corea was an important part of the Oral History of East Hampton which Martha and I produced circa 2000; the disease was found in one of the prominent local families.
"Peter's [Llewelyn], wife died not long after his suicide. His sons all chose not to have children, to prevent passing Huntington's* to another generation. Ruthven (Rivvy") developed Huntington's (and his wife Mary Bridget Pearce suffered from Multiple Sclerosis), and became depressed and bitter about what he perceived as Barrie's negative impact on his father's life before he died in 1995. George did not marry, leaving the UK for New York, traveling extensively in South America, and returning to Brooklyn where he died. Peter Junior, [Theodore], married Frances Jane Carson in 1965, but had no children. He committed suicide in 1990, at the age of 47."
We had a few drinks at Chez Davies and took a cab to the church. The church was run by Dominicans. The priest to be involved met us at the door and gave us a short speech. (He was by the way a handsome guy, possibly Italian, with black hair, wearing a brown wool robe with a hood, which was down, and he had on a cool pair of brown winged-tipped cordovan shoes. He said something to the affect, (probably noticing that we were drunk), that we shouldn't worry about the religious or spiritual part of the ceremony, that that would all be taken care of by him. I found that re-assuring. We, he or I, I don't remember, poured water over Julian's head as he leaned into some sort of fount, and I think I said something like I baptize you in the name of The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Then we went on to the marriage ceremony which must have been blessedly fast so that I don't remember it, and then we went back to the Davies and drank some more. The blackout must have started during the wedding. The next thing I remember is that it was morning, Monday morning, and I had just arrived back at my atrociously low-class apartment. It was time to go to work and I decided that now was the time to quite my job. There was no other choice. I was quite incompetent at the paste-up trade, and they would probably fire me soon, and anyway, my friend Einar thought I could make more money working with him at the Village Moving and Firewood Company. And therefore, as Einar and his Wife and I concluded, I might as well have a medicinal dose of LSD before I leave for work. I took the acid, had a light breakfast somewhere on the way to the subway, and at the 42 st. Station, with the acid beginning to kick in, I bought myself an Orange Day-Glo necktie. I was still wearing my lightweight herringbone suit jacket, which was rumbled from 24 hours of carousing. I appeared at work, went up to one of the partners and informed him I was quiting, to which he said, "Good, I was just going to fire you anyway." I said goodby to my fellow bull-pen employees and went off to the next stage of my life.
My hesitation to write about the wedding, which included members of such a noteworthy family, is I expect obvious from the lost time that started during the very wedding of which I have spoken. I felt though, that I should give it a try.
*Huntington's - Huntington's Corea was an important part of the Oral History of East Hampton which Martha and I produced circa 2000; the disease was found in one of the prominent local families.
No comments:
Post a Comment