Writing & Other Bloodsports, page 16
At any rate, as a film director—not as a book critic—I was able to follow Willeford’s novel without any difficulty, and I think it is as ridiculous for me to write a “Preface” for The Other Half of The Double Feature as it was for Hawthorne to write one for The House of the Seven Gables. You people in America are all guilty, all of you, even if you don't know why you are guilty—without being reminded of the fact.
Willeford only discussed his theory of the novel with me once—at a luncheon where he stuck me with the check—and he has confused the cinema with art, and literature with the cinema. He is apparently disturbed that movie audiences sit in total darkness for almost thirty percent of the time during the run-through of a normal full-length film. This darkness is irrelevant and immaterial, because the audience is unaware of it. The little cross-strip of blank film separating each frame from the next accounts for the dark spots. But our eyes never notice any darkness on the big screen, because that is the way our eyes are. Each frame pauses for a fraction of a second in front of the light before it drops to make room for the next one, and to our eyes the movement on the screen appears to be continuous. The little space between frames is essential; otherwise you wouldn't have moving pictures, as you know them, you would have slithering pictures, a la Dada. So the fact that an audience sits in total darkness for about twenty-seven minutes during a ninety-one minute film doesn't mean that they are being gypped on the cost of admission.
Willeford, however, feels that they are cheated. He is of the opinion (reinforced with quotations from Ratzenhofer) that everybody in the audience is already familiar with the plot, or the story the film tells, before they enter the theater. And he has extended this idea to the novel. So what he has done in The Dark Field is to write a novel based on the dark film spaces between the frames. The readers can fill in the plot or story line to suit themselves. Well, why not? Most people have seen enough movies and read enough novels to be familiar with almost any story he could invent anyway. And this way, he is free to concentrate on the poetry and the untold sections.
And Willeford, being a poet, has imagined some mighty black scenes, dark enough, in my opinion, to satisfy the guilt feelings of any reader. And any reader will be able to work out a story of some kind to fill in the gaps he has ignored.
But the main danger he faces is that a critic like Leslie Fiedler or Richard Chase might get a free review copy of his novel and accuse his hero of having a homosexual fixation on a camera.
But then, that’s the chance a writer—and particularly a poet—has to take in America. I’ll stick with my Spanish dialogue films. And so long as American audiences are gullible enough to believe the English subtitles instead of learning enough idiomatic Spanish to find out what my characters are really saying, I'll get my kicks and my cash in my own sweet Iberian way.
Juan Valera y Ayala
Las Peliculas Parabrisas, Madrid—Spring, 1962
(Translated from the Spanish into idiomatic English by Charles Willeford, and I could've killed him. . . .)
A Matter of Dedication
(1965)
I read it twice, shook my head, and put the novel back on the rack. It was a strange comment, all right; it said, Dedication Withdrawn.
A mystery. I took the book out of the rack again, and glanced at the copyright page. The novel was in its third printing. As a writer of fiction my curiosity was aroused enough to look up the first printing when I made my next trip to the public library. The dedication on the first printing of the novel read: To My Wife.
It doesn’t take an experienced writer to see the implicit story in the separated statements. Why, for example, did the author go to the trouble of actually getting the words, Dedication Withdrawn, into the third printing of his novel? Why didn’t he just quietly withdraw the dedication and leave the dedication page blank? But he didn’t, and I suspected a certain bitterness at work here. Evidently, the author wanted to make damned certain that his wife, in the event she happened to pick up a copy of the third edition, would know definitely and irrevocably that this particular novel was no longer dedicated to her. If he had been content to withdraw the dedication and leave the page blank, his wife may have erroneously assumed that the blank page on the third printing was merely a printer’s oversight. But no one could mistake the two italicized words, Dedication Withdrawn, as an accident.
Without belaboring the point, it all goes to show that book dedications are not as simple as they seem. In fact, I was unable to dedicate my first three novels. I have dedicated two of my eight published books; one of the recipients of this doubtful honor no longer speaks to me; and I haven’t told the other. Nor do I intend to; I cannot risk the loss of another friend.
The dedication is the last thing a writer thinks about, if he thinks about it at all, during the writing of his book. The problem is thrust upon him unexpectedly when his book is accepted for publication. As he ruminates on the problem, he realizes that he will be in trouble with someone, regardless of his decision. And especially if it happens to be his first book.
If he dedicates the book to his mother, his wife will be irritated. If he dedicates it to his wife, his mother’s feelings will be injured. If he attempts to go between these emotional horns, and dedicates the book to his father, he will embitter his wife and his mother. And yet, if he takes what seems to be the easiest way out, and dedicates the book to all three, in what order will he list them? Doodling on a blank piece of paper, he must eventually arrive at this solution:
TO TO TO
My wife My father My mother
My father My mother My wife
My mother My wife My father
And this is absurd. . . .
Besides, the author will learn that by dedicating the book to three members of his family that he has opened the way for complaints from brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and a cousin in Denver. “Why weren’t we included in the dedication?”
In desperation, the author decides not to dedicate the book to anyone. But he will be wrong again if he thinks this a simple resolution. Not only will every member of his family climb onto his back, but he will be censured by his friends as well. And worse, while he could reason with his mistress if he dedicated his book to his wife (“I gotta keep my wife happy, don’t I?”), he will be hard put to find a valid reason for not dedicating his book to her if he leaves the page blank— especially if she typed the manuscript for him. (And few writers can afford a non-typing mistress.)
The author whose wife, mother, and mistress all have the same name can take care of the matter simply enough. He can dedicate his book To Blanche, and only his personality problem will remain.
You can see why the trend today is toward non-dedication of novels and short story collections. In non-fiction, particularly textbooks, authors have timidly avoided the problem by writing long Introductions. In the Introduction they list the names of every member of their family, all of their friends and acquaintances, and the authors of other books on the same subject, under a general “Acknowledgements” paragraph, i.e.; “To Dr. John P. Pauls, Chairman of the History Department, who advised me to write this book if I desired tenure in his department; to my predecessor, Professor J. B. Adams, who graciously allowed me to quote copiously from his unpublished MS. on the same subject (49 pp.); to Miss Claudia Beadsman, a former graduate student, who so generously allowed me to utilize her Master’s thesis, which appears herein as Chapters One through Twenty-four; to my devoted wife, Martha, who proofread the MS. copy at great cost to her mental health and physical well-being; and to my son, Jimmy, who found Chapter 31 in the broom closet, after it had been misplaced for seven months. . . .” The professor-types still run the danger of overlooking someone; the more names they list, the more likely the name of some obscure helper may be forgotten. But it is a way around the problem, even if the Introduction does read like a credits trailer of an Italian movie.
Fortunately, in weighing whether to dedicate, authors have a strong precedent to follow, and precedents make good arguments either way.
In the past dedications were economic necessities. If the book didn’t have a sponsor (and the book was always dedicated to its sponsor) it didn’t get published. Some of these early dedications, at least in England, were sickeningly obsequious. But these fulsome dedications brought in the needed money to pay for the book's publication. The British are overly fond of tradition, and caste, and rank, and even today, when the publisher foots the bill, English writers go overboard on their dedications. Here’s one I read the other day, in letter form, on a book published in 1937:
TO
The Right Honorable
J. Ramsay MacDonald, M. P.
Dear Ramsay MacDonald,
In dedicating this book about England to a Scotchman who more than any other has helped to make the history of our time, I do so with a sense of many kindnesses that you have never allowed the cares of office to withhold from those who you have honored with your friendship. Etc. . . .
This letter goes on and on until it becomes embarrassing to read. A simple “To J. Ramsay MacDonald” would have been more sincere. If a long, crawling letter of this kind seems necessary to the author, then that is what he should write: but he should send it along with the book as a personal, covering letter—not have it printed as part of the book. Even a truly sincere letter, as I cheerfully concede the above to be, is much too personal to share with readers. Contemporary British novelists are showing signs of avoiding emotional dedications; we reached the low point in poor taste, in this respect, when Sheilah Graham included a long letter in her book, Beloved Infidel, addressed to “Dear Scott,” who has been dead a great many years. If Fitzgerald can’t read it, we can, and this is the sort of thing that makes an honest writer sick to his stomach.
A better idea, for those authors who feel that the tradition of dedicating books is outmoded, is the example established by Samuel Johnson. He attempted, without success, to get financial assistance from the Earl of Chesterfield, by promising to dedicate his dictionary to him. When the Earl failed to come across Johnson went ahead with the project on a little capital put up by the group of booksellers who had proposed the idea of compiling a dictionary. As the work neared completion, and good reports of it reached Chesterfield, the Earl attempted to conciliate Johnson by writing complimentary articles on Johnson for the World. Too late. The dictionary appeared not with a dedication, but with a letter to the Earl that is a classic of epistolary sarcasm. The Johnson dictionary, a poor one to begin with, is now a matter of historical interest, but the letter to the Earl of Chesterfield is usually included in anthologies of English literature.
So long as the author loses either way, I am of the opinion that he should dedicate his book to no one. Let us be honest; every book that any author writes is, in reality, dedicated to himself. And yet, I don’t think that it is wise, as some writers do from time to time, to have printed in a book, “To me.” Honesty can be carried too far. Not long ago Bennett Cerf reported a case where the author was so honest that he dedicated the book to a person “because he wrote it for me.”
But on the other hand, authors should be practical. Suppose a valid reason presents itself, a situation that demands a sincere dedication—and the only valid reason is a wealthy man with a bagful of gold, a rich man willing and eager to publish your battered manuscript, who also promises (in writing) to take out full-page ads in the New York Times Sunday Books section. By all means dedicate your book to this angel; leave no adjective unturned as you praise his intelligence, brilliance, and literary acumen. Write a half-dozen pages or more in praise of this fellow; you can’t overdo it.
However, put a postscript on your will, addressed to your grandson: “Boy, you know that six-page dedication to Mr. So-and-so, in my novel, Rocks in His Head? Well, if you want to obtain the royalties on that book as they accrue, have the dedication removed in the next edition. And insert a one-line substitute stating, Dedication Withdrawn!”
Finders/Keepers of the Times
(1968)
Automatic writing, at least the automatic writing that was developed and practiced by Gertrude Stein, is not as purposeless and as nonsensical as the uninitiated reader often believes it to be. Miss Stein worked by three rules, and one can see them working if one has the patience to read on and on and on into her published books. First, use everything; second, remain in the continuous present; and third, go back to the beginning again.
By using everything the automatic writer never runs out of material; by remaining in the continuous present, the automatic writer is consciously a writer writing, and therefore a neuromuscular recorder of the passing moment; and, by returning to the beginning again, the automatic writer is never at a loss for words and phrases he has written already until his mind shifts from neutral into another gear.
This kind of writing, providing one learns and follows the simple rules, can keep a non-talented writer writing until his fingers cramp into talons from fatigue and his pen falls out of his hand.
These three rules—I don’t know what else to call them—are equally useful to those of us who search for and often find poems, although the rules are interpreted differently.
By using everything, I mean that every form of media that employs words, from advertisements to novels, from fiction to graffiti, from disc jockey jabberwocky to the Congressional Record is a potential source for Found poems.
The collator, or editor, or recorder of Found poems is not a poet: I want to make this point now before I am understood too quickly, because Ronald Gross (Pop Poems, Simon & Schuster, 1967) and John Giorno (Poems by John Giorno, Mother Press, 1967) are two recorders of Found poems who believe that they are poets instead of recorders who have rearranged the symbols of our contemporary scene into poetic statements. Having made this statement, I do not deny the recorders of Found poems their individual differences, philosophies, or selections (natural or unnatural). By remaining in the continuous present (Rule Two), that is, by consciously (and perhaps subconsciously) searching for those lines and phrases that will become, by skillful rearrangement, a different way of prehension of our times, the recorder can become, with a little luck, a “maker” of poems—and the quibbler will say that “maker” is what “poet” means, anyway, although the original meaning has fallen into disuse for a good many years. However, the man who thinks of himself as a “poet,” poor devil, will never be happy finding poems anywhere other than in his own mind.
The third rule, go back to the beginning again, means that if you have read through a daily newspaper, for example, without finding at least a few lines which will turn, with the addition of your own invented title, and poetic rearrangement, into a Found poem (good or bad), you haven’t looked closely enough, and you had better read through the newspaper again. I do not claim that finding poems is easy. The rewriting and rearrangement of contemporary history is a tough job, but George Orwell considered the idea important enough to write a novel (1984) on the subject.
The novice recorder of Found poems, then, should not be too concerned when the majority of the poems he finds are not successful. A painter will paint 200 paintings before he gets twenty paintings he considers good enough for a one-man show, and a novelist will discard at least 1,000 pages of prose before he comes up with a 250-page final draft of a novel. Bear this in mind: if one out of 20 of the poems you find are successful, you are fortunate indeed.
The unwritten rule for the recorder of Found poems is that he cannot change the words or the punctuation in the sentences and phrases he finds. The original writer or speaker, of course, was unaware of the fact that he was making a poetic statement: the awareness must come, then, from the finder; and except for inventing the title, he can only rearrange the original lines technically, using the prosody of his own inclination. This unwritten rule, established unofficially by the late T. S. Eliot, must be followed or the result will not be a Found poem: it will be something else.
Finding poems is a game that anyone can play. And the results, whether the recorder’s finds are published or not, give the finder a new insight into himself, a new joy in living in the present, and a new way of looking at the world. Last week, for example, I found three poems in one day. The first poem was discovered in a rainsoaked Newsweek I picked up at a bus stop, and the other two were gleaned from The Miami Herald (October 26, 1967). Only the titles have been added, and I have repeated a few of the original lines for rhythmical emphasis.
EPITAPH FOR “BRIAN UPTIGHT”
Epstein’s death
Brought the Beatles
Back to London.
“Brian had everything
To live for,”
Mourned Ringo.
“We loved him,”
Said John.
“There is no question
Of his being replaced,”
Said Paul.
Said George:
“He was one of us. ”
M.O.T.H.E.R., Inc.
(Management Organized To Help Emil Reisman, Inc.)
“I just sit down at my desk and write a bunch of lines.” Emil Reisman, Bumper Sticker King.
Vote yes or no;
The fuzz is your friend;
Support your local police
(Bribe a cop today);
Start the day with a smile
