reading "Tara": thoughts in progress
i began the introduction to my father's book asking "Who would write this book?" the question followed from the difficulty that i had recognizing the man i thought i knew as the person who could write the text i witnessed him write. but i saw him put pen to paper (he handwrote the book before transferring it to .doc files), he talked nonstop about the book for the number of years he spent working on it, and after he completed a draft, he printed the 2520 pages, stacking them on the bed in the guest room where they remained until he passed away last year. so i knew that he was the author of that mss.
after his death, i read the book, all 2520 pages. Not only was i unable to recognize him in the text but i was also unable to understand why anyone, my father or someone else, would write a book of that sort. although the book is interesting, a reviewer might consider it "a page turner," i found it (almost) too enigmatic; i still puzzle over passages and plot segments, failing to have additional insights or to resolve any of its many koans. naively perhaps, i hoped that reading his book would accomplish what a lifetime could not: i had hoped to know him, finally. but no, his surviving words refused to disclose what the man alive kept to himself.
i have a similar response to ps' poem "Tara," recently published in The New Yorker. after reading and rereading (and rereading many more times than that), I still come away from the poem puzzled: the ps that i thought i knew (of course, at a distance), and whose work i have heartily consumed, studied, and allowed to influence me, couldn't have written that poem.
it's not rimbaldian; it's not rippedtshirt-girlinyourface-voyou-ing with warhol's bowery boys on the make for their 15minutes-godfearing/godsneering/godwilling; it's not thanking frank (at least, i don't think it is).
it's different; taking a 360 at 60 -- it seems, but perhaps not -- "her daughter unharmed": war's like that, random, undiscriminating, relentless.
i thought of this, written about another war, when deer and daughter succumbed.
after his death, i read the book, all 2520 pages. Not only was i unable to recognize him in the text but i was also unable to understand why anyone, my father or someone else, would write a book of that sort. although the book is interesting, a reviewer might consider it "a page turner," i found it (almost) too enigmatic; i still puzzle over passages and plot segments, failing to have additional insights or to resolve any of its many koans. naively perhaps, i hoped that reading his book would accomplish what a lifetime could not: i had hoped to know him, finally. but no, his surviving words refused to disclose what the man alive kept to himself.
i have a similar response to ps' poem "Tara," recently published in The New Yorker. after reading and rereading (and rereading many more times than that), I still come away from the poem puzzled: the ps that i thought i knew (of course, at a distance), and whose work i have heartily consumed, studied, and allowed to influence me, couldn't have written that poem.
it's not rimbaldian; it's not rippedtshirt-girlinyourface-voyou-ing with warhol's bowery boys on the make for their 15minutes-godfearing/godsneering/godwilling; it's not thanking frank (at least, i don't think it is).
it's different; taking a 360 at 60 -- it seems, but perhaps not -- "her daughter unharmed": war's like that, random, undiscriminating, relentless.
i thought of this, written about another war, when deer and daughter succumbed.
posted by clh at 11:04 AM
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