Here and Now: Letters (2008-2011) (15 page)

All the best,

John

April 7, 2010

Dear John,

Just back from another brief journey . . . to find your new fax waiting for me.

So glad you enjoyed the filmed interview (which was done in cramped circumstances in no time at all), and yes, even if the words we have used are different—my “arrogant” as opposed to your “conceited”—there is no question that Philippe is a handful. I suppose that goes without saying. And yet, his very lack of humility is, I think, what makes him so interesting to me.

I understand your reservations about the film, but the images of that little man alone on the wire are unforgettable, and I was also much taken by the old footage from the early seventies of Philippe and his friends cavorting in the French countryside as he prepared for the big walk. A touching glimpse of the silliness and energy of youth—reminding me of outtakes from a Truffaut film that was never made. As for the interviews, the truth is that he is calmer and more charming in person. I sensed that he was very wound up while talking to the camera, determined to provide the director with a “good performance.”

Forgive me if you feel I’ve misjudged you. I imagine my comments were a reflection of my own unbounded faith in your work. Of course you live with doubts and insecurities and a belief that your books will not endure. So do I. So, I would think, does every writer who is not certifiably insane. It is an inner condition, which has nothing to do with the good or bad things reviewers might say about us—since they always seem to praise for the wrong reasons, just as they condemn for the wrong reasons, which disqualifies them from serious consideration as arbiters of literary merit. Every writer judges himself—most often harshly—which is probably why writers keep writing: in the vain hope they will do better next time. But just because you (J.C.) live in doubt about yourself doesn’t mean that I, as your reader of many years, need have any doubts about your work. As for one’s response to reviews, it might simply be a matter of temperament—the thick-skinned versus the thin-skinned. Perhaps you are thick-skinned—at least when it comes to the remarks of strangers. I would not describe myself as thin-skinned—but thin-skinned enough to be happy with my decision not to read reviews anymore.

(News flash. I have just been on the phone with Paola Novarese of Einaudi and have two bits of information to pass on to you. First: it seems that both of us have been victims of a journalistic hoax. Over the past years, a certain Tommaso Debenedetti has been publishing fabricated interviews with writers in various newspapers—over twenty of them, apparently, perhaps even more—including one with you as far back as 2003 and one with me as recently as January of this year. A scandal in the works. I am not so much angry as confused. Why would someone go to so much trouble to fake encounters with writers—who, as we know, are the least important people in the world? Second: we will both be in Italy at the same time in June. Siri and I accepted to do a conversation together for a little Mondadori/Einaudi festival in Tuscany. One hour of discomfort for four days of vacation in the region afterward. According to Paola, you will be doing something in Genoa that same weekend [12–13]. It would be ludicrous not to make an effort to see each other during that time, even if it means spending an extra day or two in Italy before flying home. We would be more than willing to displace ourselves and strike out in your direction if a get-together is possible. Will Dorothy be with you? Let me know what you think. I’m sure that the people at Einaudi would be happy to help us with the arrangements.)

Mulling over your comments about the economic crisis, Borges, and new paradigms, I was most struck by your final remark that “we . . . would rather live through the misery of the reality we have created . . . than put together a new, negotiated reality.” This applies not only to economics but to politics and nearly every social problem we are faced with. At random, let me set forth three examples from hundreds if not thousands of problems bedeviling the world.

1. The Mideast conflict. Whether or not one subscribes to Zionism, whether or not one believes in the logic of a secular state founded by the members of a single religion, Israel is a fact, and the destruction of Israel would cause irreparable harm to nearly everyone on the planet. World War III, untold numbers of deaths, incalculable disaster. On the other hand, in spite of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the region, Israel’s Arab neighbors look upon the Jewish state as a cancer in their midst, and since 1948 they have been unrelenting in their determination to wipe it off the map. There was a time (before the assassination of Rabin, before the 9/11 attacks and the growth of militant Islam) when I felt some cautious optimism about the possibility of a two-state solution. Now that hope is gone, and when I consider that this conflict has endured for what amounts to
my entire life
, I believe the time is long past due to begin thinking about radical and hitherto unimagined solutions. I have come up with several quixotic ideas over the years, but I believe my latest plan is the best. Evacuate the entire Israeli population and give them the state of Wyoming. Wyoming is immense and sparsely populated, and in the interests of world peace, the American government could simply buy up the ranches and farms there and relocate the Wyoming population to other states in the region. Why not? The greatest threat to mankind would be eliminated, Dick Cheney would be homeless, and in no time at all the Israelis would have established a thriving country. A perfectly rational solution, it seems to me, and yet of course it will never happen. Why? Because, to use your words, “we would rather live through the misery we have created.”

2. The essential flaw of the United States Constitution. America purports to be a democracy (majority rule) but is in fact a country run by the few. I am not talking here about corporations, vested interests, and the economic elite, I am referring to the federal system itself, to the fact that each one of the fifty states has two senators, meaning that underpopulated Wyoming (approximately half a million people) has the same voice in the country’s affairs as mega-populated California (more than thirty million people). Unfair and undemocratic, which means that we have a government that fails to express the will of its citizens. There are historical reasons for this flaw (the compromise of the 1780s that brought the original thirteen states together as a single country), but it was never a good idea, and now, more than two centuries later, it is threatening to tear us apart. How to change the system? Only through a congressional vote, which would ask the senators from the small states to vote themselves out of power, to eradicate themselves. And when has a politician ever voted himself out of power? And therefore we go on living in the misery we have created.

3. The crisis in American education. Everyone acknowledges the problem, everyone knows that the majority of our students are failing, everyone understands that an educated public is the only hope for the future of democracy (even if we are not, strictly speaking, a democracy), and yet every reform only seems to make the situation worse. My solution: better teachers. How to get better teachers? Pay them the same salaries as lawyers, doctors, and investment bankers, and suddenly the brightest students would begin opting for a career in teaching. It could easily be paid for by cutting X number of useless weapons projects, by reducing the military budget, but it will never happen, at least not in a world that resembles the one we live in today. And thus we go on wallowing in our misery.

I don’t know how hard the economic crisis has hit Australia, but the effects have been devastating here. Not quite the out-and-out Great Depression we were girding ourselves against eighteen months ago, but horrible just the same, horrible for so many who have borne the brunt of it. Lost jobs, lost houses, the disintegration of whole towns and communities. As with every economic collapse in the past, every burst bubble since the beginning of capitalism, I think it was caused by historical blindness, an ignorant belief that what goes up need never come down, no matter how many times the up-down dynamic has played itself out in the past. In this case, the erroneous assumption that housing prices would go on rising forever. Therefore, sell houses to people who can’t afford them, since in the end even they will come out on top. Then, even worse, bundle up those fragile, unsustainable mortgages into securities (a great word:
securities
), since everyone is bound to profit in a world that is all up and no down. Supposedly learned men subscribed to this nonsense, and now look at us. The scary part of it—at least here—is that no one in the world of finance seems chastened.

I have been reading Kleist lately, his stories and letters in particular. I remember being deeply impressed when I first read him in my early twenties, but now I am overwhelmed. His sentences are remarkable—great hatchet-blows of thought, an implacable narrative speed, a pulverizing sense of inevitability. No wonder Kafka liked him so much . . .

Tell me what your plans are for Italy in June. Siri and I would rejoice at seeing you again.

Best thoughts,

Paul

April 17, 2010

Dear Paul,

Thanks for your letter of April 7. I have been in contact with the folks at Einaudi, and I hope to see you and Siri in Pietrasanta in June.

Since you wrote, there have been further developments in the Debenedetti affair, as I am sure you must be aware. You and I turn out to be only two among a multitude of the man’s victims. My Italian isn’t up to much, but glancing at his made-up interview with me I infer that he uses me as a mouthpiece for certain views of his own about Africa and South Africa, in much the same way as he uses Philip Roth as a mouthpiece for his views on Barack Obama.

I haven’t succeeded in locating the interview with you.

If this is his modus operandi, then his overall aim would seem to be to gather together a host of literary celebrities to spruik the Debenedetti vision of the world.

We live in an era in which it is really only the law of libel that holds back would-be writers like Debenedetti from turning us—and here
us
might include anyone whose name is more or less widely known—into characters in their fictions, making us mouth sentiments and perform actions that might amuse, upset, offend, repel, or even horrify us. If projects such as this flourish, then ultimately the pseudoselves that have been created for us, with their blessedly uncomplicated opinions, will come to reign in the public consciousness, while our “real” selves and our “true” (and tiresomely tangled) opinions will be known only to a few friends. The triumph of the simulacra.

You broach the subject of Israel. I find Israel hard to talk about, but if you will bear with me I will try to bring order to my tangled thoughts.

I follow the news from Israel/Palestine with feelings of such dismay and such distaste that sometimes it is a struggle not to simply pronounce a plague on both houses and turn away. A huge injustice has been done to the Palestinians—that we all recognize. They have been made to bear the consequences of events in Europe for which they were in no way responsible, and which—as you point out in your Wyoming-for-the-Jews fantasy—might have been resolved in half a dozen other ways that would not have involved chasing the Palestinians off their land.

But what is done is done, it can’t be undone. Israel exists, and is going to exist for a long time. I know that Israeli politicians like to conjure up pictures of Arab armies swarming across the borders, slaughtering the men and raping the women and urinating on the ark of the temple, but the fact is that in half a century of trying their very best the Arabs haven’t wrested back a square meter of Palestinian land; and there is no disinterested observer who believes that they would do any better if they tried a new invasion.

There is such a thing as defeat, and the Palestinians have been defeated. Bitter though such a fate may be, they must taste it, call it by its true name, swallow it. They must accept defeat, and accept it constructively. The alternative, unconstructive way is to go on nourishing revanchist dreams of a tomorrow when all wrongs, by some miracle, will be righted. For a constructive way of accepting defeat they might look to Germany post-1945.

What I call dreams of ultimate revenge Palestinians would call dreams of ultimate justice. But defeat is not about justice, it is about force, greater force. As long as Israelis can see, simmering beneath the surface of Palestinian pleas for a just settlement, dreams of an ultimate turning of the tables, they will continue to be lukewarm—less than lukewarm—about a negotiated settlement.

What the Palestinians need is someone big enough to say, “We have lost, they have won, let us lay down our arms and negotiate the best terms of surrender we can, bearing it in mind, if it is any comfort, that the whole world will be watching.” In other words, they need a great man, a man of vision and courage, to emerge from among themselves onto the stage. Unfortunately, when it comes to the vision-and-courage department, the leaders whom the Palestinians have produced thus far strike me as midgets. And if by some chance a savior were to emerge, my guess is that he would pretty soon be gunned down.

Perhaps the time has come for the women of Palestine to take over the reins.

Having said what I have said about the Palestinians, I must go on to say that there is something so ugly in the way that successive Israeli governments have behaved—democratically elected governments, working under a bad, bad constitution which will never be changed save by extra-constitutional action—that one’s stomach is truly turned. There is only one word that will describe what has been done of late in Lebanon and Gaza, and that word is
schrecklich
.
Schrecklichkeit
: an ugly, hard word—a Hitlerian word—for an ugly, hard, heartless way of treating people. For any of us who might be inclined to entertain the essentially progressive notion that the history of humankind teaches lessons that we should heed if we want to become better people, the question that must give us pause is: What kind of lesson has history taught Israel?