Edisto - Opening

/ I'm in Bluffton on a truancy spree, cutting, we call it, but all you do is walk off the unfenced yard during recess, where three hundred hunched-over kids are shooting marbles. I can't shoot a marble with a slingshot, so I split and go into Dresser's Rexall for a Coke or something, expressly forbidden me by the Doctor because it makes me hyper, she says, but should I drink milk all my life instead or go on now to house bourbon? That is not the point.

For my family

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright 1983, 1984 by Padgett Powell
All rights reserved
Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America
Published in 1984 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This paperback edition, 2009

Portions of this novel appeared in The New Yorker

Designed by Cynthia Krupat

www.fsgbooks.com

Edisto is an area of the South Carlinian coast. Some places
in this novel are fictional. Those that are real do not
necessarily correspong to geography.

JR - pg. 615

-- I mean look man are you going to stand there like that ...
-- Just tell me what's the difference you're the, you're what the young man from Racine invented aren't you no intimacy no, no commitment nothing, concave or convex to fit either sex aren't you ...
-- Man you're, I mean you're this real bastard aren't you ...

JR - pg. 603

-- Sixteen years like living with a God damned invalid sixteen years every time you come in sitting there waiting just like you left him wave his stick at you, plump up his pillow cut a paragraph add a sentence hold his God damned hand little warm milk a comma slip out for some air pack of cigarettes come back in right where you left him, eyes follow you around the room wave his God damned stick figure out what the hell he wants, plump the God damned pillow change bandage read aloud move a clause around wipe his chin new paragraph God damned eyes follow you out stay a week, stay a month whole God damned year think about something else, God damned friends asking how's he coming along all expect him out any day don't want bad news no news rather hear lies, big smile out any day now, walk down the street God damned sunshine begin to think maybe you'll meet him maybe cleared things up got out by himself come back open the God damned door right there where you left him ...

JR - pg. 556

-- Like they're delivering your thousand gross assorted plastic flowers from Hong Kong man.

Longing in Exile

I don't know the desert
But I planted words at its edges...
The words said what they said, and I left
I kept nothing but the rhythm
I hear it
and follow it
and lift it, doves
on the path to the sky
the sky of my song
I am a son of the Syrian plain
I live there, traveling or residing
among the people of the sea
But the mirage presses me eastward
to the ancient Bedouin
I lead the beautiful horses to water
I feel the pulse of the alphabet in the echo
I return a window looking out in two directions...
I forget who I am so that I can be
plural in the singular and in time
with the praises of the foreign sailors under my windows,
so that I can be the warring parties' letter to their families:
We won't return as we went
We won't return... even secretly!
I don't know the desert
however often it's haunted me
In the desert absence said to me:
Write!
I said: I lack absence
I said: I still haven't learned the words
It said to me: Write and you'll know them
and know where you were, and where you are
and how you came, and who you will be tomorrow
Put your name in my hand and write
so you'll know who I am and will go, a cloud
into the open...
So I wrote: Whoever writes his story will inherit
the land of place, and posses meaning, entirely!
I don't know the desert
but I bid it farewell: Peace
to the tribe east of my song: Peace
to the descendants, in their plurality, upon the sword:Peace
to my mother's son under his palm tree: Peace
to the ode that lifted our planets: Peace
to the passing peoples, a memory for my memory: Peace
to "peace be upon me", between two poems:
one that has been written
and another whose poet died [of passion!]
Am I me?
Am I there... or here?
In each you, me
I am you, the second person. It is not exile
for me to be you. It is not exile
for my me to be you. And it is not exile
for the sea and the desert to be
the song of the traveler:
I won't return, as I went,
I won't return... even secretly
لا أعرف الصحراء،
لكني نَبتّ على جوانبها كلاما...
قال الكلام كلامهُ ، ومضيت
لم أحفظ سوى الإيقاع
أسمعه
وأتبعه
وأرفعه يماما
في الطريق إلى السماء,
سماء أغنيتي،
أنا ابن الساحل السوري،
أسكنه رحيلاً أو مقاما
بين أهل البحر،
لكن السراب يشدني شرفاً
إلى البدو القدامى،
أورد الخيل الجميلة ماءها،
وأجس نبض الأبجدية في الصدى،
وأعود نافذة على جهتين...
أنسى من أكون لكي أكون
جماعة في واحدٍ، ومعاصراً
لمدائح البحارة الغرباء تحت نوافذي،
ورسالة المتحاربين إلى ذويهم:
لن نعود كما ذهبنا
لن نعود ... ولو لماما!
لا أعرف الصحراء،
مهما زرت هاجسها،
وفى الصحراء قال الغيب لي:
أكتب!
فقلت: على السراب كتابة أخرى
فقال: أكتب ليخضر السراب
فقلت: ينقصني الغياب
وقلت: لم أتعلم الكلمات بعد
فقال لي: أكتب لتعرفها
وتعرف أين كنت، وأين أنت
وكيف جئت، ومن تكون غداً،
ضع اسمك في يدي واكتب
لتعرف من أنا، واذهب غماما
في المدى ...
فكتبت: من يكتب حكايته يرث
أرض المكان، ويملك المعنى تماما!
لا أعرف الصحراء،
لكني أودعها: سلاما
للقبيلة شرق أغنيتي: سلاما
للسلالة في تعددها على سيفٍ: سلاما
لابن أمي تحت نخلته: سلاما
للمعلقة التي حملت كواكبنا: سلاما
للشعوب تمر ذاكرة لذاكرتي: سلاما
للسلام علي بين قصيدتين:
قصيدة كتبت
وأخرى مات شاعرها!
أأنا أنا؟
أأنا هنالك ... أنا هنا؟
في كل "أنت" أنا,
أنا أنت المخاطب, ليس منفى
أن أكونك. ليس منفى
أن تكون أناي أنت. وليس منفى
أن يكون البحر والصحراء
أغنية المسافر للمسافر:
لن أعود, كما ذهبت,
ولن أعود ... ولو لماما!

_

JR - pg. 553

-- Come off it man like other people I mean like who, like I mean somebody's getting paid to be this weather forecaster someplace telling you fair and warm while you're like up to your ass in this blizzard I mean like who does anything man, I mean somebody gets a job and like the first thing they do they try to figure out how to not do it I mean look at you man, like this business job with all this mail and calls and these presents like only this business job with all this mail and calls and these dollars present writing this music for some band that's getting this money free to play it? Like I mean what's the difference if you get help off that and Al gets it off this welfare, I mean like you're both in music and like you weren't even very nice to him man.

JR - pg. 538

-- Got hold of the wrong end of the stick Mr. Bast if you don't mind my saying so whole point here's just grading and taxing, big market waiting out there all your big interests having a hemorrhage watching kinds and amateurs pocket the profits government missing a tax source like letting your moonshiners work in the sunshine, government grading program going all your big boys get in the act sponsor medical studies canned editorials press releases educate the public, get the hopheads behind them pass the laws and put them out of business, caught growing the stuff be like running a still all the big boys' brand names already registered can't drag our heels want to work up some ads for these Duncan lines be all ready to go when ...

JR - pg. 507

-- Jack don't talk that way! She leaned close to the glass again, touching at a line under one eye, and then the other. -- I love you for reasons you'll never know anything about, she said paused there a moment longer, looking, before she turned away to leave the mirror free to lamp and heads of beds empty across the gap, reached his arm through the door. -- What else is this you've got?

JR - pg. 461

-- Looks like you've achieved nice racial balance here Whiteback, better than busing them out from Queens ...

JR - pg. 448

-- And if I may go even a bit further to say it appears that the more others make an effort to help you, the less effort you seem to make to help yourself. That may sound harsh but perhaps I failed to make myself clear when we were discussing Trilby earlier, Mister Bast. Not all of us have been given your unique gifts, and when I feel you are using them to satisfy what has struck me on more than one occasion as an almost unhealthy preoccupation with money, I am bound to tell you so sir. When you turn these gifts to accomplishing ends any of us are capable of we are all the losers for it Mister Bast, be content to leave these details of leaseback and writeoffs to us who toil in the vineyards and look to you to life our eyes up to the stars while standing in the damn trouserleg sliding down again there can you just get it back up for me?

JR - pg. 447

-- Of course yes I think most people would agree that music is some thing we hear, and in this case I understood our purpose to be to call upon its powers to help evoke the majesty of another kingdom, to summon the breath of life to these fellows as they sweep before our audience on the screen ... his own arm swept from the teak expanse to summon their vacant stares down from every direction -- and I believe ...

The Sleepwalkers - Opening

Part One

THE ROMANTIC

(1888)

I

IN the year 1888 Herr von Pasenow was seventy, and there were people who felt an extraordinary and inexplicable repulsion when they saw him coming towards them in the streets of Berlin, indeed, who in their dislike of him actually maintained that he must be an evil old man. Small, but well made, neither a shrivelled ancient nor a pot-belly, he was extraordinary well proportioned, and the top-hat which he always sported in Berlin did not look in the least ridiculous on him.

HERMANN BROCH

The

SLEEPWALKERS

a trilogy

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

BY WILLA AND EDWIN MUIR

FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, FEBRUARY 1996

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books,

a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously

in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by

Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.,

New York, in 1945.

Manufactured in the United States of America

JR - pg. 403

-- Point is whole God damned point is she wants to be taken seriously needs a supporting cast, talented woman never been allowed to do anything sits here all day drinking Mister Clean works up a whole God damned drama has a part for everybody. Arabs Israelis Irish same God damned thing scared maybe nobody takes them seriously, God damned Irish know everybody knows they're a God damned joke so the worse they get, God damned self-righteous Israelis same God damned thing take the top half of the double boiler leave the Arabs the bottom half everybody so God damned sick of all of them all they do is run around shouting for an audience somewhere to take them seriously same God damned thing, fill this up? Whole God damned problem tastes like apricots, whole God damned problem listen whole God damned problem read Wiener on communication, more complicated the message more God damned chance of errors, take a few years of marriage such a God damned complex of messages going both ways can't get a God damned thing across, God damned much entropy going on say good morning she's got a God damned headache thinks you don't give a God damn how she feels, ask her how she feels she thinks you just want to get laid, try that she says it's the only God damn thing you take seriously about her puts you out of business and goes running around like the God damned Israelis waving the top half of the double boiler have to tell everybody they're right. God damned Arabs mad as hell sitting there with the bottom half pretend you take them seriously only thing you want is their God damned oil ...

JR - pg. 289

-- Good yes, yes though the flute is not an instrument which is expressive of moral character, it is too exciting, it had not taken this particular rebuke of Aristotle's to check your Frank Woolworth's rash ambitions on the instrument. He was becomingly tone dead, and by eighteen seventy-nine had already crowned a decade of insolvency with the failure of his five-cent store in Utica, New York, where the rewards of leisure were then being advertised in the hapless passage of George Jones through McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader, last glimpsed as a poor wanderer, without money and with friends. Such are the wages of idleness. I hope every reader will, Bast God damn it keep complaining about how hard it is and then wander around the room while I 'm trying to ...

JR - pg. 205

-- Just sit still a minute yes ... Shirley? If this is Davidoff again just tell him to ... who? Better put him on yes just hold on a minute Bast start turning down calls from the press you see your credibility go right down the, hello ...? he recovered from a gesture apparently intended to direct attention to the litter of slide transparencies which got no further than a book on the desk there, A Moveable Feast left opened to page 190. -- Talking about the piece in Forbes this morning I saw it yes, got the whole thing blown out of proportion this talk about fabled mineral wealth and outside interests the whole thing's tribal, want the key to this Gandia situation it's right there in Fandia this Doctor Dr's an Idi ... no no just Idi, i, d ...

JR - pg. 185

-- No come with me Major come see him! Schramm come see him you'd be a real tonic Major you know why, Major? Because he feeds on outrage that what keeps Schramm alive, just his rage over the mean insensitive stupid you, you'd be the biggest God damned inspiration I could bring him with your proscribed op ...

JR - pg. 159

-- Don't do it for me Leo you just do it and these pictures, you just let me take care of it ... and he pulled the door hard behind him against the day that seemed to dim as he entered it, gray dimmed overhead to vindicate small shams of housefronts' glassed porches boxing retirement in undervests no longer anywhere for sale behind aluminum doors bearing aluminum initials, yards parceled behind chain link not even his waist high toward an American flag flown high and bleak some blocks ahead down one curb, up the next, shoulders down hands fallen to the depths of pockets, when a rubber ball hit him on the leg.

Destroyer : New Ways Of Living

Maybe I should have loved you.
Maybe I should have sworn
Not to be born
Of this wretched glove too soon,
But a dragon needs room
A dragon needs room
A dragon needs room
To run, run, run, run...

I was a desert in love with extremes.
You married well, a gentlewoman of means who
Kept the word "Destroyer" embroidered on her jeans, too

(La la la)

I wore skins. I didn't care who survived.
The band foretold trends from Spring of '85.
They're calling it "The New Decay"...
Hey, so am I.

(La la la)

Treacherous fop, don't be embarrassed
For looking good at your table on the terrace
That you call home. I'm sold
Paris, London, Rome's too old for you
And your kind
Explosions want to see what they can find:
New ways of living...

It's you and your kind:
The New Ways of Living

Destroyer: Notorious Lightning

Oh, Notorious Lightning! Yes, I had to ride you
And trash the crystal jets they kept in storage inside you!
I was told never to question it.
Now I'm facing twenty years for every night I tried to ingest the snow so lightly! (huh?)

You simply couldn't put down the Black Book.
You dreamt the dreams of the Self-Taught Man.
You warn the ladies not to be corrupted by their looks,
But your voice comes out soft and slanted!
And you're living off what government's granted you:
Amnesty from the true
Thing. Now, Sandra, slowly remove the ring and watch Notorious Lightning surround you.
Watch Notorious Lightning surround you.
Watch Notorious Lightning surround you.

I lay myself down to observe your gilded jeans hit the ground,
And have not grown from this worship.
I lay myself down to surrender,
Watch the trust funds gorge us again,
And have not grown from this worship.
So, Great Pretender, pull a face! Let's see the best 'forlorn you know!'
Just don't sing, "Barricades In The Morning" - it's been three days in a row
And it never comes off like you planned it!
Something once was delivered, then you banned it
But, oh, there is a key to this thing...
Notorious Lightning...

There is a monument.
There is a place within it that I have won.
And there is victory at sea.
And then there's the sun
Crashing down upon us
Faithful readership of the Old Warden. We beg -
"No not another ode to the Garden! You've let the Book of Appeals pile up!"
So, Child of the East, it's time
To shrug off the Beast and take a look at what you've done.
The half-breed jury agrees you're OK,
But what they never seem to say is that it's never
The defense's witness...
AND SOMEONE'S GOT TO FALL BEFORE SOMEONE GOES FREE!

God's Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; 5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

JR - pg. 159

-- Don't do it for me Leo you just do it and these pictures, you just let me take care of it ... and he pulled the door hard behind him against the day that seemed to dim as he entered it, gray dimmed overhead to vindicate small shams of housefronts' glassed porches boxing retirement in undervests no longer anywhere for sale behind aluminum doors bearing aluminum initials, yards parceled behind chain link not even his waist high toward an American flag flown high and bleak some blocks ahead down one curb, up the next, shoulders down hands fallen to the depths of pockets, when a rubber ball hit him on the leg. He stooped and caught it, and looked up, around, into a drive squeezed along the fence to a man poised there in a gay patterned suit and wearing a shirt and a tie, and he threw the ball and stopped dead. -- Wait is, Jack ...?

Destroyer: Music Lovers

Feeling fine, but it must be the wine
Cause it's April 27th and my baby's still dying on me.
We stole a gondola to sea
And ditched the chaperones on jewel-encrusted roans who called us 'unprofessional.' Deep down they knew,
Oh that we were the Music Lovers!
People say - "They just didn't want it enough."
Here, the people say - "They just didn't want it enough."
Oh, but we were the Music Lovers!
People say - "They just didn't want it enough."
Hear the people say - "They just didn't want it enough."

The time of your lives has been had
And your wives have been bad!
And look, the private sector's not denied you for the last time.
They're saying - "Those grapes go rotten on the vine."
Oh, but once we were the Music Lovers!
People say - "They just didn't want it enough."
Here, the people say - "They just didn't want it enough."
Oh, but we were the Music Lovers!
People say - "They just didn't want it enough."
Hear the people say - "They just didn't want it enough."

Sister, the world cannot hold us...
Brother, you can go your own way...

Moby Dick

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List: 2010

• Phil.

1. Descartes
2. Hume
3. Locke
4. Malebranche
5. Berkeley
6. Spinoza
7. 
   

• Lit.

1. Herman Melville
2. Saul Bellow
3. Raymond Chandler
4. Paul Auster
5. Dashell Hammett
6. etc.

• Hist.

1. History of India
2. Thucydides

• India.

1. Urdu Fiction Online: Haali, Sir Syed, Ghalib, Momin, Noon Meem Rashid, Mir, Kalidas, etc.

• Greeks & Romans

1. Plato
2. Aristotle
3. Plotinus
4. Pre Socratics
5. Cicero
6. Horatio
7. Romantic Poets
8. Euripedes
9. Aesychlus
10. Sophocles