Context N°18
by Anne Burke
Our first night in Vienna, soaked from the cold, dreary rain, we are at Servus. Most remarkable about this dinner is that Publisher said almost nothing, lost somewhere in thought. Always an enjoyable experience when he gets preoccupied . . . When Publisher and Editor did speak, it was as though I wasn’t there . . . Much of Vienna reminds me of the Northwest Side of Chicago. The Viennese seem to love fluorescent lighting . . . Publisher and Editor appeared surprised, bewildered, when faced with the fact that the Viennese speak, as they say, “in a foreign language.” They turn to me and say, “What was that supposed to mean?” They blame the “foreign language problem” on yet another failure of the Bush Administration . . . Publisher again refuses to visit museums: “Depressing. All about the dead.” And concerts? “Depressing.” And Editor says, “I agree.” They tell me to “go on my way,” which most likely means it’s time for them “to do business” (business?) with other publishers, and for this they prefer that I be absent. They have never forgotten a small “incident” that occurred a year or more ago when we met with a publisher in Russia . . . Late one night, walking on the edge of the Botanical Gardens, we heard an Elvis impersonator. I wanted to enter the park to hear the concert. Publisher: “No.” . . . On Monday evening, dinner at El Mare. The waiter didn’t speak English but nodded politely. Publisher couldn’t read the menu but pretended to. He inadvertently ordered tongue. When it arrived I told him what it was. He said he wasn’t hungry and ordered another bottle of wine . . . On Tuesday, the train to Graz through the mountains. Publisher: “Where in the fuck are we?” Publisher hates mountains: “Fucking dumb mountains, they’re like death. Why didn’t they tell us that we had to go through the mountains?” . . . Publisher on Thomas Bernhard: “Spend twenty-four hours in Vienna and you know why he wrote the way he did. What choice did he have? So much for the idea that a writer selects his materials . . .” In Graz, the publisher Max Knoch met us at the train. Literaturverlag Droschl has wonderful offices, high ceilings and large windows looking out onto a garden of roses . . . I was told to keep quiet at the meeting. “One can always count on other publishers,” Publisher likes to say, “just as long as they are European . . .” Tuesday night I was on my own. Publisher and Editor went to another publishing party where I might have embarrassed them. For such times, they had provided me with a guidebook entitled Hallo, Vienna! (published in 1973) . . . On Wednesday, Publisher and Editor had lunch with Gerhard Auinger of the Federal Chancellery, discussing translations and federal funding. Publisher never stops talking about funding . . . Afterwards, we meet for coffee. Publisher stares at a movie poster of James Dean, walking in Times Square, circa 1952. He says to no one in particular, “Buildings are no longer there, and soon we will be no longer.” It will be another one of those days . . . On Friday, we meet with Gert Jonke, Austria’s most important novelist, or so claims Publisher . . . A quiet, unassuming man. Publisher has already decided that we will be doing more Jonke novels . . . Jonke complains that he can’t come to America because of “the smoking problem”: “Americans won’t let me smoke . . .” Publisher told Jonke that Geometric Regional Novel was one of the funniest books he had ever read . . . Jonke smiled and said, “I was a very serious young man at the time and had wanted to write a very serious novel . . . But then I started laughing at what I was writing. I did not write the novel I had wanted to write!” Publisher says, “Writers are so strange . . .” All in all, Publisher and Editor agree that they’ve probably found twelve books on this trip to have translated by Dalkey Archive, and as usual my opinion isn’t sought, except as to the best time for us to leave for the airport on Saturday, and whether I could carry home several books in my luggage . . .
Thinking in Fiction
A simple question: why do so few characters in fiction ever read books? Let’s assume that these characters do have the ability to read, and to read something more than love letters or legal documents or diaries. Why do their authors so rarely have them reading fiction or philosophy?
We know that many of the characters have gone to college, even such universities as Harvard and Yale. And yet they never read? Or, if they do, they never talk about their reading with others?
And here we live, God help us, in the ongoing age of realism. Granted, such writers as Raymond Carver and Frederick Barthelme preferred to make their characters sit in front of TVs. But might they not also pick up the occasional book? And might they not—just once—mention their reading to another character? Wife? Husband? Girlfriend?
Apparently not. Even professors in fiction do not read, though this could in fact be an accurate reflection of real professors. (Why is it that professors, and especially English professors, read so little? Ah, because they are always so busy! Almost as busy as librarians, who also have no time for reading.)
But onward! Even if we want to accept the problematic limitations placed upon characters of fiction as regards reading, how can we accept that they rarely even think? It’s not uncommon (or is it?) to have someone at the breakfast table say, “Last night I was thinking about . . .” (I will once again exclude the following groups from having such conversations that are dependent on the ability to think: speech pathologists, English professors, librarians, college administrators, and lawyers. I exclude them in the name of REALISM.)
Why aren’t characters allowed to engage in conversations that might resemble the sort that human beings really do have rather often? (I know, one might say here that the cause is that they never read!) Why can’t a novel consist largely of dialogue about ideas, or the exchange of ideas, regardless of their merit, and certainly aside from the any motive of the author’s to use his characters as a vehicle for articulating them? I mean simply this: thinking and the articulation of thoughts would seem to be rich materials for novelists, and yet they do not employ these materials.
I am therefore calling for an end to such devices as exposition, omniscient narrators, character development, and even setting for the sake of releasing fictional characters to both read and think. Let the fiction of the future consist of Platonic dialogues. Let us determine a course of action whereby we will no longer tolerate characters who do not think, regardless of the quality of that thought (e.g., what a college provost might be inclined to think, if one can even imagine this possibility). Let’s give praise now to the characters of the future, who will wrestle thoughts from their authors, and even use these thoughts to reflect upon their authors in turn.
