Most Useful Information April 2023
Hunger, a dead daughter, a missing orphan, riding bikes in Idaho, and puking again
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What’s the point?
It used to be I never got sick. No cold, no mono, no pink eye, no flu, no coughing, no puking. But then I got sick. December in Idaho. Bands playing at The Yellow House. Late night. Cold walk home. Cold apartment. Frosted windows. Opened the fridge. Ate rice pudding and puked puked puked.
A different month. Still in Idaho. Working at a Greek restaurant serving spanakopita. We bake it in a large pan. The edges burn. We cut the burnt edges off, put them on a plate, set the plate on a counter in the kitchen, and snack on them throughout the day. They sat out from 10AM til 4PM. At 4PM I ate the burnt edges. 12AM sick again. Puke puke puke.
A different year. Now in Indiana. I got obsessed with Denis Lavant. I wanted to recreate a scene from Mauvais Sang. Except with puke. A couple pals filmed me with a GoPro. I ran down an alley. Did a cartwheel. Before the last take I chugged lukewarm V8 strawberry banana smoothie. Instant puke puke puke.
All three pukes came from consuming something that confused my stomach. I opened a boundary and let in “the other.” My gut didn’t take kindly to “the other.” I temporarily transgressed the boundary between what belongs inside and what belongs outside. Between myself and the other.
When I wasn’t sick for so long the boundary between me and the outside was less rigid, more forgiving. Time fortified my boundaries. My body is less accepting of weird stuff. It’s probably good. I check expiration dates now. It feels like a loss.
You are rereading this anecdote from an earlier newsletter because everything I read this month was a reread. It’s thematic. Also, all the characters this month struggle with letting in the other. A real problem.
Only one book has puke.
Sorry this month turned out so long.
Enjoy!
Hunger by Knut Hamsun.
First published in 1890. Translated from Norwegian into English by Robert Bly. Published by FSG Classics in 2008.
A misanthropic would-be writer wanders up and down Oslo streets trying to find food or a job. Intermittently he’s paid $3 by a newspaper for the weird articles he writes. He harasses people on the street. Especially a young woman. He becomes obsessed with her. Gives her a fake, made up, palindrome name: Ylajali. After months of starving he gets a job on a boat, quits writing, and leaves Oslo.
The narrator is unnamed. He doesn’t want people to know him. Humanity is disgusting. He is the exception. “I was a white beacon tower in the middle of a dirty human ocean full of floating wreckage.” The narrator cannot stand other people because through interactions with other people he sees himself. He doesn’t like what he sees. Not a beacon; part of the wreckage. It shatters his fantasy as a genius man of letters.
Early on he says, “The man’s stare irritated me” because he doesn’t like to be seen. Later he believes a woman is looking at him from a window, “Small jerks began to appear in my legs, my walk became unsteady precisely because I wanted it to be smooth… I felt the watching eyes on my neck every second and a chill ran through my body.” Watching eyes make obvious the discrepancy between what he wants to do and what he’s doing. Later someone recommends a tailor, “What was it to him which tailor I used? I got angry. The sight of this aimless, painted-up creature somehow enraged me and I reminded him in a brutal tone of the ten kroner he borrowed from me.” But really he is the aimless creature owing money. Embedded in an honest attempt at friendliness the narrator perceives a slight on his appearance. An unwelcome reminder he is poor and gross.
A young lady walks with the narrator. They flirt. “I forgot for a moment my poverty and misery, my whole horrible situation, I felt the warm blood racing through my body just as in the old days while I was still in one piece physically.” For once interacting with another person doesn’t make him see himself as he is, but as he wants to be. He tells the young woman his real name. He allows himself to be known. It doesn’t end well. During an embrace the young woman notices hair on the narrator’s collar. His hair is falling out. What appeared to be an eccentric, silly man is actually a crazed, decrepit beggar. Her fantasy crumbles. So does the narrator’s.
Several times in this newsletter I’ve expressed doubt about the idea of an individual. I don’t think a person can be a complete “self” without someone else. If a “self” exists it is a negotiation between who we think we are and who others think we are. Alone neither is true. The narrator of Hunger lacks identity because he refuses the person others think him to be. There’s a gulf he won’t approach. Hunger is the mechanism through which the gulf is explored but hunger is the problem. Whenever he eats he pukes. Food won’t fix him.
There is a scene in Hunger where a policeman sees the narrator asleep on a park bench. The cop tells the man it’s time to get up and go home. The narrator tells the cop he’s been locked out of his house. The cop tells him to go to the city jail and register as homeless for the night. He can spend the night there and tomorrow go home. Brilliant. Why didn’t he think of it sooner? He goes to the jail and gives a false name. He lies that he’s a journalist. Cops treat him with kindness, knowing he isn’t actually poor. Morning comes and cops give out meal tickets to the homeless. The narrator cannot accept one because it would end his ruse. For some weird reason its important to save face to a bunch of shitty cops.
This scene stands out for two reasons.
One: it demonstrates the unwavering pride of the narrator. At times he dresses up his pride as scruples, as a code of honor. Nearly every decision he makes based on his so-called moral code is a decision that would demonstrate high class. His moral code really only humiliates himself and others for the purpose of (unsuccessfully) proving he is a genius, moral individual.
Hitler famously admired Hamsun’s novels. They met once. It didn’t go well. Still, Hamsun wrote a flattering obituary for Hitler and after the war was arrested for treason. When first obsessed with Hamsun I read an article combing through Hamsun’s 19th century novels to identify shapes of Nazism to come. I don’t remember the article, but a militant adherence to a moral code that lionizing the pride of an individual while humiliating everyone else might be something.
Two: it influenced something I tried. For a couple summers on the Fourth of July a few friends would ride bikes on the Trail of the Coeur D’Alenes. The trail starts on the Coeur D’Alene Indian Reservation in a small town called Plummer. It ends in Wallace, where there was a functioning brothel as late as 1989. We never made it to Wallace. We always stopped in Kellogg, which used to be a silver mine but is now a ski resort. The whole trail runs about 70 miles. To Kellogg about 50.
We left ourselves plenty of daylight. Still we didn’t get to Kellogg until well after midnite. Some things happened along the way that we couldn’t plan for. Like, stopping at the lake to rope together a few logs and float around an ersatz raft. Or getting tired and taking a nap. After biking for what felt like three weeks, we rolled into a well lit Walmart parking lot. We went inside to ask if we were in Kellogg (no smartphones). We weren’t in Kellogg. Instead, Smelterville, which sounds like a fake town, but my mom’s cousin used to be the mayor.
Three more miles and finally in Kellogg we went straight to the police station. We said we had been biking. We were going to stay with friends in Wallace, but are too tired. We can’t go another 20 miles. We aren’t prepared. We didn’t anticipate this situation. We had sleeping bags. We could camp but if we camped in town they would arrest us. We don’t want trouble. Did the police have a small fund for putting up unfortunate travelers like ourselves in cheap hotels? Or some rooms in the jail with beds? Anything?
They had nothing. Begrudgingly they told us to bike to the edge of town and sleep on the ground just off the bike trail. No one would bother us. We biked to the edge of town and slept under some trees. No one bothered us. I woke up before my friends and sat in the grass reading Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun.
We were never meeting friends in Wallace. We never planned on going to Wallace. We lied. We’d planned to try to get a free hotel room from cops. Right now it’s hard to remember honestly where the idea came from, but it's honestly hard to believe it didn’t come from this scene in Hunger.
There will be a Hunger podcast next month.
Telephone by Percival Everett.
First published by Graywolf Press in 2020.
Telephone is sad. A geology professor named Zach Wells finds out his daughter, Sarah, has a terminal illness. He has to watch her neurologically deteriorate. At the same time his marriage is slowly disappearing, a colleague ends her life after not receiving tenure, a student crushes on him too hard, and he finds a note in Spanish asking for help hidden in the pocket of a jacket purchased from ebay.
He returns the coat with a note of his own. He buys another coat and gets a new note in return. Zach goes to bars. Avoids his wife. Travels to New Mexico to find the person leaving notes in his jacket. Finds a compound run by neo-nazis. Women work in the compound. Zach thinks they are human trafficked slaves and wants to save them. First he must return to his dying daughter. Before his Sarah is too far gone the family goes to France. They look at paintings in museums. Sarah goes missing, briefly. Before finding her Zach tackles a right wing nut with a gun. They return to the U.S.
Everett wrote and published three different endings. Depending on the copy of the book you have Zach either suffocates Sarah with a pillow because she has entirely lost her mind and doesn’t recognize anything of the world she’s in. Or a nurse stops him from suffocating Sarah. Depending on the ending you have he either gets a group of enslaved women safely to Mexico by hijacking a bus. Or one of the enslaved women gets shot during the hijack and he has to take her to a clinic where they will all be reported to the authorities. Depending on the ending you have he might reconcile with his wife after saving the enslaved women. His daughter always dies.
As a title Telephone evokes the game where people sit in a circle and repeat a piece of information. The information gets distorted. As a gimmick publishing three endings evokes the same game. The game suggests that whatever is core to the novel. Whatever is trying to be communicated from author to reader does not lie in the events, in the plot. Specific events might matter but they aren’t the point. They can be distorted without consequence. The point is elsewhere. If we’re looking for meaning in the series of events and the order they happen in, we are looking for meaning in the wrong place. Whether Zach suffocates her or not Sarah dies. What does it matter how?
But then, where should we look for meaning?
Sections of the novel are interrupted by short passages of information.
First, scientific names of birds found in the cave Zach studied for his dissertation. “Aechmorphorus occidentalis. Two fragments found in pack rat middens. Pieces were too small to allow measurement and subspecies identification. The grebe is a common transient and winter resident.”
Second, chess moves. “Nf3 b6”
Third, descriptions of paintings they saw at the Louvre when visiting Paris. “Stories of Saint Jerome and the Lion, c.1425, Master of the Osservanza. The grateful lion looks nothing like a lion, perhaps why Jerry was persuaded to get so close.”
Fourth, German phrases. “In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus.”
Fifth, items for camping. “a pocketknife, a tarp, a map.”
Sixth, Latin phrases. “transit lux, umbra permanet.”
Finally, the phrase, “It was hotter in New Mexico” again and again and again.
These sections are pure information. No narrative. Most of it I don’t understand. Not on the most literal level. It’s hard to believe this is where Everett wants us to find meaning in his book. Meaning isn’t in the narrative nor the interludes. So it’s got to be in the relationship between the narrative and the interludes, right? Everett does not generate the relationship for us. There is no obvious or semantic connection. Meaning is generated through the act of reading.
A book, a sentence, a word, a letter, a punctuation mark doesn’t inherently mean anything. Language gets its meaning through relationships. A word means something because of relationships between letters. Sentences mean something because of the relationships between the words. Life might be the same. A person on their own doesn’t inherently mean anything. Meaning is generated from relationships to others.
The Hunger narrator lacks an identity, his life lacks meaning because one way or another he refuses relationships with everyone he meets. Zach has relationships, but he wants a certain type of relationship with his colleagues, with his students, with his wife, with his daughter, even with the people who make his clothes. He wants total control. Every relationship wholly on his terms. Impossible. When his relationship with Sarah is out of his control. When it's no longer what he wants it to be he kills (or tries to kill) her. Life is a negotiation with things outside control. But control is what Zach wants. Not meaning. Telephone is a sad.
The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas.
First published in 1963. Translated from Norwegian into English by Elizabeth Rokkan. Published by Peter Owen Modern Classics in 2009.
Siss and Unn are almost friends. At school Siss is the leader of the pack. Unn is new. She’s an orphan just moved in with her aunt. Siss wants Unn to join the gang but Unn says no. Siss finds refusal exciting and enticing. Siss can win over everyone but winning over Unn is a challenge. She likes it. “[She] felt herself to be enmeshed in something strange and pleasant.” One day, unexpectedly, Unn invites Siss over to her house after school. Of course Siss accepts. “It was the mystification that fascinated her, the aura she seemed to see all around Unn.”
At Unn’s house she realizes Unn is not unlike herself. Their rooms are similar. They look similar. “They pulled themselves together, looked at each other searchingly, and took stock. This was not so simple—for some mysterious reason. They were embarrassed as well because they wanted each other’s company. Their eyes met in understanding, in a kind of longing, yet they were deeply embarrassed.” It’s hard to let someone see you. See your longing. At the same time, seeing someone’s longing is fascinating and mysterious.
Siss and Unn hold up a mirror and look at one another. The narrative shifts from third person to first. It’s unclear if it’s Siss or Unn. A mystical experience happens. “Gleams and radiance, gleaming from you to me, from me to you, and from me to you alone—into the mirror and out again and never an answer about what this is, never an explanation.” Not knowing who the “you” and “me” belong to is the point. Boundaries between two girls open. It’s not like they become one person, but they aren’t two people anymore.
The mirror falls to the ground. Third person returns. Both girls are shining and staring at one another. Boundaries close. Immediate embarrassment. Shame. Siss has to leave. Siss has to leave right away. Unn still wants to tell Siss something. Unn almost tells Siss something, but doesn’t. She’ll do it tomorrow. She’ll do it at school. Siss walks home. It’s cold, dark, and winter.
The next morning Unn is still embarrassed and can’t handle seeing Siss. Instead of school she goes to a frozen waterfall. Unn crawls behind the waterfall into an ice cave. The ice palace. Unn calls it a room made of tears. As she moves from ice room to ice room she starts hearing voices. She follows the voices. She tells herself that today she cannot think of “the other.” She can only think of Siss who is her new friend. It starts to get dark. Unn can’t find her way out of the ice palace. She falls asleep.
A search party. Siss insists on searching. Men hound Siss about what Unn said when they hung out. Siss can’t tell them. Unn didn’t say it. She almost said it, but didn’t say it. So how can Siss tell them? She can’t. They don’t find Unn.
A new girl comes to school. Siss doesn’t allow her to sit in Unn’s old seat. Kids play after school, kids she used to lead. Now she stands by the wall like Unn used to do. Kids are sad and confused without Siss. Time passes. Snow melts. Kids promise to remember Unn forever. Siss goes skiing with them. Only as far as the ice palace. Unn’s aunt moves away. Before she does she walks and talks with Siss. She gives Siss permission to move on. The ice palace melts.
The Ice Palace is a hard book to write about. It’s like Unn and I’m like Siss. Something remarkable happened between us. Something without explanation. The book has a secret to tell. It almost tells me, but it doesn’t. How can I tell you if it never told me? I can’t.
Tarjei Vesaas is dear to me. Whenever I mention him to my dad, he tells a story about watching Tarjei Vesaas’s funeral on TV (Vesaas was a big deal in Norway) as a kid. Afterward he mentioned the funeral to his mother. She scolded him for not telling her. She liked Vesaas and wanted to see his funeral. Like my grandmother I don’t think Vesaas had more than an eighth grade education. Like my grandmother he lived his whole life on a small, remote farm on a fjord. Like my grandmother he spoke in Nynorsk. He also wrote in Nynorsk, which prior to Vesaas was not a literary language. It was a dialect for uneducated, unsophisticated mountain people.