UNDER THE NAME OF ROQUENTIN (nyc, 1968)
19. UNDER THE NAME OF ROQUENTIN (nyc, 1968):
I am a zip-bug whiz-king : Sartre wrote a novel ('Nausea') in which Roquentin keeps a detailed journal to convince himself of the 'singularity of his existence' taking care not 'to let any nuances or small facts escape even if they seem insignificant' and he argues that 'in order for the most banal event to become an adventure it is necessary and sufficient to retell it' but then he questions whether if one gets too caught up in the retelling does one lose track of the reality and he decides it doesn't matter 'man is above all a storyteller who lives surrounded by his stories and by those of others and he sees everything that happens to him through these stories and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it' (perhaps things 'happen' one way and we 'tell' them in another) - Roquentin's penchant for passively recounting and processing his experiences to 'pad' his back story always set better with me in those days as I thought about it over and over than the more 'active' forms of aggrandized adventure-myth-making storytelling and plot effusiveness of most modern authors or those at the least with whom I'd become familiar or in any events recounted by them or constructed by them too they played a more 'active' role - a sort of tyrant enlisting others to re-enact the author's own local events as if to provide himself with a real-life active cast with which to manipulate and act out his (or her) fantasies ('expendable extras always on call') and I always felt it odd too how Roquentin was disgusted by the everyday inanimate things of ordinary life all around him - (a small-time historian un-nerved by the existence of inanimate objects) - which disgust him and confuse him and make him doubt his own significance so that when he holds a damp pebble he experiences a kind of nausea in his hand - those things I never understood surrounded as I was on a daily basis by the nasty things of the street and the equally nasty things of the interior spaces where I stayed - everything from paint anger rage old brushes and cans to the broken down rubble of condemned and collapsing buildings aged hallways junk-strewn lots and discarded objects along each and every street path and by-way - and I stayed with them and managed to make them part of my experience and that always seemed better to me than the false strivings of the suburbanized outlooks of those who found dwelling and style a suitable match - I wanted none of that and became most assured of my 'existence' when I was amidst squalor and able to do something with it and any of the miscellaneous crowds of bums and losers along the Bowery ways I frequented - side-streets turn-offs junked yards and debris-strewn lots - made me more comfortable and 'at home' in feeling than had ever any of the previous 18 years with their boarding school and small-suburb tract settlement crap ever done and I welcomed the anarchy and the disorder I found for it was MY messy irksome physical world and a world which confirmed my own existence ('going back is false moving ahead is false looking the other way is false all there is is the now and present and that must be acknowledged and embraced and worked with as clay') and the city of desire is a scrim a falsified backdrop for scene and stage and science all conjoined together to write large with falsehood the truths of a present day that is as inexorable as it is non-representational - and there is no order just as there is no logic - and all any of that ever did make me want to do anyway was to listen again and carefully again to Gershwin's 'American in Paris' which piece I'd somehow grown fond of in its orchestrations - the movement and pace of its sound I found pleasant and startling and something to live with - the juxtaposed somehow tympani of it all and the vaguely syncopated sectionings of the music itself enthralled me well - I once had a conversation with some odd fellow who claimed to be in the 'local' film industry (whatever that was or was meant to be) and he said 'Hollywood movies - you know - are profoundly and genetically Hebraic' and this took my by surprise because I wasn't expecting to be hearing this from him and we talked back and forth a little as I stayed as best I could as the less-informed one so as to let him spiel and to let myself draw out from him what he was driving at (like 'acting out his or her personal fantasies' as above stated) and what he meant was 'profoundly Hebraic and by that I mean that the film industry as we know it is a the product of Jewish minds of certain distinctive racial traits that arose in the ghettos of eastern Europe and transported themselves to Beverly Hills - two of the traits are 'ignorance of or indifference to social norms' and 'high intelligence' and they too are connected with certain diseases and conditions of a people so described and self-authored as itinerants outcasts vagrants and wanderers but 'chosen' too and as East Europeans suffer heavily from these traits it is seen as a Jewish condition : neurosis whining complaining self-absorption failure to demonstrate empathy physical clumsiness disjointed speech overly formal approaches all absorbing interest in single topics social isolation inability to integrate socially poor communication skills obsessive or repetitive routines...' and yeah I realized right then I knew what all that meant and knew too that I'd seen such personalities a hundred times right here all around - but solving his 'Jews' reference just wasn't much of an achievement I figured - so I went on my way just WITH the knowledge of that : Woody Allen to the fore in the flesh leading the thousands of others doing the same thing as him and before thirty years more were gone (I'd see) we were essentially ruined by all that too : but this guy claimed to know it and he was probably right except I couldn't see why he limited it to 'Hollywood' films since all around me at a any time was an entire false vanguard of film students actors and auteurs from NYU and the rest - the Village Voice was full of them - critiquing complaining and factoring in the angst doubt cynicism romance sex and longing of the recent years in a little film-students' industry of their own : right smack dab in the middle of it all the new Jewish Kingdom was about to arise (and there I was) - but New York was like that.
I am a zip-bug whiz-king : Sartre wrote a novel ('Nausea') in which Roquentin keeps a detailed journal to convince himself of the 'singularity of his existence' taking care not 'to let any nuances or small facts escape even if they seem insignificant' and he argues that 'in order for the most banal event to become an adventure it is necessary and sufficient to retell it' but then he questions whether if one gets too caught up in the retelling does one lose track of the reality and he decides it doesn't matter 'man is above all a storyteller who lives surrounded by his stories and by those of others and he sees everything that happens to him through these stories and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it' (perhaps things 'happen' one way and we 'tell' them in another) - Roquentin's penchant for passively recounting and processing his experiences to 'pad' his back story always set better with me in those days as I thought about it over and over than the more 'active' forms of aggrandized adventure-myth-making storytelling and plot effusiveness of most modern authors or those at the least with whom I'd become familiar or in any events recounted by them or constructed by them too they played a more 'active' role - a sort of tyrant enlisting others to re-enact the author's own local events as if to provide himself with a real-life active cast with which to manipulate and act out his (or her) fantasies ('expendable extras always on call') and I always felt it odd too how Roquentin was disgusted by the everyday inanimate things of ordinary life all around him - (a small-time historian un-nerved by the existence of inanimate objects) - which disgust him and confuse him and make him doubt his own significance so that when he holds a damp pebble he experiences a kind of nausea in his hand - those things I never understood surrounded as I was on a daily basis by the nasty things of the street and the equally nasty things of the interior spaces where I stayed - everything from paint anger rage old brushes and cans to the broken down rubble of condemned and collapsing buildings aged hallways junk-strewn lots and discarded objects along each and every street path and by-way - and I stayed with them and managed to make them part of my experience and that always seemed better to me than the false strivings of the suburbanized outlooks of those who found dwelling and style a suitable match - I wanted none of that and became most assured of my 'existence' when I was amidst squalor and able to do something with it and any of the miscellaneous crowds of bums and losers along the Bowery ways I frequented - side-streets turn-offs junked yards and debris-strewn lots - made me more comfortable and 'at home' in feeling than had ever any of the previous 18 years with their boarding school and small-suburb tract settlement crap ever done and I welcomed the anarchy and the disorder I found for it was MY messy irksome physical world and a world which confirmed my own existence ('going back is false moving ahead is false looking the other way is false all there is is the now and present and that must be acknowledged and embraced and worked with as clay') and the city of desire is a scrim a falsified backdrop for scene and stage and science all conjoined together to write large with falsehood the truths of a present day that is as inexorable as it is non-representational - and there is no order just as there is no logic - and all any of that ever did make me want to do anyway was to listen again and carefully again to Gershwin's 'American in Paris' which piece I'd somehow grown fond of in its orchestrations - the movement and pace of its sound I found pleasant and startling and something to live with - the juxtaposed somehow tympani of it all and the vaguely syncopated sectionings of the music itself enthralled me well - I once had a conversation with some odd fellow who claimed to be in the 'local' film industry (whatever that was or was meant to be) and he said 'Hollywood movies - you know - are profoundly and genetically Hebraic' and this took my by surprise because I wasn't expecting to be hearing this from him and we talked back and forth a little as I stayed as best I could as the less-informed one so as to let him spiel and to let myself draw out from him what he was driving at (like 'acting out his or her personal fantasies' as above stated) and what he meant was 'profoundly Hebraic and by that I mean that the film industry as we know it is a the product of Jewish minds of certain distinctive racial traits that arose in the ghettos of eastern Europe and transported themselves to Beverly Hills - two of the traits are 'ignorance of or indifference to social norms' and 'high intelligence' and they too are connected with certain diseases and conditions of a people so described and self-authored as itinerants outcasts vagrants and wanderers but 'chosen' too and as East Europeans suffer heavily from these traits it is seen as a Jewish condition : neurosis whining complaining self-absorption failure to demonstrate empathy physical clumsiness disjointed speech overly formal approaches all absorbing interest in single topics social isolation inability to integrate socially poor communication skills obsessive or repetitive routines...' and yeah I realized right then I knew what all that meant and knew too that I'd seen such personalities a hundred times right here all around - but solving his 'Jews' reference just wasn't much of an achievement I figured - so I went on my way just WITH the knowledge of that : Woody Allen to the fore in the flesh leading the thousands of others doing the same thing as him and before thirty years more were gone (I'd see) we were essentially ruined by all that too : but this guy claimed to know it and he was probably right except I couldn't see why he limited it to 'Hollywood' films since all around me at a any time was an entire false vanguard of film students actors and auteurs from NYU and the rest - the Village Voice was full of them - critiquing complaining and factoring in the angst doubt cynicism romance sex and longing of the recent years in a little film-students' industry of their own : right smack dab in the middle of it all the new Jewish Kingdom was about to arise (and there I was) - but New York was like that.
posted by gary j. introne at 6:04 PM
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