An Honest Ghost (12 page)

I would like to be a gigolo offering myself to all. (Wilde speaks of his “curious mixture of ardor and of indifference … I would go to the stake for a sensation and be a sceptic to the last.”)

43.

David and I had a tremendous adventure. We had been to Chartres and were on our way back to Paris. (Talking, talking.) It seemed that the ride would never end.

“This traffic jam has a permanent look about it.”

Outside, the land stretches, empty, to the horizon; the sky opens, with speeding clouds.

“What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to write, is a book about nothing.”

44.

Something lovely happened last night. There was zest in the air and a sweet sadness like a hovering ghost. A policeman entered the courtyard and asked what was going on. With a stick in his hand, he kept vigil in the chicken coop until dawn, frightening away a skunk by barking like a dog. Here he drank several glasses of beer in rapid succession, and when he came out it was night. “Are you trying to get inside me?” he asked. “I came here to find myself,” he said as he walked from the front door of my apartment to the elevator across the hall, “but instead, I got lost.” He bowed and retired, a verse or two already beginning to creep into his head.

And that was it. And then there was nothing.

45.

Silence is a prophecy, one which the artist’s actions can be understood as attempting both to fulfill and to reverse.

I have a prophecy of my own: that soon the day will come when man shall bitterly repent having neglected, scorned, or renounced his duty to spread, wherever he might, the simple light of unbelief.

46.

I am writing this book near a monastery that stands deep in the woods, among rocks and thorns. And I’m still anxious. Always alone. This is a life of eternal longing. I move books from one place to another, myself as well, / I don’t know what to do with all of this. Our solutions are redescriptions of our problems. Man has become a counter-natural animal, and we have called that process the appearance of intelligence.

How did we come to these corrupted times? As the activity of the mystic must end in a via negativa, a theology of God’s absence, a craving for the cloud of unknowing beyond knowledge and for the silence beyond speech, so art must tend toward anti-art, the elimination of the “subject” (the “object,” the “image”), the substitution of chance for intention, and the pursuit of silence.

This is, as we have seen, an epic situation; but it is also an “Orphic” situation: not because Orpheus “sings,” but because the writer and Orpheus are both under the same prohibition, which constitutes their “song”: the prohibition from turning back toward what they love.

The only good thing about childhood is that no one really remembers it, or rather, that’s the only thing about it to like: this forgetting. It is endless.

Forget it; forget it.

Zee End.

The Books

The following pages contain all of the quotes, in order of appearance, that make up An Honest Ghost. Each quote is followed by the author who wrote it; the book in Rick Whitaker’s library from which the sentence was taken; and the page number on which it appears in that edition.

An Honest Ghost: William Shakespeare Hamlet Act 1,

Scene 5

Happiness is an: Thomas Szasz The Second Sin 36

1.

I am unpacking: Walter Benjamin Illuminations 59

I have been: Andre Gide The Counterfeiters 180

It is growing: Hart Crane Library of America: Complete

Poems and Selected Letters 358

There are limits: Rob Stephenson Passes Through 26

Life lived by: Susan Sontag I, etcetera: Stories 15

You go back: Samuel Beckett Nohow On 46

The subjective universe: Ludwig Wittgenstein Notebooks

1914-1916 41

There was an: Teju Cole Open City 166

It seemed neither: Carl Van Vechten Parties 105

“How can you: Max Ewing Going Somewhere 47

He was twenty-four: Max Ewing Going Somewhere 22

At the moment: Adam Thirwell Delighted States 38

David said, “I: Don DeLillo The Names 260

My splendid David: J. M. Barrie The White Bird 274

My daily recreational: Charles Kaiser The Gay Metropolis

243

“What color were: Don DeLillo The Names 108

Our little love: Alfred Chester Looking for Genet 161

“Oh! How long: Andre Gide The Counterfeiters 165

Well!: Jacques Lacan Four Fundamental Concepts of

Psychoanalysis 109

I was dealing: Glen Baxter Returns to Normal (no page

numbers)

He was really: David Wojnarowicz Memories That Smell

Like Gasoline 39

I wrote in: Benjamin Sonnenberg Lost Property 93

There was something: D. H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers 99

To be in: Anita Brookner Look at Me 92

Sometimes he purred: Lincoln Kirstein By With To and

From 37

He often pretended: Ben Marcus Notable American

Women 130

The action signaled: Elizabeth Hardwick Sleepless Nights

15

I could spare: Thomas Bernhard “The Joiner”, German

Short Stories (Ed. David Constantine) 271

I would lie: Virginia Woolf Orlando 90

I have never: Graham Greene Travels with My Aunt 3

A few years: Albert Camus The Fall 17

I lived in: Theophile Gautier Mademoiselle de Maupin 144

It was very: W. Somerset Maugham The Razor’s Edge 187

These arrangements turned: Edmund White Nocturnes for

the King of Naples 2

Few men have: Charles Baudelaire The Mirror of Art 192

Occasionally I had: Robert Bolaño By Night in Chile 85

David frowned: Eleanor Porter Just David 202

He was not: John Banville Doctor Copernicus 123

It had been: Brenda McCreight Parenting Your Adopted

Older Child 187

When his friends: Robert Bolaño Amulet 79

His irony, intended: Susan Sontag I, etcetera.: Stories 48

Prodded by his: Nathanael West Miss Lonelyhearts 39

Once when I: Richard Gilman Common and Uncommon

Mass 49

His rage had: John Banville Doctor Copernicus 78

The most innocent-seeming: John Banville Doctor

Copernicus 112

Cops always questioned: Alfred Chester The Exquisite

Corpse 27

His early childhood: James Schuyler Alfred and Guinivere

viii (introduction by John Ashbery)

He was a: Rick Whitaker Assuming the Position 128

He died of: Alex Ross Listen to This 8

He lived a: Gilbert Highet Poets in a Landscape 174

Shall I describe: Neil Bartlett Ready to Catch Him Should

He Fall 240

I found it: Theophile Gautier Mademoiselle de Maupin 317

His mother had: Don DeLillo The Names 225

After one first: Max Ewing Going Somewhere 51

She attended to: Max Ewing Going Somewhere 50

The immense accretion: Susan Howe My Emily Dickinson

105

She could be: Lydie Salvayre The Power of Flies 1

She drank, she: Elizabeth Hardwick Sleepless Nights 19

Her clothes seemed: Victoria Redel The Border of Truth 39

She had a: Djuna Barnes Nightwood 84

Her family, her: Willa Cather Youth and the Bright Medusa

85

David admires her: J. M. Barrie The White Bird 132

How tender people: Maximilien Robespierre Virtue and

Terror 28

“I’m rough and: Rudy Wilson The Red Truck 140

One often makes: Ludwig Wittgenstein Notebooks 1914-

1916 42

“What a sweet: Nathanael West Miss Lonelyhearts 29

Her voice was: Nathanael West Miss Lonelyhearts 49

I will not: Jane Gardam The Flight of the Maidens 211

David leaned my: Don DeLillo The Names 131

He was stretched: Colette The Pure and the Impure 44

He puts on: Ludwig Wittgenstein Lectures on

Philosophical Psychology 1946-47 63

If there is: Samuel Beckett Disjecta 65

Though he was: Voltaire Zadig 21

Even more commendable: Voltaire Zadig 21

Very quickly, he: James Blake The Joint 183

He talked incessantly: Virginia Woolf Orlando 91

He was adequately: Andre Gide The Counterfeiters 205

Flushed with his: F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby 137

I’ve been told: Montaigne Selected Essays 15

David recalled dimly: Andre Gide The Counterfeiters 205

Not that there: Edmund White City Boy 80

That is how: John Banville The Infinities 7

He spent his: Alan Bennett Writing Home 570

A bell beat: James Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young

Man 191

Although none of: Susan Sontag I, etcetera: Stories 15

I am interested: Susan Sontag I, etcetera: Stories 72

But it could: Joseph Breuer and Sigmund Freud Studies in

Hysteria 189

Some of my: Robert Frost The Notebooks of Robert Frost

299

It is impossible: David Lehman, ed. Great American Prose

Poems 221

Today is not: Gioia Timpanelli Sometimes the Soul 14

I swear I: Elizabeth Bishop One Art 529

But what kind: Adam Phillips Going Sane 17

We long for: Robert Lowell Collected Prose 192

Life and death: Gertrude Stein Wars I Have Seen 121

I believe in: Noel Coward Lyrics 73

My life is: David Lehman, ed. Great American Prose

Poems 146

I live in: Susan Howe My Emily Dickinson 38

(Like Holden Caulfield: James Blake The Joint 234

All of us: W. G. Sebald Austerlitz 71

The Zen masters: Daisetz T. Suzuki Zen and Japanese

Culture 7

All work is: David Lehman, ed. Great American Prose

Poems 112

Shall we make: Maximilien Robespierre Virtue and Terror

115

The story that: Danilo Kiš A Tomb for Boris 1

To say that: Jorge Luis Borges Collected Fictions 480

This is my: Christopher Priest The Glamour 2

Not my usual: David McConnell The Firebrat 3

2.

Day before yesterday: Elizabeth Bishop One Art 336

I got drunk: Paul Klee The Diaries of Paul Klee 186

I wasn’t good: August Kleinzahler Cutty One Rock 80

That was about: Jean Echenoz I’m Gone 12

Soon I’d be: Edmund White My Lives 221

I took a: Charles Henri Ford Like Water From a Bucket 198

A black man: Virginia Woolf Orlando 56

The world to: Thomas Bernhard Prose 127

A part of: Glenway Wescott Continual Lessons 318

I didn’t want: David McConnell Firebrat 2

I was amazed: Shohaku Okumura Living By Vow 133

I was lost: Dante trans. Mary Jo Bang The Inferno 15

Loneliness rose to: George W. S. Trow In the Context of No

Context 49

When I got: Alfred Chester Looking for Genet 162

A sound of: Robert Bolaño Amulet 27

Who comes here: Jacques Lacan Four Fundamental

Concepts of Psychoanalysis 113

Sometimes a venturesome: Mark Merlis American Studies

59

(O the weakness: Maximilien Robespierre Virtue

and Terror 104

Still, the only: Mark Merlis American Studies 57

Ding-dong: Richard Rodriguez Brown 51

A minute later: Nathanael West Miss Lonelyhearts 139

I blushed intensely: Robert Bolaño By Night in Chile 14

Moving, as I: Fran Lebowitz Reader 137

The child was: Djuna Barnes Nightwood 68

We shook hands: Gore Vidal Palimpsest 122

He seemed bloodless: Paula Fox Poor George 18

I was all: Rob Stephenson Passes Through 27

Silence: Theodore Dreiser An American Tragedy 7

The uncertainty lasted: Danilo Kiš A Tomb for Boris 11

I would not: Darcy O’Brien A Way of Life, Like Any Other

5

There are only: Jean Genet The Declared Enemy 10

A shiver ran: Robert Bolaño By Night in Chile 84

It was a: Vladimir Nabokov Laughter in the Dark 21

He looked extremely: James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son

157

“Joe, how are: Charles Dickens Great Expectations 255

The visitor glided: Aidan Higgins Notes from a Receding

Past 146

He gives me: Anne Landsman The Rowing Lesson 177

“I haf someding: Darcy O’Brien A Way of Life, Like Any

Other 23

He looked at: Fyodor Dostoevsky The House of the Dead

230

“Please answer me: Albert Camus The Plague 50

How can I: Theophile Gautier Mademoiselle de Maupin

134

The question was: Sylvia Townsend Warner Summer Will

Show 122

I do not: Diane Williams It Was Like My Trying to Have a

Tender-Hearted Nature 85

I don’t want: Ivy Compton-Burnett Darkness and Day 7

Absolute silence: Darcy O’Brien A Way of Life, Like Any

Other 49

“And besides, don’t: Evan S. Connell Mrs. Bridge 122

This is a: Denis Donoghue American Classics 238

“Well well well: Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange

147

Unconditional surrender: Gertrude Stein Wars I Have Seen