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Writer Roger Rosenblatt, left, with
E.L. Doctorow at the 2002 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement
dinner. Photo: Patrick McMullan. |
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Remarks
Since this is a literary evening in which Edgar Doctorow is being
honored by The Kenyon Review, and since we're about to
have dinner, I thought I'd begin with the words of John Crowe Ransom,
the great poet and founder of The Kenyon Review (and a
teacher of Edgar Doctorow), on the subject of writers and dinners.
"Survey of Literature"
In all the good Greek of Plato
I lack my roast beef and potato,
A better man was Aristotle,
Pulling steady on his bottle.
I dip my hat to Chaucer,
Swilling soup from his saucer.
And to Master Shakespeare
Who wrote big on small beer.
The abstemious Wordsworth
Subsisted on a curd's worth,
But a slick one was Tennyson,
Putting gravy on his venison.
What these men had to eat and drink
Is what we say and what we think.
The influence of Milton
Came wry out of Stilton.
Sing a song for Percy Shelley,
Drowned in pale lemon jelly
And for precious John Keats,
Dripping blood of pickled beets.
Then there was poor Willie Blake,
He foundered on sweet cake.
God have mercy on the sinner
Who must write with no dinner,
No gravy and no grub,
No pewter and no pub,
No belly and no bowels,
Only consonants and vowels.
You may be wondering why I'm wearing a tuxedo
tonight. Then again, you may not. I'll tell you anyway. It isn't
that I misread the "attire" section of the invitation––though
the idea of what "business attire" means for a writer
is tantalizing. No, it's just that I bought this tuxedo three or
four years ago, for well over a thousand dollars, And I put it on,
maybe, twice a year. I don't get out much, so if I'm invited to
something, I'm going to wear the thing.
The tux also carries me into the sometimes world of Edgar Doctorow––the
world of Ragtime, The Waterworks, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate––where
slick men in tuxes glide into nightclubs, give a nod to Eduardo
Cinielli, and are told: "We have your table, Mr. Rosenblatt."
In real life, this has happened to me only once––in
a furniture shop.
But enough about Edgar.
Edgar. Not only is he personally lovable. He is an enthralling storyteller.
He stands in a line of literature's best storytellers that wends
from Homer to Chaucer to Fielding to Thackery, Conrad, Dostoevsky,
and Twain and Jack London and Hemingway. The great moral storytellers.
As a teller of stories, Edgar is the essential person, the indispensable
representative of the sort of animal we are. We are a narrative
species. We like to promote ourselves as a rational species, but
current events would suggest otherwise. We're a narrative species.
We keep telling the story of our being. One day we may get it right.
In a conversation a while back, Edgar reminded me of a Chekhov story
in which a man whose son had died had no one to tell his heartbreak
to, and so he told the story to his horse. It was a fable of our
need to tell stories, which is a beautiful and desperate need.
You may remember Jean-Dominque Bauby, the editor of the magazine
Elle in France, who suffered so massive a stroke that the
only part of his body he could move was his left eyelid. Yet with
that eyelid, he signaled the alphabet, and he wrote the story he
was compelled to write, a whole book, The Diving Bell and the
Butterfly.
Or the fisherman on the mackerel schooner in The Perfect Storm,
whose ship was going down in a hurricane. And still, by lantern
light, he wrote his story in messages, and sent it off in a bottle,
because he had to do it.
Or the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, near the end, when they had seen
their friends and family hauled off to the extermination camps or
die of famine or disease. Still, they took little scraps of paper,
on which they wrote poems, fragments of autobiography, stories.
And they rolled them up and stuck them in the crevices of the ghetto
walls. They assumed that the Nazis had inherited the earth, and
if their writings were discovered, they would be laughed at and
tossed away. Yet they were driven to tell their stories.
Or the messenger in Job, who, at the end, says: "And I only
alone am left to tell thee." You don't really need "only"
and "alone" in the same sentence, but it's fun to edit
the Bible. Ishmael, in Moby Dick, the same thing; "And
I alone am left to tell the tale."
And then, once in a blue moon, comes along someone who tells a story
better than others. And he or she is properly elevated to that noble
perch to which people look up and implore: "Tell me a story."
Edgar obliges, thank God. And with some stories!
Can you imagine what's going on in Edgar's head most of the time?
Everyone here has been in Edgar's company, I'm sure. Is there a
more composed, more orderly, more serene-appearing, more civilized
man around?
Evidently, civilized waters run deep. Or they run amok. Think what
is going on in Edgar's seemingly civilized head: gunfights in the
streets, wild dogs on the attack; terrorists make bombs; corpses
are exhumed; horses explode; Dutch Shultz rooms with Stanford White;
tycoons tycoon; the Hindenburg looms, lakes loon.
I picture Helen at breakfast. Staring at all that unrippling serenity.
Wondering, wondering.
Questions for Edgar. Edgar gets questions. This past summer, Edgar
was giving a reading of a thrilling story at a writers conference
we were attending, and in the question-and-answer portion, a man
stood up and said that he'd heard that Edgar used to write the TV
show Bonanza. He asked, was this true? To see Edgar's mystified
face in response to that question was worth a life. The questions
did get better after that.
One question frequently asked about Edgar's work has to do with
the spaces between fiction and history. He tells the story of when
he was a student at the Bronx High School of Science, and of writing
a story for the school paper about Carl the Doorman. Carl, a refugee
from Hitler's Germany, was the doorman at Carnegie Hall. He wore
a blue serge jacket and brown baggy pants and he spoke with a thick
German accent. And he knew so much about music. And all the great
musicians who played in Carnegie Hall––Heifitz and Rubenstein
and Horowitz–– all knew him, and always greeted him.
And when the journalism teacher at Bronx Science wanted to take
a picture of Carl the Doorman to go with the article for the paper,
Edgar was forced to reveal that the story was pure baloney, or what
we call fiction.
Navasky, by the way, does not believe this whole account, which
is why one always feels a little sorry for Victor.
Of course, Carl the Doorman lives. He lives where the rest of Edgar's
imagined population lives––in that space between fiction
and history, which is to say, dreams.
Dreams are where we want to live. I remember looking out the classroom
window––we all do––and the teacher asking
the shrill, predictable question; "Roger, would you care to
rejoin the group?" And I would think: "Not really."
Questions of historical accuracy are a critic's game. A far more
interesting game is played when one's searches for the dream or
the tune or the tones. This is from The Waterworks:
"Now I knew it was not in itself remarkable
that someone who would know Martin would know Emily, but I was
struck here as if by an extraordinary coincidence. Perhaps it
was an effect of the art––it was of such intimacy,
this portrait––but I felt that I had stumbled upon
the inner workings of this generation . . . who were all so different
from my own . . . each in his own character, to be sure, but with
this common quality of creating gaps in my understanding of what
was happening to them, of what fate they were seeking for themselves
. . . as if I had lost some of my hearing and could not always
get the sense of their words, though the tones were clear enough."
Another question frequently asked about Edgar
has to do with the manner of his writing––specifically,
the discontinuous narrative. This has always struck me as the silliest
of questions, because the evidence of the effectiveness of Edgar's
manner is right before one's eyes. Not only can we deal with discontinuity;
we live in discontinuity. That Edgar has mastered a style that imitates
the most artistic workings of the mind testifies to his special
genius.
Oddly, a question less frequently asked concerns Edgar's dealings
with good and evil. Without a sense of good and evil, no story matters.
Edgar's stories come from many places––snatches of information,
scraps of violence and wonder, but most of all, from his own acknowledgement
of right and wrong. One can't always be certain when something is
right or wrong, but one can be certain that there is a difference.
And it is that certainty that leads to a sense of justice. Edgar
is a very just writer.
The Book of Daniel, for example. World's Fair,
for example. The title of World's Fair. One wants the world
to be fair, just, and fair, beautiful––no one more than
the boy at the center of the novel, whose hope triumphs over experience,
or at least puts experience in its place. Optimism is a strange
compliment to give a writer, because it seems pale, breeds pale
stuff, the Paradiso as compared to the Inferno.
But most great writers are so suffused with optimism, they have
to tame it. All the cruel and pitiless world that Edgar deals with
is rescued by the fact that he has chosen to deal with it. He has
graced it with form. Form rescues content.
"Tell me a story," wrote Robert Penn Warren, whom Edgar
also knew at Kenyon. "Tell me story / In this century, and
moment, of mania, / Tell me a story." No time like the present.
For all writers, what finally matters is the "body of work."
Interesting phrase––"body of work." Unlike
the body you were born with, this one is put together by oneself,
part by body part, over the years––forearms, eye sockets,
torso, eardrums, anklebones. Inevitably, some parts will work better
than others. But with a great writer––when one stands
back and surveys the whole––one knows that one has been
in the presence of something significant in the world. Indeed, indispensable.
Some body.
So it has been with Edgar, with–– we trust––many
miles to go. We are lucky to be in his company.
I began with Ransom, and I'll end with him–– the final
stanza of "Somewhere is Such a Kingdom"––a
version of another mind's City of God. The stanza follows
a lament for the uncivilized chatter of birds and of us birds, and
it springs from an optimistic and great, good heart––like
Edgar's.
Ransom writes:
But when they croak and fleer and swear,
My dull heart I must take elsewhere;
For I will see if God has made
Otherwhere another shade
Where the men or beasts or birds
Exchange few words and pleasant words.
And dare I think it is absurd
If no such beast were, no such bird?
Thank you, Edgar. You're a very rare bird.
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