The Empty Chair by Bruce Wagner Read Free Book Online Page B

only one we’ll ever know until those
other
unknowing clouds come, could make nothing but midnight blue Silence—
    I know.
    The words are just a defense.
    I promise I’ll step up the pace.
    You’ve been so patient.
    I suppose I
am
finding this more difficult than . . . anticipated.
    I keep saying that.
    It’s hard to focus.
    Too much sadness.

    Know who I was thinking about when I woke up just now? Basho the poet. Do you know Basho? Have you read the haikus? Basho was the absolute god of the Beats—they all wanted to
be
him. Kerouac came closest but I suppose Snyder’s taken the crown, out of sheer longevity. In sixteen-hundredsomething, Basho’s house burned down. That’s when he went on the road. I have it somewhere in the van, a chapbook, a lovely limited edition of Basho’s
The Recordings of a Skeleton Exposed to Weather.
Beat
that
,
Beats!
    Can I talk about my affair with Carolyn Cassady?
    I know I’m skating around. Are you sorry you got yourself into this, Bruce?
[laughs]
I just can’t seem to approach it headlong.
I suppose I
could
get right to it—the full catastrophe—I just don’t want to be rude and take too much of your time. But I promise I’ll get to it.
Soon.
First, let me tell you about this thing I had with Neal Cassady’s wife. It’s guaranteed to amuse. Then I’ll talk about . . . all the rest.
    So there I was, falling for Kerouac head over heels—mind you, this wasn’t all that long ago! What can I say? I was a late-bloomer. The book that knocked me out, as I was telling you, was
Big Sur.
That novel’s actually become more of a draw for me to come back—here—than my Camaldolese hermit friends. When I make my pilgrimages, it’s to Jack’s spirit and the book that I come. To the beginner, I’d recommend
Big Sur
first
 . . . On the Road
isn’t even on my shortlist! I know that sounds terrible. Did you know there are
Madame Bovary
haters?
Mais oui.
They’re of the opinion—people have
beaucoup
opinions out there!—that Flaubert loathed his own creations, from the
Madame
on down, and his contempt bleeds through and ruins the text. Corrupts his achievement. Another
group considers
Gatsby
a novel that fails in its prose but triumphs in evoking a world and a time, a kind of ghost book that lingers like a scent made from flowers pressed
between the lines
, all fairy- and fingerprint dust. I’m in agreement! Oh, those F’d-up similes that fall so trippingly off the tongue! The glibness gets treacly once you’ve had your fill—which for me was around Page 2. Vomitous! I have a
fitzsimile
of my own, if you please: at his best, which is most often his worst (at least in
Gatsby
), Fitzgerald is like a too-congenial whore, wearing too many perfect gossamer gowns. Take that, Mr. Jazz Age! And you heard it here! (I actually believe I’d have made a pretty good critic. I really do think about books all the time and have formed my opinions with great care. Eventually, I may try my hand at an essay or two. Wouldn’t it be marvelous to publish a monograph with the “Vanzen” imprint?) To do what Fitzgerald did is an impossible trick and I’d put
On the Road
in the same camp. Does it evoke the ineffable? Does it evoke lost youth? Does it evoke the sights and sounds, the promise and magic of a time, an era, a world on the brink, of something mysterious and noble, numinous and
new
? Without question! Good Lord.
Yes.
Is it a wonderful novel? A resounding no! It’s an
experience
,
not a novel. It’s a mess.
Gatsby
and
On the Road
are like owner manuals for products that can never be delivered. And yet, how beautiful! The spell they cast is diabolical, untouchable. The
genius
of it, to create a text, an
illuminated
text of words that somehow alchemize—
atomize
—into fragrance and music, that kick up the dust of the future