Comments on The Pillow Book, on The Intercession of Saints, and on Bartholme

I've heard about the Pillow Book and was glad of the chance to read some excerpts. I see the resemblance to a blog. And can see it's value as a historical document--so interesting to see how some things (like the hypocrisy of the sanctimonious people listening to the priests) never seem to change. But for this, though, the piece would not have held much more interest for me than a blog, or the other kind of writing it reminded me of--a journal. To me this is the raw material of which art is made, but not so much art in itself. The piece was most interesting to me when it transcended being just a recording of the end-of-day's random thoughts, as when the author made lists, especially when the lists were paired, as in the list of things that lose by being painted followed by the list of things that gain by being painted. I was puzzled by the comments made by the person introducing the piece, calling it the perspective of a common person and contrasting it (favorably) with another similar piece written by a more aristocratic author, b/c the author of the pillow book seemed, to me, to be living a privileged life. There was not mention of work, no mention of doing, say, any domestic chores and where children are mentioned, they are being cared for (or not so well care for) by a nanny. Maybe the person introducing the piece meant more that the tone was common (bitchy, gossipy, etc.) rather than preachy. Anyway, I enjoyed it but had the same feeling I had about blogs (and about Lyn Hejnian's most recent book, which I heard called a "Pillow Book")--found it narcissistic and full of mundane details that a good piece made of it--a poem, or an essay--would have edited out.

The Intercession of Saints was a gorgeous, mysterious, painful piece. What held it together for me were the repetitions--of words and even whole phrases--and the repetitions-with-variations--plum becomes a plume of smoke and then returns again as a plum in that wonderful sequence of " a lily, a pomegranate, an apple, a plum." I figured out pretty early on that the piece was an elegy or lament for a child, lost at or shortly after birth, perhaps in an open heart surgery.(But I was a confused by other references--to chemotherapy and T-cells--maybe I was taking it all too literally).  The images were excruciating--the flame in the stone bowl, blue with rakes, etc. Some lines that stayed with me: "you were more precious than song," "so the child in surgery becomes the saint his whole life," and my favorite, "amniotic last most perfect night." I was surprised by the occasional intrusion of a different, almost smart-ass voice ("that's a good one" and "that's how saints are") but it somehow worked, maybe by giving some relief from the agony of the rest of the lines. I honestly don't know whether I'd call this poetry or prose, but I thought it was powerful and very well done.

Bartholme's piece fascinated me. It was all head and no heart, but my head enjoyed it. I loved the dry tone, the absurdity, and the omissions that forced the reader to take part in constructing the story. Which, ultimately, I could not do--and still, I liked the piece. Maybe b/c I love science fiction, and this suggested to me the kind of bureaucratic, hi-tech, dystopia one often finds in that genre. I liked the Q/A format a lot, and that sometimes answers were described instead of given. I just listened to another piece by B, "The Bodyguard," read by Salomon Rushdie on the The New Yorker podcasts--liked that one (a short story told almost entirely in questions) even more.