Here and Now: Letters (2008-2011)

by Paul Auster

  Now we have entered a period in which the numbers have begun to frighten us. I agree with you that the crisis seems unreal, unmoored to any concrete facts. Banks collapsing because of foolish, risky investments in the future cost of mortgages (numbers talking to numbers), multi-billion-dollar bailouts, and suddenly faith in the system (the collective belief in the fiction we have created) is faltering. Yesterday, calm; today, widespread panic.

  Unfortunately, this panic, which is no more or less grounded in reality than yesterday’s calm, is producing tangible results—the equivalent of your plague of locusts, your pestilence.

  I am referring to the so-called credit crisis. Banks have become too afraid to lend anyone money. Let’s imagine you are the owner of a small factory that produces armchairs. You need to acquire new equipment to keep your business running, and because you don’t have enough cash on hand to pay for it, you go to a bank to ask for a loan. The bank turns you down, and because your business cannot survive without the new equipment, you are forced to fire half your workers, to declare bankruptcy, to shut your doors for good.

  Last month alone, more than half a million workers in America lost their jobs. The panic has led to an ever-expanding unemployment problem, and people without work are indeed poor—in spite of a general sense, as you put it, that our larders are well stocked.

  The crisis will end only when the panic ends. But what will cause the panic to end is a mystery to me.

  Your idea of making up a new set of numbers might be a beginning. Another solution, which occurred to me the other day, would be for governments to start printing vast amounts of money and distribute tens of thousands of dollars to every person in the world. There must be a flaw in my thinking (am I overlooking the possibility of rampant inflation?), but, if I’m not mistaken, the bailouts are being funded in precisely this way: by printing more money.

  All best,

  Paul

  December 14, 2008

  Dear John,

  Only yesterday, a week after it was sent, the cover note accompanying your “Letter to P. A.” surfaced in Siri’s computer. Somehow, she had managed to miss it (we are a hopeless pair when it comes to the digital life), and I was happy to learn that you enjoyed Portugal as much as I did and sorry to hear about your flu. (I had a nasty one earlier in the fall and know how wretched those microbes can be.) I trust you are back in form now. The knife-like precision of your letter could not have been achieved by an ill man.

  Your reference to the film festival reminded me of a curious story I would like to share with you. It dates back to 1997, when I was a member of the jury at Cannes. It happened to be the fiftieth anniversary of the festival, and the organizers decided to gather together as many prize winners from the past as possible and have them sit for a large group photograph. For some reason, jury members were asked to participate as well—which was how I wound up in that picture of more than a hundred people.

  I am looking at the photo now, and among the directors I recognize are Antonioni, Almodóvar, Wadja, John Boorman, David Lynch, Tim Burton, Jane Campion, Altman, Wenders, Polanski, Coppola, the Coen brothers, Mike Leigh, Bertolucci, and Scorsese. The actors include Gina Lollobrigida (!), Lauren Bacall, Johnny Depp, Vittorio Gassman, Claudia Cardinale, Liv Ullmann, Charlotte Rampling, Bibi Andersson, Vanessa Redgrave, Irène Jacob, Helen Mirren, Jeanne Moreau, and Anjelica Huston.

  Before we took our places for the photo, there was a cocktail reception that lasted for about an hour. I’m not sure I have ever stood in a room more charged with human electricity. It felt as if everyone there wanted to meet and talk to everyone else, that the excitement generated by such a gathering had turned these stars and legends into a mass of hyperactive schoolchildren.

  I was introduced to a number of people, had short conversations with some of them, and then, in the swirling mayhem, found myself shaking the hand of Charlton Heston. Of all the people in that room, he was the one I was least interested in talking to. Not only did I think he was a bad actor (stiff, unconvincing, pompous), but I found his politics abhorrent. You probably know about his involvement with the National Rifle Association and his putrid right-wing pronouncements, which always seemed to get a lot of attention from the American press. But what could I do? It was neither the time nor the place to challenge him, and before long I realized I was trapped. Heston had no idea who I was, of course, but he, too, infected by the electricity in the room, was in high spirits, and he appeared to enjoy talking to me. He talked, and I listened, and for the next ten or fifteen minutes he reminisced about his earlier visits to Cannes, his long career in the movies, how wonderful he thought this gathering was, and how humbled he felt in the presence of all these remarkably talented people. In spite of my prejudice against him, I had to admit that in some ways he was a “perfectly nice guy.”

  The festival ended a few days later, and I went home to New York. Two or three days after that, I went to Chicago. I had promised my American publisher to attend the annual Book Expo event in order to give a reading from a book of mine that was due to come out in the fall. I arrived on a Saturday. After checking into my hotel, I took a cab to the McCormick Center—which is an enormous place, I discovered, probably the size of fifty airplane hangars, and every inch of the floor was crammed with publishers’ booths, hundreds and hundreds of booths, perhaps thousands. By the time I found my way to the Henry Holt stand, my bladder was nearly bursting. Someone pointed me in the direction of the men’s room (about a mile and a half away), and off I went, walking briskly down one aisle after another, passing scores of publishers’ booths in the process, and just as I was approaching my destination, I glanced to my right, and there, sitting at a table signing books, was Charlton Heston, the same Charlton Heston I had met in Cannes a week earlier. The banner above him read: National Rifle Association. Needless to say, I didn’t stop to exchange pleasantries. The “perfectly nice guy” was back in his element, and I had no desire to talk to him. Nevertheless, I felt rattled. What were the odds, I wondered, of meeting a man at a French film festival, and then, just days later, running into him again at a book fair in Chicago?

  I did my reading and flew home the next morning, Sunday. The following day, Monday, I was scheduled to have lunch in Manhattan with the French actress Juliette Binoche, who was considering whether to accept a role in the film I was preparing, Lulu on the Bridge. (That is another story—and far too complicated to go into here.) I arrived at her hotel a little past noon—a small, elegant, very expensive place on Madison Avenue called The Mark. I announced myself at the front desk and then ambled around the lobby as I waited for J.B. to come downstairs. No one else was there. Except for the clerk behind the desk and myself, the lobby was deserted. After a minute or so, the elevator door opened, and out stepped a man: a large old man, somewhat bent over, who walked with slow, shuffling steps. He began moving in my direction, and an instant later I realized that I was looking at . . . Charlton Heston.

  He glanced up, took note of my presence, and stopped. Recognition flickered in his eyes. Wagging his finger at me and beginning to smile, he said: “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?”

  “We met at Cannes last week,” I said. “We talked for a little while before the group photo session.”

  “Ah, of course,” he said, smiling in earnest now and reaching out to shake my hand. “So good to see you again.”

  I didn’t bother to mention Chicago.

  He asked me how I was doing. Fine, I said, just fine. And you? I asked, how have you been doing? Fine, he said, just fine, and then he shuffled on past and went outside through the revolving door.

  What am I to make of this, John? Do things like this happen to you, or am I the only one?

  Paul

  December 30, 2008

  Dear Siri,*

  I have two questions (two favors) to ask, the first to/of you, the second to/of Paul. Would you mind passing the second on? />
  (1) I have engaged to write a review of a new edition of Samuel Beckett’s letters of the years 1929–1940. In the mid-1930s Beckett was in therapy with Wilfred Bion. Am I correct in thinking you know more than a little about Bion? Is there a good book or article that I can read to get an idea of Bion’s approach to therapy?

  (2) The edition in question appears to be based on a sharp distinction between Beckett’s literary correspondence and his personal correspondence. None of the latter is included. The editors also seem determined not to say anything about Beckett’s private life. One consequence is that the reader of the letters has little idea of why Beckett keeps shuttling between Dublin and Paris and Hamburg and London (mostly, one suspects, eros is the spur).

  The editors also express their gratitude lavishly to Beckett’s nephew and the Beckett Estate.

  My question is: Do you have any experience of Edward Beckett? Is there an identifiable agenda behind the way he controls the Beckett corpus?

  All the best,

  John

  December 30, 2008

  Dear Paul,

  The “crisis in world finance” that I wrote about last time seems set to continue into the new year. At this point I think I should quit my role as commentator on economic affairs. I am reminded of Ezra Pound, whose unhingement began during the depression of the 1930s, when he convinced himself he was seeing things about how the economy worked that other people, wrapped up in fictions, were too blind to see: in short order he turned himself into what Gertrude Stein called “a village explainer,” Uncle Ez.

  It is high summer in this hemisphere, and I spent most of Sunday sitting in front of a television screen (shades of Wall Street!) watching the third day of a five-day game of cricket between the national teams of Australia and South Africa. I was absorbed, I was emotionally involved, I tore myself away only reluctantly. In order to watch the game I put aside the two or three books I am in the middle of reading.

  Cricket has been played for centuries. As with all games, there are only so many moves you can make, only so many effects you can cause. It is very likely that the proceedings in Melbourne on Sunday, December 28, 2008, duplicate in every respect that counts the proceedings of some other day’s cricket in some other place. By the age of thirty, any serious spectator must have moments of déjà vu—more than moments, extended periods. And justifiably so: it’s all been done before. Whereas one thing you can say about a good book is that it has never been written before.

  So why waste my time slumped in front of a television screen watching young men at play? For, I concede, it is a waste of time. I have an experience (a secondhand experience), but it does me no good that I can detect. I learn nothing. I come away with nothing.

  Does any of this sound familiar to you? Does it strike a chord you recognize? Is sport simply like sin: one disapproves of it but one yields because the flesh is weak?

  Yours ever,

  John

  January 1, 2009

  Dear John,

  Siri will be writing to you separately about Bion . . . but as for Beckett’s nephew, I’m afraid I’ve had no direct contact with him. When I was preparing the Centenary Edition [of S.B.’s work] a few years ago, however, I was told by the editor at Grove Press that Edward was very pleased with the project and gave it his wholehearted endorsement. If you would like to be in touch with him yourself, I could easily arrange it for you through my British publisher, Faber & Faber. As you know, they have had the rights to Beckett’s plays for years, but recently, through the efforts of Stephen Page, the young head man there, they have bought out John Calder and now own the rights to all of Beckett’s prose as well. Edward surely must have been involved in those negotiations.

  As far as I can tell, Edward’s somewhat crotchety behavior over the years concerning permissions to perform or publish his uncle’s works is an effort to respect S.B.’s wishes, to imagine how the somewhat crotchety S.B. would have acted in each instance were he still alive. But this distinction between literary and personal correspondence makes no sense to me. Years ago, I was contacted by one of the editors of S.B.’s letters (a professor at Emory University, if I’m not mistaken) and sent her photocopies of all the notes and letters I had received from Beckett. According to her, they were aiming to publish a complete correspondence and were hunkering down for what they were certain would be many years of work. At long last, it seems, the first volume is finished.

  Who is the publisher—and who are you writing the review for?

  Concerning Beckett’s travels, I’m not sure that love was the motivating factor. Knowlson’s biography is a good source of information on these comings and goings. Many of the events are dim to me now, but I believe that Beckett first went to Paris on a teaching fellowship after graduating from Trinity. He was there for a year or two, then returned to Dublin, where he taught for a while and started cracking up. His principal reason for going to London was to receive treatment from Bion (I think). The trips to Germany were mostly about looking at art. The only woman he knew there was someone named Peggy Sinclair (the daughter of a relative by marriage, his first flame—who died young of TB).

  I’m afraid that none of this will be of much help to you, but you might dip into the Knowlson to see if the facts tally with my memories. If I’m not mistaken, he discusses Bion at some length.

  Happy new year to you and Dorothy!

  Paul

  January 5, 2009

  Dear Paul,

  Thanks for correcting me on Beckett’s nephew. It seemed to me that the editors of the new Letters were drawing rather too sharp a line between the literary and the personal, and I surmised—erroneously—that the estate might be behind it.

  The publisher is Cambridge. My review will be in the NY Review of Books.

  On Charlton Heston: It doesn’t seem to me strange that, operating in a film environment, you should keep running into another person from that environment. What is bizarre is that it should be Charlton Heston. It begins to sound like one of the dreams from Freud’s dream book.

  All good wishes,

  John

  Hôtel d’Aubusson

  Paris

  January 10, 2009

  Dear John,

  Your snappy, witty letter from 12/30 arrived just two hours before I left for the airport. Now I am in Europe again, a frigid Paris, twelve noon exactly, sitting in my hotel room, unable to go on with the nap I was hoping to take to ward off the effects of a sleepless night. Excuse the funny stationery, excuse the crappy ballpoint pen. For some reason, Paris hotel rooms are not equipped with typewriters.

  I’m more than happy to leave behind our ruminations on economics. It is a subject I am ill qualified to talk about. Needless to say, I am an ardent believer in universal happiness. I would like everyone in the world to have satisfying, fulfilling work, for everyone to earn enough to escape the menace of poverty, but I have no idea how to achieve such worthy goals. Therefore, I will pass over these matters in silence.

  Some last words on the Charlton Heston saga. You argue that those chance meetings became possible because we were both moving in a film milieu, traveling in the same circle. But the fact is that only the first meeting had anything to do with film. The second took place at a book fair in Chicago, the third in a New York hotel lobby. Hence my confusion and amazement, my feeling that those encounters were utterly implausible—as if they were events (as you suggest) not from real life but from a dream.

  Last week, I reread Crime and Punishment for the third or fourth time. I was suddenly struck by plot manipulations that resembled the Charlton Heston story. The most unlikely people wind up living next door to one another. Dunya’s fiancé just happens to be in the same building as Sonya’s stepmother. The man who nearly ruined her (Dunya) just happens to be living in the apartment next to Sonya’s. Implausible? Yes, but highly effective in creating the atmosphere of
a fever dream, which gives the book its tremendous force. What I am saying, I suppose, is that there are things that happen to us in the real world that resemble fiction. And if fiction turns out to be real, then perhaps we have to rethink our definition of reality . . .

  WATCHING SPORTS ON T.V.

  I agree with you that it is a useless activity, an utter waste of time. And yet how many hours of my life have I wasted in precisely this way, how many afternoons have I squandered just as you did on December 28th? The total count is no doubt appalling, and merely to think about it fills me with embarrassment.

  You talk about sin (jokingly), but perhaps the real term is guilty pleasure, or perhaps just pleasure. In my own case, the sports I am interested in and watch regularly are the ones I played as a boy. One knows and understands the game intimately, and therefore one can appreciate the prowess, the often dazzling skills, of professionals. I don’t care a lick about ice hockey, for example—because I never played it and don’t truly understand it. Also, in my own case, I tend to focus on and follow specific teams. One’s involvement becomes deeper when each player is a familiar figure, a known quantity, and this familiarity increases one’s capacity to endure boredom, all those dreary moments when nothing much of anything is happening.

  There is no question that games have a strong narrative component. We follow the twists and turns of the combat in order to learn the final outcome. But no, it is not quite like reading a book—at least not the kinds of books you and I try to write. But perhaps it’s more closely related to genre literature. Think of thrillers or detective novels, for example . . .

  [Just now, an unexpected call from a friend, who is waiting downstairs. I have to go, but will continue when I return.] 3 hours later: