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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781771832939 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Guernica Editions, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2018 |
| Series: | Essential Essays Series , #70 |
| Pages: | 170 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.25(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.30(d) |
About the Author
Sky Gilbert is a professor, theatre director and drag queen extraordinaire. He has written seven novels, three books of poetry and a memoir. He has won numerous awards for his theatre work. In 2014, Guernica Editions published Compulsive Acts: Essays, Interviews, Reflections on the Works of Sky Gilbert. He lives in Hamilton.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
a clue.
A little boy walking with his mother. He dances along, uncaring, blithe. She seems to be irritated by holding his little hand. He is literally skipping. This vision inspires in me many feelings, among them: sadness, want. I wish of course that I was that little boy. It seems to me that I was him. This might of course be a misconception, but nevertheless, I am touched.
CHAPTER 2another.
I constantly see her; my mother. She had a very anglo-saxon face, and beauty it turns out, is ultimately mundane. There are so many beautiful women. But it's as I remember her — older, somewhat worn, blonde, a lined, once-pretty face — it's this face that stops me dead on the street, entering a streetcar, walking past a store, it's a kind of shock, but not entirely unpleasant. For suddenly it's my mother sitting there. Only perhaps less troubled, nicer. Less her. But still, for a moment, she was there. I do enjoy those moments and I am foolish enough to nurture the fancy that she is appearing to me, that these resemblances are a kind of apparition. "Halt — who goes there!" On the battlements — Hamlet and the Ghost of His Father.
CHAPTER 3speculations on a mystery.
I am quite entirely certain there is one. This would be for some, the evidence of my spirituality. For those who err on the side of fact, there is no mystery anywhere, whereas those of us who believe that there is a mystery at the heart of it all are in that way good corporate citizens — if religion could be thought of as a corporation (which it really most certainly is). I don't want to be a member of this club — the mystics — never have. I know that when my father asks me if I believe in God I always tell him that I don't believe in the man but in the spirit. He seems vaguely disappointed, and always asks the same question "Not ... a man?" No, I say, no, not a man, feeling sad again that I am not able to satisfy his expectations. Then I say something that he doesn't understand at all, and which sounds pretentious on the face of it, that my religion is my work, or, even more pretentiously, my art. Words. That poetry makes me believe that there is a spiritual world. Yes, it all sounds so overwrought and the height of aestheticism. But the fact of the matter is, if there are any facts — and there may be only one fact, and if so it would be this: I am one who believes that at the heart of it all there is a mystery and not a truth.
CHAPTER 4cornell george hopley-woolrich.
Of course you don't know about him, no one does. He wrote the short story on which the movie Rear Window is based, and so many of his novels were turned into films that you may or may not have heard of — Phantom Lady, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Black Angel, The Bride Wore Black — more than 38 films from 1938 until now. Who was he? I can still see his thin, gaunt face, his haunted eyes. He lived with his mother for the greater part of his life in a hotel in New York City — in the days when people still lived in hotels. (This was before the dawn of apartment buildings, when there was worry about fires. In a hotel, you would order up your meals from the hotel kitchen or have you lunch in the dining room, but you would not be cooking in your room.)
You have heard of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. Not Cornell Woolrich. And I wish I could say this was the mystery but clearly, you haven't heard of him because he was a homosexual. And I say that standing ready to be accused of paranoia. But there are no wisecracking private eyes in his novels; they are not about tough guys or gun molls. Woolrich's novels are about women in love, usually tragically in love, or men who are held in the thrall of a woman, and they are often written from a woman's point of view. Woolrich clearly was a woman in his own imagination. It was through a woman's tragedy, the eternal tragedy of being a woman that he found his inspiration. And dare you or anyone accuse him of appropriation? Why bother; his gender confusion was enough to cause him to be ignored.
So no mystery there. America of course watched perhaps one movie a year for forty years based on a Cornell Woolrich story. But he was not to be celebrated. This is not my bitterness showing, believe it or not, I am not bitter; no, the mystery lies not in the neglect of his work but in his life.
A rumour that Cornell Woolrich was present on the film set for Rear Window, and the possibility perhaps that he told Hitchcock about his living situation with his mother and that Hitchcock was inspired to make the film Psycho because of his fascination with Cornell Woolrich's personal life.
And what was going on between Cornell Woolrich and his mother? Call me what you will, I am morbidly fascinated by men who live their whole lives with their mothers. What did he/they talk about? Did he bring her the newspapers each morning? Did they attend the theatre? Did he buy her pickles at night (her favourites: dill)? She was apparently, often ill; one imagines an old woman with a conveniently psychosomatic cough, an imperious look, a mid-Atlantic accent, propped up by antique bed pillows, demanding things, like the mother in Now Voyager. She ruled him with a rod of iron. Or was she simply his best friend? (No psychoanalysis please, please don't ruin it, that's simply the way it was.) And she died in the late 50s when he was almost sixty years old. And what kind of desolation was that?
He moved from the hotel room they shared, of course, for how could he live there? She still inhabited the walls, and he imagined that if he moved he might somehow not take her with him. For she was still with him, and would be, forever, there is no doubt about that, and Cornell Woolrich was a heavy drinker and the drinking got heavier after his mother died. Did he drink to fill an unfillable void, to quench a desire for love that was unquenchable — for surely nothing can be as overwhelming, life affirming, and all-devouring as a mother's love for her son.
There is another story from Woolrich's biographer about meeting Woolrich at a crime writer's dinner in the early 60's. There was a pale little man sitting in a corner, and his future biographer ended up sitting next to him, and when Cornell Woolrich told him who he was, the young man refused at first to believe that this emaciated, hollow-eyed shadow had written Rear Window. Woolrich's future biographer became Woolrich's friend. They would meet occasionally. But the younger man noticed that Woolrich was soon drunker and drunker at each meeting and that parting was such sweet sorrow; Woolrich could not bear to say goodbye, increasingly, would not leave him, clung desperately to the shirtsleeves ("Please, please, don't go, not yet, does it have to be just yet?") until at the very end he found Woolrich in his tiny, squalid apartment dead from drink, newspapers covering the windows — the hotel room he had lived in since his mother died.
It seems to me that some can be killed by sadness or loss or by expectations unrealized. And I sometimes envy those whose mothers did not love them, an unloving mother prepares for the dull realities life.
Have I misread Cornell Woolrich? It seems to me at the very least that a clue lies here; at the very heart of the most tormented (or perhaps, sadly, perfect?) relationship of them all.
CHAPTER 5is it true?
There is a literary theory or a psychoanalytical theory, or a mixture of both that explains why many great writers are homosexuals. (Are they?) Anyway, the theory goes that writers have a great fondness for and facility with words because their mothers talked to them more than mothers normally do. This excessive chatting with their mothers caused them to be both great writers and homosexuals. But all mothers chat, don't they? Unless they are dumb. And what about all the great writers who are heterosexual or who simply did not have mothers (i.e. never knew them)? But one can tire of the endless search for causes for something that — it seems hopeless to convince the world — is not any sort of affliction.
CHAPTER 6a disappearance.
Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days in 1926. Such disappearances fascinate me. Should we not all be allowed a disappearance — at least once in our lives? It is unfair not to take it seriously though. Agatha Christie claimed to have lost her memory for an extended period. Or at the very least to not know clearly who she was. It seems odd that nobody told her. She stayed at the Harrogate Hydropathic Hotel (home of the famous Harrogate Massage Douche-Aix-System) for 11 days and nights, and was certainly enough of a celebrity that someone might have asked; "Aren't you Agatha Christie?" Speculation at the time was rampant. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle requested that a mystical friend meditate on one of her gloves, but to no avail. She could not be found. Until the saxophone player in the hotel's band recognized her. And then the police sent her husband Archie to spy on her from behind a newspaper in the lounge and confirm that it was her. The husband and wife were reunited. However, is unlikely that the reunion was ecstatic as Archie was being unfaithful to Agatha quite regularly with a woman named Nancy Neele.
Neele is the name that Agatha Christie used to check herself into the Harrogate Hydropathic Hotel.
As you see, the plot thickens.
Agatha Christie's car was found abandoned at the edge of a pond hear her house, there was a suitcase with some clothing in it, a necklace. Why?
The press (that Agatha Christie so despised) theorized that — since her husband was having an affair with Nancy Neele and she used the name Neele at the spa — that Christie must therefore have been quite consciously and deliberately attempting to embarrass her husband.
This is possible.
I prefer my own explanation.
Agatha Christie insisted to the bitter end that she had lost her memory for eleven days. And there is indeed a mental condition known as a fugue state (is there music involved?) which is characterized by confusion and loss of memory. She did some very odd things during her disappearance, such as making a trek to Claridge's to search for a lost ring, as well as putting an ad in the paper from Teresa Neele of South Africa, beseeching relatives to contact her. This made journalists suspicious. Christie also left a letter for the police. It said: "My life is in danger!" To journalists all this was a rash of carefully constructed clues manufactured and tossed out by a master novelist, not the bona fide disappearance of a mentally damaged woman.
But if Agatha Christie was leaving clues, what were the clues supposed to indicate?
This is one of the most fascinating aspects of the Mystery of Agatha Christie — that in either a confused, angry or pathological state, she was leaving clues that made no sense. Usually we start with a mystery and look for clues. What happens when it's the other way around, and the clues are not intended to help us discover the answer, but instead to discern the question?
It seems unlikely to me that Agatha Christie's disappearance was intentional. But I think it's possible that for ten days she forgot who she was, or at the very least was so appalled by her own life that she wished to escape it altogether. For it would have been a strange kind of revenge. Of course she was in danger, of course she had forgotten who she was — Nancy Neele had stolen her husband, and ultimately (it may have seemed to her at the time) her life. She was crazy, sad, frantic, anxious, lost — and so she fled to Harrogate to escape because she didn't know what else to do.
I completely understand how one might lose one's sense of self and effectively one's memory because of a personal betrayal. I also understand — and I make no apologies for this — how a rejection from a man might can make you feel like nothing at all, or make you feel that your life was over, as if you have nothing to live for. In fact I am even somewhat proud that I know what this means, that I have experienced, that I also understand the total erasure of personality that can ensue from the loss of one man's love.
Agatha Christie spent the rest (most) of her life with her second husband Max Mallowan, a Professor of Western Asiatic Archaeology at the University of London. He resembled Holmes' Watson; fat and settled with a handlebar moustache. A far cry from the romantic boyish, clean-shaven Archie, who — when Agatha met him — was an army officer and rode a motorcycle.
Some might say those were the eleven days it took for Agatha Christie to grow from being a girl into a woman.
Or, conversely, it took eleven nightmarish days for Agatha Christie to convince herself that her dream of love with Archibald Christie was a delusion and that a safe predictable relationship with a man whom she did not love and whose most thrilling adventure was an archaeological dig in a funny golf hat was the sensible and inevitable life choice for her. It took her eleven days to put aside "romance" and accept "reality."
Christie chose a boring personal life over an impassioned tragic early death; it took her eleven days to figure it all out.
Some choose Max Mallowan.
Others make a vain, tragic attempt to remain young forever but the struggle often kills them.
Those of us who choose a bespectacled and portly Max live on and on for countless, tedious years — our lives fundamentally imperfect and, sadly, all too circumspect.
True?
CHAPTER 7clues, but no mystery.
A plethora of clues. I know there is a mystery, somewhere — I am certain of that — as certain of as I am of anything. Certain, that is, of the fundamental uncertainty of it all. Far too many clues to raise a stick at. I am going to try and list them all here. Perhaps from looking at all the clues I will someday understand what the mystery is.
CHAPTER 8questions.
There can never be too many questions. If there is one thing we can know it is that we don't know. The truth is, our salvation may depend on the quality of the question posed. There are questions like: "Why is there air?" and questions like: "What is the square root of 35?" And questions like: "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" These are factual questions. There are answers, somewhere, however difficult they may be to obtain. Then there are questions about what this means, or that means. These, I think are the most important questions, because they have no answer. Pick a line of poetry, pick a literary quotation, and let's ask some questions about it; let's try and interpret it. Not what the author meant but what it means for us now, at this moment in this very room and read by us. The answer to "what it means" leads to many more questions — especially since the passage may mean many different things to many different people at many different times and places. The student is, inevitably, impatient (as are the philistines who fund the universities). "Surely," they whine, "there must be an answer."
I spend endless classes searching, searching. For the first little while, I don't dare even hint that there might not be an answer. For what will all my "teaching" be worth then? Is pedagogy merely an act of betrayal, or even a boldfaced lie? Then comes the last class, when I must let the mask fall, do the deed, bare my soul until ultimately, yes, I do tell them: "There is no answer; it's all been about the question!" But inside I am frightened. I have every reason to be frightened: for some are so deeply angry they will never forgive me. A pudding-faced girl stares at me, her pouting mouth a sensuous rictus: "I'll never get back the 24 afternoons I spent with you searching for answers that are not there! I've lost that time forever!" Indeed, yes, alright, I accept the blame, bow to the inevitable — for I will be forever remembered as the teacher who made them ask questions and then finally admitted, head down, fingers fidgeting, a hidden sigh, a faint smile, eye contact demurred — that indeed there is no answer. Could any betrayal be more scathing than that?
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Small Things"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Sky Gilbert and Guernica Editions Inc..
Excerpted by permission of Guernica Editions.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
a clue., 11,
another., 12,
speculations on a mystery., 13,
cornell george hopley-woolrich., 14,
is it true?, 17,
a disappearance., 18,
clues, but no mystery., 22,
questions., 23,
twelve years old., 25,
small children make me cry., 27,
alice and peter pan, yes., 28,
i didn't believe in aids., 30,
there was a woman., 40,
special., 45,
the daddiad., 48,
small humiliations., 51,
nude restaurant., 57,
the generation that won't die., 63,
seniors shakespeare., 65,
unimpressed by unimpressed., 78,
the oppression olympics., 93,
reptilian nightmare child., 103,
as death sits so immediately before them, smiling., 105,
nick saul and the end of the world., 107,
Lynne Kositsky in the now., 112,
the mediocrity of it all., 116,
shakespeare and misprision., 120,
I am loathe to reveal this ..., 124,
secret places., 127,
faggy voices., 128,
the vanishing lesbian., 130,
when you don't want to be seen., 134,
why don't I step aside?, 137,
we are your servants (for general idea)., 139,
foucault at the end., 141,
i will call him garth drizzle., 146,
invictus., 151,
small things: crusts., 152,
About the author, 154,
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