From I’m No More of an Idiot than Anyone Else

I forget now which writers Lantelme liked best. Probably Flaubert, Racine, Balzac, de Maupassant, but I don’t remember any discussions about the great Russian authors – Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Gorky and the rest. And Lantelme wasn’t a chauvinist! But why travel when his own mental landscape was so rich and cultured? He preferred to talk about Homer, Ovid and the Greek dramatists.

I want to go back for a moment to the Cafe de la Liberte. The second book in French that I tried to read, and this one was much easier than the first, was New York by the author of Ouvert La Nuit and Ferme La Nuit – Paul Morand. I read those two books, in English, in New York. Everyone knew Paul Morand –  a real best-seller. During my first year in Paris when I was really depressed, I wrote to Paul Morand, asking if I could be his secretary, his lackey,  I didn’t care. No reply. Twenty-five or thirty years later, he send me a telegram inviting me to have dinner with him at the Pont du Gard. At the same time he wrote saying how much he admired my work. Still no reply to my earlier question.

Old Lantelme was well-acquainted with the classics. often he spoke of Latin writers like Terence or Tertillian, who were completely Greek to me. I hated Virgil, Cicero, Caesar and all those others we were obliged to read at school. Of Virgil, for example, I’ve only retained two phrases – ‘Rari nantes in gurgite vaste‘ [a few swimming in the vast deep] and ‘timeo danaos et dona ferentes.’ [I fear the Greeks, even when bringing gifts]

Much more important than the Latin was our teacher Bulldog Holmes. That was a man who should have been living in an asylum. He always dressed as a gentleman, with a bowler hat and even a monocle. And he was always angry. When he got mad his lips trembled, and the veins at the side of his head swelled up with blood. During these fits of his he looked like a monster. Then one second later he became a gentleman again, all smiles, all friendliness. He used to pull himself up to his full height, raise his fist, and shout into it as if it was a trumpet: Hic, haec, hoc, huius, huius, huius, etc. etc. huic, huic, huic, and ordered us to repeat after him in an equally loud voice.

From I’m No More of an Idiot than Anyone Else

Tropic of Cancer in Russian, I think

I was almost forty years old when I arrived in France. I knew three or four words – oui, non, Bonjour, Excusez-moi – and that’s all. I never studied French at school. I chose to take four years of German instead. So I had to learn French quickly. I did this in the street, at the cinema, while popping out for the shopping. Everything I heard was new and novel, everything was a headache. Children used to mock me for my grammatical mistakes or my pronunciation. In restaurants, instead of saying ‘I’ve finished’ I used to say ‘I have expired,’ and so on.

Eventually, after two years of this, Anais Nin found me a teacher, a charming old man, well-educated and very friendly, who was called M.Lantelme. (He didn’t know one word of English, fortunately). I had already begun to read French books. I remember my reading sessions at the Liberty cafe, near the Montparnasse cemetery, with the first French book I read – Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars. Of course I made use of a French-English dictionary. A bit later I dared to try reading Journey to the End of the Night by Celine. That, however, was another pair of sleeves.

I remember my meetings with M.Lantelme during this period. ‘How could I have the temerity to read someone like Celine when I hadn’t read Voltaire or Balzac?’

Ah, Celine was one of life’s big experiences. Yet again I recognised that it’s not necessary to understand every word an author writes, but to share his soul. I was fascinated by Celine. Some years later I re-read him, this time in English. It wasn’t the same. Celine is untranslatable.

Inspired by my enthusiasm for Celine, I tried to explain him to my teacher. M.Lantelme was, however, stubborn. Nothing could convince him that an author who wrote using that kind of language deserved to be read. (At this time Tropic of Cancer existed only in manuscript. Otherwise he’d have been able to find an affinity between Celine and myself.) Despite my admiration for Celine, I never met him (not even during the period I lived in Clichy).

From I’m No More of an Idiot Than Anyone Else.

Henry Miller and his thinking cap

Mozart is perfection! I don’t want anything to do with either him or his.  Me, I like a bit of imperfection.  Down with Leonardo!  Down with Flaubert and all that gang!  Down with the eighteenth century – Voltaire, d’Alembert, Diderot and all those people!

Me, I like the monstrosities of Rabelais, Rimbaud, or Cendrars. A Hemingway doesn’t speak to me.  Even Bach bores me sometimes.  In general I like those people who are a little bit (or a lot) mad. The imbecile, no!  The idiot, yes!  There’s a big distinction between the two.  To be mad is to be a poet.  But it’s the imbeciles who rule the world. More worthwhile to have simple people in the legislature than the people we have today, rats, whores!  Imagine a world governed by a triumvirate like Chaplin, Satchmo and Picasso.  Even dead they can do better for us than the men in charge just now!

We’re not yet completely fucked, only nearly.  There will be worse to come than Hitler, Nixon and their like.  We’re waiting for the coming of the monsters, as in the time of the Romans – madmen, fools, megalomaniacs and the rest.  Ours are still babies.  Curiously, even the sense of cruelty has deteriorated.  Theatre of cruelty?  Not yet, my pretties.

I’ve never had much involvement in politics.  In my opinion, it’s impossible not to be corrupted in that particular game. They’re all tricksters, crooks, yes, toss-pots.  The same goes for religions.  Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, they never changed anything.  Evil and good co-exist. This was Zarathustra’s big idea, but nobody accepts it as the truth.

Back where I come from religion, or preaching, can become a profitable business.  Look at Billy Graham and Katherine Kuhlman.  I guess there are the same kind of people where you come from.  They cover the world, like worms and rats.

The only thing we’re lacking is angels.  In this vast world there is no place for them.  Even if there were, do we have the eyes to see them for what they are?  Maybe we’re surrounded by angels without knowing it.

One thing is certain – we recognise the demons amongst us.  And they are legion!  Bitter though this fact may be, the devils are sometimes more interesting than virtuous people and hypocrites.  I’m speaking of ordinary demons, not a Gilles de Rais or a Hitler.

from I’m no more of an idiot  than anyone else

'n'est ce pas?'

I’ve decided to write a little book in French.  I was encouraged to do this by Miss Sylvie Crossman, who is currently writing a thesis about me and my work.  She left here a few hours ago.  We agreed that I should keep all my grammatical faults, my errors, my bad punctation and my spelling mistakes.  At least, that’s what I’ll do if any publisher finds this project to their taste, n’est-ce pas? (You will see, dear reader, that throughout this book I’m going to repeat ‘n’est-ce pas’ as often I say in English ‘don’t you know?’  I’ve no idea where this bad habit comes from.  I hate it, but what can you do?)

I hope my readers don’t expect anything brilliant from me, especially in French.  My objective, if there is any, will be to make you smile from time to time.  These days I feel as old as Bouvard or Pecuchet (whereas in reality I’m older. I can ignore that.) I’m not yet ausgespielt.

I told you I spoke at length with Sylvie Crossman.  She’s quite the chatterbox, but not unpleasantly so. I’d like to say that our conversation was ‘fierce’, despite the fact that this is completely the wrong word.  When she closed the door behind her she left me feeling vertiginous.  Why, I ask myself, can’t I find American women who talk like this?  You French people know, I’m sure you do, that we Americans, men and women alike, are afflicted with a kind of mutism that can only express itself brutishly.  In one of his charming old-fashioned books Paul Morand suggested that Americans can always be identified in a public place by the loud voices  shouting ‘I,I,I’. He says that in comparison the French ‘je’ is so much more discreet, quieter and more modest.  That’s only too true.

However, we notice things too.  Wherever two or three groups gather in public any conversation in French overwhelms all others. In spite of their whispering ‘je’, the French make their presence felt – because they’re good talkers, and I’m not sure whether that counts as a compliment.  Nor do I care.

All I know is this – that my fellow Americans don’t know how to conduct a decent conversation.  Whereas every French person almost without exception is an expert; a master of the art.  Truly, speaking for myself, I prefer to listen to a good conversation between two French people than a Mozart sonata.

Mozart!  Now there’s someone who pisses me off!

Britain's Got Talent

There was once a time when instructions coming out of the TV were worth trying to follow.  This was in the days before – ‘Who will leave the house?  You decide.’ 

I remember an episode of Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective, in which Michael Gambon was red and flaking in a hospital bed with Potter’s unfictional psoriasis.  To cheer Gambon up, even though he was only acting, another character asks him for his favourite word in the English language.

Fortunately, there was a pause.  But not a very long one.

“Elbow,’ I thought.

‘Willow,’ Potter/Gambon said.

I liked this.  We were in the same area.  Both words had the same lament of an ending, and the middle curve of the l.  Potter’s word has a more pleasing symmetry, but the vowel sound that begins and ends the elbow makes my word come and go from nowhere, a little universe all its own.  I prefer my word, as a word, though willows are more beautiful than elbows.  Potter’s word relies too much on the thing it describes.

Some words are more seductive than others, and writers gradually pick out their favourites.  I’ve always liked the word Mogadon, but have never managed to use it, and my faith in the reader/writer relationship means that I believe a lot of readers will like Mogadon too, when I eventually fit it in.

These are Henry Miller’s favourite words in French, from J’suis pas plus con qu’un autre .

loufoque     inculte     emmerdeur     analphabete     connasse     engourdi     connerie     degourdi     pudibonderie     cacahuetes     maquereau     cafard     toubib     toque     salope     insolite     saloperie     boulimie     foutaise     fat     folatre     fatras     fou-rire     pudique     cabotin     nichons     cahin-caha     spleen     farfelu     boustifailles     chou     saugrenu     goujat     bonze     appat     merde     pagaille     pleurnicheur     sanglots

I have no idea what pudibonderie means, but I think I like it.