Book of Days: asher553

I was re-reading Agnon's 'A Book that Was Lost' (the story, in the collection of the same title) this morning. The first part of the story involves events that transpired maybe a century before the narrator's lifetime; so the narrator is effectively in omniscient, rather than first-person, mode here. We may assume that he pieced together the events of Rabbi Shmaria's absent-minded encounter with the bookbinder (and with the manuscript of the then-new Machtzit ha-Shekel, which R Shmaria believed eclipsed his own work) from circumstantial evidence or from oral history from the townspeople.

My first take-away on this story, speaking as an IT professional, is: This is why you always back up your data before you send your media out!

But the thing that jumps out for me about this story is the theme of self-doubt: R Shmaria, thumbing through R Kolin's work, immediately concludes that his own work of 12 years was a wasted effort and abandons the ms. on the counter of the bindery; and the young narrator, eager as he is to restore R Shmaria's work to its rightful place, sends it off to Jerusalem without copying it, apparently on the assumption that he himself will never see Jerusalem - even though he is busying himself with Zionist journals and activism.

I think there's a key in the narrator's observation that "every man who does not live in the Land of Israel is put to the test whether he is worthy of settling in the Land of Israel" (and likewise for Jerusalem itself). (This might also be a key to understanding 'Agunot', where Ezekiel makes aliyah to Israel and Jerusalem - seemingly a good thing - but for the wrong reasons, because of Ahiezer's slight against the existing community there; so the result is tragedy.) R Shamaria's doubts about the value of his own work are seen to be unfounded, as everyone who reads it - "[the narrator's] father, my teacher of blessed memory, and ... other scholars" - agree that it's a fine and worthy work; but all of this comes much too late to do poor R Shmaria any good. And the narrator's own younger self, even as he reads 'Hamitzpah' and writes poetry about Jerusalem, cannot really envision a future in which he himself will make the journey to Jerusalem to deposit the precious manuscript in the Ginzei Yosef archive; instead, he entrusts the manuscript to the post office. (Didn't even get a tracking number.) And - spoiler alert - the manuscript never arrives in Jerusalem; it is lost forever.

The narrator, now firmly settled in Jerusalem, attests that he has made many trips since then to the archive in search of the manuscript, but it has never been found. There's an ironic reversal in the ending of the story: the curator tells him that "due to lack of funds, piles and piles of books are lying around that still haven't been given out for binding". And yet the whole reason the manuscript was written (as well as the better-known Machtzit ha-Shekel) was to serve as an exposition for the classic work Magen Avraham - which is "obscure and enigmatic due to overabbreviation. For though a man of great learning, he was poor, without the means to buy paper ... and when a piece of paper came into his hands, he would compose his thoughts and jot down their essence in extremely concise language." So the problem went from being not enough paper (due to lack of funds) to too many books (due to lack of funds).

So at the end of the story, the "book that was lost" is never found, but the narrator does settle in Jerusalem, where he had long dreamed (even if with perhaps imperfect faith) of settling. How did he overcome whatever doubts he might have had? He tells us: "I can't tell whether the poems of Zion and Jerusalem brought me to Jerusalem or whether it was my longing for Zion and Jerusalem that brought me to compose poems about them." In either case, the narrator perceives a direct causal connection between the expression (in writing) of the wish, and its manifestation. [684]

'A Fine and Private Place' is the first published book, and first novel, by Peter S. Beagle. Written and set in 1958, it is a love story set in a graveyard. The main characters are Jonathan Rebeck, who left his career as a pharmacist and now dwells, with no living companions, in Yorkchester Cemetery; the recently widowed Mrs. Klapper, who meets Jonathan in the cemetery and strikes up a friendship with him; Michael Morgan, a recently deceased professor; and Laura Durand, also recently departed. Other characters include a cynical raven, who brings Jonathan food and news of the outside world; and Campos, the guard, who works from midnight to eight (literally the graveyard shift) and who plays an important role in the ending of the story.

In the world of 'Fine and Private Place', the ghosts of the deceased linger on the earth - confined to the limits of the cemetery - for about a month or two before they finally transition to wherever it is that their spirits go next. (Jonathan Rebeck is one of the few living people able to see and converse with the ghosts.) What stays on, temporarily, after death is the person's own memory of who he or she was - the body, the clothing, the experiences, the feelings. And it is during this short-lived period after death that the ghosts of Michael and Laura meet and fall in love.

FPP is a love story, but it's also a bit of a mystery. There are questions around the circumstances of Michael's death: Michael says he was poisoned by his wife, but the widow and her lawyer insist it was suicide. And the future of Michael's romance with Laura depends on the outcome of the widow's trial, because if she is found innocent, Michael will be judged a suicide, his body will be exhumed from the Catholic cemetery, and his relationship with Laura will be sundered forever.

I loved the book, and it kept my attention to the end, although I found the pace uneven at times. Chapters 11 and 12 should have been the pivotal chapters: the couple finally confess their love for one another (over and over, in fact), and Michael's killer finally confesses to the crime. But I found the writing and the dialog longwinded and tedious here, and the characters started to lose my sympathy. But the final chapters, 13 and 14, rescued the story for me and made it a very memorable and worthwhile book.

Peter S. Beagle is probably best known for his third book (and second novel), 'The Last Unicorn'. His grandfather was the Hebrew writer Abraham Soyer, and his uncles were the painters Moses, Raphael, and Isaac Soyer. You can hear the writer's native ear for Jewish dialect in the heavily Yiddish-inflected dialog of Mrs. Klapper (with generous use of the subjunctive "should", as in "you want I should ... ?").

Also less well-known is that he is a folk musician/singer, which plays an important role in his second book (an account of his cross-country trip with his good friend, artist and fellow musician Phil Sigunick). His love of folk music will be very much in evidence in 'The Last Unicorn'.

Now 86 years old, Beagle is, thankfully, still very much in the world of the living. Following a long legal dispute, he finally regained creative control of his works. Most of his books are now available in print, e-book, and audiobook. You can visit Peter Beagle's homepage Beagleverse [https://beagleverse.com/] for the latest on the writer.

I'm now working on Beagle's second book, 'I See by My Outfit', and enjoying it greatly.

THE LITTLE GODDESS, Ian McDonald, 2005; in 'The Very Best of the Best' by Gardner Dozois, 2019. The introduction in the anthology describes the story as being set in "a future India" which is partially correct. In fact, the story begins and ends in the narrator's native Nepal; the cultural differences between this tradition-bound mountain kingdom and its larger, fast-paced neighbor are significant in the near-future world of the story. The tale is character-based SF in the best tradition, with the narrator's character taking charge of her own life using the available technology.

The present tale appears to be part of a larger fictional world envisioned by McDonald. Here, futuristic sci-fi and exotic (to the Western reader) elements co-exist with mundane details like the narrator's past trauma (the death of her uncle) and persistent schizophrenia.

The story ends at a literal crossroads between the old and the new. In the end, she chooses the mundane over the grandiose, and we see that the emphasis in the story title is on the word "little": "Ours shall be a little divinity, of small miracles and everyday wonders. ... I shall be a little goddess."

https://alexperez.substack.com/p/the-ideal-literary-editor

'My ideal literary editor is someone interested in all of America and wants to read as many different American stories as possible. There are hundreds of different Americas, and I want them represented in the books I read. I want urban stories and suburban stories; I want to read about rural folks and southerners and even the annoying rich people on the Upper East Side; I want to know what’s going on in Native American reservations and the inner city and every American locale in between. This is a selfish desire, because I’m genuinely interested in America and its people; I think tons of readers—and writers—have the same desire, but they’re not currently being served by the mainstream literary marketplace. We want to know what’s happening outside the big cities and the “cultural” centers over-represented in literary fiction. It’s a massive, beautiful, strange, infuriating country, and I want to know all about it. ...

The ideal literary editor is drawn to American messiness and rejects the bubbles. He understands that America is the land of Elvis Presley and James Brown and Ralph Ellison and Dusty Rhodes and Bob Dylan and Barry Hannah and Joan Didion and Tonya Harding and Dennis Rodman and so many other messy, unclassifiable freaks. He understands that America’s magic comes from its messiness, and any to attempt to constrain it, is pure folly. ...'

Go to the link to read the whole, magnificent thing.

I do not read Damon Runyon in my life until this week. But now I am more than somewhat hooked.