Paris 5: A Mutable Feast

From in front of Gertrude Stein’s one-time apartment, through the Luxembourg Gardens, down Rue Mouffetard to the Place de Contrascarp, where one easily understands what Hemingway meant when he wrote of how difficult it is to be poor in Paris, one knows, if of a certain disposition, and with a certain history, the steps of he who wrote those words. I have read that book, that book about the thrust of what is not written, what is not spoken; that book about what is left, unpurchased on the seller’s cart, or unformed but in the mind of that man behind the circular griddle. Yes, he said, we became very good students of the avalanche that winter. And so, with a variously professed and steeping fondness for the words in that book, I accepted the offer, nearly first thing, to be guided knowingly, on that deliberate walk. It was then, in the midst of that walk, that I felt compelled to author a few words which demanded dedication to an absent companion. That book accompanied us in the autumn of a year not too long past, in our little truck, four of us, moving in and of some sense of the Gypsy spirit, some of us, but with a very certain trajectory and a very definite schedule, which, I believe, is exactly what my dear friend felt so obligated to rebel against and to, at least in his own universe, destroy, obliterate. That project, of course, in its original form may have been of some concern to those in close proximity to its progress, as will be any such project, however necessary, in real time, at the time, as we say, in the condition of that moment; for the condition of one engaged in such a project can be, will often be unsettling.

I have not forgotten, in the condition of this moment, as it did not escape me then, nor any of us traveling together, that the five o’clock shadow, the grit, if I may be forgiven such a prosaic turn of phrase, was an ativism and a sort of homage to Hemingway, or so another good friend put it, in a way as volatile then as it is amusing now. The recipient of that verdict, just the same, a little tight, undoubtedly firey, agreed and blessed the verdict tersely. Soon after that exchange, it came out that the reason that my dear friend had been wearing his right pant leg cuffed up since San Francisco was that, locked in the women’s bathroom of an Irish pub on Haight Street, he had, in his woozy aim, landed a relatively innocuous amount of vomit on the ankle of his pants. When pressed as to why he had not since then donned his other pair of pants, my dear friend replied, authoritatively, that it was because they were dirty.

I recall that autumn fondly and vividly, although, as with any period worthy of such fondness, I can count myself among good but sparing company. And I, indeed, thought of it vividly and fondly when walking streets immortalized by that book, streets called, each respectively, a part of that fête mobile.
Later that day I completed, in some sense, that deliberate walk, that secular pilgrimage, by visiting the once lending library and now only "antiquated book dealer," Shakespeare and Co. Antiquated Books. The space of that bookstore provides a formidable challenge to the discerning pilgrim, especially one wishing afterwards to communicate a worthy and lucid account of the experience of navigating through it. It must have been quieter in the 20s, or so one may be led to believe. Perhaps, however, and almost certainly, it has always been a space given primarily to the English language, both in speech and inscription. In the 20s, I believe that Shakespeare and Co. provided a haven for English-speaking writers, while today it provides such for tourists, both those who are fans of those writers and those who were visiting Notre Dame and sighted a quaint bookstore just across the Seine. The discerning pilgrim should be ginger, however, in his judgment, for the truth of such a thing in its original form, later mutated, may not be necessarily bastardized in the mutation. That is to say, there were no drunken bastards looking to borrow that day, in Shakespeare and Co., which it seems, left me disappointed, no whiskey-breath sounding and echoing from the charming, musty corners where the sagging shelves meet the rotting ceiling; and yet, I think, it is possible that drunk would still be welcome there, if with a pat on the back that one reserves for only the most novel characters.

Allow me to phrase all of this in another way. The store is gorgeous and gorgeously dense. The shelves are sagging to the point of breaking beneath the weight of so many volumes, and the cots and bunks are laid out, sincerely, it appears. And I was taken enough to photograph myself on the second floor, among the books not for sale, holding a copy of A Moveable Feast. But soon after doing so, the jarring, pious voices began to sound in my ear, and I began to feel as though I was using and being used, until that moment unwittingly, to some end not my own, but one more false, if ends can be more or less false, and more false for its apparent remoteness from some admittedly antiquated and equally constructed idea that I had myself knowingly carried into that space. "Deliver us from our unfounded accusations of inauthenticity," I would like to pray, and would have liked to have prayed, had it not been a secular pilgrimage, and yet, I felt used and using, the kind of feeling I could easily have imagined would inspire in my friend a kind of violence, if not physical, at least, and certainly, psychic or literary. That, it seems to me, is exactly why (and how) the original form is, if mutable, inarguable. The mutation of the original form, the most original form, the originary form, will not come of contestation, or argument. That mutation (which may or may not be my concern here) comes from the judgment of the source, from the source’s own judgment of itself. And that is not, by any means, to say that, in the world, the authenticity of that inarguable original form is ultimate or unquestioned, that such authenticity is not open to debate or to the tides of history. But there is something of the original form, and I mean, perhaps, and should say Original Form, that does not, in fact, in practice, even dream of subjecting itself to the judgments of authenticity found there in the world. That is what can be so bellicose about the original form / Original Form, about the project in the condition of the moment, and what can be so unsettling about the architect of such, to those in close proximity, for, of course, those in close proximity naturally tend towards subjecting the architect of such a project to just such contestation, to such judgments of authenticity. The tendency of the architect to violent response has as much to do with subjectivity, to singularity of vision as it does with a bad attitude, or in some cases, intoxication. If Shakespeare and Co., in the 20s, became known as a space from which one was not likely to be turned out, a space where the putrid breath of the drunken bastard was allowed to be exhaled, on the premise that, along with such breath, there may be released words of a singular vision, it today displays hand-lettered, poster-sized testimonials to the sentimental feelings that such a reputation has more recently inspired in its visitors. The author makes these observations, careful to avoid authoritative judgments of authenticity, on which the author has no real authority. It is merely to say that the objectified original form, subjective and singular as it originally was, is given to becoming a sort of metaphor wherein it is made analogous to its mutated form, or vice versa. It is the tendency of gnosis to become prognosis, the tendency of revelation to become orthodoxy, and of orthodoxy to resent and reject claims of revelation. The point is, the present day Shakespeare and Co. is one giant invitation to polish off a bottle and bust in, ferociously spewing definitely putrid breath and potentially singular vision, just as the present day Notre Dame is such an invitation to enter and actually try for some ecstatic religious state.