Read Online Fiasco by Imre Kertész - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Imre Kertész
Tags: General Fiction
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too humiliating for them to listen to, and that is the mechanism forthe pursuing automaton utilizes the energy derived from their own rushing about …
But I had better break off here before my pen runs away with me, as they say. Why am I poking around, anyway, in those exercise books which I put aside long ago, that impressive-looking pile of dog-eared notes? Why am I copying out the outline of this never-to-be-completed essay? As a symptom, a characterisation of my state at the time. I had just then started to think these things over, but to publicize the mere fact that I was thinking had never even crossed my mind until then. Obviously, I had written my novel out of some sort of conviction, but not with any aim of convincing anyone about anything. I had written my comedies without any conviction at all, yet was paid money for them. But now a theoretical work: to pore over things, to form an opinion with knowing superiority and self-confidently step forward with that opinion—to do that I also had to possess the added conviction needed to convince others. And so I have to suppose that after finishing my novel some sort of change has taken place within me, or at least the proclivity for such a change was present within me.
Yes, carefully disguising my goal, bit by bit, cunningly and surreptitiously, I set about making definitive preparations for a delusion. I can discern a motive for it, in the end, if I think about it. Plainly, I wanted to forge some necessary consequence from a now irremediable act—the writing of a novel—that had swallowed up irreplaceable years of life, but meanwhile I had quite overlooked the possibility that my very uncertainties might have brought the novel itself into existence through me. I have the feeling I was almost beginning, at least secretly, to consider my destiny as a writer’s destiny; even if I did not overtly reckon with it, I was almostbeginning to invest my thoughts with some kind of property which sustained an unconditional need for their communication by me and for their reception by others.
Who could know where all this would have led. During that period I may have felt myself ready to regard my future life as an inexhaustible source of ideas for public display; to set down the fruits of my reflections straightaway onto paper; to call on editorial offices and publishing houses with duplicate copies of this triumphant act; and to watch out for signs on people’s faces, or even in their lifestyle, of changes wrought by the influence of those ideas. Amidst a deafening fanfare of portentous pronouncements, authoritative views, and unappealable opinions, I too would have blown on my own toy trumpet. Once released on the mirror-smooth surface of paper, my hand would have glided at breakneck speed on the skate-blade of my ballpoint pen. I would have written as if I were seeking to avert a catastrophe—the catastrophe of not writing, obviously. In other words, I would have written for fear that, God forbid, I wouldn’t write; I would have written so as to kill every minute of time and to forget who I am: an end-product of determinacies, a maroon of contingencies, a martyr to bioelectronics, a reluctant surprised party to my own character.
The old boy was sitting in front of the filing cabinet and doing nothing.
He was not thinking.
He was not even reading.
“It was stupid of me to get those papers out,” he eventually thought to himself.
… In this respect, and in just this one respect, the letterI received two days after the last visit I had paid to the publisher chap arrived at a fortunate moment.
“Aha!” the old boy exclaimed, picking up the ordinary, neat business letter (with the firm’s letterhead and fields for date—27/JUL/1973, correspondent—unfilled, subject—unspecified, reference number—482/73, no greeting) that he had already once picked up and scanned cursorily, but which we too, bending over his shoulder, as it were, may now read in full:
Your
But I had better break off here before my pen runs away with me, as they say. Why am I poking around, anyway, in those exercise books which I put aside long ago, that impressive-looking pile of dog-eared notes? Why am I copying out the outline of this never-to-be-completed essay? As a symptom, a characterisation of my state at the time. I had just then started to think these things over, but to publicize the mere fact that I was thinking had never even crossed my mind until then. Obviously, I had written my novel out of some sort of conviction, but not with any aim of convincing anyone about anything. I had written my comedies without any conviction at all, yet was paid money for them. But now a theoretical work: to pore over things, to form an opinion with knowing superiority and self-confidently step forward with that opinion—to do that I also had to possess the added conviction needed to convince others. And so I have to suppose that after finishing my novel some sort of change has taken place within me, or at least the proclivity for such a change was present within me.
Yes, carefully disguising my goal, bit by bit, cunningly and surreptitiously, I set about making definitive preparations for a delusion. I can discern a motive for it, in the end, if I think about it. Plainly, I wanted to forge some necessary consequence from a now irremediable act—the writing of a novel—that had swallowed up irreplaceable years of life, but meanwhile I had quite overlooked the possibility that my very uncertainties might have brought the novel itself into existence through me. I have the feeling I was almost beginning, at least secretly, to consider my destiny as a writer’s destiny; even if I did not overtly reckon with it, I was almostbeginning to invest my thoughts with some kind of property which sustained an unconditional need for their communication by me and for their reception by others.
Who could know where all this would have led. During that period I may have felt myself ready to regard my future life as an inexhaustible source of ideas for public display; to set down the fruits of my reflections straightaway onto paper; to call on editorial offices and publishing houses with duplicate copies of this triumphant act; and to watch out for signs on people’s faces, or even in their lifestyle, of changes wrought by the influence of those ideas. Amidst a deafening fanfare of portentous pronouncements, authoritative views, and unappealable opinions, I too would have blown on my own toy trumpet. Once released on the mirror-smooth surface of paper, my hand would have glided at breakneck speed on the skate-blade of my ballpoint pen. I would have written as if I were seeking to avert a catastrophe—the catastrophe of not writing, obviously. In other words, I would have written for fear that, God forbid, I wouldn’t write; I would have written so as to kill every minute of time and to forget who I am: an end-product of determinacies, a maroon of contingencies, a martyr to bioelectronics, a reluctant surprised party to my own character.
The old boy was sitting in front of the filing cabinet and doing nothing.
He was not thinking.
He was not even reading.
“It was stupid of me to get those papers out,” he eventually thought to himself.
… In this respect, and in just this one respect, the letterI received two days after the last visit I had paid to the publisher chap arrived at a fortunate moment.
“Aha!” the old boy exclaimed, picking up the ordinary, neat business letter (with the firm’s letterhead and fields for date—27/JUL/1973, correspondent—unfilled, subject—unspecified, reference number—482/73, no greeting) that he had already once picked up and scanned cursorily, but which we too, bending over his shoulder, as it were, may now read in full:
Your
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