"White noise," a poem for February

White noise

Of course it's snow
that obliterates the day
and makes the meaning of time
what it is

stopped almost in its tracks
so it can be seen
passing by you
in silence

stand at the window
watch the absence of the sky
overtake the ground below
the beauty of it drifting in window corners

the slow paralysis of time
overtaking your mind
and all in it

a white noise
making its way slowly
into this moment

stand at the window
press your hand on its cold pane

watch the time passing by you
until it rattles
the kettle in the kitchen
whistling
like a freight train


(M Bromberg)

photo : "1930s - Snow Storm, New York City Street Corner with Horse-Drawn Cart," by Walfred Moisio

The disappearing act of J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)

J.D. Salinger has made his final lope into the New Hampshire woods near Cornish, and with his death the reclusive author leaves behind a literary industry of the ever-hopeful. Those who waited for decades will have to wait even longer for the Salinger estate to decide when, or if, any of the rumored fifteen unpublished novels will see print.

That decision will likely be a crapshoot. The most appropriate gesture from the author who shunned any contact with "a reading public" for over fifty years would have been an early morning, January 1, 2010 birthday auto-da-fé in his leafy woods, flames licking the ink right off the burning pages.

No one else of his stature has made such a celebrated career of non-publishing, although most authors achieve that goal without even trying, and with much less celebrity. Over the years Salinger's active disinterest in publishing was by turns puzzling, exasperating, and -- at end -- inexplicable and unexplained, even as it took on the cast of an angry author hiding in the woods away from the rest of the world and quite incensed at its decades-long attempts to lure him and his manuscripts into the daylight.

Salinger's claim was that he was writing only for himself, and fair enough, but his literary disappearing act now reaches a logical climax. Many writers' unpublished manuscripts become even more of a fetish-object after an author's death and it's unrealistic to think interest in what Salinger left unpublished will diminish -- at last, though, he will rest peacefully where no one can come knocking.

In death Salinger (and his estate) still have control over those unseen pages, but the ensuing years of rumors and leaks, con and craft, or sheer contentiousness among surviving parties, could be more damaging than any unwanted attention experienced while he was alive.

Salinger fought to exhaustion efforts to publish a biography by Ian Hamilton in the 1980s, and the case traveled as far as the Supreme Court before Salinger won a decision. In his original letter of refusal to Hamilton, the author claimed to have “borne all the exploitation and loss of privacy I can possibly bear in a single lifetime.” Ironically, death may turn out to be a most unexpected court of appeal.

Although the passage of time itself may puncture Salinger's carefully-crafted privacy, personal memoirs can be just as damaging. This week's New York Times obituary contains an extended reference to two unflattering portraits (one from his daughter, Margaret) which writer Bruce Weber summarizes as adding "creepy" elements to the Salinger history:

"Mr. Salinger was controlling and sexually manipulative, Ms. Maynard wrote, and a health nut obsessed with homeopathic medicine and with his diet (frozen peas for breakfast, undercooked lamb burger for dinner). Ms. Salinger said that her father was pathologically self-centered and abusive toward her mother, and to the homeopathy and food fads she added a long list of other enthusiasms: Zen Buddhism, Vedanta Hinduism, Christian Science, Scientology and acupuncture. Mr. Salinger drank his own urine, she wrote, and sat for hours in an orgone box."

It's simple to say that most writers write to be read; Salinger's reputation rests on astounding success with, in total, four published works and a lengthy novella in The New Yorker. That's certainly plenty enough to say that Salinger achieved as much as he wished, reached what is charmingly called "an audience" and then -- suddenly -- publicly withdrew. In this week's New York Times obituary the author is quoted from 1974: “There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It’s peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”

Point taken. The rest is cantankerous silence, apparently. Readers and the publishing world can tease themselves that they may eventually find a key to the bottom drawer of Salinger's desk; maybe the key is resting forever with Salinger, there in his suitcoat pocket. If he has any last, lone word about it, the author won't be breaking silence any time soon.

American letters makes heroes of its voluble writers. Many despite the ravages of drink, drugs or age created a lifetime's worth of published work: Twain, Faulkner, Wolfe, Fitzgerald; Hemingway's novels have a bar-room talker's bark. Salinger is frequently mentioned in their company, but in death his purposeful career of disengagement may make his unpublished work -- if it does ever surface -- an interesting aside to his privacy, not a part of his genius.

(drawing of J.D. Salinger from Time magazine, 1961; photo of the author at a car window, 1990s, courtesy of Philadelphia CityPaper.)

"Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original" (2009)

Thelonious Monk is one of the enigmatic figures of jazz: the more one admires his playing, his composition, and his recorded work, the more puzzling and elusive the man himself becomes. At a time when the popularity of jazz was at its height in mid-century America, he made its success a springboard into a form of personal expression few had ever imagined possible.

The mysterious nature of Monk's genius, it turns out, has its roots in a North Carolina boyhood and a family life that surprisingly seems very normal in many ways. Robin D.G. Kelley's Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original (Free Press, 2009) removes layers of myth-making and tale-spinning that seem to surround the monumental figure of the musician, whose life and aloof personality became a signpost for the difficult and cerebral form of jazz called bebop.

This was not a term the musicians themselves favored, but which became a convenient tag by which the public could identify the players. It was as though they were members on a team, rather than being seen as individuals; for this musical style of ensemble playing and stellar, one-of-a-kind solos, the idea must have seemed a supreme irony and one that Monk might have appreciated:

"He got a kick out of fooling people, particularly those whom he thought were too lazy or afraid to think for themselves. One of his favorite pranks was to stare intensely at a spot on the ceiling or in the sky, either in a crowded room or on a street corner. Invariably, several people would look up with him, searching for whatever elusive object apparently fascinated him. It was an experiment in mass psychology that brought him great amusement."

As Monk's life takes on the familiar contours of a young student, husband to Nellie, and a father to their two children "Toot" (Thelonious Jr.) and "BooBoo" (Barbara), there are the intriguing glimpses into life with Monk that seem in no way typical. Kelley delights in family stories that reveal the "almost carnivalesque" aspects of this very unique life with father. Monk's niece, Benetta, nicknamed Teeny, got told not to bang on the piano and later gets her sly revenge on Monk, the one-time Julliard student, as he tries to show off:

"Monk's piano was notorious for its clutter. It occupied a significant portion of the kitchen and extended into the front room. The lid remained closed, since it doubled as a temporary storage space for music, miscellaneous papers, magazines, folded laundry, dishes, and any number of stray kitchen items.

Teeny thumbed through the pages of the Chopin book, then turned to her uncle and asked, 'What are you doing with that on the piano? I thought you couldn't read music? You can read that?' The challenge was on. In response, Monk sat down at the piano, turned to a very difficult piece, and started playing it at breakneck speed.

'His hands were a blur,' she recalled decades later. 'Then after he was through, he jumped up from the piano and just started grinning. So then I said, 'You didn't play that right.'

'Whaaaa? What are you talking about? I played it ten times faster than anyone could!'

Teeny sassed back, 'It is supposed to be played adagio and you played it allegro.'"

In the hot-house environment of New York's jazz scene Monk was a stand-out, not only for his music but for his uninhibited performance. The music seemed cerebral, difficult and almost mathematical, yet Monk was sincerely interested in reaching an audience, even if it

turned out to be an audience of one. He performed popular tunes with the same force of personality as his original compositions. As his music gained exposure and his compositions deepened into their angular and singular forms, Monk's personal life becomes a retreat from the public and its very perception of him.

He himself seemed to create the myth, just as he professed to be disinterested in living up to an image -- and then, on February 28, 1964, he was featured in a Time cover story, and suddenly his was the face of jazz for a majority of Americans, who found the "new" jazz music mysterious and almost beyond comprehension; the Beatles had appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, three weeks earlier.

Kelley's book is not a critical biography of Monk's music, but it is an intensely personal look at how life and art intersect. Nellie Monk is interviewed extensively, and shows her as a central character to her increasingly insular husband, lovingly keeping Thelonious away from distraction or being taken advantage of by managers and booking agents. In his later life, as Monk inexplicably gives up performance and composing altogether, Nellie seems a force of nature herself for having been a lifelong companion to the puzzling nature of Monk's genius.

"One of his favorite mantras was 'Always Know,' adding that the word 'Know' was Monk spelled backward with the 'W' inverted. He often illustrated the point with a huge custom-made ring that had 'MONK' emblazoned across the top in diamonds, turning it upside down in case you didn't get it. 'Always Know!" All Ways Know!'"

His compositions have titles describing the familiar ("BooBoo's Birthday," "'Round Midnight") and the oblique ("Epistrophy," "Rhythm-a-ning"). His music is always there for those with an ear to discover for themselves. Like his music, Monk's life is still a mystery that may not need explaining, although Kelley does a great service by demonstrating that the force of creativity itself may, ultimately, be beyond knowing.