On the nature of memory and the art of novel.

I am obviously not going to write anything on the topic. Just came along a very interesting observation by Kundera in his collection of essays, Testaments Betrayed. This blog, nostalgia being its prominent motif, would do good to have it in its patio.

When we study, discuss, analyze a reality, we analyze it as it appears in our mind, in our memory. We know reality only in the past tense. We do not know it as it is in the present, in the moment when it is happening, when it is. The present moment is unlike the memory of it. Remembering is not the negative of forgetting. Remembering is a form of forgetting.

We can assiduously keep a diary and note every event. Rereading the entries one day, we will see that they cannot evoke a single concrete image. And still worse: that the imagination is unable to help our memory along and reconstruct what has been forgotten. The present - the concreteness of the present - as a phenomenon to consider, as a structure, is for us an unknown planet; so we can neither hold on to it in our memory nor reconstruct it through imagination. We die without knowing what we have lived.

The need to resist the loss of the fleeting reality of the present arose for the novel, I think, only at a certain moment in its evolution. In Boccaccio the tale exemplifies the abstraction that the past becomes upon being recounted: without concrete scenes, nearly without dialogue, a kind of summary, it is a narration that gives us the essence of an event, the casual sequence of a story.

Oh, the name!

In that last tag I mentioned a book, Sculpting in Time which I wished I had. News: I still don't have it. Crosswords has a genie-like sounding service called dial-a-book and I had their number saved for quite a while without really having to make use of it. Make use of it I did, yesterday, for Sculpting and heres how the conversation between me and a Crosswords executive went :

Me: Hi, I was wondering if you have this book called Sculpting in Time by Andrei Tarkovsky.

Executive: Sir, who is the Author?

( I would have been a little surprised if Sculpting in Time was the Author of Andrei Tarkovsky )

Me: Andrei Tarkovsky?

Executive: Oh!, Sir, Can you spell that last name for me? Its D . . . ?

Me: No, no. It's T. Uhh, T as in Tea?

Executive: As in Delhi?

Me: No, no. As in Thane...Uhh...Train.

Executive: Ok?

Me: Oh, alright. T as in train, A as in apple, R as in romeo, K as in key, O as in org . . . uhh, oscar?, V as in victor, S as in sugar, K as in key and Y as in you.

Executive: Sir?

Me: I meant Y-O-U. Ahh, Y as in yankee?

Executive: Sir, and the first name?

Me: Andrei? Its like the word "and" and then R as in romeo, E as in elephant and I as in India.

Executive: Please hold sir ( and poof! )

Those 3-4 agonizing minutes I waited like a pregnant lady - girl for yes, boy for no.

Executive: Sir, we used to have this book some time back but don't have a copy anymore. If you waant I can order one but it's going to be extremely difficult. The last book was bought in 1992 at Chennai.

With a haila! feeling I asked him to still order it and see if he got some other books on my list.

Executive: ( with a bored, Wt F-doesn't-he-have-any-work, raised left eyebrows, lowered right corner of the lips tone ) Okay.

Me: Great, the first one is Reason to Live by Amy Hempel.

Executive: Last name of the Author, Sir?

Me: Hempel. H-E-M-P-E-L.

Executive: Okay, H-E-M-B-E-L?

Me: No! P. As in Pain? Pakistan!

Executive: And what's the name of the book?

With raised expectations and a smile I told the name.

Executive: We do not have that book by Hempel.

Me: Oh, so which one do you have?

Executive: Actually we do not have any book by Hempel.

Me: I see. And, how about Clown Girl by Monica Drake?

Executive: ( On his deathbed of boredom or exhaustion or exasperation or something similar ) Is it D-R-A-K-E?

Me: ( with a pleasant surprise in the midst of ruins ) Yes, yeah!

Executive: No sir. We do not have anything by Drake Monica, either.

Me: Look, thats quite unbelievable. Whats the contact for Landmark?

Executive: Sorry Sir, I don't have that.

A neat zero probability of finding anything at Crosswords. Cute.
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"I love the music" acquires a totally different meaning when stupid maharashtrian punks does the pointing downward 'bizness' like the eminemised, bling-cartoons on TV while listening to bam-bam hip-hop, 12db flat.