Mathias B. Freese

I think I know, rather, I believe, how my writing mind works, which really means I know shit about it. In any case it goes like this: sink into books about the Holocaust or just this one and let it all percolate and seep through my unconscious filters until it fills up the acquifer. I had read Clendinnen’s book several years back and included a few terms into The i Tetralogy and returned to it for a second read. An Australian historian whose books mostly deal with the Aztec experience in the Americas, for her own reasons she began to study the Holocaust and in so doing brought an “outsider’s” (her own words) take to the leviathan which is Shoah. She is rigorous when she examines ideas, like a garlic press getting at the clove. And does not humor fools, calling Bruno Bettelheim “fatuous” in one instance, which he was. She honors Gitta Sereny who did remarkable interviews with Albert Speer and SS Unterscharfuhrer Franz Suchomel. Her bibliography is expansive, acute and recommendations for further reading very apt.

Presently I am sweating out the final selection of short stories for my new book on the Holocaust, “Working Through the Holocaust,” with its analytic allusion to the therapeutic process. Again I am wrestling with issues, trying like a fool to get at the “why.” A telling comment about that is in the off-hand comment by an Auschwitz guard to a prisoner when asked about an ugly incident in the camp: “Here there is no why.” I accept that, but I plow ahead trying to get at the victim’s mind-set, although I have had the experience of imagining seeing things through the eyes of the killers. Clendinnen argues well that we need to understand both. At length she writes of Primo Levi and others who have explored profoundly the victim’s experience, very well indeed; what has nourished and nurtured me while my book exists in the deserts of mind and matter, an isolate stuck on a stylite, is that on unconscious levels I was emboldened to work through the eyes of the murderer. (Goddam it! my fellow writers, trust your gut.) And Clendinnen makes her case that Nazis were not aliens, but variants of each of us. Again it is rewarding, alone with my own book, on my mental lap, in my own time, that I have struggled with this. And so in my new stories I try to see it both ways, the victim, and the victimizer. I seek no why. When I was a history major I enjoyed and relished reading the bibliographical essays of major historians who gave us the sources of their themes or motifs and generously commented on the idiosyncracies of their fellow colleagues; often the essay at the back was better than the book itself. I mention this because it is my belief it is in the accrual of detail, in the miniscule accretion of detail that we come upon insight and substance. Clendinnen’s book is such an example.

And so for a book I hope to have out in late spring, I am assiduously going line after line, tightening up sentences, providing intricate detail, using my own garlic press to get the most out of the fewest words possible, for as I hone my stories like a razor on a strop, I become clearer about what it is I need to attain or  say. Style is me, who I am, so I just go about my business in sentence-making, using images, which I tend to favor very much, to make my prosecutor’s case. I must share with you the joy or personal pleasure to have one’s own manuscript before one’s eyes — the collection of detail, thought and image. And my task is to “simply” order the stories so that the reader is taken in, massaged and then amazed or struck dumb by my intellectual tinker toys, my orientation and prejudices. I sit before the manuscript and revise and revise and revise and then will all this to stop. I give it to Jane who hopefully I will marry this weekend and she uses her acute eye to excise my often tendency to reiterate, to perseverate all in a sentence. I think my need to say things three different ways is probably my own arrogance that the reader will not get it unless I write it three different ways or it is my own sense of not being heard or being underestimated. In any case she takes the lawn mower to it and my vanity about words has relatively eased so I can take it. Wasn’t it the editor, I forgot his name (Gordon Lish?), who made James Carver the writer he is; he pruned the hell out of his works and now his heirs are barking unfair. Perplexing, is it not? However, don’t each of us need an editor for our own living, other than death who is the grim and final reaper?

Perhaps we should consider perennially revising our existence, less is more, says the cliche; but I favor that common scold, Thoreau: “Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!” I sit with a text of stories trying to imagine what it is to be the victim and several stories of what it is to be the victimizer. At times I go into surreal fantasies as my attempt to say indirectly but very concretely the unheard scream I feel. In my legerdemain I write of golems, a retarded child destined to be gassed, a doomed cantor in love, survivors, Holocaust deniers, lovers of quirky Nazi memorabilia, cannibalism, an interview with a camp “doctor,” and Jane’s personal delight, an interview with the nondescript Eva Braun who revels in Hitler’s defecating on her firm abs. I take risks. Whenever I take a risk, I give up that internal censor that mottles amd brutalizes our very safe and corseted lives.

At this juncture let me say that a new version of The i Tetralogy is at the printer. New cover, the first few pages with commentary about the book by bloggers, reviewers and the like and internal tweaking here and there. The book stands as it is. If you want a free book for teaching purposes or the Holocaust is of significance to you, you can reach at ifreese@hotmail.com. And since I will be e-mailing hundreds informing them of the book’s availability, if you have a suggestion and e-mail address of a librarian, scholar, college instructor, or rabbi, let me know — that would be a kindness.

I will be spending our honeymoon at CityCenter in Vegas — the Aria: New York in the desert.

Anything about Welles I am attracted to, perversely so. His treatment at the clammy hands of the boors and philistines of his time continues to this day. The twin morons of his time, Hedda Hopper and especially Louella Parsons, gossip columnists, went after him —often at the behest of Hearst and his caged canary, Marion Davies –and savaged Welles. Their malign influence went on for decades. What I find perverse in me is the satisfaction knowing full well how this culture goes after its artists, how we always fear and dread intelligence of a high order. It has been so for centuries; it is in the fabric of Homo sapiens. Watching “Me and Orson” brought back all the movie trivia and mental memorabilia I have about Welles. Interestingly, the movie is based on a fiction by a New Jersey English teacher, “Me and Orson.” I imagine it to be a delightful conceit.

One scene that touched me was Welles reading Tarkington’s “The Magnificent Ambersons” while riding in a New York cab. Reading passages that touched him, for Welles lost both his father and mother before he was sixteen, foreshadowed the movie that was to be made. What is little known was that Welles read two books a day, or so the legend says; wrote theater reviews in England by age 16 and was proclaimed a genius very early on, his alcoholic father and artistic mother not imposing reasonable parental controls on him. In an interview he once said that he was so used to being adulated as a genius while growing up that it was normal for him to assume so. In the movie his petulance and arrogance is brought out all the while we esteem his genius, an interesting dilemma for any individuals in relationship with him. In a memoir by his daughter Christopher Welles, just released, she mentions that he decided to call her Christopher because he liked the name; she describes his frequent absences which she resented but when he appeared he charmed her socks off and what a charmer he was. On a long ago TV show talk show he told the exceedingly overweight Oliver Reed words to the effect that as an actor he filled  space in film, meant as a compliment. It depends on how you take that. Outlandish and endearing in the same moment, I have a sweet tooth for the man. I firmly believe he had the purest integrity as an artist and for that I admire him. After all, how many times do you need to write “Hamlet”? His achievements continued long after his early masterpiece. I run to his defense. I need not.

I went to Google and discovered his daughter’s recent book, and  I came across a real fascinating fact. He had an older brother, Richard, diagnosed as a schizophrenic and institutionalized; Welles sent him a stipend for as long as he lived. Ten years older than Orson, he was released years later and seemed to get his life in order. So here is the Welles family, one son a genius and one diagnosed as schizophrenic, a mother who was a pianist with artistic leanings and a father who was an inventor and alcoholic. The conundrum of two sons so vastly different must have been not only puzzling but demoralizing for the parents and one wonders if the “other” played a subliminal part in Welles’ cinematic and theatrical productions. I wonder what it might be like to write about Orson from the point of view of Richard — Welles would put him to work at the back of the theater at times. What are brothers except our other selves in different semblances, our doppelgangers. It is the same womb. I wonder if he had the same deep voice as Orson. I am now wondering a lot about Richard.

The movie reveals fictionally the manipulative and cunning Welles, a prick, exactly, but it also captures that which is redeemable and majestic about the man. Part enfant terrible, genius, how is one to deal with that? How do we all deal with geniuses or the exquisiitely gifted in this culture? I am pondering that as I write. I believe we tear them down for they represent on many levels what we have not allowed ourselves to become or what we resent for not having — or just human envy and spite. Teachers do this regularly in schools; religious “leaders” shut down the dissenters like stepping on a biblical snake’s head. I really do feel that it goes beyond the artistic to something deeper which is only an intuitive conviction based on no known empirical facts and consequently I believe it to be true — human beings are fearful of the light, preferring the dark and shadows; human beings are threatened by that which is gifted or exquisitely intelligent for it creates an unwanted awe. Rather than sheltering one self beneath the overhead leaves of the tree next to an annointed one, we dread to sidle up to genius and we flee instead. I have sidled up to one or two great minds in my life and I found the human ambrosia wonderful — I actually grew as a person. Adopt an artist and bathe in the juices.

That’s the title of this blog; now let’s get on with it. The Hanukah candles are lit by this atheist who respects the immense Jewish contribution to humanity. I can even say the prayers in Hebrew, 56 years after my bar mtzvah. Oh, the power of conditioning and how sweet it is and can be in certain instances. I am also writing a few paragraphs about snow for my Homage to K, a riff on Kafka trying his hand on writing about the Holocaust. (Oh, the grandiosity.) Can you just imagine what he’d have to say about the Holocaust, but I refer you to my last blog about him. I am entering emails of European scholars into a database, quite diligently, quite laboriously, for the next edition of the tetralogy which has been sent off to the printer. At least 3000 individuals will get a gander at my PR email which goes out in January. Hopefully the cover will appear here and other goodies as Jane is quite well versed in this cybershit I humor and hope never to master — why allow it to creep into my brain cells?

Jane Elizabeth Holt has decided that we will wed very early in January. Realizing that as a Jewish man and a future Jewish husband my ancestral instincts, an inflamed sciatic nerve, genetically tell me to take care of my new bride. She will now be covered by my medical plan. Given that she will pay in 2010 almost $300 monthly for her anemic plan, one without a prescription plan (!) at all but just a plan for dire circumstances, she will now be protected by my teachers’ plan which will provide ample coverage. (What altruism on my part.) I remove from her brow the burden of being poorly insured not to say that she finds the payments burdensome. And what do I get for all this? I get Jane, poor girl. She is my built-in hospice, literary editor, amanuensis, pragmatist, lover, jack Mormon who adores all things Jewish, especially Jewish men. She is delighted to find out that this actor or that writer is Jewish for she is one of the few people I have come across who are not darkly inhabited by prejudice.

She is studying to be a librarian which she recently acted upon and while  engrossed in her studies I “meekly” prowl about the house unattended to, unloved, uncared for, doing my Larry David impressions. Jewish men need care: water us, feed us, schtoop us occasionally and we are contented cats. With a first class mind, I enjoy that at 51 she is cutting through her studies like a hot knife through butter. Our mutual dream is that she gets work so that we can finance a tour to Israel before I croak, visit the Wall where I will weep and collapse into terminal ethnicity. I enjoy these quaint atavistic traits I own. In any case we will pick one of those sleazy Vegas chapels and have some clerk in sleazoid fashion pronounce whatever jargon makes us a couple. We have been together three years and in effect, we are married, heart and soul — poor girl. What I keep telling Jane, although she has two masters, is that she should think beyond being a librarian, because in spirit she is a writer who will become a librarian. However, my sense of her is that she would make a very sharp therapist — sensitive, excellent memory, huge plasma webs of feeling, the ability to thread together random thoughts into a tapestry of a kind. Like a very good therapist, she would provide a superlative “hold” for her clients. And the best trait of all — a cosmic ability to laugh at herself. I enjoy the tinkling laughter she has.

And so this potpourri of daily living comes to a close.

The new book of short stories lies fallow while I wait for jane to finish up her first course in librarianship. All the stories are spanking new, therefore, I am suspect of their quality but once again Jane will read the manuscript, make comments and suggestions and I will acquiesce or not. The other day, influenced by reading Kakfa, I wrote a story called “Homage to K” which reflects the insane density of his writings which are often like repetition compulsions to me written in swirls of deep, rich chocolate. Sometimes I think he is putting on the reader, spinning out cosmic jokes. I remember how many years ago I was mightily impressed by “The Burrow” and “In the Penal Colony.” Reading them made me feel trapped, especially “The Burrow” as if I were a neurotic creature burrowing beneath, perhaps  a metaphor for each of us as we move toward our insignificant ends. “In the Penal Colony,” which is exquisitely harrowing, made me think of what Kafka would make of the Holocaust and how he might write about it. (I have learned that two sisters died in the camps.) With that for inspiration I wrote “Homage to K.” I refer to the Great Wall of China in the story, referencing his strange story “The Great Wall of China,” just recently read by me, a perplexing, riddling whirl of prose.

I will go back to “Homage” for I am working on making it more dense, a la Kafka. I want to write about snow falling in the camp, the old symbol for dying and death in literature. I will try to make the reader feel the volume and depth of the snow which is a significant feature in the story. I can only try. I really don’t read other writers, lesser or greater lights, although the conventional wisdom has always been that this is the way to learn. I agree, I suppose, but I go my own way. All my writing is self-taught and given my being an autodidact in the field, I go my merry — and miserable — way. In an introduction to a collection of Kafka’s stories, John Updike writes that he only produced six slim volumes. But what stories! What intrigues me, in fantasy, is what a book by Kafka might say about the Holocaust. I cannot imagine the crazed intensity and riveting sentences he might have written. So like a puny putz, I wrote my homage to the master. By the way here is a piece of amazing trivia. Kafka invented, yes, invented, the safety helmet and had it patented and when he came to be buried people from another world came to pay their respects and they had no idea about what he was doing in literature.

I have about 20-25 stories in the manuscript and not a few, I imagine, will be deleted. Hoping to put it out in the spring, I am suffering from a lull, a post-natal depression after having given birth to this child. I am in a lull, the time between then and now and what will be. I fish around in mind about what is next, combing through old stories and old files, seeking out fragments of aborted stories. I enjoy this browsing because it is meditative. I know full well this cannot be expedited. I will know when the next book is upon me. I do know I am “done” with the Holocaust. My unconscious knows full well what will be while my conscious mind is a tabula rasa. What surprises most of us, if we are open to it, is that the real engine that drives us, no pun intended, we are unaware of;  it hurts our vanity to not feel in control or sensible to our intentions. It reminds me of the push of genes, how we are controlled profoundly by them, how our breathing  and cardiovascular systems are purely autonomic. We are unknown to ourselves which makes me trust in the unconscious as a writer, for I do believe what is written has already been written in large degree by our inner self. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if we could learn how to nurture our unconscious in order to make better literature, and other things as well.

Perhaps Kafka’s unconscious took over completely when he wrote and what an unconscious that was. Perhaps that occurs to other writers who can write for six to eight hours in one flow, channeling the voice within. I wrote The i Tetralogy  largely by tapping into what I felt, mostly, without censoring what I wrote, by just putting down the words as if I was being moved by a Ouija Board. I do most of my writing in this manner, trusting myself, knowing I can always throw it out. I don’t secrete language but allow it to be a cataract. The lull at this time, I believe, is the unconscious replenishing itself, for it is never, never empty.

So Tiger wants his privacy; indeed, he called his yacht, Privacy. I don’t follow golf because I generally don’t follow anything. The latest tempest in the teapot is the conflict between Tiger’s “image” and his right to keep his mouth shut about what happened in his suv. The media vultures are all over him. Legally he doesn’t have to do anything. The police are investigating a fender bender as if Tiger and his wife crashed Obama’s state dinner. The lunacy of this culture is appalling. Earlier in the week the local  newspaper carried an item about a demented woman who saw the image of Jesus on her iron, replaced it with a new one and put the anointed one away in the closet. I tore out the article, if that is what it is, from the paper as a classic example of what is crazed about religious conditioning and how easily the dumb, demented and dumbfounded believe in anything. I’d retrieve the item and quote from it but it is downstairs and is not worth my effort as I blog along. They carried a picture of this cretinous human being — and the iron, a reminder of how ridiculous the species is. Imagine this modern relic moved to some church next to the thumb, ulna, or finger of a saint, objects for the faithful to bow to, to revere and to pray to. Imagine praying to a starch stain looking like a dim and faded portrait of Jesus surrounded by 10 or 15 nozzle holes, like an apse-aura, about his head, a Romanesque arch at that.

I go to my death a free man, free of heaven and hell.

I am suffering a sweetly mild depression as my latest blood test is a mixed result, forebodings are all about. And tomorrow I go to a urologist for my yearly digital exam, the intimacy brought about by an inserted digit, a press of the prostate and the doctor’s assessment of its glandular condition. The PSA is very low which is good, given that I had a prostate procedure in 2003 after enduring years of PSA tests, a very inexact measurement of the  gland’s state of health. Since coming to Nevada, I had to find new doctors — a dentist, an internist, a urologist and a lab. I am through my third barber who used a metaphorical bowl about my head and sheared me like a bound lamb. The last “stylist” was a Glenn Beck fanatic who hated Obama. I had to move on because I tasted her metallic hatred in my mouth. When you move to a new state or neighborhood, roots are cut. I am unimpressed by the doctors in Nevada — too much time playing the slots.

Which brings me back to privacy. I share what I can with Jane. Essentially I am a very private person but when you write the irony is that you have to expose your feelings and how curious all that is. Blogging is not privacy. I don’t worry. There is an essential secret self to us all which we keep in abeyance unless like Kathy Griffin you are an inverted personality gathering your jollies and shekels by revealing all that you contain within, giving emptiness a poor name. What is hilarious to me is that what is revealed is often so bereft of content and meaning. I associate this culture to the empty coke bottles on a curb. What if I revealed to you that I never went to a rock concert or never attended a football game in my life. What revelations! Please judge them, make of them what you will. Using a cliche I have been hearing of late, at the end of the day, you know nothing about me but you know a great deal about you if you look inward for the first time.

Perhaps the secrets we have about ourselves are condemnations we feel about what we have done or “committed” in the past. What is a secret, after all? And why is it a private thing? Being a Jewish Wikipedia, I will attempt a definition: — a secret is a judgment of self, a lie with some truth about it; it is a measure of self-disgust. Allow me to squeeze this lemon a bit more: - a secret defines our distance from the next person; it is a self-difference we cherish while all along feeling the uncomfortableness of it. To give away a secret, I think, may make the person feel less or inadequate, all over again. By keeping private, we retain what little this world gives us before it gnaws and tears away at our being. I will work on my definition.

Americans, this culture, apparently, detest secrets, especially by celebrities; after all, we humor them and we cater to them because we want them to cavort before us like seals; we want to judge their human errors and we want them to globally reveal all so we can have a measure of parental tsk-tsking. Privacy is anathema in this culture and it is as insensitive as walking into a child’s room without knocking. A person who does not have a private self is an empty self. The inner-directed individual is becoming as rare as certain desert tortoises. I am waiting for the next Kathy Griffin special in which she picks up the lid of her toilet bowl to show America her inner workings.