Before I begin, allow me to tell you that this piece will end with a poem. In The i Tetralogy I wrote several poems from a Nazi’s perspective and I ended the entire work with a psalm. Chutzpah runs in my blood. So does taking a risk while I am shitting in my pants. My first published poem was in the 1958 yearbook of Jamaica High School in jamaica, Queens (anyone out there who was a student?). I was a depressed young man and the poem reflects this. I wrote it on levels, to wit, the description of water coursing down a stream, unwilling to be impeded by flotsam. What I was really teaching myself was that I would persevere although I was despondent; I would go on like the river itself. When it was edited and published in the yearbook by my English teacher, she completely misread and bowdlerized it so that the poem only retained the imagery of the waterfall which incensed me no end. It was eviscerated of my personal intent. It was the first experience I ever had with editing, need I say more.
The January issue of the Mensa Bulletin has my short story, “The Tea Table,” in it with a bit too much overproduced graphics to highlight what the story clearly says. Unfortunately it too has been edited in a way that the subtletly of the story is missing now; in fact, the editor shifted first person to third in one place which bent me out of shape. In the final publication of the book it all will be righted. I recall Thornton Wilder being asked about the movie version of Our Town and how it had been truncated. Essentially he said that about two-thirds of the way in the audience had gotten the message and he wasn’t too upset about that. I remember his comment because I understand it well. Some letters I received about the story clearly reveal the readers’ appreciation of it.
In the last months of 2010 I was very fortunate to have 8 stories accepted for publication. Serving House Journal published “Soap” in its fall issue and I will be published again in its spring issue with “Sincerely, Max Weber.” This is a coup because the journal doesn’t accept this and that; in fact, the first story I submitted for the spring issue was bounced back by Duff Brenna, editor. he asked that I try again, which I did, and it was accepted. Since I have bragging rights, sample these two stories as to the kind of solemn and fog-ridden wharves I walk late at night. See www.fictionfix.net, “Cantor Matyas Balogh,” and www.servinghousejournal.com for “Soap.” Both stories come from a work in progress, “Working Through the Holocaust,” and I need to say something about this effort.
The Holocaust whirls about me in its spidery wisps, perhaps a projection of my own personal need to be felt. I have learned to feel, arduous and off-putting it has been. I am not a tzaddik, but I struggle to be a righteous man. it doesn’t take me too long before I can enter the horrible abyss which is the Holocaust. I could not let it go after my novel and so these stories appeared. About a year ago I just sat down and wrote a slew of stories; my Homeric muse is the unconscious and so I again pay tribute to it. It works while I sleep; it perseveres while I rest; it composes writing while I snore. And what did I write about: I wrote about Holocaust revisionists or deniers, much the same, as their psyches intrigue me, as I am interested in the “minds” of such simpletons like Coulter, Bachmann, Palin, Ingraham, the four gorgons of the media, et al. What makes a human being believe in rubbish and act in a rotten way is a forever perplexing issue? With the Nazis one has to dwell in hell to feel their exhalations. So, I wrote about a young adult, Jupiter Thitch, who was a denier and shot his load over the web; I wrote about a real denier, Max Weber, read some of his essays on his website and was appalled not so much by what he said but with the diligence and academic “scholarship” he applied to the issues with such mindboggling diligence. I made him a character in two stories. In fact, I use the conceit of having him reviewing my Holocaust novel, and what a curiosity that was for me — Holocaust revisionist reviews, in a personal letter to me, The i Tetralogy. That story, “Sincerely, Max Weber,” will be in the March issue of Serving House Journal.
I wrote about a retarded child who is abandoned to himself after his mother is rounded up. What happened to all the Down Syndrome children of Jewish mothers — clearly there is a great novel to be written about that (should I try?). I feel depleted as of now. I wrote, a la Kafka, of the despair and angst of concentration inmates; I wrote about survivors, and in one very long story I have a survivor review his life and compose notes about it. I wrote about the terror of being chased in “Apotheosis,” in which a Hasidic Jew escapes into the woods after his shtetl is razed by the Nazis and it ends in a series of fantasy episodes which may or may not work. Golems became characters in these stories, the fantasies of the Diaspora. “The Disenchanted Golem” is an extended story about a golem who questions his deeds, his purposes and the manipulation of him by Jews. No one wants to be a fantasy, not if you can’t have your own fantasies. I just let my mind wander with this one and I like it very much. After all, if you have read this blog you know I write for me first, and you can come along for the ride if you wish; we could chat about it. There are three stories about golems in the book in progress.
I composed some very off-beat stories, “Archipelago,” being one, which is beyond the pale; “Chagall’s Crows” deals with an inmate’s fantasy used to sustain his mind if not spirit. I entered this Holocaust pore and that Holocaust pore as I let my self wander, even to composing “Food,” a science fiction riff on a Holocaust victim being visited by a Jew from the present and the tiff they have. And in “Freud in Auschwitz,” a one page story, I try to give a sense of Freud in that situation; of course, it does not succeed, but the idea is ravishing to me. So there it is, a gallifmaufry of sensibilities, of felt moods, of anger, scorn and loathing. “Working Through the Holocaust” says it all in its title, for “working through” is therapy-speak for taking a client’s issue and like a dog, grabbing it in the teeth of both therapist and client and shaking it until it no longer matters — it is settled, it is metabolized, it is reconciled to and reconcilated with, and so to move on. With the Holocaust nothing is ever metabolized completely, for in it is everything we need to know about the mind, spirit, and psychological being of humans, and it is unrelentingly horrible.
I hope I will never write any more on the subject, but that is a lie I tell myself to console my self.
I tried to balance out the stories with several poems, some of which I am uncertain about; however, here is the poem I promised at the beginnning of this piece. It is an attempt to present the historical Jew asking for succor and receiving none. What is to be made of this poem? What do you make of it? Does it work at some level? I look forward to responses.
I Come
I come to you asking for your help.
You answer no, turn away.
I plead for your help. Your face is indifferent.
I call upon whatever good there is in you.
You stare at me as if I were an object.
I ask: fellow man to fellow man –Help me!
You don’t want to hear. You don’t register my existence.
I am shut out.
I made a mistake. I expected.
If I were you, I would do the same. I admit.
I go away.
Each one of us is unknown to ourselves, unknown to the other.
What is left is spare willingness, if that, to do for ourselves.
The species is as cold as a corpse.
I go to my death hating my fellow man more than my hated perpetrator.
The same thing.
I loathe my ilk.
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