Local Anaesthetic, by Gunter Grass

Germany. Something rattling in the crowded cloakroom of my brain. An ancient feeling, a memory of feeling, some old bitterness. I can deride her to myself, to others, but it chips off none of her gloss. There she is in all the photographs, smiling her closed-mouth smile. For the longest time I thought I didn't care anymore. I don't care. This is an ancient, closed-mouth memory.

Sardonic. Complicated. Humorous. A little bit brilliant. I will admit that Grass is never ordinary. A dentist, a teacher, young leftists (what will they grow up into?). Great, frenzied knot of humanity. All of these teachers dead, their information useless when measured against the whole, part of the whole, the whole damned thing, the hole.

Sometimes I think I want to swallow it all, let my body grow bloated with the world.

There will always be pain.

(An experiment I'm trying. Will anyone notice? I'm full of uncommitted ideas.)

Eberhard, why not? You don't recover from a fifteen-year-old pain. And especially not a four-and-a-half-year-old one. For that there's only local anaesthetic. A silly diversion, like television. (The editors say, "No one will get it." Brilliance thwarted. Mediocrity gains another point. Pshpshpshpshpsh.) But who does he write for? The educated curious with a literary bent? Thousands out of billions? Trickle-down philosophy? Most of them shout, "Who cares? Let us watch basketball, reality TV!" They cannot even say you are boring, Grass, because how would they know you? It's only us, haunters of used bookstores and library book sales, who prowl your yellowed pages. (Finger over flame. Why not? Anaesthetized.)

Jump, by Nadine Gordimer

We writers, would-be writers, all must care about something, right? I love Nadine Gordimer. Her shrewd penetration. Her immersion in the fundamental, the tricky, the ephemeral aspects of life. She does not deny individual, nor society. She does not dodge politics nor poverty. No one is safe from her gaze--least of all herself, I believe--but neither does anyone escape her tenderness, her knowing. This is the sense I get from Jump.

I have seen pictures of her online. She has an old woman's loveliness. Lined face, soft eyes, long, un-dyed hair. She seems gentle but unafraid.

I don't want to talk to her, to know her as a person. That kind of interaction with its layers of artifice and politeness and secretive judgment could only disappoint when I can see her mind so clearly through her novels. Yes, I would probably find her superior, flippant, or severe in face-to-face life. Better the reality of fiction. There she shows me her best self.

K. put me on to her, but I don't know if he appreciates her the way I do--that is, beyond language and thought. Some visceral part of me recognizes her truth, and I react in a flood of yes, yes, yes! Can I imagine him doing that, cold fish that he is?

Gordimer is still alive. Coetzee, too. Are they friends, I wonder. I can see them so. Despite undeniable differences, they are quite similar. I like Gordimer more. (But don't tell Coetzee.)