How I Prefer a True Whore

It began with Lydia Davis and the consumption of 5 of her 8 published books. Along with Barthelme, Davis is a contemporary novelist whose innovative short-fiction stands apart from all the other shit still churning out of crumbling publishing houses. Well, she had translated a book called The Death Sentence by French author/philosopher Maurice Blanchot which I had the great satisfaction of finishing this morning on the train, the last sentence entering my head as I exited the car (I have great luck with timing!). Because I am a squirrel researcher of the highest level, I spent the better part of this morning learning about Blanchot (and revisiting Derrida, Foucault, deconstruction, author function- the pearls of modern critical theory) and found that Death Sentence was based on the terrible last days of a soon-to-be favorite person of mine: Colette Laure Peignot, a French author, poet and- from the accounts of her lovers and admirers- fiercely intelligent and conflicted woman.After reading this excerpt from Laure's Fragments of a Notebook (1937) (culled from the very informative blog http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com which I am now following), I am particularly excited to eat up her work and attempt to live the way in which she has preached:

Avoid contact with all people in whom there is no possible resonance with what touches you most deeply and toward whom you have obligations of "kindness," of politeness. Since these obligations engage me strongly as soon as I find myself in the presence of such people and engage me through an ill-fated habit of patience and good-will, which in fact becomes will for humiliation (sometimes abject). Imagine a musician in an orchestra playing off-key because his neighbor is doing so, to be nice.

Flee -- literally flee -- those with whom you can exchange only absurd remarks about others who are just like them and whom you have seen the previous night exchanging the same remarks, or equally vain gossip, about the very person you are talking to. There are certain people who end up frequenting and even calling friends those they denigrate constantly. I hate "goodness" and "kindness," which have only led me to humiliation.

Keep silent as before. It's better.

Contempt for those whose conversation boils down to all that I hate and flee: to a certain spirit of vulgarity and pettiness. Farce is what they feel comfortable with. I cringe before certain laughter and smiles drawn forth on this terrain. Sometimes a laugh is enough to cause me to have, not aversion toward, but distrust of a human being. There is a point at which polite distrust is worse than aversion because it is more reserved, but I can't confine myself to this, and everything in me shouts, screams aversion.

Lack of reserve and moral propriety shocks me all the time, due to certain nervous (physical) reactions I can neither hold back nor hide. Those who broaden the horizon, those who narrow it.

How I prefer a true whore.

Do not get stuck where the essential is lost, where everything turns vulgar, base, and petty. Through my own fault, through a will for humiliation. A feeling of abjection. "Defeated ahead of time." So from now on "dust to dust" resembles dust. At those moments it is physically impossible to be clear and frank. Shame and false shame.

Easy: to accuse others of being superficial = brilliant = alive.

Return to simple beings, to childlike reactions, a difficult return.