fireplace, with its resplendent tiles and marble surround …
It’s here we come to listen to Jandek, W. and I, sitting on the couch with great seriousness. I make him listen in silence to Khartoum and Khartoum Variations . W. finds Jandek very disturbing, and needs me in the room to listen to the music with him. Sal never stays for Jandek.—‘I hate fucking Jandek’, she says. ‘Don’t play Jandek while I’m in the house’, she says.
I document the great bathroom, too—the greatest of bathrooms, we’re all agreed. The lion-footed bath on a raised plinth. The fulsomeness of the airing cupboard, with its many towels, sheets and duvet covers. The pile of Uncuts by the toilet, ready to read. The stained glass window, made by someone famous.
Ah, how will he leave it, his house?, W. says. He’ll have to leave it, he knows that. They’ll sack him. They’ll drive him out of his city. It’s coming, the end is coming.
Up another flight to the top floor, and the holy of holies: W.’s study. His bookshelves—not too many, since W. gives away most of his books (‘I don’t hoard them, like you’, he says), but enough for all the essentials. His Hebrew/English dictionary. His volumes of Cohen. His collected Rosenzweigs.
This is the room where I sleep when I stay. W. pulls out a camp bed and makes it up. He has to fumigate his study after I’ve slept in it, he says. It has to be re-consecrated, his temple of scholarship.
Then, finally, W.’s and Sal’s room, calm, generous and large-windowed. This is where he recovers from his days of scholarship, W. says. And it’s where he wakes up, before dawn, ready for his studies.
W.’s still reading Rosenzweig, very slowly, in German, every morning, he tells me.—‘I don’t understand a word’. Still, it’s a good exercise. Every morning, he goes into his study and sits at his desk before he does anything else. Does he have a cup of tea? No, he says, tea has to wait. How about coffee? He doesn’t have coffee, either. I always begin with a cup of coffee, I tell him.—‘That’s where you go wrong’, he says. ‘Some things take precedence over coffee’.
How does he dress himself for scholarship?, I ask him. He wears his dressing gown, W. says. He sits in his dressing gown and reads, looking up difficult German words (which is to say, most of them) in his dictionary. How does he do it?, he wonders. Every morning, he leaves Sal lying there in the warm bed, and goes to work. Is she impressed by his commitment?—‘She thinks I’m an idiot’, W. says.
We admire W.’s edition of the collected Rosenzweig.—‘What you have to understand is that Rosenzweig was very, very clever’, he says. ‘We’ll never, whatever we do, be as clever as him. We’ll never have a single idea, and he had hundreds of ideas’.
W.’s workfiles mean little to him now, he says. There are dozens of them, saved in a folder called Notes , on every kind of topic. Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise , for example. Hermann Cohen’s Religion of Reason . He saves them to his folder and forgets them immediately, W. says. Why does he bother?
I open one on his computer screen. Notes from Cohen’s Mathematics and the Theory of Platonic Ideas , long out of print. It cost him £130, he sighs. W. makes himself read things by spending very large amounts of money on them. He feels so guilty, he has to read them. Cohen’s The Principle of the Method of Infinitesimals and its History —that cost him £210!
But what would I know of all this?, W. says. My reading is done online. I barely know what it means to handle a volume . And besides, old books, with their learning, frighten me, he knows that. Old hardbacks with scholarly footnotes. Old libraries—what do I know of them? I’m a man of the new age , W. says, just as he is a man of the old age . He’s an anachronism, W. says, he knows that; and I am a harbinger.
Stonehouse, morning.—‘You should always live among the
It’s here we come to listen to Jandek, W. and I, sitting on the couch with great seriousness. I make him listen in silence to Khartoum and Khartoum Variations . W. finds Jandek very disturbing, and needs me in the room to listen to the music with him. Sal never stays for Jandek.—‘I hate fucking Jandek’, she says. ‘Don’t play Jandek while I’m in the house’, she says.
I document the great bathroom, too—the greatest of bathrooms, we’re all agreed. The lion-footed bath on a raised plinth. The fulsomeness of the airing cupboard, with its many towels, sheets and duvet covers. The pile of Uncuts by the toilet, ready to read. The stained glass window, made by someone famous.
Ah, how will he leave it, his house?, W. says. He’ll have to leave it, he knows that. They’ll sack him. They’ll drive him out of his city. It’s coming, the end is coming.
Up another flight to the top floor, and the holy of holies: W.’s study. His bookshelves—not too many, since W. gives away most of his books (‘I don’t hoard them, like you’, he says), but enough for all the essentials. His Hebrew/English dictionary. His volumes of Cohen. His collected Rosenzweigs.
This is the room where I sleep when I stay. W. pulls out a camp bed and makes it up. He has to fumigate his study after I’ve slept in it, he says. It has to be re-consecrated, his temple of scholarship.
Then, finally, W.’s and Sal’s room, calm, generous and large-windowed. This is where he recovers from his days of scholarship, W. says. And it’s where he wakes up, before dawn, ready for his studies.
W.’s still reading Rosenzweig, very slowly, in German, every morning, he tells me.—‘I don’t understand a word’. Still, it’s a good exercise. Every morning, he goes into his study and sits at his desk before he does anything else. Does he have a cup of tea? No, he says, tea has to wait. How about coffee? He doesn’t have coffee, either. I always begin with a cup of coffee, I tell him.—‘That’s where you go wrong’, he says. ‘Some things take precedence over coffee’.
How does he dress himself for scholarship?, I ask him. He wears his dressing gown, W. says. He sits in his dressing gown and reads, looking up difficult German words (which is to say, most of them) in his dictionary. How does he do it?, he wonders. Every morning, he leaves Sal lying there in the warm bed, and goes to work. Is she impressed by his commitment?—‘She thinks I’m an idiot’, W. says.
We admire W.’s edition of the collected Rosenzweig.—‘What you have to understand is that Rosenzweig was very, very clever’, he says. ‘We’ll never, whatever we do, be as clever as him. We’ll never have a single idea, and he had hundreds of ideas’.
W.’s workfiles mean little to him now, he says. There are dozens of them, saved in a folder called Notes , on every kind of topic. Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise , for example. Hermann Cohen’s Religion of Reason . He saves them to his folder and forgets them immediately, W. says. Why does he bother?
I open one on his computer screen. Notes from Cohen’s Mathematics and the Theory of Platonic Ideas , long out of print. It cost him £130, he sighs. W. makes himself read things by spending very large amounts of money on them. He feels so guilty, he has to read them. Cohen’s The Principle of the Method of Infinitesimals and its History —that cost him £210!
But what would I know of all this?, W. says. My reading is done online. I barely know what it means to handle a volume . And besides, old books, with their learning, frighten me, he knows that. Old hardbacks with scholarly footnotes. Old libraries—what do I know of them? I’m a man of the new age , W. says, just as he is a man of the old age . He’s an anachronism, W. says, he knows that; and I am a harbinger.
Stonehouse, morning.—‘You should always live among the
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