their friendship—while the future writer was hating himself for not having yet begun. After a while Kohn stopped seeing him; Lesser, he said, spoiled his pleasure
in his triumph. When Lesser’s first novel appeared, Kohn was abroad; when his second was published, Kohn was dead. His motorcycle had crashed, one rainy night, into a huge moving van on Hudson Street. His work, it was said, had been going badly.
There was his green-and-orange picture: a woman trying to complete herself through her own will, as willed by the painter. Otherwise she was an appearance of a face and body trying to make it through a forest of binding brush strokes.
The portrait of the woman—Lesser had once met the model at a party but nothing had come of it—had never been completed. Kohn had worked on it for years and then given up. Lesser had learned this from the model, Kohn’s one-time mistress. Kohn, in defeat, after all his labor, doubt, despair he was not making it, nor ever would, had turned the unfinished canvas to the wall; she had eluded him. You work as you always have but with this picture for no reason you can give or guess, except that it means so much to you to do it as it should be done, you can’t this time make it. She isn’t what I hoped she might be. Whoever she is I don’t know and want no further part of. Let time fuck her, I can’t. But friends who had seen the portrait in Kohn’s studio, in various aspects and colors, said the painter had “made it” despite himself, whether he thought so or no; it was accomplished as art whether or not accomplished as subject, or as originally
conceived. Whatever he put his hand to was Lazar Kohn and Kohn was a distinguished painter. His friends persuaded him to release the picture to his gallery for sale. The museum had bought it and hung it in its permanent collection.
The picture deepened Lesser’s dejection. Why had it been abandoned? Who knows?—like Lesser, Kohn had had his hangups. Maybe he had wanted to say more than he could at that time, something that wasn’t then in him to say? He might have said it after the motorcycle accident, if he had survived. Or had he been unable to separate the woman from who she really was: she had as self got the better of his art? He could not invent beyond her? She was simply the uncompleted woman of an incomplete man because it was that kind of world, life, art? I can’t give you more than I have given you—make you more than you are—because I haven’t presently got it to give and don’t want anyone to know, least of all myself. Or perhaps it was the painter’s purpose to complete by abandoning, because abandonment or its image was presently a mode of completion? Peace to Valéry. In painting, Lesser thought, you could finish off, total up, whether done or undone, because in the end (the end ?) you hung a canvas object on the wall and there was no sign saying, “Abandoned, come back tomorrow for more.” If it hung it was done, no matter what the painter thought.
Thinking of his own work, regretting that he had never been able to talk with Kohn about it, Lesser reflected that if he could not complete his novel; in the end something essential missing—the ending—some act or appearance or even promise of resolution, hence the form unachieved; then it was no completed work of art, did not deserve to be a book—he would destroy it himself. Nobody would read it except those who already had—besides himself perhaps some bum who had fished a few pages of a prior draft out of the garbage can in front of the house, curious to know what the words said. Lesser then vowed, as he often had, that he would never abandon this novel, never, for whatever reason; nor would anybody good or bad, Levenspiel, Bill Spear, for instance, or any woman, black or white, persuade him to give it up; or call the job done before he had completed it. He had no choice but to bring his book to its inevitable and perfected end.
Who says no?
As
in his triumph. When Lesser’s first novel appeared, Kohn was abroad; when his second was published, Kohn was dead. His motorcycle had crashed, one rainy night, into a huge moving van on Hudson Street. His work, it was said, had been going badly.
There was his green-and-orange picture: a woman trying to complete herself through her own will, as willed by the painter. Otherwise she was an appearance of a face and body trying to make it through a forest of binding brush strokes.
The portrait of the woman—Lesser had once met the model at a party but nothing had come of it—had never been completed. Kohn had worked on it for years and then given up. Lesser had learned this from the model, Kohn’s one-time mistress. Kohn, in defeat, after all his labor, doubt, despair he was not making it, nor ever would, had turned the unfinished canvas to the wall; she had eluded him. You work as you always have but with this picture for no reason you can give or guess, except that it means so much to you to do it as it should be done, you can’t this time make it. She isn’t what I hoped she might be. Whoever she is I don’t know and want no further part of. Let time fuck her, I can’t. But friends who had seen the portrait in Kohn’s studio, in various aspects and colors, said the painter had “made it” despite himself, whether he thought so or no; it was accomplished as art whether or not accomplished as subject, or as originally
conceived. Whatever he put his hand to was Lazar Kohn and Kohn was a distinguished painter. His friends persuaded him to release the picture to his gallery for sale. The museum had bought it and hung it in its permanent collection.
The picture deepened Lesser’s dejection. Why had it been abandoned? Who knows?—like Lesser, Kohn had had his hangups. Maybe he had wanted to say more than he could at that time, something that wasn’t then in him to say? He might have said it after the motorcycle accident, if he had survived. Or had he been unable to separate the woman from who she really was: she had as self got the better of his art? He could not invent beyond her? She was simply the uncompleted woman of an incomplete man because it was that kind of world, life, art? I can’t give you more than I have given you—make you more than you are—because I haven’t presently got it to give and don’t want anyone to know, least of all myself. Or perhaps it was the painter’s purpose to complete by abandoning, because abandonment or its image was presently a mode of completion? Peace to Valéry. In painting, Lesser thought, you could finish off, total up, whether done or undone, because in the end (the end ?) you hung a canvas object on the wall and there was no sign saying, “Abandoned, come back tomorrow for more.” If it hung it was done, no matter what the painter thought.
Thinking of his own work, regretting that he had never been able to talk with Kohn about it, Lesser reflected that if he could not complete his novel; in the end something essential missing—the ending—some act or appearance or even promise of resolution, hence the form unachieved; then it was no completed work of art, did not deserve to be a book—he would destroy it himself. Nobody would read it except those who already had—besides himself perhaps some bum who had fished a few pages of a prior draft out of the garbage can in front of the house, curious to know what the words said. Lesser then vowed, as he often had, that he would never abandon this novel, never, for whatever reason; nor would anybody good or bad, Levenspiel, Bill Spear, for instance, or any woman, black or white, persuade him to give it up; or call the job done before he had completed it. He had no choice but to bring his book to its inevitable and perfected end.
Who says no?
As
Similar Books
