"Carlos Fuentes, Christopher Unborn" and "Witold Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke"
Carlos Fuentes, Christopher Unborn (trans, Alfred Mac Adam)
…the Reader would be able to wonder, wherever [she!] might be reading a book apocryphally entitled Christoper Unborn / by / Carlos Fuentes years after the events narrated there took place, that is, as it always happens, the most rejected books end up being the most accepted books, the most obscure books become the clearest, the most rebellious become the most docile, and that’s the way it goes, Reader.
Get what you work with, right?
the way a constraint signals the con’s feint
One’s concave echo is another’s convex hearer
frieds ringing sass-backward
Rejected → Accepted = mime to calm yr·self & Relax
Obscure → Clearest = prime to dot.com yr·self & Concentrate
Rebellious → Docile = time to embalm yr·self & Dispel
Dumb luck — don’t overcook your book’s look
And you say (fading now), “that’s the way it goes, Bleeder” 1
1 Reprise, Umberto Eco’s & Italo Calvino’s novel lines
Witold Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke (trans, Eric Mosbacher)
The master started looking more and more often at his watch; and the boys started looking at their watches more and more often too… Oh, the endless repetition, the excruciating boredom… the pupils at their desks suffering from an acute sense of… boredom, boredom, boredom!
That’s the way it goes, Reader
jus’ dustin up the ol chalk bored rust
And you say, whoa, doan be droppin
those ’od·damn, ’od·awful Gee’s
you break ’em you
flush ’em, right?
— they’s aint the only ’host
you’ve swallowed whole
You need to Calm down again, pls
(gag w/ Maga too, fer dumb luck)
Get yr self back to old school Rules
(tedium di’dum, dolor o’rama’dam)
Get back copyin blah·board scribblin’s
— it were ever So Got Schooled
flyin drip wet spit wads crisscrossin
blow-’n-release rubbers zig-zaggin…
And someone said, Ferdydurke, you
have been written by a masterpiecer…
There’s a new day a’dawnin’
By ‘n’ By [sic]… Ick, zee said
And we wuz watchin thud y’all spitball
trails oozin down walls in sum
excited states of esoterica 1
1 Second stanza reprised from SongBu®st, p.87; So Got Schooled (a memoir): penmanship, spitwads, rubbers; a hint of Theodore Roethke’s “Dolor”; italicized quotes are verbatim from a previous owner’s marginalia in our first edition Grove Evergreen reprint (1968); was hoping on two more G’s (Robert Grudin & Pierre Guyotat) but couldn’t find anything readily riffable
Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet with 26 books in print (from BlazeVOX, Chax, Spuyten Duyvil, & others). His personal papers are archived in the “Contemporary Literature Collection” at Simon Fraser University. His website is StephenBett.com.
