are, but I nurse my secret dislike, my prejudice, and allow it to develop unhindered by scrutiny. The Dutch, I want to tell Wallace, have given tolerance a bad name.
I don’t know how Wallace held up in court, if he did, or whether he had to face the judge at all. What does his girlfriend find appealing about him? This is a man who is never at a loss for the ladies, to be euphemistic about it. He’s had more lovers than one would ever guess from looking at him; only a distorted notion of sexual freedom could have allowed this outrage, this flourishing of a lunatic Don Juan. Wallace professes to adore the female sex and has set many poems in bedrooms where his beloved lies déshabillée on a bed, which allows him to describe in fanatic detail the beauty of the female body, the pearl he nuzzles with his nose and licks with his tongue, that sort of thing. Of course the French have a word for poems celebrating the woman’s body— blasons . But what do women see in him? Perhaps when he was young he had a certain je ne sais quoi ….
But now? He has a paunch and is disheveled. He has the worst set of caps I’ve ever seen. He whistles through them when he speaks. His eyes protrude like mine. And he tends to leer when he looks, projecting a mad intensity; I suppose someone else might say it signaled genius but to me it is most hilarious, signifying nothing like intelligence. His girlfriend’s not laughing. Oh dear, Wallace is reading his poetry aloud, in English, something about a dog. I’m barely listening. Where the hell is Roger? Roger might relieve me of the burden of seeming to listen to Wallace. I know Roger plans to relieve Wallace of some of his money, to pluck it from him for some scheme or other, to buy property here through a Greek lawyer, to open a café. Roger always has something on the boil; he’s one of those kinds of people who keep things moving by concocting ideas—for money, usually—which other people ought to invest in or become involved with. A magazine he’d edit or a property he’d administer. Sometimes they do give him money, but I never have. It’s a point of pride with me.
Wallace has stopped reciting his poem. Now he’s defending Pound to the Dutchwoman. She must be completely uninterested. He’s whistling on about T.S. Eliot, being fierce as usual about Pound, about whom he’s ambivalent. Whatever sympathy he has for Pound was aroused because he—Wallace—and Pound are both considered traitors by some of their countrymen. I think Pound’s support of Fascism was a type of temporary psychosis, to which Wallace is no stranger either, I might add. Wallace is more paranoid than I could ever be; and he is rabidly heterosexual. Though, again, I can’t see why any woman would want to sleep with him.
I’ve often noticed that even the most unpleasant men attract reasonable and kind women; these women put up with and serve these men for ages. They cook and clean for them, tidy up their social messes. And what for? The love of genius. It’s not likely that genius could be attached to so many miscreants. Sometimes the women are masochistic, but then so am I, I should think, in some ways, and I’d never want a man like Wallace. He’s unbearable.
He seems to think he saw Pound in St. Elizabeth’s, insisting that he did visit him and even hid behind a tree to watch him after he was supposed to have left the hospital grounds. I hope Wallace was sane when he did so, although it doesn’t sound as if he was. Imagine how Pound must have felt being incarcerated in a mental hospital, locked up with and surrounded by manic depressives and schizophrenics, and then to have an ambulatory lunatic like Wallace pop up, scot-free, raving as wildly as any in there with him! I don’t believe Pound was truly insane. He was an arrogant and disagreeable man but an important poet, nonetheless. In this I agree with Wallace. T.S. Eliot was playing possum, Wallace now declares. Wallace has dropped to the ground
I don’t know how Wallace held up in court, if he did, or whether he had to face the judge at all. What does his girlfriend find appealing about him? This is a man who is never at a loss for the ladies, to be euphemistic about it. He’s had more lovers than one would ever guess from looking at him; only a distorted notion of sexual freedom could have allowed this outrage, this flourishing of a lunatic Don Juan. Wallace professes to adore the female sex and has set many poems in bedrooms where his beloved lies déshabillée on a bed, which allows him to describe in fanatic detail the beauty of the female body, the pearl he nuzzles with his nose and licks with his tongue, that sort of thing. Of course the French have a word for poems celebrating the woman’s body— blasons . But what do women see in him? Perhaps when he was young he had a certain je ne sais quoi ….
But now? He has a paunch and is disheveled. He has the worst set of caps I’ve ever seen. He whistles through them when he speaks. His eyes protrude like mine. And he tends to leer when he looks, projecting a mad intensity; I suppose someone else might say it signaled genius but to me it is most hilarious, signifying nothing like intelligence. His girlfriend’s not laughing. Oh dear, Wallace is reading his poetry aloud, in English, something about a dog. I’m barely listening. Where the hell is Roger? Roger might relieve me of the burden of seeming to listen to Wallace. I know Roger plans to relieve Wallace of some of his money, to pluck it from him for some scheme or other, to buy property here through a Greek lawyer, to open a café. Roger always has something on the boil; he’s one of those kinds of people who keep things moving by concocting ideas—for money, usually—which other people ought to invest in or become involved with. A magazine he’d edit or a property he’d administer. Sometimes they do give him money, but I never have. It’s a point of pride with me.
Wallace has stopped reciting his poem. Now he’s defending Pound to the Dutchwoman. She must be completely uninterested. He’s whistling on about T.S. Eliot, being fierce as usual about Pound, about whom he’s ambivalent. Whatever sympathy he has for Pound was aroused because he—Wallace—and Pound are both considered traitors by some of their countrymen. I think Pound’s support of Fascism was a type of temporary psychosis, to which Wallace is no stranger either, I might add. Wallace is more paranoid than I could ever be; and he is rabidly heterosexual. Though, again, I can’t see why any woman would want to sleep with him.
I’ve often noticed that even the most unpleasant men attract reasonable and kind women; these women put up with and serve these men for ages. They cook and clean for them, tidy up their social messes. And what for? The love of genius. It’s not likely that genius could be attached to so many miscreants. Sometimes the women are masochistic, but then so am I, I should think, in some ways, and I’d never want a man like Wallace. He’s unbearable.
He seems to think he saw Pound in St. Elizabeth’s, insisting that he did visit him and even hid behind a tree to watch him after he was supposed to have left the hospital grounds. I hope Wallace was sane when he did so, although it doesn’t sound as if he was. Imagine how Pound must have felt being incarcerated in a mental hospital, locked up with and surrounded by manic depressives and schizophrenics, and then to have an ambulatory lunatic like Wallace pop up, scot-free, raving as wildly as any in there with him! I don’t believe Pound was truly insane. He was an arrogant and disagreeable man but an important poet, nonetheless. In this I agree with Wallace. T.S. Eliot was playing possum, Wallace now declares. Wallace has dropped to the ground
Similar Books
