Candice wondered:
>Henry's posting of the excerpt from JOE GOULD'S SECRET (trying to tell
>us something, Mr. GOULD?)
Yes, I think Mr. Gould is trying to tell us something. And I will help him
to tell it by sharing the following strange story. It is one that I am still
haunted by:
Nearly two years ago, I gave a reading of translations at Brown University
in Providence, Rhode Island, a city, in fact, with a surfeit of sea gulls.
Mr. Gould's family has lived in Providence since the days of the Mayflower,
so he was able to attend my presentation. It was a truly wonderful affair,
one punctuated by excited bursts of applause from the (I jest not) roughly
five-score souls there attending.
Well, the night advanced, I read my final poem, closed my book, said a soft
"Thank you", and placed a hand on my hip, just so, letting the other arm
dangle casually at my side (like a gentleman in a painting by Velazquez). I
was approached by Mr. Gould (walking, oddly, to say the least, on his
tip-toes), who was in the company of an elfin figure wearing 1960ish Jane
Fonda-looking boots. (It was the only portion of her form that I could see.)
Mr. Gould, who was wearing sunglasses, said, and with a certain solemnity,
"Mr. Johnson, I should like to introduce you to the great living Russian
poet, Elena Shvarts."
I reached out in greeting, and my hand disappeared into the thick cocoon of
cigarette smoke that enveloped her. She took it, and as soon as I felt her
clammy grip, Mr. Gould began to cry in high bird-like sounds and to dance
around the booted smoke-cloud and me, madly flapping his arms, in much the
same manner as he has reported his "Hiawatha"-reciting Great hobo Uncle
doing.
This dadaistic scene went on for at least twenty or thirty seconds, and with
each passing moment I felt the hand of Elena Shvarts gripping mine ever more
aggresively, like a clamp, and I was in excruciating pain. As I grimaced and
wimpered, I noted that Mr. Gould's Larinae dance seemed to not be given a
second look or thought by those milling around, as if it were a common thing
for him to act like a sea gull at poetry readings. The fiction writer Robert
Coover, for example, continued to speak affably with the translator
Rosemarie Waldrop only a few feet away; the expatriate poet Bei Dao argued
earnestly with the diffident Oulipian Harry Mathews. In a corner, Marjorie
Perloff nonchelantly breast-fed her baby. It was all quite odd.
"I am very pleased to meet you," grunted Elena Shvarts in mannish, heaviest
accent, letting go, at long last, of my hand. And Mr. Gould, who only a
moment before had seemed on the verge of law-defying flight, slapped me
heartily on the back and roared in affected British brogue, "Jolly good
show, 'ol chap! Come and see us again sometime!"
It was like a dream. But it was real.
Kent
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