Surat Antara Paul Auster & J. M. Coetzee
Surat antara pengarang menawarkan nikmat yang unik dan luar biasa. Terutama sekali apabila ia ditulis oleh pengarang yang kita jarang dengarnya bersuara secara peribadi, melainkan apabila dia bersuara melalui naratif atau bernyanyi melalui baris-baris sebuah puisi. Sejumlah surat yang dikongsi tahun demi tahun kalau dibaca secara keseluruhan, boleh menawarkan sebuah cerita persahabatan, atau cerita percintaan, atau perbicangan yang serius dan panas, atau sekadar perkongsian rutin harian di rumah bagi menghilangkan kebosanan. Atau mungkin perbualan tentang sukan. Penulis mengirimkan surat kepada penulis lain untuk bercerita - untuk bercakap kepada bayang yang tidak boleh dilihat, namun boleh memahaminya secara intim.
Baru-baru ini saya berpeluang membaca surat yang ditulis antara Paul Auster dan J. M. Coetzee. Subjek yang dipilih tidaklah menarik sangat. (Barangkali sebab mereka sibuk berbincang tentang sukan.) Namun saya membacanya untuk membandingkan perbezaan gaya kepengarangan mereka berdua. Ternyata cara Auster menulis surat adalah hampir sama dengan cara dia menulis novel: ada penyusunan babak dan pengembangan cerita seolah-olah Auster melihat masa silamnya sebagai serpihan daripada sebuah buku. Coetzee, sebaliknya, lebih kritikal dan ekonomi: serta di banyak tempat lebih tajam dan bertenaga renungan hidupnya. Pendapat Coetzee tentang permainan cricket dan tenis mengingatkan saya kepada salah seorang wataknya iaitu Senhor C yang juga seorang novelis.
* * *
December 30, 2008
Dear Paul,
The “crisis in world finance” that I wrote about
last time seems set to continue into the new year. At this point, I
think I should quit my role as commentator on economic affairs. I am
reminded of Ezra Pound, whose unhingement began during the depression of
the nineteen-thirties, when he convinced himself he was seeing things
about how the economy worked that other people, wrapped up in fictions,
were too blind to see: in short order, he turned himself into what
Gertrude Stein called “a village explainer,” Uncle Ez.
It is high
summer in this hemisphere, and I spent most of Sunday sitting in front
of a television screen (shades of Wall Street!) watching the third day
of a five-day game of cricket between the national teams of Australia
and South Africa. I was absorbed, I was emotionally involved, I tore
myself away only reluctantly. In order to watch the game I put aside the
two or three books I am in the middle of reading.
Cricket has been played for centuries. As with
all games, there are only so many moves you can make, only so many
effects you can cause. It is very likely that the proceedings in
Melbourne on Sunday, December 28, 2008, duplicate, in every respect that
counts, the proceedings of some other day’s cricket in some other
place. By the age of thirty, any serious spectator must have moments of
déjà vu—more than moments, extended periods. And justifiably so: it’s
all been done before. Whereas one thing you can say about a good book is
that it has never been written before.
So why waste my time slumped in front of a television screen watching
young men at play? For, I concede, it is a waste of time. I have an
experience (a secondhand experience), but it does me no good that I can
detect. I learn nothing. I come away with nothing.
Does any of this sound familiar to you? Does it strike a chord you
recognize? Is sport simply like sin: one disapproves of it but one
yields because the flesh is weak?
Yours ever,
John
* * *
Hotel d’Aubusson
Paris
January 10, 2009
Dear John,Paris
January 10, 2009
Your snappy, witty letter from December 30th arrived just two hours
before I left for the airport. Now I am in Europe again, a frigid Paris,
twelve noon exactly, sitting in my hotel room, unable to go on with the
nap I was hoping to take to ward off the effects of a sleepless night.
Excuse the funny stationery, excuse the crappy ballpoint pen. For some
reason, Paris hotel rooms are not equipped with typewriters…
Watching Sports on T.V.
I agree with you that it is a useless activity, an utter waste of
time. And yet how many hours of my life have I wasted in precisely this
way, how many afternoons have I squandered just as you did on December
28th? The total count is no doubt appalling, and merely to think about
it fills me with embarrassment.
You talk about sin (jokingly), but perhaps the real term is “guilty
pleasure,” or perhaps just “pleasure.” In my own case, the sports I am
interested in and watch regularly are the ones I played as a boy. One
knows and understands the game intimately, and therefore one can
appreciate the prowess, the often-dazzling skills, of professionals. I
don’t care a lick about ice hockey, for example, because I never played
it and don’t truly understand it. Also, in my own case, I tend to focus
on and follow specific teams. One’s involvement becomes deeper when each
player is a familiar figure, a known quantity, and this familiarity increases one’s capacity to endure boredom, all those dreary moments when nothing much of anything is happening.
There is no question that games have a strong narrative component. We
follow the twists and turns of the combat in order to learn the final
outcome. But no, it is not quite like reading a book—at least not the
kinds of books you and I try to write. But perhaps it’s more closely
related to genre literature. Think of thrillers or detective novels, for
example…
[Just now, an unexpected call from a friend, who is waiting downstairs. I have to go, but will continue when I return.] Three hours later:
…which are always the same book, endlessly repeated, thousands of
subtle variations on the same story, and nevertheless the public has an
insatiable hunger for these novels. As if each one were the reënactment
of a ritual.
The narrative aspect, yes, which keeps us watching until the final
play, the final tick of the clock, but all in all I tend to think of
sports as a kind of performance art. You complain about the déjà vu
quality of so many games and matches. But doesn’t the same thing happen
when you go to a recital of your favorite Beethoven piano sonata? You
already know the piece by heart, but you want to hear how this
particular pianist will interpret it. There are pedestrian pianists and
athletes, and then someone comes along who takes your breath away.
I wonder if any two contests have ever been exactly alike,
play for play. Perhaps. All snowflakes look the same, but common wisdom
says that each one is unique. More than six billion people inhabit this
planet, and supposedly everyone’s fingerprints are different from anyone
else’s. Of the many hundreds of baseball games I have watched—perhaps
even thousands—nearly every one has had some small detail or event I
have never seen in any other game.
There is pleasure in the new, but also pleasure in the known. The
pleasure of eating food one likes, the pleasure of sex. No matter how
exotic or complex one’s erotic life might be, an orgasm is an orgasm,
and we anticipate them with pleasure because of the pleasure they have
given us in the past.
Still, one does feel rather stupid after spending an entire day in
front of a television set watching young men hurl their bodies against
one another. The books sit on the table unread. You don’t know where the
hours have gone, and, even worse, your team has lost. So I say from
Paris, knowing that when the New York football Giants play a crucial
playoff game against a tough Philadelphia team tomorrow, I won’t be able
to watch—and I am filled with regret.
With a big salute across oceans and continents,
Paul
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