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06/27/01
-----Original Message----- The travel agent in Vienna sold me the train ticket to Berlin for the wrong day, and I realize this about five hours before my train. I haul my ass, luggage and everything, about a mile down the road, in the blazing sun. I have to buy a new couchette reservation, and this time, it is for a bigger cabin, which means more people snoring around me. Whatever, Fuck it, I think. Just get me to Berlin. But did I do something wrong? Did I fuck up my karma somewhere along the way? Is there a reason this is happening? (I always feel like this on the last day I'm in town: Just get me to the next place I need to be so I can rest my weary head.) I am hot and swollen from my period that day, and my chin is scattered with travel acne. My socks and shoes are stinky. I feel less than pretty, less than magnificent. I am not an international jet-setter. I am simply menstrual. I enter my clean, cool cabin, and am soon joined by only one other, a man in his fifties, with a full head of grey hair, wearing a stylish light green blazer, t-shirt, and levis. He has a big red leather bag, the older brother to my small, sharp pleather purse. He sits down, smiles at me, and immediately begins to scribble in a notebook, passionate and frenzied. I am finishing up On The Road, and know that I will speak to him, but first I must find out what happens to Dean Moriarty in the end. (They all die. No, they don't. Well, they did in real life, anyway.) I put down the book, make a hmm noise to myself, and then turn to him. "Are you a writer," I ask him. "Yes," he says. "Me, too!" And we're off for the next two hours. He is much more of a writer than I will ever be, and, in fact, is the head of the Austrian Literature Society, which I think is sort of the Austrian NEA, but just for books. He has published 30 books, and does translations, as well, one of which won the Booker Prize, somewhere along the way. He is brilliant. I wish I could have recorded everything he said, but let me just say this: he introduced some very interesting ideas to me. But even better was the way he spoke, making full use of every positive adjective available. Books were "magnificent", the "mag" part drawn out in a long and enthusiastic fashion. Visiting Budapest in the 80s and contending with cranky border guards was "wonderful" or "vunderful", I suppose, and he spoke eagerly of their harassment of Austrians. "You just had to laugh," he said. "You either laughed or you cried. I chose to laugh." He explained to me his latest passion, one that he planned to write a book about, which was a discussion of the impact of writing in a non-native tongue has on authors. He told me about an Arab woman he knows who, after learning French, wrote an entire novel ("a magnificent, beautiful novel") in French using words and concepts not available in Arabic. When he asked her if she would translate it to Arabic, she said no. If she were to translate it, she would have to add a line that must appear after Mohammed (the book is about Mohammed and one of his daughters), something along the lines of, "Mohammed, our holy ruler, etc.), or something like that. If she did not add that line, there would be a death sentence put on her head, much like what happened to Salman Rushdie. If she did add that line, however, she told him, "It would not be my book anymore." On and on, our conversation went, and I adored every minute of it, even though I did not understand everything he was saying, not neccesarily because of his poor English, but because of the headiness of the concepts. It was thrilling. Later I asked him if he had read Paul Auster. He said no, though he knew who he was. I gave him my copy of Moon Palace to read, and he thanked me. So if you're following along, sports fans, it goes like this: A few years ago, a woman in Prague tells Kevin Chong to read Moon Palace. He tells me to read it. A week ago, I meet two Danish men who love the book. An Irish woman living in Germany emailed me recently to tell me she just bought it and read it based on what she read in one of my dispatches. And then I give it to the head of the Austrian Literature Society on a night train to Berlin. Not a bad trip for one book.
Ciao,
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