so what’s she like
she talked all the time about Jean-Paul Sartre
why
she met him
so what’s he like
she said he talked all the time about John Huston
why
Huston invited Sartre to his house to work on some movie but Marilyn Monroe cancelled so they spent two weeks in Galway alone together in the rain
how’d that go
they fell immediately and deeply in love
you’re kidding
yes I’m kidding Sartre called Huston a heap of ruins and Huston said Sartre had a face like an omelette
oh look there’s Louise
where
straight ahead of us about four rows
is that Louise oh you’re right new haircut is she still seeing that kid
I think it’s him next to her
I thought you were going to have a talk with her about that
chickened out
how much younger is he
last week he was writing her eulogy
what do you mean
she came into his room he was bent over the page really puzzling what to put in what to leave out
all those loose bloody ends
I suppose
did you ask her what they talk about the two of them
no
did you ask her if waiters make a point of saying hello madam how nice you’re out with your son today
no
should do that
you’re so judgemental
I’m just concerned for Louise
oh sure
you get that parchy tone
parchy isn’t a word
yes it is
no it isn’t
I met a parchy guy in Taos once his name was Larry Littlebird
great name
he had a bus tour business
you took a bus tour why
he looked nice I don’t know he used to hang around the hotel lobby no one else took the tour we went to different pueblos mostly I remember him telling me you live a room service life all white people are carrion
I’m seeing why no one else took the tour
after that I felt odd paying for his orange juice
why were you paying for his orange juice
we were at the pool
what’s this got to do with Louise
nothing I was just thinking about who looks down on who
whom
whom
so you fired Mr Bird
no actually after that he got to like me
part of his hustle
took me to his mother’s pueblo we talked all afternoon I still think of her sometimes it was a blazing silver afternoon
does Louise still have her dog
Philip Larkin yes
something wrong with calling a dog Philip Larkin
there’s that tone again
[2nd]
she started doing the bones when
few years ago
where’d she get bones do you know
Dave told her where to get them
can I ask her about that do you think
be careful
or the bathtubs
be careful asking
Dave says he never met a more raw person
I saw her once on TV
the cracked teeth the dyed red hair the big black Reeboks
yes and they showed her studio
I’m supposed to go there tomorrow for the interview
just her in a big studio all these objects in rows and her on a stool in the midst
doing what
working
shit
what
I’ll be interrupting the work she’ll hate me
are you scared
I’ve no idea what to say to her
say tell me about the vests Betty the bones the bathtubs
tell me about your son dying ping ping ping is this an interview she’ll hate me
on TV her hands would go up and down when they asked questions
up and down
grappling sort of
they just wasted away she said
who
I don’t know she said it a couple of times they just wasted away people just wasted away
might as well not even take my notebook
they asked about the bones and she laughs
laughs
oh the bones she says oh the bones meant something to me and she laughs or more like caws as if
as if what
as if I don’t know what
as if anybody knows how to talk about art
well there’s that
I’ll skip the bones
they say she’s kind-hearted
that makes it worse you have to drink tea and split a kind heart apart at the same time
push push push I remember she said push push push
in reference to what
some question, her working method or what’s next for you now Betty something like that
I won’t ask questions
you could just sing
sing
she’s a haunted person
why do you say that
from seeing her on TV maybe not haunted wrong word
what then
non-exempt
non-exempt from what
life
the rest of us are exempt
yes
news to me
blind deaf dumb same thing
this is your theory of art
this is my theory of her awake all night worrying about little wild animals active in the dark to which the rest of us are paying not very much attention at all
I’ll just have tea and leave
also you could ask Dave he used to know her
she was a patient of his once wasn’t she
before my time it was Darly on the desk then
who’s Darly
don’t you remember Darly, Darly was a hoot she still calls Dave now and then to give him the low-down on the man upstairs
upstairs where
Dave’s other building she says about ten every night he’s dragging a
piece of heavy furniture across the floor
who Dave
not Dave the man upstairs then he drops pins or walks around in high heels or has a lot of other people walk around in high heels tap tap tap Darly’s pretty sensitive to noise
got that
you ever meet him the man upstairs Dave says to Darly no says Darly and Dave says someday you’ll meet him you’ll say what was it with all the pins he’ll say those weren’t pins and tell you some weird inside physics fact you never heard of
well you can’t help but fantasize a man upstairs
[3rd]
where’d you get that shirt
Dave lent it to me for the dinner party
what dinner party
last week
lucky you it’s vintage
he said skip the lecture just go to the party half the people do that he says
have any fun
I end up talking to this Berlin journalist who translates crime fiction on the side or did
nice life
until he couldn’t find a non-obscene German equivalent for ‘she crossed her legs’ and got fired
stop snapping that button
it was the dinner where I met the actress
what actress
Isabelle Huppert I thought I told you
you met Isabelle Huppert
sat across from her anyway
and
weird chick
why
lots of really white make-up like a doll and four red tears down one cheek
stage make-up she must have come from the theatre
and she ate mostly salt
salt
this poor waiter serves her dinner gives it a big shake of salt starts to leave the table she waves
him back he pours on more salt then I guess it’s her husband takes the shaker pours salt all over finally she grabs it herself no let-up on eating fork in one hand salt in the other she finishes that plate without lifting her head
stress
her husband winks at me as if to say what a treasure
d’you wink back
I told him that proverb Han told me
who’s Han
Ken’s girlfriend
oh the Chinese one
you marry a chicken you follow a chicken she says
you said follow a chicken to Isabelle Huppert’s husband
it’s more nuanced in Chinese
I suppose
Dave always says why go to these parties if I don’t like the people but it’s not that I don’t like the people
Dave’s not into celebrities
true but he did get obsessed with that guy from his high school
who wasn’t even famous
just outed for doing a job no one else can imagine doing
oh boy
change of subject
what’s it like do you think being salt and having Isabelle Huppert come down on you with her big red lips
you’re in a weird mood
did Dave tell you about when he went to that guy’s house
you know I went with him
you’re kidding
we were just driving around one night
and
was Dave’s idea to knock on the guy’s door it being Christmas Eve
what’s Christmas Eve got to do with it
nothing really but Dave says well I went to high school with him what the heck so we knock the guy comes to the door in a sweater and one look at his face I’m thinking this is a bad idea Dave whispers pretend we’re carollers but neither of us can sing the guy offers us a twenty
you take it
we have no basket or anything so he puts it back in his pants not suspicious yet just kind of sunk in himself and all of a sudden he says you got to be tougher you want money you don’t want money say so and his voice is a shock
why
maybe it was the Christmas thing, guy had this Christmas music on inside his voice made me want to cry I don’t know
Dave does get you into things
and I said to him after we’re in the car again I said you’re still curious aren’t you
and
and he admits he’s interested to see how the guy did his tree
shit
but then just after Christmas he gets a call from the guy or could have been his manager
torturers don’t have managers
no well who knows but they want to make a movie of his life a documentary these two women from LA
movie of Dave’s life
no the torturer’s
but he didn’t recognize Dave at the door you said
not at the time
he took you for idiots panhandling
I guess it came to him later
so Dave’s in the movie
no I doubt he’ll do it
hmm
but I bet he’s curious
Dave’s always curious
concept is these two women from LA want Dave to be the interviewer talk to the guy reminisce about high school see where it goes
Dave couldn’t interview a block of cheese
my view exactly
but that’s what we thought about Darly and then she joined the army
you mean we thought it a poor choice on her part
yes
but she turned out to be fully capable
and happy enough from what I hear still I can’t imagine Dave in a movie I can’t imagine Dave as an interviewer
Dave says the guy’s retired now
as if that makes sense as if you can retire from torture
it’s very physical work Dave says
I can just hear him say that
in his next-slide-please voice
first thing you know he’ll be bringing the guy to the clinic for treatment
don’t even think it
[4th]
old words make me sad
like what
carhop
I’ve never said carhop in my life
what about cardigan
my aunt wore cardigans my aunt Nell and she was sad
well there you go
or not sad but kind of bluish kind of dusky she always showed up at
our house at dusk with her mysterious blue luggage and sat beside me on the couch
why
you mean why on the couch
yes
so she could teach me the sleeper hold
what’s the sleeper hold
you can totally paralyze your enemy with the sleeper hold
show me
she also taught me the word confidential
wasn’t that a magazine
when I see the word confidential even now a whole atmosphere like a Humphrey Bogart movie comes out around it
just put your lips together and blow
then one day she wasn’t there any more she didn’t visit maybe she died it got all hush hush you know how they whisper together in the kitchen and stop when you come in
the family shadow
no one ever said
aunts have a longitude
yes
unlike uncles
uncles come in groups my uncles I remember always grouped around the stove on winter nights passing the whiskey watching the fire
storytellers were they
actually no they were mostly silent big silent men side by side sort of rustling not much talk
I wonder are we better off with all our talk
any stories they had were stories about snow
the snow was mythic in those days
and I remember that icy path from the kitchen to the outhouse, no one on it snow on it mother-of-God spotless in the moonlight show me the sleeper hold
I can’t
ah
she never got around to it
ah
I didn’t know how to ask for things
the whole trick isn’t it
no one knew how to ask each other anything
families are a mystery
shot of whiskey for the boy not much else ever said
you often mention the outhouse why is that
no I don’t
yes you do
some Freudian thing is what you’re implying
not implying anything I merely wonder why you always mention the outhouse was it a two-seater
ours was a two-seater yes
so you could sit and shit alongside somebody else
theoretically
did you do that
never if I could help it
you preferred to be alone
I went there to read
lots of reading material in the outhouse
usually newspapers but I took my book with me
I can just see you heading down the path with a volume of Proust under each arm
I hated it but those were happy days
golden age
it burned down the summer of the fires
you crazy fuck don’t look so sad
she never got around to it why do you think that was
is it important
yes
so maybe that’s what it was
what
and I wonder where she got blue luggage in those days
I’m going to ask Dave
about luggage
no the sleeper hold he’s a medical man he may know it
I wouldn’t be surprised, unrelated question do you keep a journal
yes why
just curious why do you
the light is so remarkable some days I have to put it away
put what away
stop it bothering me the light
what kind of light would that be
I can’t say
is it o
nly light does this
I screen out the rest
Dave says that guy from his high school kept a journal they’re using a few pages of it in the documentary
I don’t want to know
Mr Matt Talbot liked to record materials and durations
I don’t want to hear about it I don’t want to know his name
Dave says
not interested
don’t be a coward
language is a curse
didn’t Beckett say that
okay yes I’m ridiculous
he has a recurring stage direction ‘brief laugh’ Beckett I mean
what about Mr Matt Talbot how funny is he
I was trained to do what I do in accordance with my training I’m quoting Mr Matt Talbot
a tautology
an extinction
you see how language betrays us
is that Beckett again
oh piss off
parchy
what are you staring at now
the shadow of your hands on the table it looks like –
a coffin
no, celery
well there we are then
yes there we are
THE ARCHIVE
A visual data study project
(based on a story by Sebastià Jovani)
TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY NICK CAISTOR
What follows is the result of a painstaking work of interpretation and recoding of a literary text, namely the short story ‘The Archive’, which author Sebastià Jovani was kind and unselfish enough to allow us to use for the purposes of the present analytic study.
The aim of this study is to offer and to visualise a means of understanding the essential aspects of a literary text, avoiding the possible confusions, or a proliferation of diverging interpretations, to which a conventional approach (whether a formalist or a subjective-hermeneutic one) could give rise, with the resultant added difficulty of accessing the fundamental nucleus of the text and its basic taxonomy.
From this starting point, the text was submitted to different externalised readings, which were in turn parameterised as a series of categories and data sets, previously established as fundamental to any textual-literary process of analysis. Namely: the author’s aesthetic and contextual reference points (in the case of those whose traces could be detected in a more or less objective manner, without the need to incorporate further readings to disentangle such influences); the narrative structure (understood here as a temporal sequentiality and a typology of voices); the relations and characterisations of the protagonists of said story; and the evolution of the intensity of the storyline (incident-arcs surpassing the narrative-descriptive average of the events narrated).
The data thus collected was then adapted into a series of visual images and diagrams, accompanied by their corresponding labels. The results displayed on the adjacent pages therefore constitute a reading of ‘The Archive’, which also provides a translation of the story into strategic coordinates that combine data analysis with a graphic synthesis in tune with the requirements for interactivity with cultural objects and phenomena that our media environment increasingly demands. In addition, we hope to offer the most objective possible portrait of the creative process and indeed of the figure of the author.