*****Masterpiece (to quote Arturo Bandini). Lecture du 5 janvier 2011 (23h55-3h du mat).
Chapter one
« Do you think, Mr Hackmut, that I write as well as William Faulkner ? Please advise. Do you think, Mr Hackmut, that sex has anything to do with it, because, Mr Hackmut, because, because, and I told Mr Hackmut everything », p.8
Chapter two
« To write a love story, to learn about life », p.11
« Ten dollars : it will pay (…) one thousand postage stamps to send material to the editors ; indeed ! But you haven’t any material, your talent is dubious, your talent is pitiful, you haven’t any talent, and stop lying to yourself day after day because you know The Little Dog Laughed is no good, and it will always no good. (…)
You are a coward, Bandini, a traitor to your soul, a feeble liar before your weeping Christ. This is why you write, this is why it would be better if you died.”, p.13
« Bandini (being interviewed prior to departure for Sweden) :
« My advice to all young writers is quite simple. I would caution them never to evade a new experience. I would urge them to live life in the raw, to grapple with it bravely, to attack it with naked fists. »
Reporter : Mr Bandini, how did you come to write this book which won the Nobel Award ? »
Bandini : « The book is based on a true experience, it happened to me one night in Los Angeles. Every word of that book is true. I lived that book, I experienced it », p.17
« I’m a writer », I said, « I’m gathering material for a book », p.20 (à une prostituée)
Chapter three
« (…) and like Huysmans I stand alone (…). If only someone loved me, even a bug, even a mouse, but that too belonged to the past (…) », p. 24
Chapter four
« To a Mayan Princess, from a worthless Gringo », p.38
“Dear Ragged shoes,
You may know it but last night you insult the author of this story . Can you read ? If so, invest fifteen of your time and treat yourself to a masterpiece. And next time, be careful. Not everyone who comes into this dime is a bum.
Arturo Bandini, p.39 »
Chapter five
“I watched the tattered huaraches glide across the floor, and I wanted those huaraches. I would like them to hold in my hands against my chest when I fell asleep. I would like to hold them and breathe the odour of them », p. 43
Chapter six
« Ah Camilla ! When I was a kid back home in Colorado it was Smith, and Parker and Jones who hurt me with hideous names, called me Wop and Dago and Greaser, and their children hurt me, just as I hurt you tonight. They hurt me so much I could never become one of them, drove me to books, drove me within myself, drove me to run away from that Colorado town, and sometimes, Camilla, when see their faces I feel the hurt from my home town, fulfilling same set, hard mouths, faces from my home town, fulfilling the emptiness of their lives under a blazing sun.
(…) and when I say Greaser to you it is not my heart that speaks, but the quivering of an old wound, and I’m ashamed of the terrible thing I have done », p.51
Chapter seven
« And I thought, ah well, it was ever thus – Poe, Whitman, Heine, Dreiser, and now Bandini ; thinking that, I was not so hurt, not so lonely », p.59
Chapter eight
« And I warn you, Camilla Lopez, remember that you stand before none other than Arturo Bandini, the writer. Remember that, if you please », p.64
Chapter nine
« I’m not a Mexican ! » she said, « I’m an American », p.71.
“ (…) no lust, only fear of her and shame and humiliation. Then I was blaming and cursing myself and I wanted to get and walk into the sea », p.79
« Love wasn’t everything. Women weren’t everything. A writer has to conserve his energies », p.79
Chapter Ten
“I got an idea. (…télégraphe :) “I love you Camilla I want to marry you Arturo Bandini”
The moment I saw him coming around the corner I knew the telegram was a blunder. I ran into the street and stopped him. I told him I wrote the telegraph and didn’t want it delivered. « A mistake » I said. He wouldn’t listen », p.82
« I still hadn’t written a poem to Camilla. As I lay there, inspiration came. I wrote it out from memory :
(…) But I was desolate sick with an old passion (…). I send it by telegraph, proud of it, watched the telegraph clerk read it, beautiful poem, my poem to Camilla, a bit of immortality from Arturo to Camilla, and I paid the telegraph man (…) », p.87
« Bandini lover of man and beast alike », p.88 (refrain)
« Arturo Bandini who is neither fish, fowl nor good red herring”, p.89 (refrain)
“your old child’s eyes swim in blood written like mad sonnets”, p.89
Chapter eleven
“I want to see you”, I said.
« I can’t see you tonight », she said.
« Make it later on tonight.»
« I can’t. I’m busy.»
« You’re not that busy. You can see me. », p. 91
« Does it matter ? You are nobody, and I might have been somebody, and the road to each of us is love », p.95
Pour consoler Vera, il lui dit que lui aussi il a son lot de trucs ridicules : il a le béret écossais de Camilla qu’il a planqué sous son oreiller et à qui il parle mais il parle aussi d’une femme très belle qui fumait, à qui il a pris le mégot et l’a mâché et avalé juste parce qu’elle était belle et volé sa cuillère.
« Sick in my soul I tried to face the ordeal of seeking forgiveness. From whom ? What God, what Christ ? They were myths I once believed, and now they were beliefs I felt were myths.
This is the sea, and this is Arturo, and the sea is real and Arturo believes it real. Then I turn from the sea, and everywhere I look there is land ; I walk on and on, and still the land goes streching away to the horizons. A year, five years, ten years, and I have not seen the sea. I say unto myself, but what has happened to the sea ? And I answer, the sea is back there, back in the reservoir of memory. The sea is a myth. There was never a sea. But there was a sea ! I tell you I was born on the seashore ! I bathed in the waters of the sea ! It gave me food and it gave me peace, and its fascinating distances fed my dreams ! No Arturo, there never was a sea. You dream and you wish, but you go on through the wasteland. You will never see the sea again. I was a myth you once believed. But, I have to smile, for the salt of the sea is in my blood, and there may be ten thousand of roads over the land, but they shall never confuse me, for my heart’s blood will ever return to its beautiful source”, p.114.
C’est trop beau, je comprends tellement ce qu’il veut dire putain, c’est trop beau.
“There will be confusions, and there will be hunger, there will be loneliness with only my tears like wet consoling little birds, tumbling to sweeten my dry lips. But there shall be consolation, and there shall be beauty like the love of some dead girl. There shall be some laughter, a restrained laughter, and quiet waiting in the night, a soft fear of the night like the lavish, taunting kiss of death. Then it will be night, and the sweet oils from the shores of my sea poured upon my senses by the captains I deserted in the dreamy impetuousness of my youth. But I shall be forgiven for that, and for other things, for Vera Rivken, and for the ceaseless flapping of the wings of Voltaire, for pausing to listen and watch that fascinating bird, for all things there shall be forgiveness when I return to my homeland by the sea.”, p.115
Chapter thirteen
“When I got home I said I was through with Camilla Lopez forever. And you’ll regret it, you little fool, because I’m going to be famous. I sat before my typewriter and worked most of the night.”
Chapter fourteen
“Arturo Bandini, the novelist. Income of his own, made it writing short stories. Writing a book now. Tremendous book. Advance notices terrific. Remarkable prose. Nothing like it since Joyce”, p.135.
“Arturo”, she said. “Why do we fight all the time ?”, p.136.
“You love that guy, don’t you ?”
“Not exactly.”
“She took her eyes off my face and let them travel around the room.
“Yes you do.”
All at once I loathed her, because she had hurt me. This girl !”, p.137.
“Camilla, I love you !”, p.142 (monologue).
“Scared ?” she said.
“Of you” I laughed.
“You are”; she said.
“No I’m not”
She opened her arms and all of her seemed to open to me, but it only closed me deeper into myself, carrying with the image of her at that time, how lush and soft she was.
“Look”, I said. “I’m busy. Look.” I patted the pile of manuscript beside the typewriter.
“You’re afraid, too.”
“Of what ?”
“Me.”
“Pooh.”
Silence.
“There’s something wrong with you,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re queer.”
I got up and stood over her.
“That’s a lie,” I said.
We lay there. She was forcing it with her scorn, the kiss she gave me, the hard curl of her lips, the mockery of her eyes, until I was like a man made of wood and there was no feeling within me except terror and a fear of her, a sense that her beauty was too much, that she was so much more beautiful than I, deeper rooted than I. She made me a stranger unto myself, she was all those calm nights and tall eucalyptus trees, the desert stars, that land and sky, that fog outside, and I had come there with no purpose save to be a mere writer, to get money, to make a name for myself and that piffle. She was so much finer than I, so much honest, that I was sick of myself and I could not look at her warm eyes, I suppressed the shiver brought on by her brown arms around my neck and the long fingers in my hair. I did not kiss her. She kissed me, author of The Little Dog Laughed. Then she took my wrist with her two hands. She pressed her lips into the palm of my hand. She placed her lips towards my face and waited. And Arturo Bandini, the author dipped deep into his colourful imagination, romantic Arturo Bandini, just chock-full of clever phrases, and he said, weakly, kittenishly, “Hello.”
“Hello ?” she answered, making a question of it. “Hello ?” And she laughed. “Well, how are you ?”
Oh that Arturo ! That spinner of tales.
“Swell,” he said.
And now what ? Where was the desire and the passion ? She would go away a little while and it would come. But my God, Arturo. You can’t do that ! (…). I felt her groping my hands, and I groped to discourage them, to hold them in passionate fear. Once more she kissed me. She might have given her lips to a cold boiled ham. I was miserable.
She pushed me away.
“Get away,” she said. “Let me go.”
The disgust, the terror and the humiliation burned in me, and I would not let go.
Elle se débat, il la maîtrise et sent son désir monter seulement dans ce rapport de forces (…) the rapturous self-satisfaction, the delight to know that I could possess her now if I wished. But I did not wish it, for I had had my love. Dazzled I had been by the power and joy of Arturo Bandini. I released her, took my hand from her mouth, and jumped off the bed.
(…)
She could scream if she liked, for Arturo Bandini wasn’t queer, there was nothing at all wrong with Arturo Bandini ; why, he had a passion like six men, that boy, he had felt it coming to the surface : some guy, mighty writer, mighty lover ; right with the world, right with his prose”, p.149
Il a peur des femmes et il s’aime lui : mais chouette, il est conscient de sa maladie, il l’avoue au lecteur.
“The big thing was proved : I could have had her, and whatever she thought was not important. I was something else besides a great writer : I was no longer afraid of her : I could look into her face as a man should look into the face of a woman. She left without speaking again. I sat in a dream of delight, an orgy of comfortable confidence : the world was so big, so full of things I could master, I am no longer lonely. (…) but wait until she has a taste of me, because it will happen, as sure as there’s a God in Heaven.”, p.150
“As she drove away a sob came from her throat, a cry of pain. One thing was certain : Arturo Bandini was not good for Camilla Lopez.”, p.153
Chapter sixteen
I said. “But why see him?”
“Because I’m in love with him.” p.156
(Camilla vient de se faire frapper par Sammy parce qu’elle l’a reveille à 3h du mat, Arturo lui demande pourquoi elle le voit)
“(…) and drunk I could say the things in my heart, all those swell words, all the clever similes, because you were crying for the other guy and didn’t hear a word I said, but I heard them myself, and Arturo Bandini was pretty good that night, because he was talking to his true love, and it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t Vera Rivken either, it was just his true love. (…) Open your long fingers and give me back my tired soul ! (…) Take the longing in these restless eyes and feed it to lonely swallows cruising an autumn cornfield, because I love you Camilla, and your name is sacred like that of some brave princess who died with a smile for a love that was never returned.”, p.157
Ils couchent enfin p.173
“I thought I would never see Camilla Lopez again”, p.173
Chapter seventeen
“Everything was going to pieces. The new room was so strange, so cold, without one memory. When I looked out the window, no more pebbles against the glass. I set my typewriter in one place and then another. It didn’t seem to fit anywhere. Something was wrong, everything was wrong.
I went for a walk through the streets. My God, here I was again, roaming the town. I looked at the faces around me and I knew mine was like theirs. Faces with the blood drained away, tight faces, worried, lost. Faces like flowers torn from their roots and stuffed into a pretty vase, the colours draining fast. I had to get away from that town.”, p.194.
Chapter eighteen
“Far out across the Mojave there arose the shimmer of heat. I made my way up the path to the Ford. In the seat was a copy of my book, my first book. I found a pencil, opened the book to the fly leaf, and wrote:
To Camilla, with Love,
Arturo
I carried the book a hundred yards into the desolation, towards the southeast. With all my might I threw it far out in the direction she had gone. Then I got into the car, started the engine, and drove back to Los Angeles.”,p.198.
