Impossible Views of the World by Lucy Ives

Author:Lucy Ives
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

thursday

[ 17 ]

“Compose a novel,” began Paul’s “PLAN,”

in which a poet speaks. He does interesting things you wouldn’t expect a poet to do, like holding down a job. This is done to make him seem plausible. And to help us see through him.

Behold the poet at his labors: he is composing a long poem about the history of art. It is a history about all of art, not just fine art but anything humans have made with a certain smiling, translucent attention. It isn’t a real history, since he is a good poet. At any rate, it is not a narrative. It is a task. Soon anything we might have known about him will be replaced by these gestures.

This will take place gradually. Day by day, the poet will adopt the past as his own.

The poet is living in a kind of house located inside a museum. The house is a ruin, though very clean and perfectly restored. We don’t know how the poet got inside and there’s no explanation of how no one ever catches him or how he eats or where he sleeps or how he travels between these rooms, which are on occasion separated by entire centuries.

The poet doesn’t have a real person’s history, a personal story—at least, not anymore.

All he’s ever wanted is to be the greatest American poet who ever lived.

Not an easy task. But he is a real soul, a true soul, and that’s the thing that has to be conveyed. The poet is authentic. That is the whole reason for the novel, why he is talking to you here.

He is an open door.

This was the end of the document. I considered sardonically retitling it, “A_scintillating_tale.txt.”

Whatever one might say about Paul, never let it be said that he was not interested in himself! Yet there was an eerie vacancy at the center of this elaborate vow to self-portraiture, and it complicated the literary navel-gazing. “He is an open door.” Perhaps I had even already seen this in Paul; the door swinging easily on its hinges as a diverse crew of available identities swarmed on the other side.

—

THE NEXT MORNING I got up and puttered around the house, waiting for my heiress biography to be conveyed by UPS. Even if all was lost, I wasn’t about to let this doubtless juicy hagiography just be kicked into limbo. I planned to be there to sign for it. And so I was.

“Have a pleasant day,” the man told me.

But it was going to be a long and extremely unpleasant day. If I was interpreting last night’s tea leaves correctly, it might even include Nicola di Carboncino’s announcement of retirement, which, one presumed, he could now proffer without worry or shame, knowing that Frederick Lu’s plans to catapult CeMArt into next-level relevance had been broadcast to the public. I, on the other hand, could have the pleasure of contemplating the reduction of something I had believed was a proverbial mountain into a proverbial molehill. My agonizing love for Fred would shrink in importance in direct proportion to his rapidly gestating greatness.

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