Everything Passes

For some time now I’ve been finding it hard to read. I glance over my bookshelves and the books that lie there, which I know I’d enjoy if I read them, seem to repel me. I pick one up, leaf through it, and I either can’t get started, or lose interest after a few pages. I wonder if this is connected to frustration as a writer (although the writing has actually picked up somewhat). There are so many books in so many styles, there must be something there I’ll like.

For the past few years, I’ve been reading a lot about Gabriel Josipovici on various blogs, and on Spurious and This Space in particular. I’d only ever read Josipovici’s story “Mobius the Stripper” and a short story on his website. I was intrigued by everything I read about his most recent novel, Everything Passes, and by the brief excerpt I saw everywhere:

A room.
He stands at the window.
And a voice says: Everything passes. The good and the bad. The joy and the sorrow. Everything passes.

The passages are very short, and some of them are repeated, like a refrain. When you begin reading it, you’re uncertain about what it is you’re actually reading. It’s like a play, or a poem.

He turns from the window.
He begins to pace.
The empty room. The bare boards.
The sound of his footsteps on the bare boards.
He stops at the window.
He stands.
Greyness. Silence.
He stands at the window.
Silence.

The white space on the page also makes an impression. It reminds me of the bare walls and floor of the room the man is standing in. It reminds me of the glass of water in the Chardin painting Josipovici wrote about in the story on his site. (The story, I was surprised to discover when I went back to look at it again, has a lot in common with Everything Passes. The phrase itself even appears at the end of the story.)

Three pages into the novel, and I thought, “This is a breath of fresh air through my library.”

The man is in a room. We know he is suffering. A voice is trying to console him. (Whose voice it is, we’re not told, but I imagine it coming to him from the past.) He is grieving. Perhaps he has had a breakdown of sorts. His son and daughter come to visit him. He is a writer or a professor, or both. We visit scenes from his past, scenes with women he has known, friends to whom he has been a mentor, and a cousin with whom he has had a complex relationship.

We often think of vividness as a wealth of detail, but Josipovici shows here how vividness is created by a sparseness of detail. The scenes are starkly, bleakly vivid because he has erased or blocked out everything else.

He stands at the window.
Cracked pane.
His face at the window.
Greyness. Silence.

I don’t want to say too much about the book. The pleasure is largely that of allowing the pieces to come together in your mind. But I would like to give a couple of examples of how much Josipovici can accomplish with so very little.

When the son first comes to visit. The dialogue reveals the awkwardness and discomfort.

And again the room.
The window.
He stands at the window.
A knock at the door.
He turns.
The knock is repeated.
He waits.
Facing the door, he waits.
The door opens. It opens slowly.
It is is his son.
He stands in the doorway.
He says: –So.
He closes the door behind him, stands with his back to the door, looking around.
He whistles. –So, he says again.
–Have a seat.
His son laughs.
–You like it?
–Like? his son says. Like?
The window. Cracked pane. Grey light.

“Do you like it?” asks the father. What is it? So far, we have only been aware of the man and the room, so he must be referring to the room. It must be a new room, then. The man has recently moved into it, although maybe he’s been here before. (Or maybe that was another window.) The son seems reluctant to enter, stands near the door. He’s surprised or amazed by what he sees. He whistles when he sees the room. He can’t think of anything to say.

Most revealingly, he seems bothered by the question. It’s not the room which is an issue. He seems bothered by the word like. He repeats it as if to say, “How can one like something at such a time?” It strikes us that the father has a sense of irony that the son lacks, in addition to a sense of humour. The son laughs when his father offers him a seat. Perhaps he laughs sardonically. One gets the sense that there’s no chair.

We don’t know, but it’s there, hiding beneath the surface.

I feel the need to apologise for quoting extensively from such a book, but I can’t resist. One more excerpt to show again how vividly and economically Josipovici creates a scene.

In another time, the man, who we learn is called Felix, is playing draughts with his cousin. They are discussing the game, the rules, his mistakes while playing. She surprises him while he is in the middle of making a move by changing the subject:

She moves her queen swiftly over the board, collecting his pieces on the way and piling them up at the side.
–I saw you, she says.
–What?
–I saw you at the bedroom window.
–What do you mean? he says.
–You were looking at me sunbathing, she says. You were looking at my naked breasts.
The board. His hand.
–I don’t mind, she says. It’s perfectly natural. We’re cousins, after all, aren’t we?
The board. His hand.
–Aren’t we? she says.

Josipovici seems to use repetition as a way of showing stillness and silence. We can see Felix freeze, go silent, stare at his hand while it’s hovering over the board.

Writers often like to tell you that their characters are looking at things. It’s a lazy way to direct the reader’s attention to things. They also like to tell you when a character doesn’t speak. “He gazed across the room at her and said nothing.” “She glanced out the window and saw dark clouds coming over the hills.” It’s much better to direct the reader’s attention immediately to the thing the character sees, without mentioning the seeing. (Felix spends much of the present time at the window, looking out, but Josipovici never tells us what he’s looking at or what he sees.) Instead of saying that a character is silent, it’s better to give a sense of time passing and let the reader realise that nothing has been said. We can do this by filling the silence with other things: the protagonist’s thoughts, some minor event on the periphery of the scene: what many call a “beat”.

Josipovici, however, does not fill the silence. He comes closer than any other writer I’ve ever read to actually creating the silence.

–I don’t mind, she says. It’s perfectly natural. We’re cousins, after all, aren’t we?
The board. His hand.
–Aren’t we? she says.