CONFESSION

Gide meant: could he confess upon the page; put into the writer’s pretty paper world some creatures whose troubled breathing would betray the fact they were not fictions; record a few feelings in an ink our blood would flow through like a vein? Sincerity—this Christmas wrap around a rascal—-could he dispense with even its concealments and reach reality, expose himself to his own eye?

THE COMPLETE DISHONEST

AND UNWHOLESOME TRUTH

But words (to be sincere) are what we wretched writers are, whatever our aims: whether some of us are historians like myself, or novelists like Gide; whether it’s a little mild amusement or a vaporous dream which we pretend to dip our pens for, the seduction we so famously provide, an after-luncheon snooze, or simple article of trade; and every one of us knows that within the customarily chaotic realm of language it is often easier to confess to a capital crime, so long as its sentences sing and its features rhyme, than to admit you like to fondle-off into a bottle (to cite an honest-sounding instance), because it’s not like blowing gently across the bottle’s lip to hear the whoo, but an act itself so basically cacophonous it will unsteady the calmest hand; yes—since a flat and wooden style, words nailed like shingles to the page, the earnest straightforward bite of the spike, is the one which suits sincerity; sincerity cannot gambol, cannot play, cannot hedge its bets, forswear a wager, bear to lose; sincerity is tidy; it shits in a paper sack to pretend it’s innocent of food; it cannot quote its masters like Montaigne, or fly its fancy even in a tree, or pun upon a wholesome opportunity; draw up lists like Burton, burst at all its seams; sincerity makes every day dull Sunday, does lump sums, keeps tabs, lies through its honesty like a Bible-beater’s pious threats and Great Good News, instead of letting obfuscation and deceit, both rigamarole and simple beauty, put pleasure in the punch

and crooks into the straight; thus Gide could not be Gide and be sincere, nor I contain my skeptical and scoffing self like a firefly in a bottle (q.v.)—its intermittent gleam an imprisoned promise behind the glass—and be sincere.

March 11, 1943. The evacuation of Jews from Berlin has led to a number of untoward happenings. Unfortunately a number of Jews and Jewesses from privileged marriages were also arrested, thereby causing fear and confusion. The scheduled arrest of all Jews on one day has proven a flash in the pan because of the shortsighted behavior of industrialists who warned the Jews in time. We therefore failed to lay our hands on about 4,000. They are now wandering around Berlin without homes, are not registered with the police and are naturally quite a public danger. I ordered the police, Wehrmacht, and the Party to do everything possible to round these Jews up as quickly as practicable.