that’s what I could say

This book is intended to make you a mountain. From such a mountain you may see

dead Jews

Now I know it has destroyed me

thousands of days’ dedication

to death on the printed page

And I have been the helpless butt of filthy jokes, the face in the hole at the fun house, the bull’s-eye on the dartboard, the court dwarf.

from such a mountain you may see

Mad Meg’s pucky face

Bill, are you still making book on the Boche? Governali carries his head on a plate down the hallway. Day after day. The same songs. The same singing. Culp’s next door, Dear god. Culp.

O the dirty Hun has all the fun . . .

The Frenchman thrives on neglected wives . . .

He sings.

And Herschel lives across the hall, haunts his office like a hapless spirit, his gray bulk a gray bulk behind the glass.

I gave up poetry for history in my youth.

Why?

(1) I gave up youth.

Why did you give up youth?

(a) I was no good at it. Have your youth later, I said, when you are better equipped . . .

Poetry stood for order, rule, and regulation, didn’t it?

Not in my mind.

-i- It represented riot and wilderness and inner regard.

-ii- It represented fire, war, wonderment, and faithful dedication.

-iii- It stood for what might, what could, what would, what should essentially Be. It was written as if from the future. It saved with praise whatever was passing, while history hurried it along, and lowered life into its grave with solemn pontification. An event enters history because it is over; dead, it is buried in blame like a pigeon in its own shit or a gull in its guano. It should be clear—plain to any person—open to any eye—that historical chronicles are chronologies of crime, and that any recital of the past constitutes an indictment.

You appear to hate history.

I love History because I hate Time and all Time contains. I gloat on its going. I perform the Himmler Fling. I jig on the graves of all those days: July 6, 1415, for instance, when they burned John Hus; or Dec. 7, 43 B.C., a day on which Anthony’s thugs murdered Cicero; or July 21, 1946, when President Gualberto Villarroel was hung from a lamppost, like the symbol of a pawnshop, with three globes; or Jan. 29, 1938, when the elevator took my mother to the floor reserved for the crazy ladies.

What are you going to call it, Bill: Apologia pro devita jua?

That’s Oscar. Os. Oscar Planmantee.

From the peak of my book death stretches away like a valley crossed with lazy streams.

And I have this tension in my testicles, this pressure in my groin.

Your history is your only individuality, says Oscar Planmantee. His glasses dangle from a string around his neck.

You must understand, Kohler, Herr Belden said, that we Germans have an immense sympathy for mountains. We did not destroy a single mountain during the whole war.