| book review: Because I Was Flesh |
| www.bflowriter.com |
| The book begins in this way: Kansas city is a vast inland city and its marvelous river the Missouri heats the senses. It is a wild concupiscent city, young and seminal, and the seeds of its men were strong. The maple, alder and elm trees are songs of desire that deeply awaken the hungry pores. Kansas City was my Tarsus and the Missouri was the washpot of joyous Dianas from St Joseph and Joplin. Yes its a different kind of writing—a voice like no other. The book is an autobiography—the story of the writer Edward Dahlberg and his mother and its the story of the mother that takes precedence and dominates the action. The mother was Lizzie—the lady barber of Kansas City. In those days, circa 1910, lady barbers were few and those few held in none too high esteem. It was a notch but not much more above being a prostitute. But there she was, Lizzie, running her own shop and raising her son Edward, an only child, also a bastard, the offspring of Saul--a low life if ever there was one. We’ll get to Saul Lizzie: She had a narrow face and a long nose I took no pleasure in because it reminded me of my own, and burning eyes and much feeling in the appearance of her mouth though several teeth had been removed by a quack dentist on Rivington street in New York. No more than five feet tall health was her beauty. She had the tender full paps of Ruth and wore a tight corset on the job that never failed to arouse some curmudgeon who already had used up a wife with a hanging udder and 5 children. The book has two themes: Lizzies obsession to claim a husband and the sons obsession with sex—getting laid. Lizzie was foiled in her quest for a man and the sons luck with women wasnt much better. He inherited from his mother a stout heart but not a stout sense of self worth to go with it. Women like confidence in a man. You read along and the feverish moanings and groanings of a soul suffering the tortures of lust appear on nearly every page: He was at 10 already the prey of Eros. His privities were a torment and he came to view whoring as natural as rain snow and defecation. Ruby Parrs posterior had moved his soul and hearing the sighing undergarments of Blanche Beasley, the new hire, he suffered sexual agonies. Lately Mrs Hickman had taken one of the chairs and her daughter Venus overwhelmed him. Her silk dresses harmed his entire nervous system. Ive been obliged to sprinkle this piece liberally with quotes that normally I would not do but I have my reasons which are: its a book about language, there is this voice and my intention is to suggest something of the rhythms and power of the language and— more than anything—the nutty, wonderful humor. So I must quote; there is no other way. Lizzie at work: The owner of an enterprise such as this, a barber shop with four chairs with Lizzie on one and a revolving door type situation of young or even not so young women working the other three is more than an owner—the boss. You are also a friend, a parent, a therapist, a banker for the giving of the short term loan not always repaid and a few other things that arise as they will. But its mostly as a friend and confidant to provide a sympathetic ear for the troubled soul of a young woman who has been treated poorly— also known as being fucked over--by some low-life. I wont labor that one. But this was her turf, the shop, the one place she could assert her authority and obtain confidence. She came alive in the shop. In strolled the customers—the good, the bad and the ugly and she went into her pitch: Good morning sir, what splendid hair you have but you look down in the dumps. I trust no lowly chit with marvelous hunkers has deceived you. Will you have a close shave, a light trim or a feather edged cut. Don’t you think a good massage would ease the strain of the day. I restore hair, give enemas and remove soul-grieving calluses. Saul. No woman could hold Saul, the sight of a skirt made his blood run mad Saul she met as a young woman when she was easily deceived—a “gull” as Dahlberg says—a word no longer in use except by him and the meaning is--a sap, a mark, someone easily conned. That was Lizzie and so she would remain. You could call her gull or an eternal optimist. It was her nature. Saul was a sport and a hustler posing as a barber and it was he who taught Lizzie the trade, also to knock her up at the same time and to disappear soon after with some chippy from Galveston. This was the beginning of a familiar scenario, the first in a series of appearances and disappearances, whenever Saul found himself in a jam and to pop up and sweet talk a fresh stake out of Lizzie--a heart of gold type that put her at the mercy of every bullshit artist who wore a sharp suit, a cool tie, the handmade shoes. Clothes make the man. Saul was followed by Harry Cohen, the baker: A bowlegged Edomite with brutal hair. He had a deep gut on each side of his raw roguish mouth and a hinder gold tooth he thought quite modish and regarded as an amative fang. But Harry was another familiar type—the loser type—and soon to disappear from the scene following a fire that destroyed two horses he owned covered by an insurance policy. Next: Popkin. Popkin was divorced, an investor in diamonds in Palestine. Lets say: who had a plan to invest in diamonds—and if there was a type Lizzie could never resist it was the financial genius. She married Popkin and turned over her life savings to fund the diamond investment scheme and off was Popkin to Palestine. After that she saw him once—in handcuffs. But that was Lizzie. As they say—if she didnt have bad luck she would have no luck at all The orphanage Lizzie was at her wits end, running the shop, an endless struggle, while looking for a man and tending to the boy, age 11, a sickly child with a tendency to vomit when stressed and she made a tough call—to pack him off to the Jewish Orphans Home in Cleveland. Here he becomes chums with the likes of Prunes, Mooty, Bucket, Stones, Binky etc, and is advised not to puke during meals because the puke resembled the food and the kid sitting next to him might start eating it. I'll pass over the orphanage years, a hard time for the boy but with its moments and also served to teach him discipline—not to be found hanging around Lizzies shop to observe the girls and their comings and goings with men—comic but none too edifying. He returns to Kansas City six years later to find nothing has changed. Lizzie is older but no wiser. She has a new friend: the Captain. The Captain was semi-retired from his job navigating a freighter up and down the river between St. Louis and New Orleans. The captain had two things going for him—a jolly disposition and a minor talent for music—to sing and play the piano—and one thing against: he was cheap. It was my own mother who was fond of saying: dont make friends with a cheap person—and Lizzie subscribed to this one also. The Captains days were numbered. Tsu-Ben. Only someone like Dahlberg could have crossed paths with someone like Tsu-Ben, met in Los Angeles while bunking at the downtown Y where, if you are a misfit type, you are certain to encounter many kindred spirits. Tsu-Ben was older by a few years, chronologically but light years ahead when it came to a natural savvy for the basic requirements of survival—street smarts. It was Tsu-Ben who demonstrated the fine art of quick thinking by crawling not out of but into the window of a streetcar laying on its side following an accident and then removing himself from the wreck to participate in a class action suit. Tsu-Ben had the hustling gift and another gift, even more phenomenal, for the seduction of women: Tsu-Ben had eight or nine females in as many lubricious beach houses within 15 or 20 miles of the city. His preference was for married women, believing that ground grubbed by another would prove more arable. Dahlberg says: He was fond of me because I was a droll creature and the most original fool he had ever encountered. Ben took Dahlberg under his wing and from time to time D was able to score for some of the spillover—women-wise--the Ben-Tsu rejects. Ben was also a reader, of literature and philosophy and introduced Dahlberg to Nietzsche--another misanthrope with problems with woman—-and when Dahlberg discovered that many of the greatest artists— Nietzsche, Goethe, Beethoven—suffered from syphilis he decided “to look for a whore who could help me become a man of letters” Dahlberg attended UCLA for a spell, also UC Berkeley and eventually to study philosophy at Columbia in New York where he began to write. Fortunately all his problems with women did not apply to the writing and his remarkable gifts were recognized and he began to publish almost at once. The books had titles like: Bottom Dogs, The Flea of Sodom, The Sorrows of Priapus, Can These Bones Live. He had a style—powerful and exhilarating and impossible to define— something not seen before or since either— that many found not to their taste but others did, including some of the hotshot critics of that time—Alfred Kazin, Lionel Trilling, Alan Tate and he managed to scrape along, writing the books, doing reviews, some teaching. Thank God for teaching. Time passed. Lizzie was old and got older. The son was long gone and on his own and now the last and of them all the most ill- chosen by far of the losers Lizzie preferred to amuse herself with appeared on the scene—Tobias Emmerich: He had an insufficient mouth a potato for a nose, tended to break wind and was barely 5 feet tall and Lizzie was certain he would be unable to extend himself in any other way either. If pessimism and a grim outlook is your preference read Beckett—or arrange to meet someone like Tobias Emmerich. He wore galoshes and carried an umbrella in spite of the brilliance of the day because as he said— you never know. And he also said: Every time I meet a new person he gives me such a load of gas on my stomach I am unable to sleep until I have evacuated him. And he also said he enjoyed walking but had nowhere to go. TE viewed all people with suspicion and the foods they ate: peas give you gas, cabbage sours your system and one plate of spaghetti is enough to rush one of your relations to a dealer in tombstones. That was Tobias Emmerich--one of the more perverse but perversely interesting specimens to cross Lizzies path but enough is enough and following two hours of this type jabbering she steered him out the door and laid down on her bed with a splitting headache. And thats the story—or a severely compressed version of it—of Lizzie the Lady Barber of Kansas City and her son Edward whose books along with himself have faded into obscurity—or maybe oblivion. He is a forgotten writer. I read the books 30 years ago and since that time have failed to come across one person—of all my well read and super educated friends, including a few professor of English types who have read or even heard of him. But from time to time the name will occur as it did during the writing of this piece when I stumbled across an interview—on the internet where else—with the writer Gilbert Sorrentino—the late Gilbert Sorrentino-- who had this to say: Dahlberg is a writer whose work cannot be tamed or reduced or assimilated. He is a subversive and at his best so good he takes your breath away. He is also zany, goofy, loopy, misogynistic, deeply prejudiced, bitter, nasty, paranoid. He has no politics any politician could find useful and he is a great agent of the truth that only art can convey. He is a great writer, astonishingly original, a virtuoso without peers, much too good for us. That he is hardly known or read and is virtually ignored by academics and regularly mocked and patronized by literary scum all testifies to our vulgarity as a people. The circumstances of his life turned him into a half crazed misanthrope but as an artist he is the definition of integrity and purity. Ten or fifteen pages of Because I Was Flesh is a terrific antidote to the kind of lifeless, phony prose one is liable to bump into in the pages of a magazine like the New Yorker. I liked that line about the literary scum. The book ends with Dahlberg living in New York, in Queens, and tending to his mother during her last years, absent some of the resentment and bitterness that plagued the relationship and it is with these words he wraps the saga of her life: When the image of her comes up on a sudden—just as my bad demons do— and I see again her dyed henna hair, the eyes dwarfed by the electric lights in the Star Lady Barber Shop, and the dear, broken wing of her mouth, and when I regard her wild tatters, I know that not even Solomon in his lilied raiment was so glorious as my mother in her rags. Selah. |
