Can you believe that we are north of somewhere, considering the slice of weather during this time of year? It is a comfortable respite in here, I must say. It makes sense, of course. You cannot have covers bending and pages succumbing to foxing and browning from sustained heat and humidity. Such book damage would surely not be good for business. Don’t worry, by the way. I have not stopped in for several years, it has probably even been a decade back, but I am not the kind of person who walks in, gushes over loving the smell of books, but never buys anything, and darts back out the door in less than a minute. Neither will I awkwardly joke if you have read everything in the shop or expect, with matter of fact forwardness, you to show me the most monetarily valuable title, as if vellum is suitable handling for casual browsing. The wariness on your face is palpable, but let me affirm that I am a local and have had a small business in the Quarter for several years.

Job Lot Cheap, 1878
(Oil on canvas, 18 x 36″)
BY William M. Harnett
Reynolda House, Museum of Art

It is amusing to recall the fellow working the last time I stopped in. I will never forget him, Mr. Soren, for he truly was such a sniffy man. He surely still is, wherever he presently happens to be hanging his hat, the kind of person who has drawn all of his opinions and pithy quotes from that week’s issue of The New Yorker and has nourished himself as a peevish blend of the pompous and pedantic. I suspect that I am not the only person whose distaste for Mr. Soren is yet lingering. Interestingly his attitude appeared to be that of toleration, as if he thought me too familiar, uncool enough, despite the subject of Goethe, by stooping to the infernal monologue, unorthodox interior made external, ultimate purist aloud. Perhaps though, this version of discourse, for better or worse, actually has bridged to the future in some manner. Conversations no longer seem to have much merit, and that is assuming there is even the desire or ability to conduct them. Monologues also have been devalued, for that matter, what with the prevailing dialect born of hearty frivolity and limited pursuits, but at least monologues provide the possibility for unbroken thoughtful content. At least the speaker is straightaway permitted, no, obliged, to affirm and sustain a sense of personal belief, whether suitably affable or outright worthy of no more than exasperated disdain. Perhaps the degradation and atrophy of written exchange has brought spoken exchange tumbling down with it. Brevity may as well be a bumper sticker. These self-limiting creatures do not seem to know how to connect, much less speak or be spoken to, anymore. Can we then expect anything beyond just a feeble exchange of monologues? Someone like Mr. Soren was hiding in the glib, the hypothetical, the language of caprice, an example of how vanity fared, but even he was more plausibly human, however tiresome, than the present-day blank majority. It almost makes one long for a few more chattering loitering wastrels for balance, prickly but at least alive with spirit. I must seem severe to you, young man, but a deepening cultural regression or erosion of thought running roughshod over the infant-sized steps of progress looks to be apparent, what with my advantage of a few generations.

I do realize that you will be closing the shop shortly, but may I trouble you to allow me to see the Hermann Ungar book in the vitrine display? I believe from the cover that it is a Dedalus-published book, probably a Mike Mitchell translation. Ah, yes, thank you. I do love this kind of novel, imagining gaunt, melancholy, fey, wracked characters in trembling buildings, as if the elongated figures in El Greco’s Burial of the Count of Orgaz were placed in the mostly-early-20th-century-German/Czech/Austrian novel. Meyrink, Paul Leppin, Georges Rodenbach, Sophie Benjamin, Paul Busson, Jiri Karasek. I am sure many in the present day and age consider this writing style to be ponderous, but it still quickens my Mitteleuropean blood. So what if it is out of vogue, with lightness being the name of the game in décor, entertainment, and culture. Give me some weight, some angst, an ungentle response to those who follow the design formula of a flimsy white particle board bookshelf filled with a third books, a third knick-knacks, and a third space, in actuality and as a metaphorically desperate stab at resisting the pull. It will not work. There is no way to avoid the eventual gravity, and it will not be several ironic steps removed.

Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586-88
(Oil on canvas, 460 x 360 cm )
BY El Greco
Santo Tomé, Toledo, Spain

I am not accustomed to nor do I accept being interrupted, as you can probably tell. Were you to reply, it is safe to say that you would likely ask where all of this is going, as you must be entertaining all kinds of ideas of intention. Although I made ninety-one earlier this year, an exercise in reminiscence is not that to which you are bearing witness. You probably did not notice the two men, out-of-towners, of course, both with rapid pale murderous eyes, who passed by your store heading the same upriver direction toward Canal Street, about a minute or so after I entered. They have been discreetly tailing me with great diligence, ever since I closed up my modest gift shop of antiques and decorative fare on Royal Street in the lower Quarter, took St. Peter Street over to Jackson Square, and then continued on Chartres Street until entering your establishment. This is not undue speculation. Their intention is an open attempt to dispose of me quickly and quietly as I am retrieving my car from the fourth floor of the Canal Place parking garage. I suspect they intend to use a drug to induce a heart attack. This is an eventuality I do not plan to physically fight, since there would be little benefit beyond my two keen thumbs finding one eye apiece to cause permanent damage, nor am I considering using your phone now to call for immediate reinforcements, in which my preferred outcome would be burial by birds for the two sons of bitches. Crossing the street takes more exertion than making that kind of decision. No, my time has come, the little nagging resistances and provocations at authority have been noticeable lately. Some whispering has made its way back to me. I have been in a position to be feared for almost forty years. That is not a boastful or empty statement. I welcome this bold miserable peril with choice pleasurable thoughts, not with a death mouth of old wasted lamentations. These fuckers will not have the satisfaction of thinking me weak. A little bravery and strength in plight is easy when grace’s durable tenure ends.

My mind has become either a dense demanding straggle of riverbriar or a blank head of protected memories and desires, so I will attempt to talk my way into the truth…

This may seem to you like a heat-induced hallucination. My ruminating appears to be true and alive, yet possibly proving to be dubious and fleeting. Even I must admit that some of the details seem a step out of reach. My mind has become either a dense demanding straggle of riverbriar or a blank head of protected memories and desires, so I will attempt to talk my way into the truth and correct it. Of course, there may be some false notes along the way, but I am trying to speak toward solvency. I may find it necessary to pause or reference guide words I have jotted down to help establish basis and keep clarity, not being sure if the act of speech brings about remembrance, creation, or both. Fragments and figments should all be expected, for that is the way we ought to speak, is it not? To reiterate, if one unrelentingly does not deviate from a single subject, that person is thought to be obsessed and monomaniacal. A seasoned diversity is thought to be the epitome of refined breeding, which makes it ironic that I am playing the role, despite offering no more than a ridiculous peasant incantation. If one provides discourse without imagination, speculation, and occasional flights of disruption, rather than appreciating the open play of talk, then that person should be suspected of being a dullard who may as well recite life and experience as a report-like day, time, and terse listing of activity. As well, do you not think there is often benefit to saying that which all others are thinking? Do realize that though I am not the sentimental sort, the idea that this will be the last time I utter anything sets me back. You might find me to be a bit garrulous, but I consider it only being unabashedly verbal.

Shall we get to it now? I assumed that all of this would be taken to my grave, as I am not a rat, but something compelled me to stop in and suspend mortality for a bit longer, almost as if you were my confessor. Not that absolution is being sought. We are all in need of occasional literary absolution, of course, but I suppose I was subconsciously remembering when my dear father would tuck me, his little bird, into him, visit the bookseller, and they would talk simply but with apparent meaning. Papa once told me that booksellers, gracious of knowledge, but weak of courage, were among the few semi-honorable people in this crafty city. As I walked up Chartres Street, I thought, where is my best chance at these few minutes being true, even if not an exchange, because there simply is not time for it. I guess you are naturally mordant and sardonic rather than gregarious, but if nothing else, you might find your time redeemed. You will soon realize that this is not to be repeated, at least not until your own final minutes, and although I do not expect that anyone would believe you anyway, an error of judgment by lack of discretion on your part would be a fatal mistake. Papa once told me that booksellers, gracious of knowledge, but weak of courage, were among the few semi-honorable people in this crafty city. Do not let the fact of my obvious German heritage fool you. You have probably heard of some of the big names of the past, mostly Sicilians, but there always have been several of other nationalities who keep a low profile. I am talking about business, the kind I call facilitation or providing a desired service, but which is labeled as organized crime when it is not being perpetuated by corporations, politicians, or the police. They have mostly taken over things with a greedy fervency that would put to shame a junkie in need of a fix. You still look skeptical and askance, as if you are entertaining disbelief about my authenticity or cannot reconcile it with what you see in front of you. Perhaps your preconceptions do not allow you to picture someone like me being ruthless and making daily bread off of the suckers, schmucks, hucklebucks, and Vidalias. My bonafides will be readily apparent soon enough. Call me a shadow. My name does not matter. Everyone who needs to know does, and all others think me a little old shopkeeper remnant from the long past immigrant neighborhood days. It is an artificial name anyway, though no one is aware of that, a paper name it was referred to as being, the non-ethnic American sounding name provided to me, complete with modified birth records, after my father was imprisoned in 1918 for speaking German in a public place. My childhood had been fairly uneventful, but due to this terrible event I ended up receiving succor for several years at the, now what was it, let’s see, oh yes, the Bethlehem Orphan Asylum on North Peters Street, which faced the levee in what was then the country. My years upon coming of age were fairly hardscrabble, some days no better than a hand upon the waters, but I came through them well, considering, less a supplicant than a barely ruined child, resourceful and focused. I swore that I would put my mark on Leveetown and started out by acquiring a position at a tailor shop on Bourbon Street. Over my time there, an enduring lesson was learned. In this wretched life, it is better to control than to be controlled.

By the late 1940’s, I began to do odd jobs for Carlos Marcello, who ran everything in the South. Gambling, drugs, girls, you name it. It was an irregular arrangement for him, but we were bound to end up working together, elective affinities based on both of our natures, you see. After the Kefauver Committee hearings, Carlos felt besieged by the fruits of conspiracy, needed to reduce his active presence, and began to shift some responsibilities to trusted underlings and family members. You may have heard of a few of them, they turned flashy and thought they were invincible, sufficient heart twice pleased by brash conduct. Me, I took an example from someone who was also a shadow, Abe Raxas, a person not mentioned in books or archives, one benefit of history being a scoundrel. He has been dead for eighty years but wore the golden band in his day. Abe was ingenious and formidable, the informal mayor of the city starting around the turn of the century. No was not an option. One either did his bidding for the day or just jumped into the river to trump the inevitable grisly example made of the defiant few. His tactic was to pick 365 men randomly each year. Different men every time. No repeats. Those chosen were designated a specific day to report for duty and assigned a criminally compromising task that he needed accomplished, in effect eventually holding the potential threat of blackmail over most of the entire city’s men. No was not an option. One either did his bidding for the day or just jumped into the river to trump the inevitable grisly example made of the defiant few. Abe was utilizing a secret society model to make all of the Leveetown men his blood brothers, his own brethren, the paradox being that it was in everyone’s best interest to keep their mouths shut about that which also ended up involving nearly all of the collective male residents, including friends and neighbors. There was little resentment or honest envy because only one day of service was required over a lifetime and Abe gave back to the community with unwieldy largess not based on proud pity. My own style is much more subdued, to put it mildly, but one can always learn from people of his stature. I have adapted Abe’s philosophy of thinking big, yet remaining discreet, and keeping as many people as possible in one’s employ, as well as making sure to pay them well, which was also emphasized by Carlos. When I say as many people as possible, I mean those on or potentially on the wrong side of the laws. Notice I did not say the law, because those charlatans are far baser than we could ever hope to be, just don’t think that their ineptness is limited to only police work. That goes double for the politicians, those errors of biology, who would rob the coffers even more if they had a modicum of smarts.

You may be thinking, other than greasing a few cops, how big of an operation could it really be? What if I told you, cabbies, concierges, palm readers, baggage handlers, mailmen, and cooks for a start? Yes, cooks. Who better to introduce an ongoing diet of powdered glass to cause an eventual seemingly natural death to the one who is designated as a hit. It is clever, but I cannot claim it to be my idea originally. There is nothing new under the sun, it is just recontextualized, updated, or modified. In this case, on occasion, a female slave would use this stealthy tactic in the kitchen to get retribution on the master. As far as the other positions mentioned, realize that there will always be visitors, the smooth polite designation, coming to Leveetown for vice as a repression outlet. It is clever, but I cannot claim it to be my idea originally. There is nothing new under the sun, it is just recontextualized, updated, or modified. The appetite remains, even is heightened as the rest of the country legislates the so-called new and right moralities into existence. When the sucker asks the cabbie or concierge for a recommendation, he is likely directed to one of my people or underground establishments, because there are an unwieldy amount of hacks and hotel folk who are on my payroll, the way we have carved up the business. Sometimes the suckers are given a few options, but that is no more than an illusion anyway, since it is often just the same people with a different name for each phone number. Who else did I mention? The baggage guys and mailmen, look, do you think they pocket the constant valuables at the airport or a bag of mail on their own? Sure, if they are stupid, because I do not abide by freelancers. A foolish lone wolf who is not breaking off the large piece of the action for my generous profit will not only willingly be given up to the authorities as the patsy to have any other similar open cases pinned on him, but also used as an example of the corruption supposedly being weeded out. It is to be expected. Name a business person fined, closed down, jailed, or hassled, and I will show you someone who did not take care of the right people for the right amount. As far as luggage and mail, that is all arranged. The supervisors are also in my pocket, and only so much is taken at a time. My point is that there are many eyes out there who want a little extra tax-free money.

On the subject of taking care of people, the businessmen, politicians, and cops have really come to expect the moon. If there is not a steady supply of admirable flesh for the hunting and fishing camps as well as the stag parties, then connections cannot be kept. Of course, all of this has been going on for quite a while, but there are just more people at the trough. I always have an eye out to procure, have a knack for it, especially now, appearing to be so genial. Anyone can spot the girls from Slidell, Gulfport, just off the bus from the Midwest, and hitched from Texas. They are the pent-up wild ones, hungry for action, shrewdly innocent beneath the attitude, with kinetic energy not disguising the scrutable small-town-faced vulnerability. They know they have only one form of currency to deal in, you see it in the walk, and there are so many willing to lend a hand with a severe welcome. You initially thought that I was just a loquacious matronly grandmother, but I have worn my costume well. Realize, you are here in the Quarter, where the heartbeat of the old business pulses. My cunning advantage is understanding that a woman knows another woman’s mind and is always tougher on other women, which is what these girls want, or at least they do when they see the cash that comes with it. You initially thought that I was just a loquacious matronly grandmother, but I have worn my costume well. Realize, you are here in the Quarter, where the heartbeat of the old business pulses. Do you know how many cars disappear off of these streets? All the movies and TV shows have people thinking that the snatched vehicles go to chop shops, warehouses under the bridges or in certain neighborhoods, with parts sold there. Sure, there are some small time operations doing that, but the serious business is using the port for export. What my people do with cars is to label the parts, disassemble them, and ship only the like parts together from several vehicles. They end up in Latin America, then as each shipment arrives, the cars are rebuilt. Instant car for sale. Do you think a fucking VIN number means anything in Paraguay? Another little trick is to buy a bunch of used cars as inexpensively as possible, while being somewhat recent makes and models. Then we send the boosters, the neighborhood kids who can jack with haste, thank goodness, because none of them are discreet, around looking for new or lightly used cars that match up to our cheap used ones by identical make, model, and color. Once we have a pair of twins, we pop off the VIN and plates from the cheap car, put them on the stolen car, then sell the newly-created vehicle for cash out of a business parking lot on a busy street, evenings or weekends only, so that the potential customer is not able to contact any government agency to confirm the vehicle’s authenticity. The phone number on the windshield rings to a non-traceable trac phone that is thrown out after the car sells. You might be amazed at some of the specialists around here. I have a guy down in Violet who boosts nothing but construction equipment. Dump trucks, cranes, front-end loaders, that is his thing. Who suspects that a crane poking down St. Bernard Highway is hot? He is careful not to hit sites certain construction companies are running, of course, we try not to step on toes around here.

Ultimately this is all like any other large business model, reverse pyramid, not trickling down but flowing up. Do I mean to infer similarities between me and a typical Fortune 500 CEO, other than to point out that we both keep at least one step removed from anything that could come back to bite us and that neither of us has ever been plagued by innate honor, much less concerned about our casual reputations? I am not condemning capitalism, just clarifying that my role in it is no less unimpeachable than those considered proper…Well, it can be said that the CEO has the money but not much of a structure for longevity, while I have not done too badly and have maintained a sustaining power base. When you ask who provides something of use, it is apparent which one of us satisfies basic ongoing human needs and which one sells the country, much less the world now, mostly products that none of us really need, but owe their sheer existence to the crutch of advertising. It is an affront when you look at which of us is considered more respectable. And frankly, I would do more business if there were fewer time-passing money-wasting distractions. I am not condemning capitalism, just clarifying that my role in it is no less unimpeachable than those considered proper, and also speaking to the canard that extreme wealth comes from anything but inheritance or thievery, even if the storyline is tidied up for the ancestors. Of course, there are exceptions, but it is typically the Great American Lie that by-the-book hard work and striving by the rules can bolster one’s bank account to the upper tier of wealth. It seems to be the lie that works, though, because people want to believe that it all might be eventually available to them, and that a certain moneyed position makes one serene and impervious to the harsh realities of life and health. Perhaps you look at me, young man, and see a life of sufficient fortunes and limited misfortunes, but it is really no more than luck from the vagaries of life and also keeping my mouth shut. I have never spoken openly before like this, which is out of place in the modern world.

Speaking of, because the subject of acquired wealth is tedious and crude, have you noticed how modernism in literature, at least that which is termed as being modernism or post, has reawakened from its fractured silence, making up for lost time, and becoming perverted to serve as an authoritarian political tactic? Although these are literary techniques and structures that have been utilized for 2,000 years or so, far longer than the relatively recent-by-comparison novel format of the last 150 years to suit a wider audience, it is interesting that they seem less influential on today’s literature, at least in this country, than on culture, politics specifically. I would say for campaigning, except that seems to be happening year round anymore. If you look at, let me check my notes here, okay, eight names, Auster, Bernhard, Borges, Macedonio, Burroughs, Tzara, García Márquez, and Joyce, it is as if an essential stylistic quality of each of these esteemed authors was studied and distilled into being useful for political advantage. Would that we had a modern day Walter Benjamin to explore this. It all seems so stunning to me, not that I truly believe that political stooges have studied these authors for the means of subverting concepts and philosophies of individualism for the capacity of groupthink, but that these scribes were oracles, knights, and reporters of the current to come. That would be a book, wouldn’t it, eight authors in search of an essayist. From the beginning, Auster, the idea that the act of writing can bring about creation, Bernhard, the unleashing of vitriol and vituperation through a monologue, Borges, reality is unclear and shifting, filled with uncertain reflecting variants, from the lips, pen, and penned lips of his teacher, Macedonio, Burroughs, a virus can be introduced to anything to mutate it, the fever of language, as well as the discontinuity inoculation that rose in stock from Tzara, García Márquez, if one could convince an audience to suspend the usual rules of believability by use of detail, then implausible magical realism can inspire rapt attention, Joyce, the raw and culturally challenging stream of consciousness internal thoughts come to life, liberation of vocabulary from the blistered vault, and symbiosis between the narrator and narrated. It all seems so stunning to me, not that I truly believe that political stooges have studied these authors for the means of subverting concepts and philosophies of individualism for the capacity of groupthink, but that these scribes were oracles, knights, and reporters of the current to come.

Can you imagine if a book actually could have such influence, when we in this country, even the limited few who desire to, do not perceive literature in translation in any way but out of context because there have been so few fellow authors translated to compare them with, so many momentous decisions and humble words in print that we will never be exposed to, those that might have allowed us to connect the night? These few translated authors are exceptional but not islands, merely adding to and expanding the already existing literary traditions of their respective countries.

Take Your Choice, 1885
(Oil on canvas, 51.44 x 76.84 cm)
BY John Frederick Peto
John Wilmerding Collection
National Gallery of Art

Young man, you might wonder how an orphan has the fortitude to become a literary minded person of a certain stature, yet is still able to hide from history, or perhaps your expression, impassive and musing, is doubtless indication that you find me to merely be risibly unsettling and overtly cancerous, yet eagerly dependent? After the upheaval and sorrow of dear Papa being taken away, never to be seen again, then eventually living on my own, working for very little as a seamstress in the tailor shop, I had the pleasure of meeting someone who changed my life. I suppose we come across very few people over a lifetime offering a worthy recasting of life’s rhythms, and I was lucky to make the acquaintance of one who served as an impediment to the volatility and potentially trivial influences that could have easily undermined me at a vulnerable time. It must have been during winter, when a curious stooped gentleman entered the shop, whisking out a case of mounted butterflies. He had a strong German accent, held a dignified but time beaten haggard composure, was gravely serious, and smelled of drink. When he shuffled off, only a few minutes later, there were murmurs among the others of a scandalous past, cheap talk that I dismissed quickly. In the abbreviated time beforehand, it became clear that not only was he an obsessive entomologist with a vast collection of insects, to which his devotion was monk-like, but that he had been a writer of some note. To this day I have been seeking back issues of the newspaper with his column, The devil in Leveetown, and how he lifts the roofs of houses. …I have been trying to keep one step ahead of the fates all these years, fully aware that power on earth can easily become turncoat. He spoke with a rusty suffering voice, without question once crisp and exact, now pliable and weary, and was kind enough to give me a book, The Singular Life Story of Heedless Hopalong by Grimmelshausen, which I would eventually discover was the third book of the Simplicius novels. It was enough that he was generous with his time and spoke as a peer to me, a low peasant girl, but reading about Heedless Hopalong helped me begin to understand the human condition and that my own struggles were minor compared to those during the Thirty Years War. I did not catch the name of the man, nor did our paths ever cross again, and he likely forgot about the scant encounter by the next opportunity that allowed him to earnestly address the contents of his butterfly case, but for several reasons, I keep this quote written on the front of my notebook. It is from The Ballad of Hopalong at the beginning of the book, and, there, that was not too difficult to find, things tend to get lost in a large bag. It reads, I became a toy in Fortune’s hands, And went where I was led. With due deference to Grimmelshausen, I have been trying to keep one step ahead of the fates all these years, fully aware that power on earth can easily become turncoat. To think otherwise is a child’s ethereal conception of fairness. Also, it is of no interest to anyone else for one to begrudge a life deserved.

This has been certainly enough talk about such things. Do you realize the implications of what you have heard and that there are now two who lay in ambush for me? Considering the circumstances, don’t you think it is reasonable that this little talk ought to gain me the Hermann Ungar book I hold, gratis? It seems like a fair exchange, so as not to leave me with wasted troubles. Ah, a reticent nod, thank you. Let me say this as I leave your store. Despite my age and standing, one constant is that I have never liked to pay for anything, so I pocket what I can as often as I can, but it is difficult to do that when an item is out of reach. Sometimes there are other shrewd methods to making the score, and it appears that the night’s gambit was effective. I thank you for receiving me with such laudable courtesy rather than with common insolence. Good evening to you.