Private Novelist by Nell Zink Page B

tomorrow, we could still put it out for five years,” one of her subordinates told me. He was a homely workaholic who had edited his college paper three years in a row.
    In the Anxiety of Influence process, the great literature of the past, by confronting the author with his own mediocrity,destroys his self-esteem. In reaction, the author does his best to evoke this literature as little as possible, while still feeling he must equal it in quality. At his death, diskettes and notebooks are discovered. Each contains two or three short pieces no one has ever read.
    Luckily, I suffer more often from an opposing feeling—the fear of failure to make clear exactly what my unconscious influences are and why I like them so much. Far from publishing a formal disclaimer to the effect that comparisons to Moby-Dick are unwelcome, I would encourage the reader to discard Sailing Toward the Sunset immediately in favor of Moby-Dick, the wit and profundity of which shame all other novels. I welcome any and all influence of my favorite authors, whom I am willing to meet halfway by confessing that if my work ultimately resembles that of Melville in any way, it is as much an accident as if Melville’s work resembled mine.
    Unlike the Anxious writers, I am free to evoke the great literature of the past as often as possible, and without inviting comparison, in the easiest possible way: I mention it, over and over. I am grateful to my models, Possession and Dictionary of the Khazars, for demonstrating the ease with which this can be accomplished.
    I wish I had a copy of Moby-Dick right now, so that I could borrow a few of Melville’s epigrams on the subject of the whale so nearly resembling the mysterious “Mr. Pickwick,” which now nestled comfortably, as though it planned to stay for a long time, on the Mediterranean seafloor.

CHAPTER 8
    BEFORE DESCRIBING THE ENIGMATIC submarine, I should remind the reader that my aim in Sailing Toward the Sunset is not to create irresistible literary characters, but in deference to my models, Possession and Dictionary of the Khazars, to dispense with such fripperies in pursuit of a higher goal: the suggestion, through breathless innuendo, of an exotic and unverifiable past.
    I turn to Shats’ eighth chapter. It begins on page 213. The novel ends on page 234. This chapter is surely an especially dense one, whose every word carries an ambivalent and multilayered significance, as these twenty-two pages must ultimately carry three-quarters of the hermeneutic weight of the entire book. It begins:

    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  The angels [could be “queens”] of complaint came to Jamaica in the eighteenth century, and told the committee of virgins: the [?], symbol of reality and [?] of the bitterness of the power structure . . . the two deaths separated by eighty years. . . .

    Hebrew words notoriously have multiple meanings, since each Hebrew word is based on a three-consonant root, and the twenty-three consonants (I don’t think that’s right, but it’s something like twenty-three) yield only 12,167 possible combinations. As I recall, English has at least three times that many words, indicating that each Hebrew word must carry, at the absolute minimum, three English meanings. I.e., the sentence can also be translated:

    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Deeply eroded ravines [could be “gutters”] of resignation came to Sicily in despite of the 144 elisions, and told the objectors: the [?], essence of truth and [?] the bad flavor of the fruiting tops . . . the five circles split into eighty fragments. . . .

    Or:

    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Cain entreated God for permission to lay down his weapon: but God said, one [?] has brought me here, I cannot be turned back . . . the wind [piped?] in Cain’s ears, loess filled his lungs, he walked in the dust behind Abel, carrying a bag of newly grafted mango