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Because I Was Flesh
Because I Was Flesh is the story of Edward Dahlberg's life as a child and young man, and a portrait in depth of the remarkable woman, his mother Lizzie, who shaped it. It is an authentic record from the inferno of modern city life, and a testament of American experience. Seldom has there been so ruthless, and yet so tender a dissection of the mother-son relationship. And from it Lizzie Dahlberg emerges as one of the unforgettable characters of modern literature.
234 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
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About the author
Edward Dahlberg
38 books23 followersHis first novel, Bottom Dogs, based on his childhood experiences at the orphanage and his travels in the American West, was published in London with an introduction by D. H. Lawrence. With his advance money, Dahlberg returned to New York City and resided in Greenwich Village. He visited Germany in 1933 and in reaction briefly joined the Communist Party, but left the Party by 1936. From the 1940s onwards, Dahlberg made his living as an author and also taught at various colleges and universities. In 1948, he taught briefly at the experimental Black Mountain College. He was replaced on the staff by his friend and fellow author, Charles Olson.
He was an expatriate writer of the 1920s, a proletarian novelist of the 1930s, a spokesman for a fundamental humanism in the 1940s. For a number of years, Dahlberg devoted himself to literary study. His extensive readings of the works of Dante, Shakespeare, Thoreau and many others resulted in a writing style quite different from the social realism that characterized his earlier writing.
He moved to the Danish island of Bornholm in 1955 while working on The Flea of Sodom. The Sorrows of Priapus was published in 1957, becoming his most successful book thus far. He later moved to Mallorca, while working on Because I Was Flesh, an autobiography which was published in 1964. During the 1960s and 1970s, he became quite prolific and further refined his unique style through the publication of poetry, autobiographical works, fiction and criticism.
He was an expatriate writer of the 1920s, a proletarian novelist of the 1930s, a spokesman for a fundamental humanism in the 1940s. For a number of years, Dahlberg devoted himself to literary study. His extensive readings of the works of Dante, Shakespeare, Thoreau and many others resulted in a writing style quite different from the social realism that characterized his earlier writing.
He moved to the Danish island of Bornholm in 1955 while working on The Flea of Sodom. The Sorrows of Priapus was published in 1957, becoming his most successful book thus far. He later moved to Mallorca, while working on Because I Was Flesh, an autobiography which was published in 1964. During the 1960s and 1970s, he became quite prolific and further refined his unique style through the publication of poetry, autobiographical works, fiction and criticism.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
January 23, 2014
I shall let him speak for himself, as it is the quality of the prose that really made this stand out for me. If your taste is anything like mine, the following will be enough to make you want to read this as soon as possible:
"Kansas City was my Tarsus; the Kaw and the Missouri Rivers were the washpots of joyous Dianas from St. Joseph and Joplin. It was a young seminal town and the seed of its men was strong. Homer sang of many sacred towns in Hellas which were no better than Kansas City, as hilly as Eteonus and as stony as Aulis. The city wore a coat of rocks and grass. The bosom of this town nursed men, mules and horses as famous as the asses of Arcadia and the steeds of Diomedes . . . Kansas City was the city of my youth and the burial ground of my poor mother's hopes; her blood, like Abel's, cries out to me from every cobblestone, building, flat and street…. Let the bard from Smyrna catalogue Harma, the ledges and caves of Ithaca, the milk-fed damsels of Achaia, pigeon-flocked Thisbe or the woods of Onchestus, I sing of Oak, Walnut, Chestnut, Maple and Elm Streets. Phthia was a bin of corn, Kansas City a buxom grange of wheat. Could the strumpets from the stews of Corinth, Ephesus or Tarsus fetch a groan or sigh more quickly than the dimpled thighs of lasses from St. Joseph or Topeka?”
"She did not know what to do with her life or with her feelings. She toiled because she was afraid to starve, and because she had nothing else to do; but her will was too sick to love the child of her lust. He was so skinny and yellow that his nose seemed to cover his face; and all the obduracy that was in her short, round neck had passed over to him. If he saw a speck on the wall, he imagined that it was the ordure of flies. When he looked at the greasy, rotten oil-cloth on the table, he would not touch his scummy soup. His mind gave him intolerable pain when he thought of the back alley that lay between 8th and 7th where he had seen gross rodents. On occasion, when he heard the chirruping of rats in the basement of the building or in the rear of the shop, his face grew more peaked and rancid, and he buried his head in his arms and retched. Lizzie was unable to comprehend his nausea, for like most people of her class in the Midwest she found a certain amount of rapture in looking at vermin. Often the lady barbers spoke at great length about loathsome creatures, and the boy listened and could not leave off hearing what made him green and sick for weeks. All that Lizzie could understand was that the child of her profligacy vomited and that he would grow up ugly …"
"Kansas City was my Tarsus; the Kaw and the Missouri Rivers were the washpots of joyous Dianas from St. Joseph and Joplin. It was a young seminal town and the seed of its men was strong. Homer sang of many sacred towns in Hellas which were no better than Kansas City, as hilly as Eteonus and as stony as Aulis. The city wore a coat of rocks and grass. The bosom of this town nursed men, mules and horses as famous as the asses of Arcadia and the steeds of Diomedes . . . Kansas City was the city of my youth and the burial ground of my poor mother's hopes; her blood, like Abel's, cries out to me from every cobblestone, building, flat and street…. Let the bard from Smyrna catalogue Harma, the ledges and caves of Ithaca, the milk-fed damsels of Achaia, pigeon-flocked Thisbe or the woods of Onchestus, I sing of Oak, Walnut, Chestnut, Maple and Elm Streets. Phthia was a bin of corn, Kansas City a buxom grange of wheat. Could the strumpets from the stews of Corinth, Ephesus or Tarsus fetch a groan or sigh more quickly than the dimpled thighs of lasses from St. Joseph or Topeka?”
"She did not know what to do with her life or with her feelings. She toiled because she was afraid to starve, and because she had nothing else to do; but her will was too sick to love the child of her lust. He was so skinny and yellow that his nose seemed to cover his face; and all the obduracy that was in her short, round neck had passed over to him. If he saw a speck on the wall, he imagined that it was the ordure of flies. When he looked at the greasy, rotten oil-cloth on the table, he would not touch his scummy soup. His mind gave him intolerable pain when he thought of the back alley that lay between 8th and 7th where he had seen gross rodents. On occasion, when he heard the chirruping of rats in the basement of the building or in the rear of the shop, his face grew more peaked and rancid, and he buried his head in his arms and retched. Lizzie was unable to comprehend his nausea, for like most people of her class in the Midwest she found a certain amount of rapture in looking at vermin. Often the lady barbers spoke at great length about loathsome creatures, and the boy listened and could not leave off hearing what made him green and sick for weeks. All that Lizzie could understand was that the child of her profligacy vomited and that he would grow up ugly …"
June 23, 2013
the subtitle of this book is "the autobiogaphy of edward dahlberg". this, however, is very misleading, as 80% of the book is about the author's mother. except for one section where he travels across the usa, in abject poverty, to california, he is a fairly minor figure in the book.
as i said, the book is mainly about his mother Lizzie. the main, and most interesting, part of the book portrays her life as a lady barber in kansas city in the early 1900's. during this period, and after as well, she gets involved with many men, most of whom fleece her for as much as they can.
the other part of the book in which the author is the main figure, involves the years he spent in an orphanage. the absolutely awful years that he spends there, are wonderfully described, and in fact, the writing throughout the book is uniformly brilliant, and the book as a whole is written in a unique style that must be experienced to be appreciated.
i should also point out that the author uses large quantities of poetic licence in this book, as he quotes verbatim many conversations that took place when he was an infant, and also when he was older, and not even in the same town in which the conversations were taking place.
all in all, a very different and interesting read. i also have a book of his essays and a book of his letters, both taken out of the library, that i shall be reading soon. i will also endeavour to track down some of his novels as well.
by the way, i first heard about this author from the Buried book club here on goodreads.
as i said, the book is mainly about his mother Lizzie. the main, and most interesting, part of the book portrays her life as a lady barber in kansas city in the early 1900's. during this period, and after as well, she gets involved with many men, most of whom fleece her for as much as they can.
the other part of the book in which the author is the main figure, involves the years he spent in an orphanage. the absolutely awful years that he spends there, are wonderfully described, and in fact, the writing throughout the book is uniformly brilliant, and the book as a whole is written in a unique style that must be experienced to be appreciated.
i should also point out that the author uses large quantities of poetic licence in this book, as he quotes verbatim many conversations that took place when he was an infant, and also when he was older, and not even in the same town in which the conversations were taking place.
all in all, a very different and interesting read. i also have a book of his essays and a book of his letters, both taken out of the library, that i shall be reading soon. i will also endeavour to track down some of his novels as well.
by the way, i first heard about this author from the Buried book club here on goodreads.
January 5, 2022
A book of truisms, adages, maxims, of archaic classical construction towering like Babel and wedged into the modernity of 20th century America. It's all in some ways a put-on, a ploy, for the "autobiography of Edward Dahlberg," as the subtitle would have it, is really a biography of his mother, Lizzie. But as Dahlberg puts it in the muses' invocation of the first Pentateuch of pages: "whatever I imagine I know is taken from my mother's body, and this is the memoir of her body." So, there is of course misdirection, and then there is clarification. The title is an excerpt from Dahlberg's chosen epigraph: "...because I was flesh, and a breath that passeth and cometh not again,"—but though he cites it as coming from the Psalms of the Bible, it is actually a manipulated fragment of a rhetorical question from the confessions of Saint Augustine; Dahlberg has turned this rhetoric which was meant to be affirming of a greater Christian continuity into a definitive statement of most unchristian doubt, a proclamation of the howling wilderness of this our one and only life. Taken together, this misdirection of biography, this bricolage of reassembled reference, this ringing clang of learnèd dissonance, the turn of phrase so perfect and unexpected, is what is in store for any prospective reader.
This is a book of a vanished America as it is a book of Dahlberg's vanished mother—to see Kansas City in its heyday is a miracle, especially if you have seen it in the past twenty years. I read Marguerite Young once describe the Indianapolis of her youth as the "Athens of the West," and the distance from what I know of that city now is similarly evoked by Dahlberg for the ghostly Kansas City of his childhood already gone by the time he comes of age:
Dahlberg towers as a strange figure of twentieth century letters, seemingly more informed by the prose style of Sir Thomas Browne than anyone even of the 19th century, and yet his sensibility is screamingly modern—there is a short section where he heads West on foot, on freight, anyway he can, that is better in its brevity than the entirety of On The Road, is more honest, and, truly, a hell of a lot more bohemian. He has been down and out and acetic and horny and broke (though never, ever wealthy) and occasionally wise and a fool, o an eternal fool, but he has made something of it, at least for us—though as he would have it:
The joy is in the nuggets of rendered down wisdom, cribbed or original is anyone's guess, something like a saturation of Schopenhauer in the Old Testament by way of Oscar Wilde—a few at random to show just what the potential reader is in for:
"Nobody can endure his own happiness; besides, what weakens human character so much as a long spasm of agreeable events?"
"When we struggle against our defects, it is an artistic delusion which is necessary to our souls."
"We owe everything to nature, even our desire to annihilate ourselves."
"What's in a name, every poet has asked? Everything."
"Most of my errors have come from that rudest of shibboleths: I want to be free. Yet we only do what we are."
"It is hideous and coarse to assume that we can do something for others—and it is vile not to endeavor to do it."
This is his only book still in print, but others it seems are not hard to find in the right places. Dig with me.
This is a book of a vanished America as it is a book of Dahlberg's vanished mother—to see Kansas City in its heyday is a miracle, especially if you have seen it in the past twenty years. I read Marguerite Young once describe the Indianapolis of her youth as the "Athens of the West," and the distance from what I know of that city now is similarly evoked by Dahlberg for the ghostly Kansas City of his childhood already gone by the time he comes of age:
Kansas City was my Tarsus; the Kaw and the Missouri Rivers were the washpots of joyous Dianas from St. Joseph and Joplin. It was a young, seminal town and the seed of its men was strong. Homer sang of many sacred towns in Hellas which were no better than Kansas City, as hilly as Eteonus and as stony as Aulis. The city wore a coat of rocks and grass. The bosom of this town nursed men, mules, and horses as famous as the asses of Arcadia and the steeds of Diomedes...Let the bard from Smyrna catalogue Harma, the ledges and caves of Ithaca, the milk-fed damsels of Achaia, pigeon-flocked Thisbe or the woods of Oncestus, I sing of Oak, Walnut, Chestnut, Maple and Elm Streets. Phthia was a bin of corn, Kansas City a buxom grange of wheat.
Dahlberg towers as a strange figure of twentieth century letters, seemingly more informed by the prose style of Sir Thomas Browne than anyone even of the 19th century, and yet his sensibility is screamingly modern—there is a short section where he heads West on foot, on freight, anyway he can, that is better in its brevity than the entirety of On The Road, is more honest, and, truly, a hell of a lot more bohemian. He has been down and out and acetic and horny and broke (though never, ever wealthy) and occasionally wise and a fool, o an eternal fool, but he has made something of it, at least for us—though as he would have it:
I have nothing better to do with my life than to write a book and perhaps nothing worse. Besides, it is a delusion to believe that one has a choice. If this book is a great defect, then let it be; for I have come to that time in my life when it is absolutely important to compose a good memoir although it is also a negligible thing if I should fail. Fame, when not purchased, is an epitaph which the rains and the birds peck until the letters on the headstone are illegible.
The joy is in the nuggets of rendered down wisdom, cribbed or original is anyone's guess, something like a saturation of Schopenhauer in the Old Testament by way of Oscar Wilde—a few at random to show just what the potential reader is in for:
"Nobody can endure his own happiness; besides, what weakens human character so much as a long spasm of agreeable events?"
"When we struggle against our defects, it is an artistic delusion which is necessary to our souls."
"We owe everything to nature, even our desire to annihilate ourselves."
"What's in a name, every poet has asked? Everything."
"Most of my errors have come from that rudest of shibboleths: I want to be free. Yet we only do what we are."
"It is hideous and coarse to assume that we can do something for others—and it is vile not to endeavor to do it."
This is his only book still in print, but others it seems are not hard to find in the right places. Dig with me.
May 25, 2010
In lieu of a review, here are a handful of the more delightful quotations (mostly related to lust) that I've culled.
p. 1 Only those who know the ocean ponder death deeply as they behold it, whereas those bound closely to the ground are more sensual.
p. 2 Each one carries his own sack of woe on his back, and though he supplicate heaven to ease him, who hears him except his own sepulchre?
p. 4 Everything has been created out of lusts no less than flesh, for God and Nature are young and seminal, and rage all day long.
p. 5 What eases the lonely so much as sexual pleasure?
p. 11 The tender, full paps of the Ephesian Diana
p. 24 She had the dry, average lips of one who had been used rather than loved.
p. 27 has a jolly, bawdy bed and fat gammons
p. 28 the sunflower, a foe of frankincense, the Arabian spice of love, is an aphrodesiac
p. 34 ...nipples as erect as the cedars of Lebanon
p. 36 the mind gasps and dies a little in the moment of orgasm.
p. 37 the maggot always comes after surfeit; since lovemaking has emasculated the race, we are as foolhardy as the domesticated caterpillar in the mulberry tree who devours the leaf on which he is standing.
p. 43 The truth is that we can only perfect our vices, for we die with all our sins entire, and every wrong thought or dream or vision in the child matures in the man.
p. 44 All wisdom is sensual since it comes from the body.
[He:] was some baleful seminal drop of a depraved rotting forefather; he lived solely to discharge his sperm.
p. 48 It was as natural for these women to gull men as it was for the men to spill their sperm.
p. 50 The man is the corrupt dream of the child, and since there is only decay, and no time, what we call days and evenings are the false angels of our existence.
p. 55 Malice is the most entertaining pastime of the human race.
p. 57 The greed for voluptuous sensations is a disease. Who invented the torments of the testicles?
Pleasure is the tickling of the maggots that ravin upon the bones.
p. 58 a big skirt-chaser, a fleshy, sensual laugher who could not stay away from women
p. 74 All acute moments are the same. When pain is absolute, or unbearable, it is similar to the most heightened pleasure. But nothing really exists, for nobody can handle his memories, or take hold of a single sensation, no matter how immense it was when he had it.
p. 76 Whatever grace and virtue we give to others comes from our own fell needs.
p. 90 It is an infernal tragedy to be too fortunate. Pitiless is he who has not been harried by the furies.
p. 98 Whoring is as natural as rain, snow, and defecating. The practices of Venus Illegitima, the goddess of various turpitudes, is the way of all flesh.
Let him who can keep his pudendum on a leash for seventy years cast the first stone.
Absolute continence gives us chilblains, the quartan ague, and the vapors.
p. 99 The Epicurean hopes that all his ecstasies will be as wondrous as he imagined they were when he was seven years of age.
p. 104 Prostitutes are as essential to society as potatoes, bread, and meat, though they may not be rhapsodical food.
How good and right our conduct is when our testicles are empty.
They body is a burden of Tyre, and it is also the only wisdom we have. He who refuses to fondle the breasts of Theodota will live long enough not to have the occasion again.
p. 105 Contemplating a pentagram would be an excellent recipe for such fevers [of lust:], did not the sight of plump hunkers overthrow the whole of Euclid.
The life of the universe depends upon the pudendum.
p. 108 When man has finished his destiny he waxes obese and feeds to excess because his genitals are sleepy.
p. 109 ...that driest of crypts, the arid and deceitful heart
p. 134 Are eating, blowing one's nose, hawking, and spitting less fastidious than fornication? All flesh is hypocritical; there is hardly a depravity we condemn that is not a parcel of our dreams.
p. 135 He had graved well over a hundred maidenheads; abhorring injustice, he believed that only a scoundrel would allow a virgin to grow cold and musty.
p. 139 We are charitable at noon, pensive in the rain, fools when the Fishes are quivering on the horizon, and perverse all day long.
p. 140 May the harpies excrete upon everybody who has more money than he requires for his conceptions and livelihood.
p. 1 Only those who know the ocean ponder death deeply as they behold it, whereas those bound closely to the ground are more sensual.
p. 2 Each one carries his own sack of woe on his back, and though he supplicate heaven to ease him, who hears him except his own sepulchre?
p. 4 Everything has been created out of lusts no less than flesh, for God and Nature are young and seminal, and rage all day long.
p. 5 What eases the lonely so much as sexual pleasure?
p. 11 The tender, full paps of the Ephesian Diana
p. 24 She had the dry, average lips of one who had been used rather than loved.
p. 27 has a jolly, bawdy bed and fat gammons
p. 28 the sunflower, a foe of frankincense, the Arabian spice of love, is an aphrodesiac
p. 34 ...nipples as erect as the cedars of Lebanon
p. 36 the mind gasps and dies a little in the moment of orgasm.
p. 37 the maggot always comes after surfeit; since lovemaking has emasculated the race, we are as foolhardy as the domesticated caterpillar in the mulberry tree who devours the leaf on which he is standing.
p. 43 The truth is that we can only perfect our vices, for we die with all our sins entire, and every wrong thought or dream or vision in the child matures in the man.
p. 44 All wisdom is sensual since it comes from the body.
[He:] was some baleful seminal drop of a depraved rotting forefather; he lived solely to discharge his sperm.
p. 48 It was as natural for these women to gull men as it was for the men to spill their sperm.
p. 50 The man is the corrupt dream of the child, and since there is only decay, and no time, what we call days and evenings are the false angels of our existence.
p. 55 Malice is the most entertaining pastime of the human race.
p. 57 The greed for voluptuous sensations is a disease. Who invented the torments of the testicles?
Pleasure is the tickling of the maggots that ravin upon the bones.
p. 58 a big skirt-chaser, a fleshy, sensual laugher who could not stay away from women
p. 74 All acute moments are the same. When pain is absolute, or unbearable, it is similar to the most heightened pleasure. But nothing really exists, for nobody can handle his memories, or take hold of a single sensation, no matter how immense it was when he had it.
p. 76 Whatever grace and virtue we give to others comes from our own fell needs.
p. 90 It is an infernal tragedy to be too fortunate. Pitiless is he who has not been harried by the furies.
p. 98 Whoring is as natural as rain, snow, and defecating. The practices of Venus Illegitima, the goddess of various turpitudes, is the way of all flesh.
Let him who can keep his pudendum on a leash for seventy years cast the first stone.
Absolute continence gives us chilblains, the quartan ague, and the vapors.
p. 99 The Epicurean hopes that all his ecstasies will be as wondrous as he imagined they were when he was seven years of age.
p. 104 Prostitutes are as essential to society as potatoes, bread, and meat, though they may not be rhapsodical food.
How good and right our conduct is when our testicles are empty.
They body is a burden of Tyre, and it is also the only wisdom we have. He who refuses to fondle the breasts of Theodota will live long enough not to have the occasion again.
p. 105 Contemplating a pentagram would be an excellent recipe for such fevers [of lust:], did not the sight of plump hunkers overthrow the whole of Euclid.
The life of the universe depends upon the pudendum.
p. 108 When man has finished his destiny he waxes obese and feeds to excess because his genitals are sleepy.
p. 109 ...that driest of crypts, the arid and deceitful heart
p. 134 Are eating, blowing one's nose, hawking, and spitting less fastidious than fornication? All flesh is hypocritical; there is hardly a depravity we condemn that is not a parcel of our dreams.
p. 135 He had graved well over a hundred maidenheads; abhorring injustice, he believed that only a scoundrel would allow a virgin to grow cold and musty.
p. 139 We are charitable at noon, pensive in the rain, fools when the Fishes are quivering on the horizon, and perverse all day long.
p. 140 May the harpies excrete upon everybody who has more money than he requires for his conceptions and livelihood.
April 6, 2019
In brief: if you like pungent, maximalist late modernist prose such as Omensetter's Luck or Darconville's Cat, there is no work of that ilk more erudite, misanthropic, or wounding.
Though praising a work as singular and intransigent as this seems inane. There has been no literary critic since Dahlberg so opposed to the idea that literature is something that we just read and blithely form opinions about -- for Dalhberg, great literature was something that judges us, that we make ourselves worthy of, however deeply ascetic that task may be.
Perhaps it is best to grasp at analogues to Dahlberg's work, which can only be a grasping. In his sorrowed invective, Solomon is the model. And Dahlberg's debt to the KJV is only too clear, but Browne and Robert Burton are also present. along with Solomon's ablest French heirs, Léon Bloy, and Huysmans. And that other weeping prophet, Ruskin, of the Fors Clavigera, gone mad with black bile. Most remarkable, though, is the extent to which Dahlberg avoids the fate of other strongly allusive modernists (from Pound to Eco): unintelligibility or hollow affectation; his learning is borne deeply, embedded into the flesh of his text, and integral to every word.
Though praising a work as singular and intransigent as this seems inane. There has been no literary critic since Dahlberg so opposed to the idea that literature is something that we just read and blithely form opinions about -- for Dalhberg, great literature was something that judges us, that we make ourselves worthy of, however deeply ascetic that task may be.
Perhaps it is best to grasp at analogues to Dahlberg's work, which can only be a grasping. In his sorrowed invective, Solomon is the model. And Dahlberg's debt to the KJV is only too clear, but Browne and Robert Burton are also present. along with Solomon's ablest French heirs, Léon Bloy, and Huysmans. And that other weeping prophet, Ruskin, of the Fors Clavigera, gone mad with black bile. Most remarkable, though, is the extent to which Dahlberg avoids the fate of other strongly allusive modernists (from Pound to Eco): unintelligibility or hollow affectation; his learning is borne deeply, embedded into the flesh of his text, and integral to every word.
February 14, 2021
Dahlberg was for some years
an idyllic well-kept secret
Now know that in awaiting
oblivion most will not even
read poor Edward given the
chance. Very fond memories
of this book, & look forward to
revisiting passages while wan-
d'ring in cloak, as Warlock, thr-
ough Gomorrah, on Ash Wed.
an idyllic well-kept secret
Now know that in awaiting
oblivion most will not even
read poor Edward given the
chance. Very fond memories
of this book, & look forward to
revisiting passages while wan-
d'ring in cloak, as Warlock, thr-
ough Gomorrah, on Ash Wed.
July 24, 2007
That most of Dahlberg's work remains out-of-print is possibly the publishing industry's current great calamity. He is not an easy writer to figure, nor was he a pleasant man in real life, but those with the patience to stay with his frustrated Edenic quest will understand the passion of his cult. This autobiography of his mother, a lady barber in turn-of-the-20th-Century Kansas City, will break your heart with a sentence, then his own heart in the next. The most neglected of American masterpieces?
June 19, 2022
wow, great worm imagery in this one.
Read
March 23, 2024going for no rating because this book made me feel dumb but also i could APPRECIATE it but also i finished it at my own risk
May 31, 2016
Un capolavoro. Prosa ricercatissima, numerose citazioni classiche e religiose...un libro che mette alla prova ma.che non si può non amare
February 23, 2021
this book claims to be an autobiography, but while it does have some autobiographical detail it's more about the life of the author's mother than his own life. it is written in a sort of baroque pseudo elizabethan style that also owes a lot of the king james bible, and a lot of the sentences are epigrams, and there's some really really good ones. there are also a lot of references to great authors of the past, with particular focus on classical writers, and various books of the bible are refrenced a lot. despite all this referential high modernist claptrap it also seems to owe a lot to dahlberg's early career as a proletarian writer, with all the emphasis on poverty and lower class america circa the early 20th century. dahlberg is also really cranky at times and clearly hates himself which is a cool trait for an author to have. i don't think it's as cool as the other review on here that says it's like "Ruskin, of the Fors Clavigera, gone mad with black bile" makes it sound though, unfortunately.
June 2, 2013
Bellissima la figura di lizzie, la madre dell'autore
July 4, 2017
Accurate blurbs: Alfred Kazin … “A work of extraordinary honesty, eloquence and power, it redeems with one mighty creative act the suffering of a lifetime.”
Sir Herbert Read … “The magnificent portrait of the author’s mother is as relentless, as detailed, as loving as a late Rembrandt.”
Notes:
4…It is a great pain to divulge the life of a mother. …
Why a book? … for I have come to that time in my life when it is absolutely important to compose a good memoir although it is also a negligible thing if I should fail. …
Everything has been created out of lusts no less than flesh, for God and Nature are young and seminal, and rage all day long.
5… bondservant … bound w/o wages
What eases the lonely so much as sexual pleasure?
13… No lecher was so intolerable as a skinflint
21… Lady Star Barbershop stories
29… One must have indignation to steal with virtue
37...All Lizzie wanted was thanks
42...Only a city could slake Saul’s venery
45...poverty instructs the gullible
48...these wenches seldom married until they were frowsy flowers … marriageable drabs, knew how to gratify
55...malice is the most entertaining pastime of the human race
57...The greed for voluptuous sensations is a disease. Who invented the torments of the testicles?
76... Whatever grace and virtue we give to others comes from our own fell needs.
92… I have avoided the use of “I” because I was obscure to myself, and no Pythian oracle either then or now has helped me.
Two infernal perplexities: erotic appetite, and how to earn $ to pay for it
93...all our actions derive from concupiscence and unregenerated nature … Pascal
98...Whoring is as natural as rain, snow, and defecating. The practices of Venus Illegitima, the goddess of various turpitudes, is the way of all flesh.
100...there were harlots, but none for me
103...I was rebellious, but did not know what I was opposing
104... Prostitutes are as essential to society as potatoes, bread, and meat, though they may not be rhapsodical food.
How good and right our conduct is when our testicles are empty.
The body is a burden of Tyre, and it is also the only wisdom we have. He who refuses to fondle the breasts of Theodota will live long enough not to have the occasion again.
108...she always held her head high to increase her size …
When man has finished his destiny he waxes obese and feeds to excess because his genitals are sleepy.
113...how dear and sacred is the memento mori of our poverty
116...no desire to perform futile and bestial work
119...stuffed my scabrous shoes with newspapers
127...Lao Tsu Ben my mentor
129...a pelting (paltry) ramshackle on the Venice seashore
130...My priapic, Socratic syllogism: I have secret parts, I am ashamed of them, I am mortal
135...He had graved well over a hundred maidenheads; abhorring injustice, he believed that only a scoundrel would allow a virgin to grow cold and musty.
131...Venice, the syphilitic bitch of all those cheap Calif. Spas
139...when one tells another that he is busy, he implies that the other’s time is his refuse
140...May the harpies excrete upon everybody who has more money than he requires for his conceptions and livelihood.
143...grocery boy w/good sense is more learned than a professor … whose stock in trade is ambiguity and circumlocution.
147...my design of making her lover the archbishop of cuckolds had failed.
150...for a time I was not plagued by Satan Pudendum
154...my mother’s appearance humiliated me
155...she was deprived of one constant man … Old time railroader bantering me
164...Lord Chesterfield: Do not look into your handkerchief after you blow your nose.
169...My origins were still unriddled
170...Saul was my father. … No grave was more silent than she.
175...suitor like Ignatius Reilly
179...Lizzie grinned at that joke. A little quantum of happiness … What a compost for human bones is laughter. Oh my God, my God, laughter is a sweet country well. … Could we die laughing and sport in tombs, death would only be another season.
181...Poor old Cromwell. … He had larded the barbershop with his goodness when he came in
190..Tobias’ engagement letter … no heart
192...Ig. Reilly
195...a bedfellow is a bailiff, a summons, a foreclosure, a pauper’s oath and a hearse. (Ignatius)
197...chickens were as good as a sedative to excitable people … no intent of pauperizing him
198...who would expect the blackamoor’s passion in this almost disembodied figure?
212...outrageous disclosure … what impudence this sloppy codger had!
218...Father, father, it is finished.--John
226...since I was useless, I began to sleep late.
230...Mother … Plagued by so many ailments, where had she gotten the strength to think of anything else but her own fate?
232...saying goodby to my mother
234...I know that not even Solomon in his lilied raiment was so glorious as my mother in her rags. Selah.
[Perhaps the best way to think of selah is a combination of all these meanings. The Amplified Bible adds “pause and calmly think about that” to each verse where selah appears. When we see the word selah in a psalm or in Habakkuk 3, we should pause to carefully weigh the meaning of what we have just read or heard, lifting up our hearts in praise to God for His great truths. “All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you, they sing the praises of your name. Selah!” (Psalm 66:4).]
T.’s 2013 review:
… Yet praising a work as singular and intransigent as this seems inane. Not least because there has been no literary critic since Dahlberg so opposed to the idea that literature is something that we just read and blithely form opinions about -- for Dalhberg, great literature was something that judges us, that we make ourselves worthy of, however deeply ascetic that task may be.
Perhaps it is best to grasp at analogues to Dahlberg's work, which can only be a grasping. In his sorrowed invective, Solomon is the model. And Dahlberg's debt to the KJV is only too clear, but Browne and Robert Burton are also present; along with Solomon's ablest French heirs, Léon Bloy and Huysmans. And that other weeping prophet, Ruskin, of the Fors Clavigera, gone mad with black bile. Most remarkable, though, is the extent to which Dahlberg avoids the fate of other strongly allusive modernists (from Pound to Eco): unintelligibility or hollow affectation; his learning is borne deeply, embedded into the flesh of his text and integral to every word.
I learned about this masterpiece from Patrick Kurp’s Anecdotal Evidence, `Capable of Any Folly' 6/14/17
Sir Herbert Read … “The magnificent portrait of the author’s mother is as relentless, as detailed, as loving as a late Rembrandt.”
Notes:
4…It is a great pain to divulge the life of a mother. …
Why a book? … for I have come to that time in my life when it is absolutely important to compose a good memoir although it is also a negligible thing if I should fail. …
Everything has been created out of lusts no less than flesh, for God and Nature are young and seminal, and rage all day long.
5… bondservant … bound w/o wages
What eases the lonely so much as sexual pleasure?
13… No lecher was so intolerable as a skinflint
21… Lady Star Barbershop stories
29… One must have indignation to steal with virtue
37...All Lizzie wanted was thanks
42...Only a city could slake Saul’s venery
45...poverty instructs the gullible
48...these wenches seldom married until they were frowsy flowers … marriageable drabs, knew how to gratify
55...malice is the most entertaining pastime of the human race
57...The greed for voluptuous sensations is a disease. Who invented the torments of the testicles?
76... Whatever grace and virtue we give to others comes from our own fell needs.
92… I have avoided the use of “I” because I was obscure to myself, and no Pythian oracle either then or now has helped me.
Two infernal perplexities: erotic appetite, and how to earn $ to pay for it
93...all our actions derive from concupiscence and unregenerated nature … Pascal
98...Whoring is as natural as rain, snow, and defecating. The practices of Venus Illegitima, the goddess of various turpitudes, is the way of all flesh.
100...there were harlots, but none for me
103...I was rebellious, but did not know what I was opposing
104... Prostitutes are as essential to society as potatoes, bread, and meat, though they may not be rhapsodical food.
How good and right our conduct is when our testicles are empty.
The body is a burden of Tyre, and it is also the only wisdom we have. He who refuses to fondle the breasts of Theodota will live long enough not to have the occasion again.
108...she always held her head high to increase her size …
When man has finished his destiny he waxes obese and feeds to excess because his genitals are sleepy.
113...how dear and sacred is the memento mori of our poverty
116...no desire to perform futile and bestial work
119...stuffed my scabrous shoes with newspapers
127...Lao Tsu Ben my mentor
129...a pelting (paltry) ramshackle on the Venice seashore
130...My priapic, Socratic syllogism: I have secret parts, I am ashamed of them, I am mortal
135...He had graved well over a hundred maidenheads; abhorring injustice, he believed that only a scoundrel would allow a virgin to grow cold and musty.
131...Venice, the syphilitic bitch of all those cheap Calif. Spas
139...when one tells another that he is busy, he implies that the other’s time is his refuse
140...May the harpies excrete upon everybody who has more money than he requires for his conceptions and livelihood.
143...grocery boy w/good sense is more learned than a professor … whose stock in trade is ambiguity and circumlocution.
147...my design of making her lover the archbishop of cuckolds had failed.
150...for a time I was not plagued by Satan Pudendum
154...my mother’s appearance humiliated me
155...she was deprived of one constant man … Old time railroader bantering me
164...Lord Chesterfield: Do not look into your handkerchief after you blow your nose.
169...My origins were still unriddled
170...Saul was my father. … No grave was more silent than she.
175...suitor like Ignatius Reilly
179...Lizzie grinned at that joke. A little quantum of happiness … What a compost for human bones is laughter. Oh my God, my God, laughter is a sweet country well. … Could we die laughing and sport in tombs, death would only be another season.
181...Poor old Cromwell. … He had larded the barbershop with his goodness when he came in
190..Tobias’ engagement letter … no heart
192...Ig. Reilly
195...a bedfellow is a bailiff, a summons, a foreclosure, a pauper’s oath and a hearse. (Ignatius)
197...chickens were as good as a sedative to excitable people … no intent of pauperizing him
198...who would expect the blackamoor’s passion in this almost disembodied figure?
212...outrageous disclosure … what impudence this sloppy codger had!
218...Father, father, it is finished.--John
226...since I was useless, I began to sleep late.
230...Mother … Plagued by so many ailments, where had she gotten the strength to think of anything else but her own fate?
232...saying goodby to my mother
234...I know that not even Solomon in his lilied raiment was so glorious as my mother in her rags. Selah.
[Perhaps the best way to think of selah is a combination of all these meanings. The Amplified Bible adds “pause and calmly think about that” to each verse where selah appears. When we see the word selah in a psalm or in Habakkuk 3, we should pause to carefully weigh the meaning of what we have just read or heard, lifting up our hearts in praise to God for His great truths. “All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you, they sing the praises of your name. Selah!” (Psalm 66:4).]
T.’s 2013 review:
… Yet praising a work as singular and intransigent as this seems inane. Not least because there has been no literary critic since Dahlberg so opposed to the idea that literature is something that we just read and blithely form opinions about -- for Dalhberg, great literature was something that judges us, that we make ourselves worthy of, however deeply ascetic that task may be.
Perhaps it is best to grasp at analogues to Dahlberg's work, which can only be a grasping. In his sorrowed invective, Solomon is the model. And Dahlberg's debt to the KJV is only too clear, but Browne and Robert Burton are also present; along with Solomon's ablest French heirs, Léon Bloy and Huysmans. And that other weeping prophet, Ruskin, of the Fors Clavigera, gone mad with black bile. Most remarkable, though, is the extent to which Dahlberg avoids the fate of other strongly allusive modernists (from Pound to Eco): unintelligibility or hollow affectation; his learning is borne deeply, embedded into the flesh of his text and integral to every word.
I learned about this masterpiece from Patrick Kurp’s Anecdotal Evidence, `Capable of Any Folly' 6/14/17
Read
June 6, 2021"Ognuno porta sulle spalle il suo sacco di sofferenze, e per quanto supplichi conforto al cielo, chi l'ascolta, se non il proprio sepolcro?"
Uno dei libri più belli della letteratura americana, del '900, di sempre.
Uno dei libri più belli della letteratura americana, del '900, di sempre.
April 30, 2019
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.
Ill 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 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 that
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 5feet 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 lastyears, 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.
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.
Ill 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 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 that
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 5feet 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 lastyears, 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.
September 2, 2021
"Since I was useless, I began to sleep late; I craved to be the four-footed beast in the darkness, for the sun confused and punished me. the long shoots of evening were the tapers that gave off the light the day had denied me. I already began to doubt that my mother lived, though I dreaded that she would die, and I would lose her image. After we go down into the pit of night, when we are in our beds, we smell the fish of Oceanus, and when we awaken our palates are brackish, and the odor of Leviathan is in our mouths."
Basically every page is like that. Dahlberg describes something as simple as wistfully remembering formative years in the barbershop he's raised and where he is constantly sick in prose that makes his meagre life seem as though it was written into the Old Testament.
What a comical, morbid, and chewy book. Fantastic, gorgeous, fresh uses of words and archaic constructions. At lease one sentence on every page was a meal ("My dreams were round and wombed..."). I will need to read this again with a notebook to jot down the hundreds of strange words used throughout. It was like reading an ancient spellbook. But it's just about this dude's mom getting crushed by life and his guilt at not being a better son.
Basically every page is like that. Dahlberg describes something as simple as wistfully remembering formative years in the barbershop he's raised and where he is constantly sick in prose that makes his meagre life seem as though it was written into the Old Testament.
What a comical, morbid, and chewy book. Fantastic, gorgeous, fresh uses of words and archaic constructions. At lease one sentence on every page was a meal ("My dreams were round and wombed..."). I will need to read this again with a notebook to jot down the hundreds of strange words used throughout. It was like reading an ancient spellbook. But it's just about this dude's mom getting crushed by life and his guilt at not being a better son.
February 2, 2008
Meh. It was ok.
March 2, 2017
Una lettura noiosamente citazionista, pedante, verbosa e anche un po' ripetitiva.
July 1, 2017
Impenetrable. This word sums up my experience reading Dahlberg's book. Nearly every event or observation made by the narrator in this autobiography is accompanied by a show-offy, abstruse allusion to the Bible, ancient mythology, or the classics. I began to feel like a football player trying to make it upfield against a very tight defense: for every yard of story gained, I was knocked back a couple of yards by an unwanted, tedious association. In addition to this, the prose's register is extremely high and, frankly, unappealing, especially in light of the narrative's other hurdles. Finally, there are also a high number of Huh?-sentences. For example, "When the fig is cindered, not virtue or goodness or charity will truss up the chaps and the hams" or "Why dust should wrinkle more in one than in a thousand churls is an enigma for apes." Sentences like this require not only flipping through the dictionary, but also a certain amount of rumination, which generally speaking does not make for a pleasurable read. The furthest I am willing to go with this kind of prose--heavily allusive and challenging--is Nabokov's Lolita, so full of irony and wit and brilliance to compensate for the effort it demands.
July 25, 2011
Impressionistic autobiography, soaked in the language of the old testament prophets and WWI songs... there are lady barbers, Jewish orphans, Army majors, button factories... Very good stuff and highly philosophical. Liked it.
November 19, 2011
Interesting for insight into a childhood in b ad neighborhoods and a Jewish orphanage during the early 1900's, but pompously long winded and grandiloquent. If you like buckets of obscure old testament references, this one is for you.
March 21, 2016
3 1/2 stars
March 4, 2016
Profoundly sad, moving and often times difficult book to read (the biblical and classical references can be overwhelming) but most worthwhile leaving a lasting impression
April 1, 2017
What "autobiographies" could be like, to not capture your life through your life, to avoid the lies of your own perception but instead to focus on the mystery of the (m)Other whom has decided your life with you.
One of the most beautiful attempts at "autobiography" I've read, fascinating writing style, captured something I can't quite wrap my head around yet....
One of the most beautiful attempts at "autobiography" I've read, fascinating writing style, captured something I can't quite wrap my head around yet....
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