His life was also that of the stories told about him. These began early enough as well. Perhaps not early enough for an ardent fan and biographer. Perhaps not even early enough to ever see outside of whatever persona he was crafting in all the words. That's to say that we never see an outside to him. There's a paradox embedded there. On the one hand we can't possibly believe that any public persona could possibly be so complete as to be without an exterior. The craft of such a thing about imply total knowledge of himself. But at the same time, in his work, we can see a commit to a sense of self that is without outside. As if, as many layers and makeshift masks you want to lay on it, they are all simply permutations of the same self, always giving evidence of the same self inescapably. And unlike the latter day critics, Charles seems to have seen this as the overwhelming blessing of (human) life. There is at least one way to consider life as oneness. And quite simply it seems to be an accordance of life as that only thing. There was never any fracture there for him. None that mattered at least. Which is also to say, full to the brim with fractures of all kinds. Just not the essential one. Until you die at least.
Friday, September 18, 2009
He must have been out west only a little while, maybe ten years at most, after Twain. Of course ten years in that era could see the overthrow of whole ways of life, not to mention nations which tended to have a considerably shorter life span. While the comparison to Twain is in many ways inevitable, their individual roles in the history of American letters diverge at nearly all points. Charles could never have achieved the esteem of Twain and wouldn't have wanted it. If Charles were to embody the American Dream, any american dream, it would have to have been a shadow dream out beyond even the uncharted regions of the west. He didn't want to be known by anything more than the works he produced. And these were more various than could be appreciated. Between his unsigned newspaper columns, his unpublished novels and the piles of paper scraps marked with often undecipherable script, his life was made up of words.
