540
PARTISAN REVIEW
camera), but by the chilly atmosphere of the opening: W. wasn't there
(probably still in America), nor
R.
(I was forgetting: they've quar–
relled). D.S., beautiful and daunting, said to me: "Lovely, aren't they?"
" Yes, very lovely" (but it's thin, there's not enough here, I added under
my
breath). A II of which was pathetic enough. And since, as I've grown
older I have more and more courage to do what I like, after a second
quick tour of the room (staring any longer wouldn't have done more
for me), I took French leave and indulged in a futile spree, from bus to
bus and movie-house to movie-house. I was frozen, I was afraid of
having caught bronchitis (this occurred to me several times). Finally, I
warmed up a little at the Flore, ordering some eggs and a glass of
Bordeaux, though this was a very bad day: an insipid and arrogant
audience: no face to be interested in
or
about which to fantasize,
or
at
least to speculate. The evening's pathetic failure has impelled me to
begin, at last, the reformation of
my
life which I have had in mind so
long. Of which this first note is the trace.
(On rereading: this bit gave me a distinct pleasure, so vividly did it
revive the sensations of that evening; but curiously, in reading it over,
what I remembered best was what was
not written,
the interstices of
notation: for instance, the gray of the Rue de Rivoli while I was
waiting for the bus; no use trying to describe it now, anyway,
or
I'll
lose it again instead of some other silenced sensation, and so on, as if
resurrection always occurred
alongside
the thing expressed: role of the
Phantom, of the Shadow.)
However often 1 reread these two fragments, nothing tells me they
are publishable; nothing tells me, on the other hand, that they are not.
Which raises a problem that is beyond me-the problem of "publish–
ability"; not: "is it good or is it bad?" (a form every author gives
to
his
question), but "is it publishable or not?" This is not only a publisher's
question. The doubt has shifted, slides from the text's quality to its
image. 1 raise for myself the question of the text from the Other's point
of view; the Other is not the public, here, or any particular public (this
is the publisher's question) the Other, caught up in a dual and
somehow personal relation, is
anyone who will read me.
In short, I
imagine that my Journal pages are put in front of "whom I am looking
at," or under the silence of "whom 1 am speaking to."-Is this not the
situation of any text?-No. The text is anonymous, or at least produced
by a kind of
nom de guerre,
that of the author. This is not at all true of
the Journal (even if its "I " is a false name): the Journal is a "discourse"
(a kind of
written word
according to a special code), not a text. The
question 1 raise for myself:
"Should I keep a journal?"
is immediately
