HAROLD BRODKEY
523
reaching- and a Harvardish resonating tin
brilliance
of his own de–
vising-Johnno was not saintly but
was
martyred-and his head was
stonelike like a cathedral enclosing this stuff- the matter of spirit- it
was like a pyramid entombing something or other in the middle of a
desert .... He regards and scans and checks out the middle dis–
tance in a knowing way- with nervous irony- in experienced (and
aging) appetite: for complicated realities-he was the star at the
party as none of the women then in New York who tried to do this
sort of thing- to be entrepreneurs and mistresses and creators–
could have been. They were too tinged with the second-rate and
their being ashamed of admiring anything and their bitterness in
competition. Actually, Johnno was that way, too- but he was more
serious about art-and authority-which, in the end, is a matter
merely of persons- and he had it- authority- and they never did–
except as wielders of malice. They were all drinkers- those women
and J ohnno and the artists of the time- and dark with prejudice and
malice when drunk. But Johnno was unmalicious until he was
drunk-he was helpful to anyone who cared about
art-he
would be
vengeful and enraged shortly, as he drank- he had a larger parish
and a smaller audience than any of the women would risk.
In a window near us is a view of lit stretches of as if rustling
cloud, shifting cloud, ravelling and moving fast, torn antimacassars
in migration past- phallic- water tanks. The set of J ohnno's eye–
brows and their movements- his squinting wide-eyedness and the
cording of the neck and in the jut of the chin- he is toughly, staunchly
aware- and thoroughly drunk- he is on the cusp of malice- but the
period is still one of an evening's (civilized) affections- the broken
layers and stepped edges of his awareness are part of an as if moral
address for the occasion.
I helped father the non-abyss part of Johnno's esthetic and I
nagged it and advised him on it- the rest of him is him or is from
other sources.
In dreams he can be either a pyramid or a
layered
horse- a wild
horse alternating with the drawn and painted horses of pictorial
art- his look of
wit-
the racing (or stalled) commentary- of some–
one of publicly acknowledged
wit-
is like that. In a more personal
sense: his eyelids blink less than most people's- the gallows shadow
that the genital chance casts is on his face. Heat and forwardness
gust around his mouth. An unexpected aura of cleanliness- some–
thing like a shaved look on a shamed dog-lurks at the fork of his
legs.
