SIMPLY ACCUMULATING NOTES
Spadework for a Palace by László Krasznahorkai; translated by John Batki
New DirectionsAugust 2022Selected by Barbara Epler
Curated by the writer and translator Gini Alhadeff, Storybook ND is a new series of slim hardcover books that look to recreate that childhood pleasure of reading a book from start to finish in a single afternoon. As Alhadeff says, “There's nothing sweeter than to fall, for a few hours, between the covers of a perfect book.” The series, designed by Peter Mendelsund and with covers by renowned contemporary artists, consists of original works of fiction from six international authors. These books, with their riotous individual energies, take the reader from Buenos Aires to Berlin via a mysterious magician, a cyborg child and Hebridean tweed, each telling a story that’s entirely their own.
Spadework for a Palace bears the subtitle “Entering the Madness of Others” and offers an epigraph: “Reality is no obstacle.” Yep! This classic Krasznahorkai high-octane rant – a single joyful, soaring, crazy sentence about the interconnectedness of great (and mad) minds – vaults over all obstacles. A little grey librarian is hellbent on connecting Herman Melville with the visionary architect Lebbeus Woods with the rock that is Manhattan with Bartók and with that “drunkard Malcolm Lowry”. – Barbara Epler
I am not related to their famous author, but all my life they’ve been really getting on my nerves about it, just because our names are so similar and thanks to one or two other trivial items, it’s always the same thing, people love to discover so-called interconnections, they’re always contriving them, so the hell with them, when they come across someone whose name is melvill their ears prick up, then the repulsive reporters arrive, followed by Columbia grad students with their troubled eyes, and that’s exactly what happened, they found me, gave me deep and meaningful looks, claiming that it wasn’t because of that, but yes it was, I knew, and indeed it was because of my name, only because of that, though you could have heard a pin drop when they learned that I too resided on East 26th Street, and that I, too – and in fact this, was a true coincidence – that I, too, had worked for a while at the Customs Office, yes, they could point out that both he and I worked as customs officials, but so what, I worked there only for a brief period, it has no significance whatsoever, and anyway I happen to be a librarian, I almost had myself saying a born librarian, who is simply accumulating notes about his connectedness with the Earth, to which they would reply that that’s no big deal, you know mr melvill, not to shock you, but we all have that same connection to the Earth, that’s how they’d amuse themselves, dripping with sarcasm, when I unfortunately happened to accidentally divulge something about this interest of mine, but as far as I was concerned they could make fun of me as much as they liked, they could laugh themselves sick, because for though I might have accidentally let drop a smidgeon or two, I never really revealed to them the essential thing, namely, that my connectedness with the Earth was radically different from theirs, it was not just any old connectedness, but a permanent connectedness that I maintained with the Earth / and STILL DO!!! / by which I mean that for some time now I have been constantly conscious of this connectedness, whereas they were merely babbling nonsense, unconscious of what they were saying, letting words flutter this way and that, without anything to back them up, and trying to pounce upon one thing or another, these reporters and grad students were spouting a flurry of empty words, the hell with them all, for they were in fact not interested in anything, not even what they’d been assigned to report on, or were pretending, wow, to be enthusiastic about, maybe here was something they hoped they could dish out for their readers, or write up for a seminar presentation, but no, I decided they were definitely not going dish me out to anyone, and I would not be the subject of any seminar paper, I won’t have that… ◉