Spectacular lies
Nice people
A friend alerted me to this article in the Times:
“He told stories of growing up on Manhattan’s Sutton Place, of getting into Yale at 14 and of his work as an astrophysicist, venture capitalist or movie producer, depending on his whim.
And Boston listened.
To his wife and everyone else here, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter was known as Clark Rockefeller — presumably a member of one of the nation’s richest and most storied families.
But that persona disintegrated on a Back Bay street last summer when, on his first custody visit with his daughter after a bitter divorce, Mr. Gerhartsreiter pushed aside a social worker who was supervising, jumped into a waiting car with the 7-year-old girl and fled. That led to an international manhunt and, prosecutors say, the unveiling of a life’s worth of spectacular lies.
This most erudite of cities, where Mr. Gerhartsreiter had made his home since 2006, will be watching closely when he goes on trial here this week, seeking an explanation of how he could have fooled his former wife, a graduate of Harvard Business School, and so many others for so long.
Six days after his disappearance, investigators arrested Mr. Gerhartsreiter in Baltimore, where he told them he had hoped to start a new life with his daughter, Reigh. According to court documents, he had presented himself to real estate agents in Baltimore as Chip Smith, a ship’s captain who was moving with his daughter, Muffy.
Soon after the arrest, investigators matched a fingerprint he had left on a wine glass to one from an old immigration document; they said he was a German citizen who had come to the United States as an exchange student in the 1970s, and never left.”
But another friend brought Louis Begley’s review on James Park Sloan’s biography on Jerzy Kosinski to my attention.
Mr. Begley wrote in that review: “Nice people who don't tell lies are not likely to write great novels.”
From time to time it’s important to remember this truth.
i wrote valenttina freschi
because she showed up in a picture with you i told her that sometime she should maybe visit the big bend where by native legend the scraps of the world's creation were thrown.. i made my tourist pitch a maybe dangerous fiction by omitting mention of the border.. but i believe in preemptive ecological tourism.. peaceful cultural missionaryism.. some credit the successful excesses of fictionaists to the innate honesty and goodness of the general run.. i suspect merely a blinding fiixation on other lies.. i note that to so many historical critics 'great novel' is the fiction if not an oxymoron.. kozinski moved to finance, didn't he? a man always ahead of the curveQuin
Valentina is a beautiful young woman. As far as I know she is not prone to telling lies, but I don't think she is eager to write a novel. Her boyfriend Marco is equally beautiful. He is into Nietzsche and he paints.Quin
Are you speaking of Big Bend National Park in Texas?vilde
yes.. have yoou been there?Quin
Yes, but I hadn't heard of that legend. Have you been there?vilde
in the spring of 2005.. the winter before had been very wet and everything bloomed out and it was hard to think it was desert.. marfa is so weird.. it has a fake prada storefront and a real etats unis (that beiing an upper east restaurant - they call it something else in marfa)..and arnon
mario's uptown.. i talked to him yesterday.. i have wriitten valentina's young man requestiing he bring her here soon.. i suggested he might like a look at the work of domino danzero who comes up in google.. last friday i dined at fedoras which has been opened by amber campisi's twin sister gina.. food's fair.. you could eat there.. better is the family's old egyptian room.. i think i remember that's where ruby ate the night before he killed oswald.. try the crab claws whenever you should visitQuin
Do you think Arnon would enjoy a visit to Marfa?Quin
He is uptown, meaning he is still at St. Ambroeus? The ravioli I had there the other night was delicious, but as I said before the kitchen is much more uneven than it used to be.After I had dinner at Madoff's favorite Italian restaurant it's a good idea to have a meal where Ruby ate before he killed Oswald.
Do you have directions? I don't have a driver's license.
Important truth?
“From time to time it’s important to remember this truth. (“Nice people who don't tell lies are not likely to write great novels.”)”Really? It sounds like one of those truths from same series as “great literature is borne from suffering”. Why not argue that people who do tell lies are not likely to write novels? I’m pretty sure that statistically speaking this is a lot more truthful. As I’m sure you know.
Which makes it the more interesting question: why are you so fond of remembering this little lie from time to time?
vilde
i'm sure arnon, or indeed most any gentle reader here, would enjoyably profit from a visit to marfa.. getting there's sorta hard and living there full time can be sorta lean.. but as a place to visit it is sweet.. i don't think much of judd really, but i like john chamberlain and his stuff is downtown a short stroll from the hotel where liz taylor stayed when they shot giant (i think it was giant). i think european visitors to texas are best off hiring a driver.. for one thing you can't count on finding parking anymore.. and for another they zone the demi monde off in industrial districts about a thousand miles from anywhere and then they hit you with a ten dollar valet charge for any of the parking under lights .. it's a racket.. yes mario is still at the uptown sant ambroeus but i know not his schedule.. actually when i was in marfa i kept thinking, 'man, this would be the perfect place for mario to winter. ' tell him i said so..Michel
You have a point. But please keep in mind: the context is Kosinski.Michel V.
How to define "nice" and "don't tell lies"?Of course, most of us are nice and truthful people. That may be the reason why we need despicable liars to write us good novels.
On the other hand, it may be the case that we are all liars and not as nice as we think we are. That may be the reason why we need friendly and honest people to write us novels that are worth reading.
Do you want us to say that you're nice, truthful and a good writer at the same time? You may be asking for too much.
Nice writers
Kosinsky may have been a liar about his personal experiences, he certainly was not a liar about what happened during WO 2.But a person who writes about horrible things, I think, will away arouse some suspicion around his character. Can you write about horror and still be considered a nice person?
It seems to me, that someone who writes about horror, in a certain way wants to transfer this experience to other people, and indirectly suggests, ‘I can do this to you too’.
T.R.
You are right, everyone lies to some extent. I don't think anyone would dispute that. If we take into account that there are no people who do not lie, the little "trut" actually becomes amusingly accurate: "Non-existent people do not write great novels."Like Arnon said, it is important to remember this from time to time.
