Arnon Grunberg
Words Without Borders

Witold Gombrowicz

When I was eighteen and living in Amsterdam, it was quite fashionable to read Witold Gombrowicz and to think highly of this Polish author.
For reasons that don’t need much explanation, I bought his book Pornografia and was not able to finish it. The expectations raised by the title were not completely met.
First, there was a sense of shame that happens when you are not able to finish a book that is described by others as “great.” Slowly that changed, and I started boasting about classics which in my opinion were not worth reading for more than five pages.
It’s a phase that we all go through, I guess .
Sharing a distaste for a certain author is a good way of bonding with other men, but it doesn’t do much for the art of flirting.
Which is to say that I forgot about Gombrowicz untill recently, when I read an article on him in The New York Review of Books by Charles Simic.
Simic writes: “It never bothered him [Gombrowicz] that we may be living in a meaningless universe. To pretend otherwise was to run away from the truth.” My first editor in the U.S. told me that he believed that there was too much meaning whereas I, as he saw it, thought of this universe as, well, meaningless.
Now meaninglessness has become a little bit like moon boots. Something that used to be fashionable but now you don’t want to be seen with it.
(Maybe I missed something, and moon boots are back in fashion, but I haven’t noticed them in ages and I do think that this is a positive development.)
A lack of meaning is by no means purely negative; it is foremost an opportunity.
That’s what Charles Simic’s article reminded me of. A little bit less meaning can be very healthy.
It might be time to go back to Gombrowicz. It’s a good week for some laughter in the dark.


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