In the Marketplace of Ideas

Mark Dorset

When Kraft began work on In the Marketplace of Ideas, the evolution of the sequence of books based on B. W. Beath’s photographs had progressed sufficiently so that Kraft knew that this book would be the fourth in that series. At first, he intended to call it In the Arcades and to present BW’s images very nearly as they had come to him, without manipulation of the images themselves and with a minimum of accompanying text. However, as with each of the preceding books, his intentions shifted as he worked.

While Kraft was looking through BW’s images of several of Paris’s surviving arcades, beginning to make a selection from them, and thinking about an order for them, he began to see that he might use the entrance to each arcade as an entrance to the section of the book devoted to that arcade. If he could have had the pages of the book die-cut, he would have made the first page of each arcade’s section a “door” (a blank page) with a “window” in the door (the die-cut opening) that revealed only a portion of the page that followed it. In this manner, he could use the window to reveal to the viewer the beauty of the arcade’s entrance while the opaque area surrounding the window isolated the entrance from the context of contemporary life. Then, with the turn of the die-cut page (the opening of the door), the diminishing effect of the surrounding bits of contemporary ugliness—the trash, the graffiti, the insistent merchandising—would become apparent.

Alas, the limitations of Kraft’s budget precluded die-cut pages. As an alternative, he decided to use cropping to achieve a similar effect, opening each section with a tightly cropped image of an arcade entrance, printed alone on a right-hand page, and then following it with a wider view on the following right-hand page, in which the cropped element appeared in precise alignment with its first appearance on the preceding right-hand page. The effect is, I think, similar, though not nearly as powerful as it would have been if he had employed die-cut pages.

In laying out the pages for the first of the arcades, Galerie Viviene, Kraft began to see the pattern that the presentation of images for each arcade should take: it would begin with the entrance, walk the viewer through the architectural space of the arcade, offer a look at some of the wares in the shops (if the images were available), and finally present the spaces with people in them.

Note that he planned to put the people last. I think I understand why. When I look at the peopled images, I cannot help feeling that the people do not improve the view. These are images of the arcades with people cluttering them. The people, the shoppers—who are, after all, the raison d’être for the arcades—seem to intrude upon their graceful space. One wants to shoo them outside and lock the doors. At least I do.

In this feeling I depart from the two obvious sources of inspiration for the book: Charles Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen and Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. Baudelaire was an especially ardent admirer of crowds:

Il n’est pas donné à chacun de prendre un bain de multitude: jouir de la foule est un art; et celui-là seul peut faire, aux dépens du genre humain, une ribote de vitalité, à qui une fée a insufflé dans son berceau le goût du travestissement et du masque, la haine du domicile et la passion du voyage. . . . Le promeneur solitaire et pensif tire une singulière ivresse de cette universelle communion. Celui-là qui épouse facilement la foule connaît des jouissances fiévreuses, dont seront éternellement privé l’égoïste, fermé comme un coffre, et le paresseux, interné comme un mollusque. Il adopte comme siennes toutes les professions, toutes les joies et toutes les misères que la circonstance lui présente.

It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude; enjoying a crowd is an art; and only he can relish a debauch of vitality at the expense of the human species on whom, in his cradle, a fairy has bestowed the love of masks and masquerading, the hate of home, and the passion for roaming. . . . The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived of. He adopts as his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that chance offers.

Baudelaire, “Crowds,” in Paris Spleen

When Kraft made the first layout of the book, he rearranged BW’s images so that the progression he wanted—that movement through the arcade—was achieved. As he worked, he found himself wishing that he had taken more photographs of books in the windows of the many bookshops in the arcades. Soon he found himself toying with the idea of staging such photos: arranging books so that they would look as if they were on sale in shops within the arcades. However, he reasoned that most of the books that he had on hand—books of his own that he would want to include within this book—would diminish the verisimilitude because they would not be French editions. The thing to do, if he wanted more books in ItMoI, would be to return to Paris and take, or have BW take, more pictures. What would Madeline think of that idea? He found her at the dining room table, bent over the New York Times, taking notes.

Eric: Mad?
Mad: [intent on her work]: Mm?
Eric: How about a quick trip to Paris?
Mad [still intent on her work]: Mm. Sounds fine.
Eric: Okay then.
Mad [suddenly aware that she has missed something]: What? I didn’t catch what you said. It sounded as if you said something about taking a quick trip to Paris. What was it really? Something about making a dipstick for parrots?
Eric: It was Paris. I’d like to return to the arcades and get some shots that I didn’t get on our last visit.
Mad: I’m game. When do you want to go?
Eric: Actually, I think you’re supposed to point out that the cost of air travel has been rising rapidly—
Mad: Skyrocketing.
Eric: And that the value of our retirement fund has been falling—
Mad: Plummeting.
Eric: I guess you’re right.
Mad: Right? Me? Right about what?
Eric: We shouldn’t be squandering our money on frivolous jaunts.
Mad: Frivolous jaunts? I never said—
Eric: Thanks. You’ve brought me back to my senses.
Mad: What happened here?
Eric: I’m going to go back to work. See you at cocktail time.
Mad: How about French 75s, since we’re not going to Paris?
Eric: Perfect!

Photograph Exhibiting Low Verisimilitude Kraft reasoned that staging a photograph with books of his own would diminish the verisimilitude because they would not be French editions. That would also have been the case had he included this photograph of volumes in the window of a bookshop in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

So no second trip was undertaken. Kraft worked with the images he had, and no images of books in shop windows appear beyond the one that shows four small, rather precious paperback books. One seems to be a small collection of photographs by Man Ray. Another seems to be Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. The third bears the title The Hidden Presence, and, after examining the image with the magnifying glass that came with my copy of the reduced-type edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, I’ve concluded that this might be a journal or “little magazine.” The fourth is apparently the final book in a series of some sort, though what sort cannot be determined. I doubt that it makes sense to read much—or anything—into the arrangement or selection of the books, since BW simply photographed what he saw.

Photograph into Which Not Too Much Should Be Read When wandering the arcades, BW simply photographed what he saw.

While Kraft was working on the text, he came to realize that the whole book—the book that would eventually comprise six sections or parts, of which this would be the fourth—was evolving toward a single more or less continuous narrative, meaning that the resulting book would be far—very far—from the simple photo books with terse snippets of text that he had originally imagined he would make from BW’s images.

I can imagine Kraft shaking his head and grinning wryly when he anticipated BW’s reaction.

Any reader of In the Marketplace of Ideas will see at once that its hero is the unseen woman who advises and guides the unseen man. (Permit me to add a personal note. I find that I am becoming very attracted to the unseen woman and very annoyed by the unseen man.) It is a short step from the recognition of the unseen woman as hero of the piece to the prediction that she will be the hero of the entire suite of six small books. However, Kraft claims that he was not so quick to see the obvious, although he says that he began to understand what the sum of her advice would be: “Get going. Keep moving. Don’t stand in one place too long. Don’t lose sight of the goal. Go forward into your work. Tack when the wind shifts. Row when the wind fails you. Go where you know you ought to go. Above all, get back to work.”

I put it to him that the conversation might be turning out to be about Kraft himself.

MD: I can see now that the unseen man might be a stand-in for you, and that he is seeking advice and consolation from . . . someone. From whom I’m not yet sure. An alter ego? A mentor or counselor? Madeline? Yourself? I’m not sure.
Kraft: Mark, hasn’t it occurred to you that the unseen man could just as easily be a stand-in for you?
MD: Of course it has. I've even alluded to that possibility in my notes to In an Undisclosed Location. I resemble him in having something that I want to do. I want to write my autobiography. The Topical Autobiography of Mark Dorset.
Kraft: And you will.
MD: Someday.
Kraft: But you have other things that must be done first.
MD: Yes, I do. I have other things that must be done first.
Kraft: However, you are sure that the situation you are currently in, with so many things that you want to do being postponed by so many things that you have to do, will not last forever.
MD: It won’t. My future looks bright.
Kraft: Lit by the light of promising projects.
MD: Yes.
Kraft: Yet that future seems so far away.
MD: Because I have to get free of the past, of so many obligations, before I can move toward it, but then, once I’ve gotten past all that, I’ll begin to make my way. You’ll see.
Kraft: I hope I will.
MD: I don't think I deserved that. When I agreed to work on Risking the Ridiculous, I knew that I was adding to the "other things that must be done" that would stand in the way of my topical autobiography, and yet I took it on. I think I deserve some thanks for that. I think I deserve some respect for that.
Kraft (bringing his hand to his forehead): You're right. I'm sorry. I have a lot on my mind. I'm anxious, on edge. Ignore me.
MD: Gladly.

Inevitably, there came the interview with BW, during which Kraft showed him the layouts for the book.

BW: This book marks the point at which the text dominates the images.
Kraft: That may be.
BW: The images have been reduced to illustrations of the text.
Kraft: I don’t agree.
BW: I know that there is nothing I can do to get you to slash some words from this, so I will ask a favor of you when you go to work on my images of New York.
Kraft: Yes?
BW: Restrain yourself. Ask yourself whether the images might not say what you want them to say without your saying it again in words. Let them stand on their own. Don’t smother them.
Kraft: I—
BW: Yes?
Kraft: I’ll try, but there will be text.

With this book, Kraft realized that he really would have to settle on a single controlling metaphor for the unseen woman to use in describing how the unseen man should proceed. Should that metaphor be derived from sailing, rowing, walking, flying, rowing in the air, or ballooning? He wasn’t yet sure.

Whatever the choice, the advice that the unseen woman had offered in Just Now, at Present, that the unseen man ought to “chip away” at the obligations that were tethering him to the past, preventing him from proceeding or progressing, seemed likely to be “wrong” by the time Kraft reached the sixth and final book, wrong in the sense that it would not fit the metaphor, because the metaphor was going to be about making progress toward a goal or destination, not about carving a future out of marble; that is, the obligations to the past could not be represented as the portion of marble that must be chipped away from a block to reveal the sculpture hidden, or waiting, within.

I’d like to say a final word about the attachment of this book to reality. At the opening of the text of In the Marketplace of Ideas, Kraft identifies the setting of the overheard conversation as the Café Vienés in the Hotel Casa Fuster. Casa Fuster was designed by Lluis Domènech i Montaner for Mariano Fuster i Fuster, who commissioned it as a gift for his wife, Consuelo Fabra. Domènech i Montaner was one of the architects of Barcelona’s Nineteenth-Century Modernisme movement. Among his other notable buildings is the Palau de la Musica Catalana. In the books that preceded this one, Kraft had avoided naming the setting, and he had instructed me to refer to it in my account of the making of Just Now, at Present only as a lounge “somewhere in Barcelona.” The conversation never took place there, or anywhere else, but Eric and Madeline did drink some cava there one afternoon in September of 2007.

On October 29, 2008, the Babbington Press published In the Marketplace of Ideas in an edition limited to fewer than one hundred copies.