In the Center of Redefinition

Mark Dorset

When this book was complete, ready for publication, and Kraft gave me a proof copy to read, or examine, in preparation for this essay on the making of it, I was surprised at the way the unseen woman’s advice had evolved.

Kraft: So was I.
MD: I had expected that you would have her say something “inspiring,” although you would undoubtedly have used irony to distance yourself from what she said.
Kraft: You thought that I would have employed that cheap use of irony to hide my true feelings? Or to avoid exposing my true feelings?
MD: Ignoring that question for a moment, just let me say that I had come to expect that the woman would try to give her companion something that would lift him out of the slough he was in.
Kraft: Yes, so had I. Specifically, I expected her to say something about rising above it all. I even had the images to reinforce it. BW had given me a number of photographs taken from airplanes, and I thought that I would use some of them to make a final volume, a sixth, called, of course, Above It All, in which she would tell him how to lift himself above it all, how to get himself into a state of elevation, how to be aloof, loftily distant from the world’s concerns, his concerns, even her concerns, so that he could do his work. I had no idea what sort of trick she was going to teach him, but it was going to get him above it all, and then she was going to tell him, “Let your will be your wind and it will take you where you want to go,” and she was going to mean it.
MD: Is that an old saying?
Kraft: No. I made it up for the unseen woman. At least I think I did. It’s possible that I’m remembering it, but I think I created it. It’s so typical of the kind of bullshit promulgated by the self-realization industry that it has to be a parody, don’t you think?
MD: Well —
Kraft: So it must be mine.

An Image that Would Have Appeared in Above It All This photograph was taken above the Pyrenees, en route from an undisclosed location to the marketplace of ideas.

Although Kraft began his work on In the Center of Redefinition with the expectation that it would be followed by another book, the last in the series, there came a day when he realized that he couldn’t have the unseen woman offer false advice, advice that he didn’t believe himself, and that he wouldn’t need a sixth volume, or part. In addition, he would not have to change the advice that the unseen woman had given the unseen man in Just Now, at Present. There would be no need to change it, because it was correct. She had been right about chipping away then, and she would offer the same advice now. He realized what he should have realized from the start: that the book would be sincere.

Kraft: That felt very odd. Weird. From the start, I had intended the book to be a joke.
MD: You mean the complete book, of which In the Center of Redefinition would become a part?
Kraft: Yes.
MD: And do you really mean that you intended it to be a joke?
Kraft: I do. I hoped that it would be an elegant joke, and that it would be one of those jokes that reveals a truth, like the kreplach joke, but still I had intended that it would be a joke.
MD: The kreplach joke?
Kraft: Yes.
MD: Will you —
Kraft: I won’t tell it to you, because I’ve never really learned how to tell a joke, but I will tell you about it.
MD: I’ll settle for that.
Kraft: The premise is that there was once a little boy who was afraid of kreplach. This upset his parents enormously, as you can imagine. They couldn’t let their dear boy go through life suffering from fear of kreplach. They had to do something. They consulted several specialists. One of them suggested a therapy that sounded as if it would work, so they began it the next day. The mother brought the boy into the kitchen and sat him on a stool where he could watch her while she worked. Then she began making kreplach, step by step, and at each point she would tell him what she was doing and get him to agree that he wasn’t afraid. She would say something like “See, this is flour. We use flour in cookies. You’re not afraid of flour, are you?” or “Look: we’ve got a little square of dough. You’re not afraid of a little square of dough, are you?” Then she proceeded through beef, onion, and salt for the filling, and soon she had a number of filled triangles, and the boy was still not afraid. She put the triangles in water and boiled them until they floated. Then she put one on a plate and set it in front of her boy, who screamed, “Aaargh! Kreplach!” and ran away to hide under his bed.
MD: I see. So it’s a joke about the idea that a thing can be more than the sum of its parts.
Kraft: Actually, I think it’s a bit more than that. I think it’s a joke about how the parts become something that is more than their sum. It’s a joke about the transformative power of cooking, or cooks, or about the transformative power of art, or artists.

Although the book lost its trivial protective irony, it acquired another type of irony, the type that I have called, in “You Can Trust Me, Honest,” the unintended irony of sincerity. In the Center of Redefinition and the cycle of which it became the concluding part actually give the advice that Kraft gives himself, advice that he often needs, for during much of the time that he is developing one of his writing projects he has to push himself to work on it. His reluctance to work on the project arises from laziness, of course, but also from his worries about the project, or for it. Often, he is sufficiently worried about it to be reluctant to proceed with it. His worries can become fears, and foremost among those fears is the fear that the work will manage to get away from him. By “get away from him” I don’t mean that it will grow or develop in some way that is beyond his control. He would consider that notion preposterous, as I do. I mean, instead, that the work might “get away” in the sense that it might escape him before it is finished, before it is right. He fears that a piece of work could deceive him. It could make him think (I might appropriately have used believe here instead of think) that it is ready and right, and he might send it into the world, only to discover later that it was not ready, and that it was very wrong. He fears that treacherous bit of self-deception, and the fear makes him want to avoid working on the piece at all. I can imagine his reasoning: if he doesn’t work on it, it will never reach the point at which it might seem good enough to be called complete although it is not. Neglected, it will remain obviously incomplete and, therefore, safe. Some of his work has been languishing in this state for years, including Ariane Lodkochnikov’s Making My Self . . . and Dinner and my own Topical Autobiography (though he has recently begun writing that, or having me write it, one small piece at a time).

In the specific case of In the Center of Redefinition, Kraft’s fear of releasing the work before it was right was compounded by the fact that this piece of work would eventually become the concluding section of the book that he was beginning to feel certain he would call Where to Go and What to Do. Emotionally, he found himself pulled in two directions by the importance of the role that ItCoR would play in WtGaWtD. In one direction lay the boldness of sincerity; in the other lay the safety of irony.

As he worked on the “chip-away” ending, he began to feel more confident about it and the sincerity of it. In his heart he knew, he had long known, that the unseen woman’s chip-away advice really is the advice that should be given to a struggling writer, or artist, or to anyone stymied in the effort to do something difficult and demanding, and he was strengthened in this conviction by the fact that it reiterated the advice that she had given in Just Now, At Present, which would now become the second part of Where to Go and What to Do.

At that point, however, something (perhaps it was an instinctive desire to protect the ego, possibly a manifestation of a Freudian defense mechanism) made Kraft decide not to let the unseen woman’s good advice be the last word. Instead, he would give BW the last word, and BW’s last word — actually, his parting words — would give an ironic twist to everything that had preceded them. Then ItCoR and WtGaWtD would both be right, and ready.

The parting exchange between BW and the beautiful Miranda (who had acquired a name to add to her epithet at some point in the development of In the Center of Redefinition) and the final image would make this work reflect and reinforce “Realism in the Service of Romance.” Kraft considered that “fictional essay” important as a statement of his aesthetic and his goals for his work. By having BW introduce the notion of the artist rising above “it all” in a balloon — whatever balloon it is that an artist might use to gain some distance from “the immediate data of experience,” i. e. the balloon of Art, or the balloon of inspiration, or the balloon of ego — making it entirely ironic, but then ending with BW’s image of a sunrise taken from the air, as if he and the beauty had indeed lifted off, ascended to a position above it all. As a result, the balloon as a metaphorical image went from being the woman’s, employed sincerely, to BW’s, employed ironically, even sarcastically.

(I should mention, I think, that during his work on ItCoR Kraft had revived BW’s career as a “restaurant reviewer,” publishing his “reviews” on the Web as they came in. However, BW’s pieces rarely mention a response to the food that he and his constant companion, the beautiful Miranda, consume. Instead, his dispatches from the restaurants that they visit consist mainly of field reports on the habits and behavior of the diners in whose proximity they find themselves, along with mouth-watering photographs of the food they eat. We might call him an observer of the zeitgeist or a hungry eavesdropper.)

When Kraft knew what the ending to In the Center of Redefinition would be, he felt an overwhelming desire to get it finished and out into the world, and then to begin the work of bringing together all the parts of Where to Go and What to Do. He worked at it, chipping away, chipping away, and for quite some time didn’t seem to be making much progress, but then, suddenly, one day, it was ready. The text was what it ought to be. The images were as they should be. (I will have more to say about the images shortly.)

Kraft read In the Center of Redefinition to Madeline over the course of two evenings (a Wednesday and a Thursday). After the first reading, which included the text that precedes the images and a viewing of the pictures themselves, she was exhilarated.

Kraft: I think she gasped with delight, but her response to the second reading was markedly different. She was stunned. I think she may have been disappointed. “It’s very sad,” she said. “Yes,” I said.

A feeling that I think I am going to have to call resignation settled over them. They both knew that he would go on chipping away for as long as he was capable of it.

After I had read the unseen woman’s remarks, I couldn’t resist pointing out that I saw a strong similarity between what she said and Sonia’s remarks at the end of Uncle Vanya:

Sonia: What can we do? We must live our lives.
[A pause]
Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender smile — and — we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith.
[Sonia kneels down before her uncle and lays her head on his hands. She speaks in a weary voice]
We shall rest.
[Telegin plays softly on the guitar]
We shall rest. We shall hear the angels. We shall see heaven shining like a jewel. We shall see all evil and all our pain sink away in the great compassion that shall enfold the world. Our life will be as peaceful and tender and sweet as a caress. I have faith; I have faith.
[She wipes away her tears]
My poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are crying!
[Weeping]
You have never known what happiness was, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait! We shall rest.
[She embraces him]
We shall rest.
[The Watchman’s rattle is heard in the garden; Telegin plays softly; Mme. Voitskaya writes something on the margin of her pamphlet; Marina knits her stocking]
We shall rest.

“I see the similarity,” said Kraft, “but there is a fundamental difference, isn’t there?”

Something came over me, something that made me become jocose. “Of course,” I said, with an impish grin to signal my unwonted jocosity, “Sonia’s remarks were originally delivered in Russian.”

“More importantly,” said Kraft, apparently having failed not only to notice the impish grin but also to “get” my little joke, “what Sonia says is about resignation; she counsels resignation. What the unseen woman says is about struggle, not resignation; she counsels making one’s way forward, persisting in the effort, even believing in an eventual triumph. I’m not sure that the unseen man will eventually triumph, but I think that the woman might, if she sticks with him, help him to make the effort, and to persist in it. Don’t you agree?”

“I do,” I said. “I was just making a little joke.”

“About resignation?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “It was about — well — never mind.”

The time had nearly come for Kraft to have me begin writing this account of the making of ItCoR, but there remained one last prerequisite to my beginning: the unavoidable discussion with BW.

BW’s images of renovation and redefinition in New York had hardly undergone much transformation or manipulation at Kraft’s hands, merely cropping, straightening, and, of course, dramatization, by which I mean putting them into a sequence that built toward a conclusion (the image of the statue at the top of a renovation) and that put some of them into pairings in which two images worked together as comments on each other, or clashed to create visual tension. Kraft expected an easy interview with BW, but BW was not pleased.

BW: This represents the final triumph of the text over the images.
Kraft: Why do you say that? I kept the text separate from the images. It doesn’t interrupt them —
BW: It makes them superfluous. The unseen man describes the images before we ever see them — not only does he describe them but he interprets them. Because his words anticipate the images, all they do, all that is left for them possibly to do, is illustrate his words. When I gave the images to you, they were statements. Each one was a statement. You have reduced them to illustrations. None is anything more than an illustration of a statement, a statement in words.

On April 21, 2009, the Babbington Press published In the Center of Redefinition in an edition limited to fewer than one hundred copies.