BELIEVERS, NON-BELIEVERS: AN INSIDE, UNMASKING, UP CLOSE LOOK AT GOD
Merton, DeLillo, Nabokov, Thomas' Wolfe + Dylan, Peggy Lee, Donne, Robert Lowell, Pascal, Tolstoy, Dante, Jung, Nietzsche, Phil Silvers, Buddy Ebsen, Kafka, Bach, & Rilke who calls his penis: Rocket.
Back in December 2023, I wrote a SUBSTACK effort about one of my all-time favorite personalities, Renata Adler, titled “The Over-Informed Correspondent.”
Here are the first two paragraphs from that article:
“Not for the faint of mind. Renata Adler was big time—an American author, journalist, film critic, and onetime writer-reporter-staffer for The New Yorker. She also ruled as chief film critic at The New York Times. During the mid-1970s, Adler wrote what she dubbed “fiction,” a novel that became a best-seller, called Speedboat. That was forty-seven years ago; it was a new book that changed the definition of fiction. It even altered the way I wanted to write. And now, it might change me one more time.
“Like nothing before it, Speedboat splashed on the scene disregarding the novel’s rules, including those I’d learned. Yet, reading it was a pleasure. Its voice—ambivalent, curious, wry, and occasionally self-deprecating—was that of Jen Fain, a journalist negotiating the uneven, unpredictable landscape of contemporary America. Party guests, taxi drivers, brownstone dwellers, professors, journalists, presidents, and debutantes fill her observations from the universe as heroine Jen viewed it. And Jen’s beau happened to be named Jim, no kin. I wondered as a young guy ‘How did Adler know what she knew?’ I’m reminded of a Peter Matz-Barbra Streisand song where Babs references “A man who won't ask how I learned what I know…”. I’m asking.” End of December’s SUBSTACK reference. A new beginning…
You see, I favor writing that contains short accounts, sometimes known as vignettes.
Concerning The Future of Souls
Recently, a new book surfaced in New York enticingly called Concerning The Future of Souls. (At the bottom of the cover:) 99 Stories of Azrael, by Joy Williams (Tin House, Distributer, W. W. Norton). I was suckered in. I had to have it.
Joy Williams is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, National Books Critics Circle Award winner, Rea Award recipient for Short Story, and a winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Strauss Living Award.
Post haste, what arrived in my mailbox from USPS, was a 5 x 8 hardcover with promising praise on the back from NPR, “Quite possibly America’s best living writer of short stories.”
(What? And who in the hell is the title’s Azrael?)
CUT TO: Also, dubbed fiction, Joy Williams delivers 99 truly short-short, often fable-like gests/gists (?) stories, compact, snap-shot illuminations from a character called Azrael, God’s angel of death – so, that’s who he is – God’s angel of death, whose job was to extract … transport souls from dead bodies to the next level. Au contraire, this fearsome Angel Azrael is pensive…handsome … more like a well-healed undertaker, troubled by his unsavory work.
On the plus side, along with my affinity for vignettes, I’m always on the lookout for new information; I’m eager to learn more about most subjects. And author Joy Williams’ new work spanned the spectrum from the ordinary to the great: she promised and then delivered a crash course; ample, incisive amounts of aesthetics, philosophy, religion, metaphysics, morality, literature, culture, history, even a nod to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Plus, we must not leave out, in the process, she questions the mortality of being mortal. And what she did was to cram all that into 99 pithy vignettes mostly about that previously mentioned “gentleman,” Azrael … who is in charge of our dead souls, bless him.
And what we get here is … allusions; gleanings, personages from the likes (and un-likes) of deep thinkers ranging from Carl Jung to Blaise Pascal DeLillo to John Edgar Wideman, Christopher Hitchens and bluesman Reverend Gary Davis. I pray it’s not incumbent on me to apologize for my literal readings of things. Bite your tongue. A onetime Catholic with some leftover guilt (does it ever leave?) I’m going to take book renown critic Dwight Garner1 word for here: it’s OK to laugh at (and with) God. If you hang in with me, you’ll find everything’s fair game for “sharp but mostly playful abuse” in these subtle short-short stories.
ONE: On page 149, Ms. William quotes a line from an American Popular Standard song, the one area I know quite well, “Comes Love,” and then footnotes singer “Peggy Lee.” Peggy Lee did not write (nor sing) “Comes Love,” but 34 other vocalists did record it. It IS possible along the way Miss Lee did sing the wonderful old classic in concert, but she never waxed the tune. And for the record, jazz standard “Comes Love” was written in 1939—composer, Sam H. Stept and lyricists Lew Brown and Charles Tobias—and featured in the Broadway musical Yokel Boy, which starred Phil Silvers and Buddy Ebsen. Comic-actress-singer-radio personality Judy Canova had the pleasure of introducing the showstopper. I enjoyed seeing the song in the book but frankly found the reference to Peggy Lee puzzling. Know that when I was a child, my parents had the radio on 24/7 and I heard Judy Canova’s weekly radio show and early pop American Standards continually. You’d be better off sampling Carmen McRae on the album, “75 Great Jazz Divas;” singing “Comes Love,” better yet, a treat: Y-TUBE Carmen McRae singing “Comes Love” on The Ed Sullivan Show. Y-TUBE or Google.
TWO: On Page 21, author Williams wrote this, “One of God’s favorite elements was water…”. Coincidentally, friends, one of my idiosyncrasies is — I now keep it in check — I like drinking gallons of cold water, preferable with cubes. I used to chuck-a-lug the treat while reading the newspapers and/or/both watching the news from 7 p.m. to midnight. I had to stop that indulgence, if you will, cold turkey, or agree to stay awake all night most of that time in the head. I still indulge, from time to time.
THREE: On Page 40, I underlined this quote in the book I found strange: “…the Buddha was certainly no fool he had certainly overestimated our abilities to be responsible by a great deal.” Huh? Out (or in) context: odd. Perhaps beneficent Buddhist’s might know what that means. Is it due to the rigorous discipline necessary to be a good follower? May be.
FOUR: A startling reference to how Thomas Merton died: “wet from his shower, with a short-circuited electric fan on his chest, a dumb death.” Am I missing a subtlety here? Cautionary tale?
FIVE: Don DeLillo, in an entry called “Underworld,” Williams wrote… “The highest currency that can pass between certain friends is ‘the stand-up scorn that carries their affections.’” Is that an oxymoron we should be cognizant of — adhere to? Unsure why it’s included, though I concede: it is interesting.
SIX: Williams slipped in a story from the great Tolstoy who had written about an experience while sleeping in a tiny room “spending the night on his way from one place to another …”. In the middle of the visit, he got up and stepped into the hallway, then experienced what appeared to be, to this 2024 mind, what sounds like a garden variety anxiety attack. “What nonsense,” Tolstoy said to himself, and wrote, “Why do I feel anguish what am I scared of? Of me, came the soundless voice of death. I am here…” Author Williams added, “For Tolstoy, ‘everything was different for him after that. His life, his writing, everything.’” I ask: what are we to take away from that tidbit? Is she merely sharing an aha moment in Tolstoy’s life that has some higher meaning for us to savor or be on the lookout for?
SEVEN: Finally, here’s an entry I favor. I found it like a section in televangelist Joel Osteen’s lectures he’s repeated a couple of times (available online). I never forgot the parable (?) because it is uncharacteristic of his (Osteen’s) teachings. The Right Reverend suggests getting hold of a footstool, and when annoyed — or on the outs with someone — place that culprit’s name underneath the footstool; yes, put the bugger’s names, under a footstool… What a concept! What a novel idea! In another SUBSTACK article, yours truly suggested some enterprising blokes run with that: create an enemies’ footstool, label it “Enemy’s Footstool!”, sell it on Amazon.com, and clean up. What an unusual and creative Christmas gift. I’d buy two, one for me and one for an old friend in Brooklyn who hates everyone we know (and don’t know.)
About now, our Joy Williams tells us this: “There are 42 psalms of lament in the Hebrew Bible, eight of which are communal…. Cry, followed by Confession of Trust, the Petition, the Exclamation of Certainty and the Vow of Praise.” She then adds, when fatootsed, “…include a curse on the enemies which the people believe to be the cause of their suffering or a claiming of the people’s innocence in the situation.” And her bold footnote to that, in all caps, underlined. “INCLUDE IF HELPFUL.” An option for YOU: Google “Joel Osteen — It's Under Your Feet.” It’s a hoot.
EIGHT: One more FLASH OF LIGHTNING story, like Tolstoy’s. Blaise Pascale, brilliant mathematician, when thirty-one experienced what he called a “night of fire.” (It only lasted two hours.) He wrote down, “nothing extraordinary… Certitude. God. Feeling Joy, Peace, Jesus. Tears of Joy.” End of Pascale’s quote. Words Ms. Williams’ details about that: “He sewed the paper into his coat evidence of the grace bestowed up him that night…He never returned to mathematics or his sister, physics, but spend the remaining years—there were eight of them — composing his Pensees (?)—reflections on God, meaning, and the faith that transcends the limitations of thought. …The beauty of this is these fragments are not based on logic,” Williams added, “though mathematics is not based on logic either,” and then Williams ends with this: “Nothing is based on logic.” (Really?!, Ms. Williams, really?). As “Maud” would say, “God’ll get you for that.”
NINE: Here’s one for New Yorkers only: I feel compelled to include Page 106, Chapter 66, “What do the rich have to look forward to after death? Nothing!” And this, FOOTNOTE conclusion: All caps and underlined, “SO THERE. LUKE 12:19--20”
(Sigh.)
The Devil’s Sneakers & The Poet’s Penis
Though the story builds from one story to the next … several times while reading this book, I asked myself, What kind of mind would write this book? I found some insight (?) from research. I read somewhere “that author Joy Williams is the daughter of a Congregational minister. It was suggested, her work might be filtered through flinty and many times anarchic varieties [vagaries?] of religious experience.” That doesn’t help us much here, does it?
Hang on in anyway, you won’t believe what’s coming up. Two — on Private Parts, honest.
Author Williams does have a sense of humor. On Page 128, she writes something that amused ME, anyway: The Devil had an infinite supply of sneakers and never wore the same pair twice as far as Azrael could tell…the reason we had a great falling out was because I wasn’t supportive of that Adam and Eve business…” Gratuitous Fashion Statement? I smiled. Author Williams leaves no turn un-stoned.
On Page 142, “Rilke once referred to his penis—the poet’s penis—as a womb-dazzling rocket. The Angel’s weren’t indifferent to him, the Devil thought. They just didn’t like him” — with this all caps, and an underlined footnote: “WHO IF I CRIED WOULD HEAR ME AMONG THE ANGELIC ORDERS?” Hats off, perhaps, to Mr. Rilke.
From male genitalia to…Mrs. Williams’ sense of humor kicked in again. One of our great writers, Vladimir Nabokov when he was dying had tears in his eyes. … his son Dimitri said that those tears indicated to him that his father had come to realize that he would never again pursue his beloved butterflies, that they were on the wing without him. … he would die and be no longer capable of experiencing the joy of stalking—the capture, extinguishment and analysis. The forests and fields, his ‘collecting grounds,’ he lovingly excitedly executed his collections…The butterfly has long been the symbol of recovery, rebirth, metamorphosis, the arising of the soul…Nabokov was mostly interested in the radiant insects’ genitalia. Such minute and improbably perfection.” Wow! IT’S IN THE BOOK!2
About this Azrael gent, (Remember he’s God’s angel of death) — The Devil describes Azrael this way “grotesque beauty — who extracts souls from their bodies, has four thousand wings…countless feathers on each wing. He had to entrust his wings and eyes to remember it all.” You see, those wings shelter the souls… concealing them in transit. If that wasn’t outlandish looking enough, Azrael was blessed with a thousand dazzling, brownish, black eyes. (Another time, they were extraordinary indigo color.) Only one head, you understand, but a thousand eyes. “If a single eye were nicked, they would all come to grief surely.”
Mixed blessing, there’s more to that: the pupils of Azrael’s multicolored eyes are heart-shaped, crescents, slits with cones pulsating behind them. How this works: the pupils could rest while open but also watch us when shut. Those talented, versatile pupils see everything that moves, and everything that is about to move, or has ceased to move. If that’s not sufficient enough, he has a sleek, talented tongue, with which he can lick (you read it right) … can lick at / or on those outrageous eyes. They have a slight salt taste. Shudder.
Enough of that.
The Devil is depressed
Azrael and The Devil have a tragic-comic, yet touching relationship, you might call best frenemies. And these two men (?) remind me of two buds in a buddy movie: or warring factors even between gal and guy in a romantic comedy. I’m not sure of what to make of them... as they dance round one another and talk, talk, talk.
You see, The Devil is depressed. (As author Williams put it, “one of his blue periods.”) He has no affection for his…devotees…his admirers, but if the truth be told, frankly, he thinks they are bums. It’s bad. He’s downright inconsolable …because, well, evil is not doing so good these days— like a hoop rolling down a hill and that’s unfortunate, for his mental health. He no longer needs to tend to them. (Could it be a case of E.N.S. -- empty nest syndrome, I ask?) You see, the world is shrinking. The Devil can’t seem to find destinations for all the souls he gathers on those imposing four thousand wings from Earth to whatever comes after it.
Why, even his snakes, who thrilled him “because they’ve dethroned kings,” no longer want much to do with him. All that makes for a foul mood… You further need to know: The Devil is a lonely fellow. Let me add before we get too far aware from his physical description, (and for accuracy’s sake) he has grown vain about his multicolored eyes.
So, about this time, The Devil asks his pal… what about you and me, us — Azrael and The Devil, that is — go down to the corner bar, called “Barb’s Wire,” (Barb’s Wire Neighborhood Pub? The Barb’s Wire Corner Saloon?) and have a drink. No way, no friggin’ way. Not to be. Not going to happen. “Too dirty.”
While we’re in the describing mode here, we need to know a tad more about Azrael. You see, when he was an infant, God sang “Ghost Riders in the Sky” to him. (What does “yippie I oh, yippie I yay” mean, anyway, he wonders.) Even if he could, The Devil doesn’t help him out on that one. Along about now, Azrael shares something special: sometimes he craves a damn good milkshake… IT’S IN THE BOOK! (Chocolate or Vanilla?) This morsel proves Joy Williams is probably a good dinner companion. I’d buy.
And, oh yes, Angel Azrael has a penchant for “a great deal of” poetry, especially Gerard Manley Hopkins,’ the rhymer who became a Jesuit priest, stopped writing, and came into fame, posthumously. (Out of all the poets in and out of the universe, why that one?). We’re not told.
Friends, as you can tell, in this book, The Devil and Azrael converse a lot. An example of a questions. “What is the very worst thing that has happened to you?” The answer? Too subtle for thee? “The fall” … from grace? Then the author lists multiple great works of art depicting “The Fall,” then ends with the from The Devil… “He’d always been vain. He’s been told it was one of his biggest problems” …
Next, The Devil scolds Azrael: You don’t even know how to converse. (Is that true?) You see, Azrael is mostly silent; The Devil likes to have, as many of us do, long, cozy conversations. Not going to happen! And The Devil speaks to everyone (except to himself.) I don’t recall God ever entering into much dialogue with anyone in the book but by this time I have to admit, there are no guarantees for me of “getting it.” Perhaps, there never were/was. (Not being coy. Often perplexed throughout.)
I feel compelled to include this: the two friends touchingly rely on one another’s company to stave off a void of … loneliness. To me, it appears to be a healthy need for connection that smacks distinctly of being human — and a subject the New York Times writes about frequently during these uncertain times. (I keep a file.)
Of course, this work would not be complete without including J. C. Jesus is mentioned once, incidentally: “Jesus was surprisingly unfamiliar with death other than His own” … Williams writes with great authority. One wonders how she knows that fact(?) The point or what’s the point? Azrael and Jesus are not well acquainted. A throw-away en passant?
An aside… a bit of research: Running below all these episodes is “…the loneliness… down on earth, of acidifying oceans, species loss and space junk crashing Muskily down from the cosmos….”. I found this downright refreshing, a pleasant detour. Could we have more of that, please? No? OK then, back to …
If I may get serious for a moment: Perhaps, of central concern: through out, I get a sense that the author is trying to convey a cautionary tale … the destruction of the natural world — a clear warning about the cost of damaging our environment – our surviving ecological disaster. Perhaps obvious to most? Back to something more fun:
IS THIS WILLIAMS’ DESCRIPTION OF LIFE? Before rapping a wrap, I want to include all of Chapter 18, something I might have made good use of seventeen years ago when I was trying to be articulate while compiling Novel Number One, The Answer to Life…
Here’s Williams’ entire Page 32 (and pray I don’t get sued): “I didn’t cry out as I plunged through the darkness. I didn’t know any better. Too busy thinking to myself, This is how it is, this is how it is, how it is…accustoming myself to what it seemed life brings, what life is. Spinning, tumbling, a breathless rush, terror, exhilaration and wonder, wondering is this it, am I doing it right.” Alas, TWO FOOTNOTES for this profound entry: 1) CHUTE. And 2) “John Edgar Wideman, Newborn Thrown in Trash and Dies.”
Death As You’ve Never Heard It Described Before
Williams recounted this startling, staggering paragraph: “Attempting to articulate her near-death experience she found it differed scarcely at all from thousands of other accounts. There was light, the empty road, the endless shore, the light, the tunnel, the ascent, the view of the unimportant body below. The feeling of limitlessness, oneness, freedom, the sudden dismay at the obstruction, the shut door, the check, the thwart, the cruel. boundary. Then the turning back, the forced retreat, the unpleasant feeling of being drawn down a kind of funnel, a cone…”. Not to be dismissed lightly, I suspect.
Why? Why? Why? I needed some answers…
Aha! A telling question on Page 145: AGAIN: “Could it be that souls are leaving a person before the body dies? Azrael wondered.”
The Devil confirmed! “I’ve been noticing a falling off in the customary process.” … I ASK: Could this be the crux of the entire narrative: Time, running short: Joy Williams has observed: that multiple souls are suddenly, yes, suddenly trying to leave their bodies… before their time.” That would certainly put a wrench — crimp? — in Azrael’s hectic, harried, schedule: you know, transporting-the-soul’s-gig. The Devil drones on: “The soul wants out, not being fed what’s necessary… Requires a better host. Why stick around…But where can they go?” Yes, where?
Azrael weighs in “fretfully,” “Nature’s vesture is no longer available.” Azrael looked anguished… The Devil says formally, “Truly I take no pleasure in this… privately, he thought, mice fleeing a sinking shop…”. Dear reader, I read the above four, five, six times, and still unsure of what the hell the author was attempting to say, if anything, except possibly to confirm the previous theory of time running out.
The Soul Continued
Most of my life, I’ve been told — back home, from childhood on — via the local Nuns and visiting Priests, “You have a soul.” I did not believe it or perhaps didn’t grasp it … it did not sink in. (As a young Catholic boy, I was expected to accept a great deal on sheer faith.) … But as I age now, I’m beginning to entertain the possibility that perhaps, just maybe, one does have soul.
Here’s what author Williams weighs in that one: “Each birth is not the creation of a soul but the completion of the transmigration from one body to another. There is no such thing as a new soul. The souls made no sound as Azrael transported them. Never had one attempted to engage him in thought. The journey was made in perfect silence. They seemed wonderstruck.” Shhhh. Another puzzlement! Re-cycled souls?
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury plus the peanut gallery: I found that fascinating … but way above my pay scale. I’m merely accepting it. What’s more urgent to me here, I am wondering what the Nuns and Priests from my childhood would make of this book.
At one point, Joy Williams confides in us: The Devil saw Azrael, entertained his presence, and The Devil liked him. (Jeez.) “He couldn’t recall liking anything so much. Such affection could cause nothing but worry of course. The whole apparatus that Azrael embodied, enabled actually, was rickety, not built to last. Deferred maintenance. Delay delay delay. (sic) Judgement stayed forever… Azrael was enlightened but it was through pure ignorance … ignorance indistinguishable from depthless wisdom. He had the radiant intelligence of an orphaned octopus larva.” The Devil also feared for him. “Hadn’t he been gone rather longer than usual? Azrael and his duties, his heroic commitment, could drop from God’s attention like a stone down a well…. But then he re-appeared… returned once more. … Improbable glorious weary sorrowful. Still rejoicing, though the tiniest bit less.”
KNOW THIS: Periodically, I was exasperated throughout reading this book. I didn’t always know what was going on. I wondered: Is something big about to implode? Is it possible we too are ‘Waiting for Godot?’ Or is all this merely a brouhaha … a donnybrook… a trip to the moon on gossamer wings? … full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
I consider myself a writer. I love other writers unlike Gore Vidal who once said, it’s not enough for a writer to succeed, his friends must fail. It takes a lot to pull a book together…a great deal and accolades must go out to anyone who writes one. I hesitate to quibble… I tip my hat to omniscient, ubiquitous Joy Williams.
A New Word For Morsel
The Eleventh Story, a quote I like, T. S. Eliot’s: “May the judgment not be too heavy upon us.”
This book is one of the most unusual reads I’ve ever read, and you might suspect I’m not young — if I listened to Judy Canova’s radio show that aired from 1943 to 1955, I must be a bit long in the tooth. (Canova left the planet in 1983 at 69.)
About now, I’m more comfortable going back going back on more terra firma to re-re-re-reading Renata Adler’s Speedboat. I hear the Lovely One is living comfortably in Spain or is it Greece. I sure wish she were / was here so I could ask her what she thinks of this new volume of … “vignettes” (?) .
The advance press advised there are 99 Stories of Azrael and put those words prominently at the bottom of the release’s cover. I found few are anywhere near a full chapter. For God’s sake, (Ooooppps) some aren’t even vignette-weight. Maybe we need to invent a new word for morsel. If you’ve read this far, I pray you won’t be too hard on me. I agonized.
“It’s best to enter the literate world like a cat burglar — through a window, that is rather than through the front door,” from ingenious book critic, Dwight Garner
“It's in the Book” is a recorded comic monologue, partly sung, partly an exhortation in the manner of a revivalist preacher on the subject of Little Bo-Peep. It was marketed as a pop song and made the Billboard chart in 1952, reaching Number One. — selling more than one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. Written by Johnny Standley and Art Thorsen (BMI Work #744156) and released by Standley (accompanied by Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights) on the Capitol Records label. The recording can be heard in the background in the final scene of the 1971 film, The Last Picture Show.
Azrael's infinite supply of sneakers and that he never wore them twice.
The 4,000 wing creature with countless feathers on each wing extracting the souls from
the bodies really captured my imagination as I read through Jim Fragale's most creative journey!!!