A few more thoughts on obscenity

The first time my narrator, Vivian, actually encounters Tzipi Honigman in the flesh, they’re driving to a fancy restaurant in Tel Aviv and Tzipi asks her if she knows any of her poems by heart, and if she could recite one to her.

“With my heart in my mouth, I did – an unrhymed sonnet about failed love. It was called ‘Obscene.’ She looked over at me, smiling just a little. I felt extremely naked.” (p. 9)

I didn’t reproduce the sonnet in the novel, although I did include some of Vivian’s other poems. But I thought you might want to see the one she recited to Tzipi in the car. The epigraph is from Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse.

Obscene

“Discredited by modern opinion, love’s sentimentality must be assumed by the amorous subject as a powerful transgression which leaves him alone and exposed; by a reversal of values, then, it is this sentimentality which today constitutes love’s obscenity.”

No one would have raised an eyebrow at

the little sexual accoutrements

of their love. These might provoke a smile

but little more. She e-mailed him a file

called “dirty pictures” in which she appeared

in all her glory playing with sex toys.

Even that phrase, “sex toys,” goes to show

how innocent they were. He sent her back

a picture of his hard-on. She was charmed.

The thing that was obscene, the dirty secret,

was neither flesh nor fetish. It was love

itself. Bataille describes the sentiment

in all of its vulgarity—a massive

throbbing organ. An embarrassment.

le rire de la méduse

I sent Tzipi this video of me reading from the "Medusenhaupt" section of my novel. She had Asher post it to her YouTube page:

Asher's Interview

Tzipi was married briefly in the 70s, and she has an adult son named Asher with whom she's very close. Asher was recently interviewed on the radio. People always ask the same question: what was it like growing up with an iconic cultural figure for a mother?

Mul Yam

Vivian's first extended conversation with Tzipi took place at a famous restaurant in Tel Aviv, Mul Yam. Although that dinner ended in catastrophe, I'd definitely recommend the food. The chef is Yoram Nitzan. Nitzan is a devoted friend of Tzipi's, despite the fact that she "ruins" his beautiful food by washing it down with Coca-Cola. She refuses to drink wine! She says it makes her feel "desiccated".

This is Nitzan's take on calamari:

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

When a friend of mine saw the cover of Tzipi's last novel, she said, "She may be the world's greatest living novelist, but I'm sorry, this cover is really tacky. It looks like Jonathan Livingston Seagull!"


I hope Tzipi soesn't see this post. I never told her I didn't like the cover of her book.

Tzipi Honigman

A couple of months ago, Eric asked me to blog about my novel, The Correspondence Artist, and I decided to devote a week of posts to one of my characters, Duong Van Binh. I'm dedicating this week to another of the four fictional manifestations of my narrator's secret celebrity lover: Tzipi Honigman, the 68-year-old Israeli novelist who just won the Nobel Prize.

No need to feel ignorant if you've never heard of her: she's a figment of my imagination. My narrator's best friend says, "You know, I think Tzipi Honigman is the most beautiful woman in the world. She makes you think there's nothing sexier than a woman in her 60s." This is true. Look at her author photo:


If I had a little more courage, I'd also show you a picture of Tzipi's jealous ex, Hannah. My narrator describes the most famous image of her:

"I've seen a photograph of her pregnancy. She was so stunningly beautiful. Annie Leibovitz took a portrait of her, smiling beatifically over her perfect, soft breasts, the tendrils of her brown hair falling over her shoulders, her lovely round belly circled by Tzipi's unmistakably muscular and yet graceful, tanned arm. Tzipi was mostly out of the shot, obscured by Hannah's naked glory, but you could see her pressing her face into the back of her lover's neck.

"That was ten years ago. Hannah was 19. Tzipi was 58."