8. A speculation, doomed to be incomplete for many reasons, not least my insufficient grasp of literary theory: Joseph McElroy, with his ecstatic depiction of consciousness as a thing incarnated in the unstable but gorgeous relations between humans and their companions here on spaceship earth may be exactly the great writer who most needed — most needs—the terminology of what is currently called “Affect Theory” to come along and account for what he’s getting at.
9. Ancient History, then, because of the clarifying urgency of its mode of address, is possibly McElroy’s manifesto, a master key, even — the hinge, I called it earlier, of his shelf. At the least, a precursor to his two most daunting (and divergent) masterworks: the densely economical Plus, that outer-space deconstruction of the absolutes of solipsistic estrangement, and Women And Men, McElroy’s symphonic and encompassing depiction of the vast field of human proximities. The way such proximities bind us to the permanent mystery of presence—in our bodies, and in time — despite how consciousness and recollection seem precisely designed to escape such limits, much as a space voyager escapes the field of earth. The way our thinking, no matter how abstract, takes place inside, not outside, our lives.
— Jonathan Lethem
Ancient History: A Paraphrase
My luck you’re not here.
For once, dear Dom, both elevators were healthy, so without being seen or if seen thought worth interrogating I came out of the east elevator just in time to hear way down to my right an Irish voice call, “No, lady, you’re purrfectly safe, he did it himself,” and to see at that end of the long hall your door being held ajar and a fully blanketed stretcher moving out of sight certainly into the west elevator. The same voice called, “I mean he was all by himself, lady, O.K.?”
A patrolman as he let your door close gently heard the high Irish voice presumably in the elevator say, “Let’s gaw,” and wheeled and with his hand out took two running strides to get the elevator door. I turned away feeling in my jacket as if for my key in case they wondered why I was up on this floor. But so far as I could see at my east end, the cop hadn’t locked your door. But did he think it locks itself? The west elevator ran shut a second after that east I’d just stepped out of, and unless the inspector had left a man on duty inside your apartment the door to which the cop closed so gently he seemed bemused, why then unless you had guests or contrary to my information weren’t living alone, the coast was clear and I had a kind of welcome, if not from you in person. So I went down the long hall to your door, where as I expected another hall came into view to my right. Standing on your mat, I swear that for the long moment during which I looked to my right to check on the nervous woman, somehow your apartment watched. I turned your knob, pushed, and stepped in.
The Irish voice said you did it yourself, I’m sure that’s what it said.
How can I begin to take the measure of this living room of yours? With my story of Al and Bob?
I came to see you tonight just in time to see you carried away, if that navy-blue form was you. But at least your place was open, and with your new fountain pen between my thumb and first two fingers here at the south end of your living room, dear Dom, I could if you were here assure you your door is now locked — an inside job by yours truly. But I didn’t put on the chain, for a chain means someone’s inside. A square claim-receipt card from the typewriter repair shop lies here, but you never typed on this beautiful table. I might well have said to you last week, “In the event of disaster call me,” for at that very private opening where we barely met I saw that as all I knew of you led me to expect you were the kind of man I could say that to lightly, “in the event of disaster call me.” Cora introduced you as “Don” or “Dom,” a rare use of your given name; the public knows you as you appear on this benighted old building’s crowded directory-board downstairs where now for half a year my name has also stood. The very day we moved in the super had our name up, mint white grooved in velvety black.
Hearing the west (or from here the near) elevator open again at this high floor, I’ve just put down your gray pen to zip across the carpet between the long white leather couch to the east and your neat desk to the west near a window, and then shift gears to tiptoe the foyer tiles to the peephole.
Which was already open. In the coarse light within its scope I could see only three cocoa doormats along the hall I’d come down from the east elevator. Peace be with the super. I’m getting to know him (though not on this floor) — a bulky, statuesque black man with a quality paperback in his hip pocket. He was left by his chic-suited wife about the time I and my family moved in. He looks too young to have those grandchildren he sometimes in conversation seems to free-associate with the ailing elevators and the steel in his shin. Peace be in the old apartment house, Dom, this night you’ve taken leave. I saw nothing but doormats and an amber scum on the peephole glass. No cop came from the near elevator area, the elevator itself just outside my scope. This irrepressible west elevator simply on its own came back here to twelve; and then from the peephole I heard its door run shut with a bump that may also have been the fresh descent commencing. Last week the west elevator came untracked and was “Under Inspection” for two days and we had to use the east. And now, having slipped shut the peephole’s pendular lid, I’m back at the cherry dropleaf in your living room’s south end. This wall of steel-casement windows reveals the inclement night sky’s blank shade as well as the top floor of an office building right across the street, and in it a red EXIT sign like a face with its vectors askew.
Didn’t the cops know they left your door unlocked? Did they mean to? Or did they not have the key. Has someone gone for it? What could this space mean to them? Yet, as you yourself said, measurement is not to be sniffed at.
Your late door was left unlocked as if for me, but I don’t flatter myself. I didn’t phone, lest you be not home. I just came up, as once before when I stood on your mat and identified your Eagle lock and heard typewriter keys slot-slot-slotting interrupted by the firm under-bump of the spacer. But I hadn’t the courage to buzz. I couldn’t be sure I’d be of interest to you. Tonight I told my wife Ev I was going to the basement lockers to see if I could appropriate some andirons. Now in your late apartment I feel that each advancing sigh of the west elevator may be bearing police shoes up here. Would it do for me to hide if they came in? This living room is so open if I used my head I could hide right here. At either end of the traverse track running above the wall of windows here at my elbow, your estranged wife’s earth-colored curtains which you probably took for granted are drawn back to form a pillar of folds. This was her room too, as I might easily forget. Since you are dead, she can be called your late wife. The light Irish voice said you were the victim of suicide. I guess the space under the police blanket was you all right.