Stieglitz

Yes, it’s weird how things turned out but the signs were there. 

 Stieglitz is not like me. Sometimes he can write five pieces in one go, typing hurriedly and aggressively, the clattering of the keys making a sound of verbose downpour, filled with references and lubricated puns, something between Edward Said and a CAT-Scan. 

I could spend days, musing in bed, only to wake up three days later or in a different season all together. I couldn’t help it; my mind like a computer filled with leach-like viruses and despicable pornographic images. His words were soliform, an entity of pure energy that hit the page directly, like the jolt a madman gets in an electroshock treatment. He is the “Man” among men, a true bureaucrat of language and form, a stickler for synonyms.

I was the intellectual-buffoon, a juggler of words, the high-rope walker of semantics and semiotics, the Svengali of syntax. 

Once we were inseparable: weekends down the shore, dramatic readings of Beckett or the TV guide. We wore the same green checkered suit (He wore the jacket, I wore the pants). 

But the job of the critic is to mystify the job of the critic. Stieglitz, like the Wizard of Oz, planted seeds of contempt in this Tower of Babylon in order to create the illusion that he is larger than the munchkins. But unlike the munchkins, he ceased to live in Technicolor. Soon enough his parables came to serve as a deep insight into the psyche of a housewife ironing on Valium. He was the proclaimed prophet of plastic. 

Today Stieglitz lives on the 25th floor overlooking some river or some municipal building or some tree. I live in a hole in the ground or in the tree overlooking a large glass building