PR: Saoirse Bertram

Saoirse Bertram (@american_empath) is a writer and editor from Fairbanks, Alaska. His words have appeared in publications within the States and abroad, including Heavy Traffic Magazine, Blue Arrangements, and The Opioid Crisis Lookbook. He is currently on residency in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, where he is completing his first four novellas.

I first encountered Saoirse in-person at a reading in Los Angeles, now long in the past, where (unbeknownst to me at the time) I encountered many individuals who would later become important figures in my life. Saoirse, one such figure, was giving a recitation from T. S. Eliot’s Book of Practical Cats (mentioned in the below) that will endure forever (fondly) in my memory. I can confirm Saoirse’s answer regarding his books living “on someone else’s bookshelf” – his copy of H.D.’s Collected Poems and Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet are but two of many still in my possession. It was Saoirse who first lent me Bachmann’s Malina, a principal text in the PR canon. I owe him much for this alone.

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1. The last thing you finished reading

   “Porphyria’s Lover” by the husband Browning. A re-read. I’m möbial in my tastes these days, and it’s one of the two Browning poems that I return to most when feeling frail. The other, “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship”, by the wife Browning, brings me into the light in an almost comical manner, while “Porphyria” makes the darker states of being more gratuitously comfortable… I am in the mountains as of recently, and quite ill, and confined to a low attic where the one window lets in the silhouette of the peaks, and feeling somewhat vampiric, and so “Porphyria” was the correct read this morning, before the sun rose. The last story I read, and the last new piece of prose I finished, was Amalia [Ulman]’s latest in the most recent Heavy Traffic. I have not completed a full-length novel in some time.

2. The last thing you abandoned reading

   Mostly when I stop reading something I view it as more of long-term distraction than abandonment proper. My regularly transient lifestyle contributes to how many texts I fail to finish on the first pass-over; I left Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X in some unknown United State of America just I was getting properly enthused. I have also been hoping to find my copy of Simone Pétrement’s massive biography of Weil for years now so as to complete the last third, but I should probably just purchase another copy.

3. Next on your list

   Embarrassingly I have never read The Brothers Karamazov or One Hundred Years of Solitude; both are stacked presently on the reading-chair next to my bed…

4. Something on your list but you never begin

   The above; Wharton’s sequel to Hudson River Bracketed; the third and following volumes of Proust; several Bernhards, every Bachmann piece I’ve yet to read… God, though, it’s all just a matter of time. If “never” was for ever it wouldn’t be on my list at all.

5. Something in which you have no interest

   I have no objection to Houellebecq or to reading him one day, I’ve just never been inclined. Still would or will be a more enjoyable experience, surely, than the vast majority of output by my “contemporaries” or whatever you’d call the loose amoeba of ostensible writers linked by vague geography or generation or both. Some of these books I’ve attempted reading, more than not one page is enough to send shivers down my spine… of disgust, mind you, not sublimity!

6. Worst thing you’ve read cover to cover

   I would rather waste my time with more childish or caddish pursuits.

7. Something you reread

   All of my favourites, especially poetry, but all of my favourites of any sort, I loop back as often or more than I press onwards. Eliot and Bachmann’s poetry constantly. Of novels, Werther every year or so, Wuthering Heights every other year, maybe, and so on and so forth. Of Shakespeare, Hamlet and Richard III most especially. I could go on and on. And still, I’m absolute rubbish at quoting any extended passages of any of the aforementioned pieces verbatim—pretty damn pathetic!

   

   Suggested pairings: Gravity and Grace, Hamlet and Hennessy, Kafka and Kinski

8. Something you never forget

   The hyena monologue from Tropic of Cancer, the “I believe—something will happen” passage from The Master and Margarita, certain rhyming couplets from Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline books. From Moscow-Petushki by Erofeyev, the line (translated in my copy as) “and I drank it straight down” echoes often whilst traveling by rail. And—of course—the very ending of Malina. No, nothing compares to the very ending of Malina, as far as I’m concerned!

9. Conditions in which you read best

   Considering love, or desperate, or whilst drinking wine by myself, or all of the above. In the summer a fireplace sounds divine. In snow I miss the poolside.

10. Conditions in which you read most often

    In the past!

11. Conditions in which you cannot read

    I dislike reading in the company of more than one other individual at once (nameless background crowds are fine, but a sitting room with three friends will prove too much of a distraction). I can’t read well while ill or injured, or while morbidly depressed, unless I’m reading The Sickness Unto Death or On the Heights of Despair or some horrendously melodramatic poem. I hate reading on my laptop or phone, I don’t like e-readers either, if all I have is a pdf I need to print it out—and in the smallest font possible! I can read in large print—but not happily.

12. A favourite author

    Those who have writ the classics mentioned prior, as well as Hardy, Cixous, Duras, et cetera. Plenty, and plenty long-gone. I’d like a contemporary. By my forty-fifth year I should hope that my absolute Favourite-with-a-capital-F Author is someone I know intimately, be it my self or another, and if that does not prove true, I shall have to narrow my eyes at this epoch, or gouge them out of my face, or throw myself off a bridge, or so on and so forth.

13. A favourite genre, form, theme

    Love. & romance.

14. A favourite title

    She Came To Stay, and We Have Always Lived In The Castle.

15. A favourite book cover

    This edition of the aforementioned Shirley Jackson, and this other edition of the same.

16. A favourite recent read

    Not much! While flying trans-Atlantic, I read one of my own in-progress stories... It’s shaping up nicely, if I may say so myself.

17. A favourite nostalgia read

    Beatrix Potter books! Any of the ones with kitten-protagonists were my favourite; as well as, for whatever reason, The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit. I also really loved this other, kind of surreal, picture-book called The Cinder-Eyed Cats; I don’t recall the author but it was totally dreamy… also loved the Catwings series by Ursula Le Guin—read their metropolitan adventure first, upon moving to Pittsburgh for the first time, and I truly believe it instilled in me a particular empathy for the suffering felines of the cities that persists to this day—beyond that, they’re simply terrific fairy tales. Moving onwards into later youth, feline-centric literature stayed a part of my life, the Warriors books were popular and I liked them as much as the next boy, but I preferred the Varjak Paw duet and Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams, both a lot weirder, more mythic, more disturbing. Tailchaser’s Song drew a lot of its mythos from T.S. Eliot’s Book of Practical Cats, actually, and that text will always be so dear to me—when I was too young to read I loved to watch the VHS recording of the Broadway musical, and my father would make up stories about Macavity to recite to me, and to this day the original poems make me so so so happy. It’s probably Mistoffelees or Gus I rate most highly now.

    

    Saoirse and previous Pathological Relations guest Eve Moeykens-Arballo reading We Have Always Lived In The Castle

18. A favourite greatest of all time, personal canon read

    Eve [Moeykens-Arballo]’s answer in her prior questionnaire of Far From the Madding Crowd was on the money. Epitomal romance. Malina and Werther are my default responses to this question—The Master and Margarita and Wuthering Heights, if I think for a few moments more, are up there too in my rankings, equivalently positioned or perhaps just behind the Hardy. I’ve basically already mentioned all these books before! Like I said, my habits lean more & more towards the retreading of well-stamped ground… It would be more interesting to mention my canonical poems, maybe(?) but it never seems proper to share more than one at a time. And I’m just not in the mood to be so selective presently!

19. Do you annotate

    I don’t annotate bound books. When I obtain a copy marked by someone unknown to me, my reactions range from amusement to annoyance, mostly based on the shape and size of the previous owner’s penmanship. On the other hand, I love reading annotations made by those dear to me, and wish I’d the chance to do so more often, it would be a dear gift, I think, to receive a full commentary on a novel of interest… As for myself, when I print out texts as pdfs, I do annotate, not heavily but consistently; marking passages of interest more than anything, with an underline or exclamation point or heart. I most happily do all of this while using a dark red fine-line pen.

20. Do your books tend toward any condition

    Hmm… does “on someone else’s bookshelf” count as a condition? Scattered to the four winds?

21. Do you have any books that are prized possessions

    Yes.

    

    Further: wine and Werther

22. A text that surprised you

    This writer I know, Charlie Clateman, gave me his book Ridiculous Devotions; it’s not yet available to the public, but he’d had some copies printed to shop around, I assume in hopes of securing a wide release, and he was kind enough to give me one of them. I read about half of it on the nocturnal subway from downtown New York all the way up to Inwood and then read the rest of it on a similarly long and empty transit-ride. It’s not that I ever considered him a bad writer, no, of course not, but this was his first work that I’d consumed longform, and the first as well that I would label terrific! in my eyes; I found it exhilarating, and novel, and enjoyed both content and structure, and was moved to emotional excess at least once in regards to laughter and once in regards to deeper sentimentality… I really hope he finds a publisher for it soon. It’s really hard to find writing in this milieu that doesn’t disgust me in one way or another, especially when it comes to full-length pieces. I could go on and on upon my contemporaries' attempts at what they call a “novel” that did not surprise me in the slightest, such was my well-met expectation of disgust... and these instigators of disgust self-propagate and multiply like maggots in the base of a trash-bin. And then there are the self-proclaimed “writers” whose “novels” I have not yet had the misfortune of glancing at as of yet, although I know through their sallow-skinned, beady-eyed claims that said “novels” are forthcoming, incubating like tumourous fetuses in the crooked wombs-of-mind that lie within the skulls of these undesirables. The Devil take them! Were it up to me, I’d send these fools to agonize in Tartarus, or at least take efforts to rearrange the structure of their face in the old Heming-way. Your own inclinations may be less extreme, but you must agree—something must be done, yes, indeed?

23. A text that disappointed you

    The Great Gatsby. I would have preferred him to live happily ever after.

24. A text that altered you somehow

    Gravity and Grace, for better, The Loser, for better and/or for worse.

25. Open up a text and copy a line at random

    From a French translation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, chapter fifty-one:

    “Oh! Pourquoi m’avez-vous traitée si monstrueusement, Angel? Je ne le mérite pas; j’ai bien réfléchi à tout et je ne pourrai jamais, jamais vous pardonner. Vous savez que je n’avais pas l’intention de mal agir envers vous. Pourquoi avez-vous mal agi envers moi? Vous êtes cruel, cruel vraiment! Je vais tâcher de vous oublier. Tout ce que j’ai reçu de vous n’est qu’injustice!”¹

Thanks for playing:

PR

1. “O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do not deserve it. I have thought it all over carefully, and I can never, never forgive you! You know that I did not intend to wrong you—why have you so wronged me? You are cruel, cruel indeed! I will try to forget you. It is all injustice I have received at your hands!”