Carl Rux and the 16 Year Old Trumpeter (11 cents)

I had bought a copy of "Asphalt" by musician/poet/novelist Carl Rux (about whom I knew nothing) and started to read it, got lost trying to figure out what was going on, and put it aside.

But it called me back, and I went through the same exercise two more times, never finishing the book (or even getting far into it), but always keeping it on the top of a pile, in full view.

Switch to our week at Klezkamp in December:

You may recall that we took a 9 a.m. beginning Yiddish class (guaranteed that we would know as much at the end of the week as we did when we started). One of our fellow students was a 16 year old high school student from California, who came with her elderly grandparents. She had taken the same class the year before. While the rest of us were somewhat serious about what we were doing, she was, or appeared, not to have a serious bone in her (somewhat exposed) body, as she talked out throughout the class about whatever came into her (equally exposed) mind. She was annoying in the extreme (and - truth be known - our bet was that her grandmother was the same way 60 or 65 years ago).

One day, coming to class in pajama bottoms and a shirt that only came down part way, she sat in front of me and, lo and behold, she was carrying a paperback version of "Asphalt". The book is impossible to understand. It is filled with allusions which can be appreciated only by Mensa members. Its drug and sex scenes are way too much for a 16 year old (even from California). What can she be doing with that book, I asked myself? Probably, nothing.

Then, she turns to me and says: "Have you read this? It is terrific!"

I still don't know what to make of it. I don't know if she really read it. Or if she understood it, rather than simply being bowled over by Rux's intense, idiosyncratic, reality/fantasy style. To me, she was a 16 year old adolescent who needed years to get her behavior in order; I imagined her acting in Beginning Yiddish the same way she acted in high school in Oakland.

Later in the week, there was a concert at which the Klezkamp campers/musicians played in their various ensembles. I was surprised to see her on stage in a small group, holding a trumpet (or perhaps a coronet; I was pretty far back). I was more surprised when she played as part of the jazz/klezmer group. She is extraordinarily talented.

So, I said, well, maybe her musical talent is an indication of all sorts of talents, including talent to understand "Asphalt".

At any rate, I came back and read the book, cover to cover. If there is a plot, I don't know what it is. It takes place in Brooklyn after the next war, when it has been cut off from Manhattan, and appears to have been severely damaged so that only squatters remain in what had been respectable apartments. There are a lot of drugs, some strange sex, but mainly memories, tales, conversations, weaving in and out, back and forth.

I looked in up on Amazon, and read the professional editorial reviews, which were, I would say, very respectful of the author, but mixed on the book. Then I read the 14 reader reviews, each of which (without exception) gave it 5 stars, and spoke of its mesmerizing qualities. I am not sure anyone picked up a story line, but that did not seem important. It was the context and the language that bowled each of the reviewers over.

A paragraph picked at random, to give you a feel. Page 189: "By day it was a road, a long line gashed up the shaven earth where daily travelers have stopped wearily alongside the trimmings of grass and slept unbothered, others have dashed the scorching trail without stopping - waving lazy palms at passing trucks and field hands picking through the groves. By night, it was an anomalous staircase steeped toward an uncertain destiny. A path your feet had to know better than your eyes. He ran it. Photographs of shortcuts and landmarks flashed vivid colors in his head, but the world around him was one shade of darkness. Land requiring visceral exploration. The first mile, up the gravelly course, was aimless. The feet ran with the speed and clumsiness of a boy outrunning ghosts and ghouls and God. The second mile, through the serrated colony of cornstalks, was pursuant. He was heading toward the hill, the tree, the rock, the water; the place he knew."