Laziness in the Fertile Valley

These are the days I read Heidegger just to torture myself, the dog days of August in upstate Wyoming. As I read my breathing doesn't keep pace with my heart and my heart doesn't keep pace with my breathing. It must be the altitude. I lie down, put a bookmark in Heidegger, take up Albert Cossery, his great novel, Laziness in the Fertile Valley, about a family of world-class slackers, the New Directions edition with translation by William Goyen. I met Goyen at the poet Jean Burden's house in the early 1970's. I don't know that I've ever met a quieter, more self-possessed man! He was possessed by his quietness, the quietness of true inner strength, of having seen things other people hadn't seen and being intelligent, sensitive, and compassionate enough not to unleash his vision on others until he'd made it art, the living embodiment of Wittgenstein's, what we cannot understand we must pass by in silence. He had married the actress Doris Roberts; even I who had no real talent then for seeing such things could see how in love they were! I can't imagine what William Goyen made of me, a 23-year poet, recently married. We talked a little about his book--The House of Breath. I was honest enough to say I hadn't read it. I've since learned The House of Breath is one of the quiet masterpieces of American lit. It was published in 1950, the year I was born. I still haven't read it, but I will. I'm a fantastically lazy reader, almost as lazy as I am a writer. Just a moment ago I picked up Heidegger again and come across this phrase: in order to hear a bare sound. There's something about it I really like--I don't know why--so I write it down.