15. Otto Dix vs. Lautrec; the Literary Agent's Advice

Thursday 12 March.  8:15 a.m..  Sunrise 6:21, sunset 6:01.  Windy, cold, pressure down. Cathy finally admits to being tired of the cold weather!

Yesterday we went to London on 9:57 train and visited the Tate, where we spent the day, including lunch at the Rex Whistler restaurant.  We spent most of the time at the Otto Dix exhibit, which I enjoyed quite a bit.  Dix painted and sketched from before WWI to the 50's, died in 1969.  He had quite a career, considering that it spanned the two world wars (including as a German soldier in the first war) and the Cold War, when east favored realism in art suited to socialist politics, while the west took up abstract art.  Dix was an observer and has some marvelous portraits of the times, such as the whore and the war wounded.  I was most curious, however, at why I felt down and depressed after the Lautrec exhibition in December, and felt uplifted after the Dix exhibit.  Is it Lautrec himself, the outcast, apparently happy in the world of prostitutes?  Or is it that, unlike Lautrec, Dix's pictures are not at all flattering, but illustrate the tawdry, the ugly side of what appears in Lautrec (certainly at first viewing) as a lovely world.  Dix puts prostitution on a par with war, even has a sketch of soldiers having sex (raping) a nun.  There is no question where Dix stands.

Lautrec looks for beauty in the world of the prostitutes, yet so many of them have a bored, unhappy, perhaps detached, wistful look.  In contrast, Dix's prostitutes possess a friendly look, they are definitely marketing and definitely not detached from life.  The crossover picture might be Dix's of the old man and the young woman attempting (?) to have sex: the woman has a sort of wild eyed look, dazed a bit, not pleasurable, and far more detached than the Lautrec whores.

Friday 13 March.  10:45 a.m.  Received fat letter from Scott Meredith today, saying, great promise, talent, etc. but here are the insurmountable problems, too many to fix!  Not an unkind rejection, but definitely a rejection.  It is an astute rejection and I hope to take it to heart.  Essentially my problem is not that I lack a vision of where I'm going, the book is a preparation to writing a book, as Mr. Meredith says, not a real saleable thing.  It doesn't surprise me, it's better than the worst that could have happened, but, of course, not what I hoped for!

So, off to practice my skill again!  1000 to 2000 words per day (a la A. Burgess, Keith Waterhouse).

12:55 p.m.  Images of passages I like in my book appear and reappear: a rejection of my rejection?  What am I doing?

I seemed to have such a good idea of what I was about when I wrote my book.  Now I start and start.  I have wished to avoid the trials of confrontation and aggressiveness in my life, to live a life of concerned helpfulness, but perhaps the abandonment of one fight simply leads to taking it up elsewhere.  This time perhaps on my own, internally, rather than the less affecting battles of words and money, which are so easy to disavow as not part of me.