THE QUIVERING TOWEL

The Possessed is a potboiler, an unwilling gothic novel written by a European avant-garde writer; Witold Gombrowicz went to Argentina from Europe in 1939; he needed money: a quivering towel in the old kitchen, blue/black lips, like to like spreading like a virus, a crusty, withered, crazy prince in a castle; Signs, Treasure, Etc. Writing is restlessness. Everything in this narrative evades the narrative. Jack goes up the hill but he also goes down. A false novel, an infernal machine, said Sartre. Gombrowicz writes as he discards, discards as he writes. The Possessed is the sardonic tale of a rising tennis star, her coach, her fiancé, the castle down the road, the quivering towel, the old kitchen. A suggestion, fifty pages from the end of the book, is to declare war on the quivering towel, source of all evil. 

I have long loved what I called bad novels — by Mrs Henry Wood, Ouida, William Gerhardie, Kay Dick — all contentious — bad is always contentious. The Possessed is a bad novel. Is a bad novel a false novel, an infernal machine? Is all writing an infernal machine?

These are the layers of reading The Possessed, filling a glass with their variety, like layers of sand from the Holy Land.