A Brief History of Portable Literature Read Online Free PDF Page B

mad because he threw make-believe parties, now, to top it off, he was trying to make a laughing stock of Karl Kraus, which could only upset people and discredit him further socially, and intellectually.
    But on his mission as secret Shandy ambassador, Valery Larbaud arrived in Vienna and saw in Littbarksi the ideal host for this international party. (The party had to happen away from Paris and Shandyism’s other nerve centers, and furthermore, it mustn’t draw the attention of citizens who weren’t part of the secret portable movement.)
    Larbaud saw right away that one of Littbarski’s make-believe parties could conceal an actual party, full of conspirators from around the world. Their presence in Vienna would go perfectly unnoticed if they knew to disappear in the dawn mist, at the right moment.
    Convinced that this energy of Littbarski’s—so unproductive, so crazy and portable—could easily be channeled in the direction of the luxurious and useless Shandy planet, Larbaud sent him a letter. Though mostly incoherent, the letter did include a secret “key” that would give birth to new friendships and connect the members of a small, clandestine society that imperceptibly, implacably, was expanding.
    “I understand, my friend,” Littbarski wrote back. “I understand. And please be aware that your key is of interest to me. You are opening the door to one of those pavilions that, since I was a child, has undergone fewer changes than other kinds of quarters. But that isn’t the only reason I still feel attached to them: it’s the solace, too, emanating from the fact that they are uninhabitable for anyone waiting to establish himself permanently somewhere. The truth is that anyone struggling to establish a firm foothold in the world could never inhabit them. The possibility of dwelling in these places is limited. Vienna is born in them, and I was born in Vienna, to see them reborn.
    PS : Indeed, I am single, and, yes, my servant is black.”
    It seemed to Larbaud that Littbarski had played with two meanings of the word lodge. The houses in Vienna also had glass-domed pavilions outside that were used for household clutter. He also had meant to indicate that he understood perfectly that the offer of a “key” would bring him into contact with portable literature, that is, with a non-existent literature, seeing as none of the Shandies knew what it consisted of (though paradoxically this was what made it possible). It was a literature to whose rhythm the members of the secret society danced, conspiring for the sake of—and on the basis of—nothing.
    According to what I know about the preparations for the party in Vienna—and the fact is, I know very little, the only place I’ve found reference to them is in Miriam Cendrars’s
Inédits secrets
—one of these typically Viennese lodges provided the setting for Littbarski and Larbaud’s first encounter: one in which Littbarski decided, for the first time in years, to tell anyone about an odd novel he was writing entitled
A Bachelor Opens Fire
(a bibliographical rarity nowadays). This was a text he’d been working on since time immemorial, ever since he’d had the use of reason, to be precise. What made the novel so odd wasn’t how long he’d invested in it but rather the fact that he himself thought he’d only written one decent page in all that time: a miserable wine-soaked little sheet of paper that he showed to Larbaud. Girding himself with patience, Larbaud read it:
    “Feeling bored, little Hermann stood looking out the window of the concierge’s office managed by his parents. A child he’d never seen before came and stood in front of him, and in a gesture Hermann found brazen and defiant, the child joyfully emptied a whole bottle of French champagne onto the sidewalk. Hermann would never forgive the boy.”
    When, out of sheer courtesy, Larbaud inquired about the novel’s plot, Littbarski gave the following answer: “It’s the story of Hermann, a man