ROBERT DESSAIX What Days Are For. Reviewed by Stephen Sargent.
Complex layers of discussion inform this memoir on the fragility of life.
In 2011, the actions of two strangers saved Robert Dessaix from ‘being deported from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady’, as Christopher Hitchens put it in Mortality. Dessaix’s memoir, What Days Are For, begins on a Saturday night in July and describes his week lying in a hospital bed alone with his thoughts and musings over various topics such as travel, religion, intimacy, happiness, language, friendship, and spirituality.
The title of this book originates from the first line of Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Days’: ‘What are days for?’
‘Days’ is a short and seemingly simplistic poem where the concept of death removes divisions in time: therefore there is no difference between a moment and eternity; it examines life and death with fierce honesty and humour while apparently ignoring other issues. It is through ‘Days’ that Dessaix is able to launch into his many contemplations, and share some of Larkin’s humour – even though he is constantly close to death.
On a Saturday night in 2011, Robert Dessaix is walking down Oxford Street, Sydney, after a rehearsal of his play A Mad Affair when he suffers a heart attack:
[Lying] on the pavement in my own filth … amongst the cigarette butts and streaks of vomit, I could easily have been taken for a disgusting old drunk and been left to die.
Fortunately for Dessaix, a young Chinese man wearing a FUCK YOU T-shirt helps him off the pavement and back to his hotel, where the night porter saves his life by calling an ambulance, rather than returning him to his hotel room.
Dessaix doesn’t dwell too much on medical details. He describes his heart attack, being revived twice after being rushed to hospital, and a serious complication brought on by an allergic reaction to medicine, causing continuous bleeding. During his week-long recovery he goes in and out of a confused state. He uses this confusion, along with his thoughts and reflections, to examine life:
Well, we all want to matter, don’t we. None of us wants the dark stealing over us as we grow older to blot out mattering now. We can’t stave off time and nothingness forever, but we do want to matter now, today. It’s not a question of living in the limelight, or being a celebrity, or changing the course of history, or even of being in the thick of it, but of mattering, of being of some account. To someone.
Another topic that Dessaix muses over is happiness. For him, finding happiness:
… is learning to desire only what you can have. It’s knowing what to do with your freedom. It’s not bliss, of course, but it is happiness.
Happiness is also found in close intimate friends:
Peter [Dessaix’s partner] doesn’t quite know what to say when he notices me awake. What is there to say? There’s nothing to say. With intimate friends, it’s being there together despite everything that matters. They face down the Angel of Death for you. They go some miles with you on your journey, that’s what they do.
Revealing deep and intimate thoughts that arise from confusion gives Dessaix an original and particular voice. What Days Are For contains many sentences that skirt all around a particular topic and then launch into a separate subject, only to jump back to the original idea or sentence. He will also dart into brackets for a second, or even third, thought on issues, digress into a series of questions, or expand on some of his previous points. These discontinuous sentences, or second thoughts, create complex layers within the book. Dessaix can also be surprisingly funny at times, whether in observing hospital life, or posing questions like: ‘Was Jesus nice?’ And answering: ‘Not really, when you read between the lines, not in a Lane Cove sense.’
He is uncompromising in his opinions on marriage, religion, intimacy, Channel 7 and today’s youth:
All that talk, all that tweeting and hooking up and liking on Facebook, but … no intimacy. Chat tweet chat tweet chat chat chat – we can’t shut up. We natter away and message each other in broken English ceaselessly, but intimacy escapes us. It’s kind of spiritual destitution. I’m glad I was born when I was, I really am, all things considered.
Or his opinion on gay marriage:
Why on earth would you do that? To be ‘equal’? I don’t think so. I think they also want it because getting married is thought of as ‘romantic’. But marriage isn’t romantic – weddings might be, but marriage isn’t … for a time, as I recall, homosexuals were proud of being different … They can’t wait to be monogamously married, with children, to husbands and wives, just like all the other couples in the street. Why? Why this rush back to a middle-American fantasy from the 1950s? Do they imagine it will at last give them the right to hold hands in Target? What will they demand the right to do next? Join the army? I snort rather wetly and set off a sneezing fit.
We are also reminded how fragile life is: alone on the street, Dessaix was saved by a complete stranger.
What Days Are For is a mesmerising, engaging, and provocative meditation on Larkin’s question, brought about by a near-fatal heart attack. Dessaix answers the question with complex layers of discussion of travel, religion, spirituality, intimacy, friendship, happiness, language and love, with references to Turgenev, EM Forster, Jane Austen, Francis Bacon, Samuel Johnson, George Orwell, Hilary Mantel and Voltaire along the way. He dismisses the ‘pompous’ idea that we live on in other people’s memories, but rather counts the days that he has achieved something – whether it be shopping, walking the dog, reading, or writing. After all, ‘Where can we live but days?’
Robert Dessaix What Days Are For Knopf 2014 HB 240pp $29.99.
Stephen Sargent is a novice blogger writing about literature, history, tattoos and other interests on his Tattooed Critic site.
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Reading Robert Dessaix’s books is like sitting in a comfortable chair in a cosy room having a wonderful conversation with a very intelligent original thinker-he has taught me such a lot about life. I have enjoyed all of his books and hope he writes many more.
Betty Steele