Distortion Lens

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

      JACOB FINALLY CAME TO ME in a dream late last summer. He was wearing a new green shirt and he looked great. “Jacob!” I said, I was delighted to see him, “Man, it so good to see you! What took you so long?”
      He grinned, a little embarrassed by what he probably felt was overt sentiment on my part and by his own happiness at seeing me. He shook his head. “You do understand, I hope, that I had obligations of the familial and other varieties which warranted prior attention?”
      “Right, right, I know,” I said, feeling foolish, “what I meant to say is just that I’m very happy to see you. I’ve got great news, man, I’m editing your thesis!”
      His brow furrowed. “Oh Christ, please tell me you’re joking.” When he saw I wasn’t, he threw up his hands and scowled. “This is truly abominable news. No offense, but I really can’t imagine a worse editor for my work.”
      I winced. “Aw, c’mon, I’m not going to do it the way I think it should be. I’ll do it by your rules. After being stuck with you for three workshops, I know your rules better now than I know my own.”
      He grinned at this and relaxed- only for a moment. “Okay, then,” he said, “if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to really do it.” He became very animated and started spooling off the names of the novelists and philosophers I’d need to read in order to be able to do it right. We spent the rest of the night planning together. Which is to say he talked and I took notes.
      My experience editing his thesis has been remarkably similar. Jacob’s voice was so clear and strong in Distortion Lens that it seemed to hover over it as well: whenever I came to a passage that diverged from conventional grammar, construction or phrasing, Jacob’s explanation ( and not defense, never defense) came, unbidden, to mind: “Written conversation should reflect how the mind parses speech. The comma is omitted because no one says that comma.” Nine times out of ten, I left the passage unchanged. If anything, I’ve found my onus as editor has just been to take Jacob’s side of the argument, which is ironic considering that I spent the better part of our friendship trying to best him in argument. I’m sure the irony is not lost on Jacob, just as no irony, however small, ever was.
      Jacob is celebrated- and rightly so- for his black humor, his mischievous wordplay and his remarkable critical acuity. So are other, less talented writers. This is what sets Jacob’s wit apart: where other writers arrive at humor as a diffusive device, Jacob’s humor was always explosive and implicitly dangerous. His wordplay stems not from a desire to show off, but from his multiplicity and his expressive fire, refined and sharpened by his obsessive drive for clarity beyond le mot juste. His poise and presence as a critic didn’t come from egotism; it came from years of intense, focused, loving evaluation of the written word and an intimate relationship with human darkness. Jacob, in writing and in real life, was a huge, impossible character. If I had the arrogance to tackle a character like him in my own writing, Jacob, in his review of my work, would say something like “Even giving you the benefit of the doubt, this character is, at best, wholly improbable.” Most impressive, though, is that for his many gifts, Jacob always maintained a deep sense of humility.
      One encounter with him stands out to me above the others. One Monday last February, I mistook the glare of the sun for genuine warmth and underdressed. Jacob had, of course, worn a heavy coat and brought an extra down vest in his bag. When we met for lunch to discuss the horrors and disappointments of the weekend, he noticed me shivering and pressed me to wear the vest. I refused. On the verge of making a scene, he relented only on the condition that we got lunch in the sweaty Chinese place on the corner instead of making the trek to his preferred spot several blocks away. Jacob wasn’t trying to one-up me or prove a point. He possessed something that could alleviate suffering, and he wanted to use it to alleviate suffering and nothing else.
      Distortion Lens is a daunting accomplishment, and it reveals Jacob Waletzky as an extremely talented young artist who was only beginning to come to terms with his tremendous power. He was also, simply, a beautiful guy.

Mishka Shubaly
February 23, 2003