J.M.G. Le Clezio: Desert

Many years ago, the pastor Jim White quoted an art historian in an effort to explain religion.  "The best thing about art," he quoted, "can't be spoken.  The second best thing about art we can only point at.  The third best thing about art isn't worth speaking about."  For fifteen years, I have tried to find the source of this quote, but have come to the conclusion--one entirely consistent with what I know of Jim--that the original quote, if it ever existed, was in some entirely different form and Jim remembered, not the words, but his own thoughts upon hearing it.  I feel safe in saying that the words, and even the sentiment, are his own without thought of plagiarism.

Le Clezio's book reminds me, not only of this truth, but of the way in which I received it.  Desert is art.  In fact, it is very nearly not a book at all, but a painting, the medium of which happens to be words.  It envelops, hypnotizes, and digests the reader in the same way that a great painting does.  And to ask "what does it mean?" is as insulting and ludicrous as asking that question of a painting.  Who are the Blue Man, The Secret, Nour, Lalla Hawa?  Is there some line of ancestry between the latter two?  Or is Nour the same spirit which haunts her in the desert? How did Lalla's aunt get to Marseilles before her?  And how did her story, which holds years worth of moments, take place in nine short months?  All such questions are part of the painting, though the answers are decidedly not.

But the real story of art--the story of stories in fact--is not simply that they are experiences that leave one changed afterward.  Just as Jim White inadvertently revealed all those years ago, the stories change for us as much as we change for them.  I will hold onto my version of Desert just as he held onto his version of a quote by an obscure art historian, my story of puzzling over a curious spelling varation that turned out to be merely a typo, my story of living with Lalla in Marseilles as I lay on the beach the day before my sister's wedding, and my despair upon realizing I am not Lalla, but Nour: a shining light in the desert, destined to burn out without amounting to anything.