The Pleasures of Time: Two Men, A Life
by Stephen Harold Riggins
Insomniac Press
310 pages, $16.95 (paper)
Stephen Harold Riggins and Paul Bouissac have shared an interesting life, having traveled the world and crossed paths with such intellectual luminaries as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Allan Bloom, Michel Foucault, A. J. Greimas, and John Cage. But in The Pleasures of Time: Two Men, A Life, Riggins attempts to provide more than a romantic travelogue or eyewitness intellectual history. His book is both biography and autobiography—as well as literary criticism, cultural history, sociological study, and tenderly crafted family album. This is not to say that the book lacks focus; each of these approaches is necessary in its turn, as Riggins celebrates his decades-long relationship with Bouissac, a scholar, novelist, circus aficionado, and reluctant subject.
To elucidate their relationship, Riggins wants us first to understand Bouissac and himself as individuals, as they were both before and after their first meeting in 1969. We are not surprised to learn that the two men had much in common. Both survived a provincial upbringing—Bouissac in rural France and Riggins in the American Midwest—later to become citizens of the world. They shared a passion for the arts—Bouissac for the circus and Riggins for music—that transcended mere connoisseurship to become for each of them, at times, a life’s work. However, there’s at least one passion that the two do not share: Riggins’s determination to study Bouissac. For the latter clearly does not share Riggins’ enthusiasm for the project that became this book. Bouissac, Riggins tells us, “was either hostile or indifferent” to this effort and claimed to “feel like a cornered animal, eaten alive.” Riggins’ need for information is undoubtedly provoked by Bouissac’s very reticence, which in turn seems a logical response to a perceived intrusion into his privacy. If this lack of cooperation is a failing of the project, it is one with which Riggins deals honestly throughout, providing accounts of Bouissac’s objections to the telling of events alongside his telling of them. In this way, Riggins uncovers the persistent urges both to conceal and reveal aspects of one’s life history. But Riggins does not need Bouissac’s complete cooperation in order to write this book, which is more impressionistic than documentary. He gestures at the complexity of his and Bouissac’s lives without attempting to exhaust every possible avenue of association. The chapters do not follow an orderly chronology, and Riggins draws from diverse materials, among them excerpts from his own diary, letters, and conversations with Paul and their acquaintances. Historical time might become blurred, but this is how memory operates, as everything necessary to interpret an immediate experience can be called forth into present awareness. We learn enough, though, to see that this is a relationship in which the love of ideas has reinforced the love these men have for each other. Riggins writes with great sympathy of Bouissac’s doomed battle to stage “The Circus of the Century” in Germany in the mid 1970’s, casting Bouissac as an artistic hero, uncompromising in his vision even to the bitter end. He treats himself no less heroically as he recounts his own struggle to finish his dissertation shortly thereafter. These experiences, like others that Riggins recounts, reveal how he and Bouissac have cultivated a perseverance in their separate callings that derives in large part from their mutual reassurance and support. This security has propelled them into their next project and prevented them from lending catastrophic importance to setbacks like a failed performance deal or a lukewarm recommendation. Riggins describes Bouissac affectionately as “a mischievous bear taught to hop and pirouette by a circus clown.” Riggins allows the other people in his stories to take center stage only according to their personal significance, not in response to their fame. One conversation between Riggins and Michel Foucault may get more space that it merits, but Riggins generally avoids padding his narrative with recollections about people from his and Bouissac’s roster of impressive acquaintances. There is much more to learn about Bouissac from stories like the one about his thrifty grandmother and her attitude toward books, than from recollections of Allan Bloom’s party conversations. Among the lesser-known yet highly illuminating of their acquaintances is Christian Marin, a juggler who demonstrates an almost antiquated commitment to his craft. In a final swipe at the chronological imperative that drives most memoirs, Riggins waits until his final chapter, “Stolen Time,” to tell the story of his inauspicious first weeks with Bouissac. Because we know how strong this relationship has become in spite of these early missteps, the latter become testimony to how far two people can come when they refuse to be satisfied with what they think they know about each other. If there is one constant theme throughout the shifts in perspective, time, and place, it is the elusiveness of perfect understanding. Riggins challenges us to confront our failed or partial knowledge of those we love, and to realize that what we have become together has been shaped by who we are, and what we love, apart. Thomas March lives in New York City, where he teaches at New School University, New York University, and The Brearley School.
