Brian Dillon - Sanctuary
On yet another trip to SFMOMA to see the Serra exhibit and Sharon Lockhart’s Lunch Break before they both moved on, I wandered around the shop afterwards and ended up spending more than I meant to, but the catalogue for the Serra was on sale for 30 bucks, and they had a rather nice sweatshirt that ended up being way too big for me, and in the criticism section, misfiled to be sure, I found this slight thing. It’s a beautiful object. Smaller than a paperback, cloth-bound in blue with contrasting red lettering. The word “Sanctuary” large in front, and a glowing blurb by McCarthy (also in red) on the back. I was predisposed to like it from a purely aesthetic standpoint, but then I started reading it, holding a sweatshirt and a heavy exhibition catalog and fell a tiny bit in love.
Once I got it home, my plan was to read it in one go, some Sunday afternoon at Arbor, drinking coffee and maybe a beer before heading home; but as soon as I started it in earnest I knew I should give it more than an afternoon. So I gave it a week. 91 pages. Dipping in and out, re-reading, taking it slowly. I am, by nature a fast reader, but this book begs to be given time, room to breathe.
This is a story of themes more than actions. It’s a story of memory, love, loss, and pain. A woman arrives in a remote town, ostensibly for work (art criticism and editing), but it’s also the last place the man she loved was seen. A filmmaker, he was exploring the ruins of an old seminary built in what sounds like the Brutalist tradition, all imposing concrete forms with sharp angles never quite sharp thanks to the material, cold, immovable. In 91 pages she has a migraine, eats food, recalls moments of love and frustration, explores, puts off more exploring, questions her own grief, takes walks, rides buses, and finally explores fully, attempting to walk in what she assumes were his last steps.
And while that’s a pretty accurate summary, it misses what makes me love this. There is a patience to the writing, and an obsessive attention to detail. Sanctuary feels old. Dillon spends pages describing the way concrete can break down, describing what goes on inside the walls and why they are failing. There are pages on the structural problems the building faced, the history of this place that was meant for something so traditional but designed and built with only the new in mind. These things clashed, and neither is good or bad, or rather neither is described as such. The lost filmmaker was obsessed with these tensions, with the difference between use and design; but he was also obsessed with telling the building’s story. Not the story of the building, or the story about the building’s failing, but the story of the building itself. The woman describes at one point how the filmmaker said he felt the only way to really tell the story would be through the remnants of the building itself, that the story was contained in the failing concrete, the broken stairs, the wooden beams fallen to the ground, the dust and dirt and water and new animal life. The only way he could tell the story was to go there, to be in these things. For her, the story of him is to be told by examining his obsession, examining the notes he left, revisiting all the conversations they had, and finally, by going herself, and climbing through the fence. The only way to understand is to go to the seminary.
In some ways, Dillon’s writing does more than beg to be given time, it demands it, quietly, patiently. There is no forward movement, or very little. There is no plot pulling forward. There are mysteries, questions unanswered, but no answers, no resolution, because the unanswered questions are really about the people, and this is not a book about people. Again, the only way to understand is to go to the seminary.
This is a book about a place, and the filmmaker and the art critic are there to help Dillon explore that building. That is why we don’t need the answers, because the questions she asks herself are for herself, they are tangential to the real purpose, to give that building, not a voice, but its due. The old seminary is not a character, it is a structure, that is never in question, but it is the focus. And in 91 pages Dillon lovingly describes for us each detail from a number of perspectives. The art critic who associates every new room, every new discovery with the filmmaker, the filmmaker’s obsessive interest that describes the building via context and history before even setting foot in it, and finally a detached view, associated with no character, just simple italics delivering the most detail of the three. Describing with care the cement, the wood, the dirt, the air, the light the decay, the building as it is now. And that’s key to me, that both the critic and filmmaker try to understand the seminary but always turn back to either personal associations or historical context. Those italicized portions really get it.
McCarthy mentions the nouveau roman in his blurb, and it’s apt. The seminary is the reason this novella was written, and in 91 beautiful pages Dillon gives it its due.
