You might notice I've been on a Burroughs/Beats kick lately. Me and everyone else it seems, but we'll get to that later.
I blogged about William S. Burroughs and Brion Gyson only just recently because my recent obsession with Burroughs regards his style. I am in awe. All my newfound fascination confuses me because I read "Junky" over a year ago and didn't get so into it then.
What has changed between then and now?
(8h41)
(9h43 - after dishes and cleaning up a little cat vomit)
I still can't answer my own question. Different writer speak to me at different times. When I first read Catcher in the Rye I was bowled over, nowadays I read bits from time to time with mild disinterest. As much as I still have a certain regard for Anais Nin, it is for the quantity of pages she filled in her lifetime rather than for the content of the pages.
I think what I've experienced is a common thing. Monsieur Redacteur gets it too. As you continue to read throughout your life you read better books and sometimes worse books. The ranking queue keeps adjusting below a certain number. W. Somerset Maugham, Colette, Maupaussant, and Murakami seem to be constantly at the top of my list of favourites, but after that it changes with every book I read.
So Junky didn't talk to me, but Naked Lunch did. The Cut Up Trilogy interests me. The style is almost mechanical in its assembly. The Cut Up Trilogy (also known as The Nova Trilogy) is comprised of "The Soft Machine", "The Ticket that Exploded", and "The Nova Express". Burroughs himself considered them a sort of sequel to Naked Lunch.
At the bookstore the other day there were three Burroughs books: "The Soft Macine", "The Ticket that Exploded", and "The Place of Dead Robots". Being interested in The Cut Up Trilogy I of course bought The Place of Dead Robots, which is the second book in a completely different trilogy (which includes "Cities of the Red Night" and "The Western Lands") and doesn't use the cut up method at all.
But that's okay. Maybe it's a fitting method, my reading and discovering Burroughs. One book here, one book there. Cut ups of cut up trilogies (I have Nova Express at home) and whatever else I can lay my hands on. I suppose it helps that Burroughs had such an interesting life.
I'm not entirely disappointed either. The Place of Dead Roads is written in such a way I might not have known it didn't employ the cut up method. It's not easy to read because it doesn't flow like a "story", but it is interesting. I like reading it a few pages at a time.
I don't know when I'll get over my current Burroughs fascination, but for the moment it's helping me write, which is good enough for me.
I cannot possibly write a review of Roger Shattuck's book "The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France 1885 to World War I without including the quote from Plato's Symposium (also sometimes translated as Banquet) found on the very first page.
. . . there remained awake only Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon, who were drinking out of a large goblet which they passed around, and Socrates was discoursing to them. Aristodemus did not hear the beginning of the discourse, and he was only half awake, but the chief thing which he remembered was Socrates insisting to the other two that the genius of comedy was the same as that of tragedy, and that the writer of tragedy ought to be a writer of comedy also.
Roger Shattuck's book The Banquet Years is a book devoted to five subjects: Henri Rosseau, the self taught painter who would influence Picasso, Léger, Jean Hugo, Beckmann, and the Surrealists; Alfred Jarry, who is most famous for his play Ubu Roi (King Ubu)and its rather famous opening word "merde" that caused a quarter of an hour of pandemonium with the traditional theater attending public booing and jeering while the avant-garde countered with cheers and applause; Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki), who is accredited as the coiner of the term "Surrealism", Apollinaire was the impressario of the avant-garde, who met his end of the very last day of the first World War; and Erik Satie, the true progenitor of "Musak" with his 1920 manifesto advocating "musique d'ameublement" (furniture music), the brilliant composer that beat both Debussy and Ravel in the race to create modern music, and brought together in his own way the avant-garde, Surrealists, the Dadaists, and the old and the new.
Shattuck states in the Preface (to the Vintage Edition),
"Then came the idea - a kind of gambler's hunch that the trio Rousseau-Satie-Apollinaire represented several significant aspects of the period and could reveal them better than any single figure. . . Within a few weeks Jarry had forced his way into the group and established himself close to the center of things. He helped me clarify my underlying subject: how the fluid state known as bohemia, a cultural underground smacking of failure and fraud, crystallized for a few decades into a self-conscious avant-garde that carried the arts into a period of astonishingly varied renewal and accomplishment."
It all started with a funeral. On May 22, 1885 French literature was dealt a tremendous blow with the death of Victor Hugo (who received his letters addressed à Monsieur Hugo, sur son avenue - to Mr. Hugo on his avenue after they renamed the Avenue d'Elyau Avenue Victor Hugo in his honour). More than two million people joined in his funeral procession from the Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon where he was laid to rest beside Alexandre Dumas, who was buried only fifteen years before. The endless procession included several brass brands, every political and literary figure of the day (like Zola who would also be buried in the same crypt as Hugo and Dumas), speeches, and numerous deaths in the crowd of the mourners. A church had been unconsecrated. No monarch ever had such a funeral.
Victor Hugo's funeral procession in a hearse of the "people" as he demanded in his will.
Paris had just had a lot "done". Baron Haussmann was the ultimate Svengali, preparing his ingenue for her ultimate role in la belle epoque. Every theater, avenue, cafe, and street corner would be her stage. Paris would become the Muse for art, literature, theater, fashion, and how to live the good life.
Unlike most celebrities, Paris is fairly open about having had work done.
Of all the stages set for her, the most demanding was that of the salon. The new Napoleonic aristocracy had replaced the old. The most elevated member of the new nobility, Princesse Mathilde Bonaparte, Napoleon's niece, did not mince her words: "The French revolution? Why, witout it I'd be selling oranges in the streets of Ajaccio." Princesse Mathilde cultivated" the great minds of Gautier, Flaubert, and Renan to her dangerously liberal salon. During the Third Republic she began receiving Alexandre Dumas (fils), Henri de Régnier, Maupassant, and Anatole France at her house on the rue de Berri. The same house would later be the Belgian embassy and it's next door neighbour would be fashion designer and rival of Madame Coco herself, Elsa Schiaparelli who was heavily influenced by the Surrealists, most notably by Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau.
Elsa Schiaparelli, lobster painted by Dali, made for Wallis Simpson.
Elsa Schiaparelli with details by Jean Cocteau.
Paris is nothing if not the cleverest of ladies. Knowing she could not conquer the salon, she used her new face lift to attract new admirers to the cafés. Here anyone could sit for the price of a drink. This singular idea would give birth to the café culture that still exists today. Here artists and writers could meet and exchange ideas. Impressionism came from The Café Guerbois on Avenue de Clichy thanks to Manet who was often joined by Zola, Bazille, Latour, Degas, Monet, Renoir, and Sisley with Cezanne and Pissaro visiting from time to time. Together the group was known as Les Batignolles, named for the area where the cafe was located. At the Nouvelle Athènes on Place Pigalle (torn down in 2004) one could find Matisse and Van Gogh. Degas painted L'Absinthe here. The Napolitain, the Weber (a favourite hang out of Henry Miller), the Vachette - all the cafés of Paris were full of people putting their glasses and minds together.
L'Absinthe on display at the Orsay Museum in Paris that was once booed off the easel and thus kept in storage for nearly 20 years.
With that much talking go on and amongst so many gifted minds, it is inevitable that a quarrel should occur but none more bizarre than the one between Count Montesquiou and Henri Regnier. After the new cinematographe of the Lumiére brothers caused a fire at the Bazar de la Charité in 1897 that led to the death of a few prominent French aristocrats a quarrel broke out between Count Robert de Montesquiou and the symbolist poet Henri de Regnier and all over a cane.
It was rumoured after the fire at the Bazar that some of the upper-crust youths used their canes to clear a path for themselves out of the fire, abandoning their lady companions. Upon meeting Count Montesquiou at the Baron de Rothchild's, Regnier's two sisters-in-law made a comment about the count's cane, even though he had not been present. Regnier himself added some comments about how dashing the count would look with a muff or a fan. Montesquiou demanded satisfaction, choosing pistols.
But Regnier claimed to have said, on the contrary. "There are two things I wish I could use - a fan in the summer and a muff in the winter". The offender became the offended and chose swords. The poet proved as mighty with a sword in his hands as with a pen and wounded the count. They both refused to be reconciled.
Dueling or demanding satisfaction were not uncommon during the age. The newspapers announced each day's affaires d'honneur, with interviews from the seconds as to what had and had not happened. Engagements were fought untl the first blood flowed only. Fatal duels were rare though sometimes death was only just avoided as in the case of Catulle Mendes who almost lost his life defending Sarah Bernhardt's right to play Hamlet.
But despite these fanciful things in 1885 Paris there was a need for fresh outlets of expression that was met in part by the new literary reviews, the Salon des Independants, and the private gatherings of artists such as Mallarmé's mardis (Tuesdays) and Edmond de Goncourt's grenier (attic). The pressure was building up - and the effects would go farther than just the limits of Paris.
The year was 1913. Cubism was now in London and DH Lawrence published Sons and Lovers. 1913 is the year that Joyce would send in Dubliners for publication. In New York, in Italy, in anywhere that mattered things were starting to happen, but in 1913 Paris everything was happening at once.
Apollinaire was writing about Cubism and sitting for portrats; Satie was composing music that would be later pumped into elevators; the pistol of Alfred Jarry the pataphysician was now being carried around by Picasso after Jarry died of tuberculosis after years of drinking and drugging in 1907; Rosseau would die three years later and be buried in the same cemetary as Jarry outside of Paris. Apollinaire would compose his epitaph that Brancusi would chisel on to his tombstone:
We salute you Gentle Rousseau you can hear us.
Delaunay, his wife, Monsieur Queval and myself.
Let our luggage pass duty free through the gates of heaven.
We will bring you brushes paints and canvas.
That you may spend your sacred leisure in the
light and Truth of Painting.
As you once did my portrait facing the stars, lion and the gypsy
The Dream, the last painting of Henri Rousseau painted just before his death.
Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry.
Apollinaire painted by Maurice Vlaminck. "Faut-il qu’il m’en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine..." Our loves recall how then after each sorrow joy came back again".
Erik Satie's first published composition, GymnopédiesNo. 1.
With the exception of the Renaissance, the avant-garde was a time when writers, artists, and musicians lived and worked together and tried their hands at each other's arts in an atmosphere of constant collaboration. But the avant-garde years, The Banquet Years as Shattuck calls them were more than a period, more than just a movemement. It was, as Shattuck puts it in Chapter Two: "a way of life, both dedicated and frivolous. The question is where to look, where to concentrate one's attention in order to distinguish its form and details." Shattuck mentions in his footnote that Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle and Marcel Raymond's De Baudelaire au surréalisme are worth a read, but one couldn't go wrong to read "The Banquet Years" (or at least purchase it for its footnotes and bibliography.
* I would like to comment here that while Satie's work in music did eventually lead to modern day Musak, his compositions are well worth a listen and can easily be listened to on Deezer. Please don't let your experienced with Neil Diamond "Musak" at grocery stores dissuade you.
"This is going to sound sexist," he says warningly, "but American woman writers are just awful..."
Sexism, still alive and well in literature apparently.
He then proceeds to knock Eudora Welty, whom I consider a damn fine female writer, but my head is still spinning from the whole American woman writers bit. I am seriously offended. Eudora Welty is to me one of the best short story writers in American literature. Nevermind she was a she. Her work still holds it own in the male-dominated world of literature.
I ask for examples. He looks in a book of Welty's collected short stories. He reads until he is annoyed and stops. He blurts out "as full of himself as a colt". It's a metaphor I say and probably one she grew up hearing since she was from the South. He goes on saying Welty is "too clever, too effusive, trying to hard to be clever".
I don't want to sound snobby here but until you have examined a vast proportion of a writer's work you cannot judge their writing. You can judge the work on its own merits, but not the writer him-or-herself. I loved W. Somerset Maugham because the first thing I read were his short stories. Then I decided to read Of Human Bondage and didn't like it as much. Now that I've read nearly everything that Maugham ever wrote I can still earnestly and with authority say he is one of the best writers to ever write. Sure he's slightly outdated now, but I don't give a fig. I have yet to find a book that is as witty and sharp as The Razor's Edge. I can nearly recite his short story "Rain" verbatim.
He sits down in the chair and opens up a book of Alice Munroe's Selected Stories. He doesn't approve. He gives Munroe the same treatment he gave poor Eudora. The language is too precious he says.
Now he or you or I have as much right to not like a writer for whatever reason we want. The writing might not be to our tastes or the subject of the book or story might bore us. Yes, everyone might be named Rose. Yes they might write lines like "she understood Char was beautiful". But if you could hear what he's saying now (which basically boils down to backtracking faster than a politican), you'd probably feel the same way as I do which is, how dare you take my books off my shelf and then proceed to butcher some of my favourite writers (Well I'm not a fan of Munroe's. I bought her book because I wanted to see what happens when you take another writer's style and make no effort to reshape it into your own.)?!?!
I ask him, "Do you understand that Eudora Welty is considered one of the finest American writers of all time and a master of the short story?"
No, he doesn't care. He doesn't care about a writer's reputation.
"If you don't care about a writer's reputation, then why do you bother to read books that are recommended to you?"
It's who recommends them he says. And the work itself. "Who's opinion is it", he asks, "and why do they deserve it?"
I ask him why he bothers to write down ever book ever mentioned in the works of Borges, Miller, or Colin Wilson, all of whom he's told me make the best recommendations for books.
"It's all about pleasure for me. I only read it because I like it."
So let's get away from the whole recommendations thing then. "How can you judge female American writers based on just Welty and Munroe?"
He doesn't. He likes Sylvia Plath and Amy Hemple. Still I refuse to let him off the hook because whereas I go out of my way to support female writers in general, his reading is predominantly male.
I tell him I don't understand why he'd make such a blanket statement. Why not he says.
Have you ever read Wharton I ask him? No.
What about Carson McCullers? She's genius he says. Harper Lee is also a genius apparently.
I keep at it, citing other female American writers. He conceeds. But in the end it doesn't matter does it? He prefers male authors. Is it because most books published are written by men? Does he think that female writers can't be as good as men?
Not at all he says. But he reads most male writers because he's a man and there's more of them. I certainly wish that we women had this luxury. Of the 100 books on Time's list of the All Time 100 Novels only 18 of the books were written by women and two of those 18 were written by Virginia Woolf.
So my question to my readers is, who are you favourite female authors? They obviously need our support.
I am a massive comic book fan and have been ever since I was four years old and went around with aluminum foil taped to my wrists and a paper crown on my head à la Wonder Woman. She was my favourite superhero for many years and then I sort of forgot her until I grew old enough to afford comic books and started reading X-Men, The Fantastic Four, The Green Lantern, The Flash, and all the other comics I discovered in my thirty year love affair with the art form.
But I must confess I've never been a fan of Superman. While I can appreciate "The Man of Steel" as a superhero, Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman never appealed to me. When I became engrossed in the JLA comics all I could think was despite all his invincibleness and speed and strength and buffness he still wasn't The Green Lantern. He wasn't even the second or third or fourth best member of The Justice League! (IMHO)(The H is for humble.)
First off Superman isn't invincible. There's Kryptonite to deal with and lead and magic and psionics and his dependency on a certain female reporter.
Secondly he's not that fast either. In the World's Finest #198-199 Superman races The Flash (Barry Allen, Silver Age) and Superman is forced to admit that The Flash is the fastest man alive...on this planet (Earth).
Overall Superman vs. The Flash would leave it at 2-0-2 before Barry Allen died saving the Multiverse in The Crisis of Infinite Earths (1985).
hen Barry Allen is resurrected in 2009 they have it out again and The Flash beats Supes in an actual foot race. Easily. Knowing The Flash he probably chewed gum leisurely and had time to hit on a few ladies while he gave Supes a chance to catch up. Supe lovers can get into all the debates they want but while atmospheres may be different from world to world, it doesn't change the fact that The Flash can manipulate the very atoms of his body which essentially boils down to manual teleportation, which even someone as fast as a speeding bullet can't do even on their best day.
Now in strength Superman has a little more ground to stand on. The Hulk was bested by Superman and The Hulk is the strongest mortal on Earth. But let's not forget Superman isn't invincible. Doomsday managed to kill him and he isn't the only one. In fact any superhero with either enough magic, lead, or Kryptonite could do the job. Heaven forbid post crisis 1985 Superman were to meet up with say Dr. Manhattan (Watchmen) or Thor (as he is a god and all). Superman isn't as badass as he used to be.
Still even I have to concede that in buffness Superman isn't a bad choice as far as superheroes are concerned. He certainly does fill out a pair of tights and there were moments in the JLA that Supes proved he wasn't just a perfectly square-jawed face...
I didn't read Superman because there were so many other comic books I want(ed) to read and I just never liked him enough, in fact I liked him so little I considered Superman my least favourite of all the more popular comic book superheroes. I didn't think I could like him any less until...
The day I read on Google News that Superman had renounced his U.S. citizenship. Not because he saw the current situation in America for the bullshit it is, but because after showing up to support protestors in Tehran he inadvertently started a war because he is such an icon of America that the Iranians see it as an act of war. Supes denounced his citizenship at the U.N. (thus providing more evidence that the U.N. is actually the U.S.) and has decided to stop thinking locally and act globally.
WTF???!!!???
With the new Superman reboot coming out (with the hot guy from The Tudors as Supes) and all the other comic book movies being spit out by Hollywood (the best of recent memory obviously being ZS' The Watchmen), this is (obviously) another marketing ploy to rake in the big bucks internationally. When even stars of such calibre (or after The Rite is this statement no longer true? Hmmm...) as SIR Anthony Hopkins, Dame Helen Mirren, and other great actors not from the UK are now starring in films based on comic books it has to be obvious to comic book fans and non-comic book fans alike that DC Comics sold out Superman to sell more tickets.
But given that Superman is supposed to represent "the American way", maybe it was more in character than Goyer and Sepulveda realised. Which is very, very, very sad.
So no Superman as much as I dislike you as a comic book character, I don't think that you should have shafted the American people being such a symbol of hope and all.
Zelda Fitzgeral was dubbed by her husband the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night) as "the first American flapper" and is (or should be) for any aspiring flâneuse-eur a sort of inspiration. Any aspiring flâneuse-eur would be flattered to be the embodiment of an entire era in history. Non?
After her husband's success with the novel This Side of Paradise, the Fitzgeralds were nearly instant celebrities. Zelda had always welcomed the limelight, and welcomed the invitations and the parties - the jazz and the gin.
The Fitzgeralds were, colloquially speaking, drunks. An early version of Bonnie and Clyde except instead of robbing and stealing the Fitzgeralds drank to excess, took naps in chic Upper East Side sitting rooms, and went to party after party.
She was even drunk at the birth of her daughter and admitted as much."Oh, God, goofo I'm drunk. Mark Twain. Isn't she smart—she has the hiccups. I hope it's beautiful and a fool—a beautiful little fool".
The new father wasn't too inebriated to be present for his daughter's birth and the proof is in the plagarism. Daisy Buchanan would later utter the same words to her daughter in The Great Gatsby. The Fitzgeralds quickly became accustomed to their new life as parents thanks to the extensive staff they employed of a nurse for Frances ("Scottie"), a couple who cleaned the house, and a laundress - who I like to imagine Zelda never once referred to as a laundry lady in the high-falutin' conversations she likely had with some of her top drawer chums.
It is Zelda's sort of exaggerated WASPishness that made me so curious about her in the first place. I Wiki'd her and my curiosity was rewarded with a sort of recette pour la vie, or Zelda's at least.
(Asked to submit a recipe for a book, she sent them the following.)
"See if there is any bacon, and if there is, ask the cook which pan to fry it in. Then ask if there are any eggs, and if so try and persuade the cook to poach two of them. It is better not to attempt toast, as it burns very easily. Also, in the case of bacon, do not turn the fire too high, or you will have to get out of the house for a week. Serve preferably on china plates, though gold or wood will do if handy".
To be a true flâneuse or if the case applies, a flâneur - means deciding that life is to be lived. It is seizing a moment to be witty instead of admitting you don't know how to cook*. Of course you know what one should serve, but you wouldn't serve it yourself because that would be unspeakable. (GASP!)
But choosing the life of the flâneuse, the bohemian, the vagabond, the layabout, the dandy, the fop, the eccentric - it's not for everybody and it's not always a pretty picture either. Zelda was in many ways oppressed by her husband. When she asked for a divorce because she was smitten with another man, F. Scott locked her in the house and didn't let her out again until she agreed to not divorce him. His work isolated a woman who wanted nothing more than to find a creative outlet for herself. On top of everything Zelda grew increasingly resentful of all the things she'd written that found their way into her husband's work.
When she was approached to write a cheeky review of her husband's new book The Beautiful and The Damned, Zelda it seemed couldn't resist mentioning how her husband edited her words.
To begin with, every one must buy this book for the following aesthetic reasons: First, because I know where there is the cutest cloth of gold dress for only $300 in a store on Forty-second Street, and, also, if enough people buy it where there is a platinum ring with a complete circlet, and, also, if loads of people buy it my husband needs a new winter overcoat, although the one he has has done well enough for the last three years ... It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and, also, scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.
The review led to offers of work from other magazines, but in the end it was her husband who would be mentioned alongside Hemingway and the other greats of The Lost Generation that they had been a part of while living in France. Zelda would be diagnosed as schizophrenic. Their glamorous life was over. Their famous friends and wealthy admirers now considered them unpleasant company.
Zelda wrote her own book, Save Me the Waltz, in just six weeks and sent it off to the publisher. When her husband finally read the book he was furious. It was Zelda's autobiography and whilst writing it she had dared to use parts of her life and their life together that Fitzgerald himself had already planned on using for his book Tender is the Night.
In the end Zelda's book sold only a little over a thousand copies, less than half of the 3,010 books the publisher had printed because her husband would call her a plagarist (ha!) and a third-rate writer (insecure much?) and force her to revise it until it met his conditions.
The same man who locked Zelda in the house so she couldn't leave him would leave her in a mental hospital while he went off to Hollywood to write for TV, and where because there may actually be poetic justice in the world he would die from drinking before her and without her.
Eight years later Zelda died while waiting for electroshock therapy as the mental hospital she was living in burned to the ground. She never finished her last book.
Their daughter Scottie had the last words of The Great Gatsby inscribed on their headstone - "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past", but I prefer this line that was 100% Zelda's - "I don't want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally."
* Some flâneuse-eur like myself do like to cook and consider cooking extremely decadent things a school of philosophic thought of its own. It's called yumology.
I like so many other addicts, abuse a drug called Facebook because it makes me feel better about myself. I don't have the worst of the many Facebook habits - I don't use FB for eye crack. I am not a Friends junkie. No, my addiction is to the great white dust covered Virtual Bookshelf.
Yes, it makes me feel better to save all the books I've read and to write scathing critiques on Kundera or the recent failure of Murakami and every now and then I get to come across a book I've long forgotten, like the Scarlet Letter. How is that for old school?
But my favorite moment today was clicking past Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and coming across the GOW Cliff's Notes, which is a study guide and seeing the following review:
"interesting story but I felt it could have been a bit longer"
I don't think this was tongue-in-cheek sadly.
Though I nearly wet myself showing the poor reader's review the appropriate amount of comedic appreciation.
