Category Archives: life

Graphomania. Compulsive logorrhea.

Margaret Atwood asks why writers write in Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002), sourced here.

These are the three questions most often posed to writers, both by readers and by themselves: Who are you writing for? Why do you do it? Where does it come from? …

Here then is the list:

… To pass the time, even though it would have passed anyway. Graphomania. Compulsive logorrhea. Because I was driven to it by some force outside my control. Because I was possessed. Because an angel dictated to me. Because I fell into the embrace of the Muse. Because I got pregnant by the Muse and needed to give birth to a book …

And ‘to pass the time’ reminds us of Borges who notes:

“I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time.” — Introduction to The Book of Sand

I am forced to the appalling conclusion

joanvollmer.jpg

Joan Vollmer

In 1951, William Burroughs shot and killed his wife Joan Vollmer in a drunken game of “William Tell” at a party above the American-owned Bounty Bar in Mexico City.

In the introduction to Queer, a novel written in 1953 but published in 1985, Burroughs states, “I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan’s death … So the death of Joan brought me into contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I had no choice except to write my way out.” (Queer, 1985, p.xxii)

Truth and Todorov

Historian and philosopher Tzvetan Todorov argues in the French left wing newspaper Libération that the foundations of democracy are at risk whenever a country accepts – as the United States did with the war in Iraq – lies and illusion. An English translation of the article here.

Search string used: Todorov + Fellini, after seeing the following definition of the term felliniesque at Wikipedia:

“felliniesque” is used to describe any scene in which a hallucinatory image invades an otherwise ordinary situation.

This reminded me of Todorov’s definition of fantastic literature.

The truth is — and as always with cases of instinctual dislike I cannot exactly explain why — I don’t care much for Fellini who is considered according to the same Wikipedia article as “one of the most influential and widely revered Italian filmmakers of the 20th century and … one of the finest film directors of all time”. All time film equals 20th century film, too much praise indeed.

The last film by Fellini I watched was his vignette for the Boccaccio 70 collection. His contribution, starring Anita Ekberg just seemed downright silly. I liked the other 3 contributions except his.

I’d like to point out the irony of Todorov, who’s written about the unresolved hesitation between the real and the imaginary, should write about the notion of truth as it relates to Iraq and the U.S.A..

“Will I disturb your writing if I vacuum?”

Woman: “Will I disturb your writing if I vacuum?”

Bukowski: “Nothing can disturb my writing, it’s a disease.”

Via The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction (2005) – which arrived in the mail yesterday. I don’t find it as enjoyable as 1001 Books I’ve been raving about but in contrast to the latter, it has more cross-media references to music and film. Notably absent are Ian McEwan and Iain Banks. Also, mostly 20th century literature.

The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction (2005) – Michaela Bushell, Helen Rodiss Paul Simpson [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Introducing Dr. Gaston Ferdière

Ferdière has been somewhat on my mind since a letter that Hans Bellmer wrote to him on his strange codependent relationship with Unica Zürn came to my attention. It appears that he was the psychiatrist of Unica Zürn, Antonin Artaud and Isidore Isou. Here is an excerpt from a 1995 article by British academic Stephen Barber:

“Under Ferdiere’s supervision, Artaud received 51 sessions of electroshock between June 1943 and December 1944. The treatment had been invented only five years earlier, by the Italian doctor Ugo Cerletti, who had observed the pacifying effect of electric shocks applied to the skulls of pigs in a Rome slaughterhouse and adapted the strategy for human application. The treatment was surrounded by an aura of discovery and excitement at the time Ferdiere began to use it, and he embraced it enthusiastically. Ferdiere’s assistant, Jacques Latremoliere, included an account of the treatment Artaud underwent in his doctoral thesis, Incidents and Accidents Observed in the Course of 1200 Electroshocks. He writes of the “theatrical reactions of the subject in the face of his hallucinations” and notes that one of Artaud’s vertebrae was shattered during the third of the unanesthetized sessions. Artaud himself would write of his having been taken for dead at the end of this same session, and of watching the orderlies prepare to take his “corpse” to the mortuary before he suddenly awakened after a coma of 90 minutes. Ferdiere, while not denying that such an incident took place, told me that, with such a volume of electroshocks being applied, it was difficult to remember this particular event. … Ferdiere, building on his reputation as the “rehabilitator” of Artaud, would subsequently become the psychiatrist of the Surrealist photographer Hans Bellmer and his companion, the poet Unica Zürn (who committed suicide in 1970 while under his care). He also treated the leader of the Lettrist art movement, Isidore Isou, during the events of May 1968 in Paris. Isou and his fellow Lettrist Maurice Lemaitre subsequently wrote an entire book of outrageous insults against Ferdiere, titled Antonin Artaud Tortured by the Psychiatrists. They asserted: “Dr Gaston Ferdiere is one of the greatest criminals in the entire history of humanity: a new Eichmann,” and demanded his immediate arrest …” —Art in America

 

My best wishes for 2007

Cover design by Tanino Liberatore for Italian magazine Frigidaire

Although thematically appropriate, the above image is no way of wishing you ‘all the best’. Let me try that again:

Garden in Shoreham (1820s or early 1830s) – Samuel Palmer

 

Carnal Knowledge (1971) – Mike Nichols

Carnal Knowledge (1971) – Mike Nichols [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

G___ lent me a VHS copy of Carnal Knowledge (1971). It’s a depressing look at the effects of the sexual revolution and free love, one of the first films to depict its negative influences, as such it predates Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). While the film deals with themes related to eroticism, it is unerotic in its depiction thereof, and can best be classified as a kitchen-sink realist drama and a celebration of the modernist cult of ugliness. The film is also reminiscent of Coming Apart (1969) and was a feature in David Schwartz’s retrospective on the sexual revolution in American cinema.

Christmas exchange game

K___, M______ and I play a Christmas exchange game. Each has to lend the other a DVD, book or other artifact, which is to be returned after Christmas.

K____ exchanges an original video of Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS, and a copy of the original Mummy and the The Devil Thumbs a Ride; The Norton Anthology of English Literature and Tony Hillerman’s People of Darkness.

I offer K___ Le Sexe qui parle and Astrid Lindgren’s My Nightingale Is Singing (1984). For M_____ it was Serge Gainsbourg‘s CD compilation Du Jazz dans le ravin (1996).

My copy of Praz’s The Romantic Agony

My copy of Praz’s The Romantic Agony arrived Thursday, with an introduction by Frank Kermode and the famous Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation (c.1485) by Memling on the cover. At times it reads as the gossip pages from the Decadents. Here is a quote on the supposed impotence of Baudelaire:

“[The] case of Baudelaire’s exotic exclusiveness will be understood, and of his strange conduct towards Madame Sabatier, and it can be why so many people give credit to the rumour reported by Nadar. (Baudelair’s impotence, generally admitted in this case, is denied by Flottes.)” pages 153 and 187 of The Romantic Agony.

It seems that I was wrong about Praz’s ‘panning’ of the decadence of late romantic literature. In his introduction Praz that it is his aim to describe the what-is-ness of this sensibility (morbidity and perversion) in romantic literature.