Suck, The First European Sex Paper
Suck, The First European Sex Paper was founded in Amsterdam in 1969 by William Levy, Heathcote Williams, Germaine Greer, Willem de Ridder, Susan Janssen and Lynne Tillman. Suck also co-organized the Wet Dream Film Festivals .
This post is dedicated to the work of Earl Kemp.
Der Marquis de Sade translated by Pierre Klossowski
from Otto Flakeâs 1930 German original.
Der Marquis de Sade is said to have been one of the sources on which Peter Weiss based his play Marat/Sade.
Flake thanks Maurice Heine, Sade connoisseur and Vicomte de Noailles, owner of the original manuscript.
Marie-Laure and Charles
Arthur Anne Marie Charles (26 September 1891- 28 April 1981), better known as Vicomte de Noailles married Marie-Laure Bischoffsheim in 1923. They were famous art patrons and owned Villa Noailles built by Robert Mallet-Stevens between 1923 and 1933 in Hyères in the South of France.
Marie-Laure
 Marie-Laure, Vicomtesse de Noailles (31 October, 1902 – 29 January, 1970), was one of the 20th century‘s most daring and influential patrons of the arts, noted for her associations with Salvador DalÃ, Balthus, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, Luis Bunuel, Francis Poulenc, Jean-Michel Frank and others as well as her tempestuous life and eccentric personality. She and her husband financed Ray’s film Mystery of the Chateau of Dice (1929), Poulenc’s Aubade (1929), Bunuel and Dali’s film L’Age d’Or (1930), and Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet (1930).
Little Caesar 7
Dennis Cooper says:
“I think most of you know I used to edit a literary/ art/ music zine back in the late 70s and early 80s called Little Caesar. Issue #7 was a kind of unofficial Andy Warhol themed issue. I got Warhol superstar Gerard Malanga to give me a little interview he’d done with Warhol in the 60s and write something about Nico. Lou Reed gave me a long poem he’d written. Taylor Mead gave a long piece of writing. I did a special section on my all time favorite Warhol superstar Eric Emerson, who’d died not long before I put the issue together. The section on him included pix, writings, excerpts from his diary, and a transcript of his amazing scene in ‘Chelsea Girls‘ Below I’ve posted scans of select pages from the issue. This will be the first of a series of posts concentrating on various Little Caesar products.” Dennis Cooper in 30 pages of Little Caesar # 7
Parc Monceau by Monet
Monceau Park (1878) – Claude Monet
In search of Borgesian elements in Story of O.
From the opening lines of Story of O:
Where did her lover take her? To the Monceau Park or the Montsouris Park? Or both?
I’ve written about O here.
Somewhat related linkcandy: sinnliches.ch and and accompanying Google gallery (nsfw).
I Spit On Your Grave (1959) – Michel Gast
On the morning of this date in 1959, Boris Vian was at the Cinema Marbeuf in Paris for the screening of the film version (see picture above) of his controversial “Vernon Sullivan” novel, I Spit On Your Graves. He had already fought with the producers over their interpretation of his work and he publicly denounced the film stating that he wished to have his name removed from the credits. A few minutes after the film began, he reportedly blurted out: “These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!” He then collapsed into his seat and died of a heart attack en route to the hospital.
Background:
J’irai cracher sur vos tombes (Eng: I Spit On Your Graves) is a 1946 French language novel by Boris Vian written under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan. It was adapted to film by Michel Gast in 1959. Radley Metzger bought the American the rights to this film and distributed it there from 1963 onwards. Miscegenation, murder and revenge are the themes of this French crime drama set in the American south.
Plot
The story, like the other stories that Vian wrote under the “Sullivan” moniker, is set in the American South and describes the difficulties African Americans face in their daily lives with “whites”. In this novel, Lee Anderson, a light-skinned African-American, leaves his native town after his brother was lynched and hanged because he was in love with a white woman. Once arrived in this other city, Lee becomes librarian and fraternizes with the local youngsters who crave for alcohol and sex. His goal is to avenge his brother.
Different in style from other Vian novels, this story is more violent, rawer and most representative of the “Sullivan” series, in which Vian denounces the atmosphere of racism and the precarious situation of African Americans’ living conditions in the American South.
Shortly after its publication (in 1949) the novel was banned because it was perceived as pornographic and immoral; Vian himself was convicted of “outrage aux bonnes mœurs” [2] a French phrase meaning outrage to public morality or “an insult to public decency. (see Censorship in France) There was a 1947 illustrated version by Jean Boullet. The novel also exists in a bowlderized version.
I’ve previously written about Vian here.
Apparently, Michel Houellebecq is to be found behind the camera these days. He is busy with the film adaptation of Platform (or is it Possiblity of an Island?). Some stills can be found on the website of Fernando Arrabal. Scarcely clad body-painted carnivalesque damsels draw the immediate attention. It has been rumored that Rem Koolhaas would design the decors. Fernando Arrabal is prominently present. –via De Papieren Man
Baobab is the common name of a tree, native to Madagascar, mainland Africa and Australia. The baobab is occasionally known as the devil tree, from African folklore which has it that the devil was mad at the tree because he got stuck in its branches, pulled it out and planted it upside down, making the branches the roots and vice versa. To make sure no future baobab trees would grow, the devil destroyed all young baobabs, that is why there are only fully grown baobabs. The Devil Tree is also the name of a novel by Jerzy Kosinski which I just finished reading and liked a lot. It’s the story of a ‘poor little rich kid’ who travels, goes in group therapy, is initiated into ‘the concern’ (its mysticism reminded me of Iain Banks‘ The Business). This revenge tale is the male equivalent of Fear of Flying (without the literary references). Both were published in 1973 and reflect the American zeitgeist. There is a fine review by Mary Ellin Barrett, Cosmopolitan.
Also, don’t miss Her Private Devil, the tale of the love affair between Kosinski and Laurie Steiber as told by Steiber over at nymag.
Jules Janin
“The frenetique school is a school of literature in 19th century France. The term frénétique is French for frenetic and means fast, frantic, harried, or frenzied. The term was coined by Charles Nodier.
In the category of “la littérature frénétique”, most frequently cited are Jules Janin (The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman), Charles Lassailly, Xavier Forneret (Un pauvre honteux), Arlincourt (Le Solitaire) Charles Nodier (Smarra, or The Demons of the Night, 1821), Frédéric Soulié (Les Mémoires du diable, 1838) and Petrus Borel (Champavert, contes immoraux, 1833). Its peak was the late 1820s and early 1830s.
Its wider context is gothic literature. Every European country had its own terminology to denote the sensibility of the gothic novel. In France it was called the roman noir (“black novel”, now primarily used to denote the hardboiled detective genre) and in Germany it was called the Schauerroman (“shudder novel”). Italy and Spain must have had their own, but I am unaware of their names as of yet.
Their is some overlap with the Bouzingos.”
I’ve posted about this before here.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dfbZ6S6DU4]
Liebestod (German, “Love’s Death”) is the title of a song from the opera Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner.
As a literary term liebestod (from German Liebe, love and tod, death) it refers to the literary theme of erotic death or love death meaning the two lovers’ consummation of their love in death or after death.
Two-sided examples include Tristan und Isolde, Romeo and Juliet and to some degree Wuthering Heights, one-sided examples Porphyria’s Lover and The Sorrows of Young Werther.
The joint suicide of Heinrich von Kleist and lover Henriette Vogel is often associated with the liebestod theme.
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) was an American writer.
In some of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, when somebody dies, Vonnegut does not call it dying. He writes that this person had their “peephole closed” and when they are born, they simply have their “peephole opened”.