Category Archives: literature

Nelson Algren @100

The Man with the Golden Arm (1949) by Nelson Algren

The classic modern novel about drug addiction.

Nelson Algren (1909 – 1981) was an American writer best-known for The Man with the Golden Arm (see drugs in literature and heroin in literature).

Allow me to digress.

Algren had a torrid affair with Simone de Beauvoir and they travelled to Latin America together in 1949. In her novel The Mandarins (1957), she wrote of Algren (who is “Lewis Brogan” in the book):

“At first I found it amusing meeting in the flesh that classic American species: self-made leftist writer. Now, I began taking an interest in Brogan. Through his stories, you got the feeling that he claimed no rights to life and that nevertheless he had always had a passionate desire to live. I liked that mixture of modesty and eagerness.”

On January 3, 2008, French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur publishes a nude photo of Simone de Beauvoir by Art Shay with the title “Simone de Beauvoir la scandaleuse“.

Simone de Beauvoir photo by Art Shay

End of digression.

RIP Nicholas Hughes (1962 – 2009)

Nicholas Hughes with mother Sylvia Plath

Nicholas Hughes (January 17, 1962 – March 16, 2009), son of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has commited suicide. He was suffering from clinical depression like his mother before him who took her life when he was one year old.

I first became empirically aware of the hereditary qualities of suicide via Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, a 1999 book by Kay Redfield Jamison on suicide and manic depression.

Carlo Jacono @80 and Italian exploitation

An Italian translation of Malory by American author James Hadley Chase

Cover design by Carlo Jacono

Carlo Jacono (March 17, 1929 – June 7, 2000) was an Italian illustrator detective novel covers and regular contributor to Mondadori’s gialli and Urania magazine.

A digression into Italian exploitation.

My interest in regional exploitation or pulp culture is that what it tells about the region where it is produced. I am searching for national stereotypes by way of their exploitation culture; regional stereotypes deduced from regional fears and desires (horror and eroticism).

Italian exploitation culture is literature and films in the “low culture” tradition originating from Italy, cultural products which address the prurient interests of its audience. A quick glance at Italian society on the one hand, which its firm anchor in puritan Christianity, and its abundance on the other hand of graphic exploitation material, quickly reveals its double standards.

In print culture there has been giallo fiction, quickly followed by adult comics, the so-called fumetti neri.

But the nature of Italian prurience is most readily revealed in Italian cinema. Genres such as cannibal films, Italian erotica, Italian horror films, giallo films, mondo films, il sexy, spaghetti westerns, sword and sandal films all went a tad further than contemporary products of European exploitation.

Had it not for the world wide web, these maligned genres would probably not have been so widely known, but if you prefer reading books to the internet, here is a list of publications on European exploitation you may enjoy.

André Pieyre de Mandiargues @100

Yesterday would have been André Pieyre de Mandiargues‘s 100th birthday, had he not died in 1991.

Some quick finds:

Les Incongruités monumentales, Robert Laffont, 1948.

Featuring his story “The Diamond”

Prefaced by Mandiargues

Arcimboldo le merveilleux, Robert Laffont, 1977.

His story La Marée and the 1967 novel La Marge were both made into film by Polish film director Walerian Borowczyk and it is de Mandiargues’s collection of pornographic items that is featured in Borowczyk’s Une collection particulière . He wrote several prefaces, amongst others to Pauline Réage‘s Story of O and a catalogue raisonné of Hans Bellmer engravings.

La Motocyclette

His novella La Motocyclette was the basis for Jack Cardiff‘s The Girl on a Motorcycle. He was also the author of works of non-fiction, such as a photography book devoted to Bomarzo entitled Les Monstres de Bomarzo and a book on Arcimboldo. His stories are collected in Le Musée Noir [The Black Museum] (1946) and Soleil des Loups [The Sun Of The Wolves] (1951).

His book Feu de braise (1959) was published in 1971 in an English translation by April FitzLyon called Blaze of Embers (Calder and Boyars, 1971).

One of his most controversial books is L’Anglais décrit dans le château fermé (1953).

RIP Pierre Bourgeade (1927 – 2009)

RIP Pierre Bourgeade

Yaba Yayınları published Ölümsüz Bakireler, presumably a Turkish translation of Les Immortelles. –Sholem Stein

Pierre Bourgeade (November 8, 1927 – March 12, 2009) was a French writer, novelist, dramatist, poet, screenwriter, journalist, literary critic and writer. Rita Renoir met with her first critical success in the theatrical piece Les Immortelles by Bourgeade.

More on his importance to my universe in the coming hours.

Update: He wrote for French film magazines Positif and L’Écran français.

He is known to write in the category black comedy.

He participated in Peter Weibel‘s project Phantom of Desire.

He was a member of the jury of the Prix Sade.

He wrote prefaces for such authors as Stéphen Lévy-Kuentz and most recently Medi Holtrop.

Young Lust (1971-1972)

The Young Lust Reader (1974) [Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

Young Lust is an underground comics anthology series co-founded by Bill Griffith and Jay Kinney.

Young Lust (1971-1972), an underground comics anthology series co-founded by Bill Griffith and Jay Kinney.

It featured stories and art by Bill Griffith, Jay Kinney, Art Spiegelman, “Pap Schmeer” (Landon Chesney), Roger Brand, Justin Green, Jim Osborne, Ned Sonntag, Spain Rodriguez, Nancy Griffith, R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, and Jay Lynch.

For more visuals see[1][2][3] (that last one is the best one).

From the back cover of its reader:

“Once you have experienced YOUNG LUST you’ll never be able to look at another “True Love Romances” in the eye again without cracking up. To have all three YOUNG LUSTS under one cover is almost too much to take!” – Ed Ward, City Magazine

“Occasionally something comes along that too good not to mention like YOUNG LUST, the series of mock-sexploitation comic books that parody perfectly the picaresque sexuality of teenage female cartoon fantasies!! – Howard Smith, Village Voice

“In this world there are three things we can be sure of debt, taxis and YOUNG LUST!!” – David Ossman, Firesign Theatre

“YOUNG LUST is almost impossible to read. You get halfway through the first story when suddenly you are rolling on the floor laughing your head off! Affords the whole family endless hours of pants-pissing entertainment!!” – Dean Latimer, East Village Other B&W

Jean Richepin @160

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bAZPmgvQn4&]

contemporary version of La Glu by a certain Dorsannes

Jean Richepin (February 4, 1849 – December 12, 1926), French poet, novelist and dramatist, noted for perpetuating tropes such as La Glu (1881). He belonged to the Le Cercle des poètes Zutiques and was an important player in French cabaret, the French avant-garde, the history of the cruel tale and the history of derision.

Richepin was virtually unknown until the publication, in 1876, of a volume of verse entitled Chanson des gueux (see Les Gueux), when his outspokenness resulted in his being imprisoned and fined for outrage aux mœurs.

La Glu

La Glu first came to my attention[1] a year ago. It is a poem/song by French writer Jean Richepin. It is a story of motherly love, of a mistress who demands of her lover his mother‘s heart to feed to her dog.

The song was a staple in the French cabarets of the late 19th century and has been interpreted by various performers including Eugènie Valladon, Mistinguett and Polaire.

“La Glu” was brought to stage by Richepin for the Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique in 1883 and later adapted to musical drama set to music by Gabriel Dupont performed at the opera of Nice in 1910.

Hungarian writer József Kiss used the plot for his novel The Mother’s Heart (“Az anyasziv”, written between 1883 and 1889).

The origin of the story is probably an old Arabian tale. It was updated in the 1920s by Iranian poet Iraj Mirza.

The original lyrics of “La Glu” are:

Y avait une fois un pauvre gars

Et lonlon laire

Et lonlon la

Y avait une fois un pauvre gars

Qui aimait celle qui ne l’aimait pas.

T’es-tu fait mal, mon enfant ?

Et le cœur disait, en pleurant :

Elle lui dit : Apporte-moi d’main,

Et lonlon laire

Et lonlon la

Elle lui dit : Apporte-moi d’main,

L’ cœur de ta mère pour mon chien.

Va chez sa mère et la tue,

Et lonlon laire

Et lonlon la

Va chez sa mère et la tue,

Lui prit l’ cœur et s’en courut

Comme il courait, il tomba

Et lonlon laire

Et lonlon la

Comme il courait, il tomba

Et par terre, le cœur roula.

Et pendant que le cœur roulait

Et lon, lon laire,

Et lon, lon la,

Et pendant que le cœur roulait,

Entendit le cœur qui parlait.

Et le cœur disait, en pleurant

Et lonlon laire

Et lonlon la

RIP John Updike (1932 – 2009)

John Updike (1932 – 2009) dies. I have never read anything by him. My only memory remotely connected to the physical me is a foreign professor who came to teach us English at the HIVT, where I studied for translator.

He described a scene in one of Updike’s Rabbit novel sequence in which the main character inserts a gold coin into the vagina of his partner, Janice.

I was instantly put off by the scene, although I am not naturally aversed by debauchery.

The whole story was described by this teacher as terribly a middle-class everyman, perhaps best described in Europe as the petit bourgeois who was a fan of the work of Jacques Brel, one who was laughed at by Brel despite (or perhaps, because) being a fan. It is a character I find difficult to indentify with.

For a writer of such fame, it is strange that so few of his works have been adapted for film (see unfilmability), is this due to the aforementioned unfilmability or just that no filmmaker was inspired enough by the stories of Updike?

From IMDb:

(6.30) – The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
(6.24) – Too Far to Go (1979) (TV)
(6.22) – The Roommate (1985) (TV)
(5.43) – Rabbit, Run (1970)
(5.38) – A & P (1996)

(The films are preceded by their IMDb scores which are a fairly reliable assessment of tastes.)

The Witches of Eastwick is Updike’s most famous work in filmland (it is far too easy for a writer to be famous in bookland, one has to research every artist outside of his own domain to assess future longevity). In 1987, the novel was adapted into a film starring Jack Nicholson as Darryl, Cher as Alexandra, Susan Sarandon as Jane, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Sukie.

I have fond memories of The Witches of Eastwick:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHVIv-hSg14]

The previous excerpt on the war of the sexes …

Jack Nicholson to Cher:

“Scale against size. … You see! Women are in touch with different things. … I see men running around trying to put their dicks into everything … trying to make something happen, but it’s women who are the source. The only power, nature, birth, rebirth … cliché … cliché … but true.”

… even sounds surprisingly Paglia at her most chthonic.

I am a romantic at heart. Of the dark variety.

Simeon Solomon

I recently purchased The Romantic Image[1] by Frank Kermode. It mentions Simeon Solomon as the garret-living bohemian/starving artist/einzelganger.

I quote:

“…a Simeon Solomon type, garret-dwelling, ragged, pitiable but also odious…”

I research Simeon Solomon and find W. H. Auden‘s For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, which has the scene, “The Meditation of Simeon,” which begins:

“As long as there were any roads to amnesia and anaesthesia still to be explored, any rare wine or curiosity of cuisine as yet untested, any erotic variation as yet unimagined or unrealized, any method of torture as yet undevised, any style of conspicuous waste as yet unindulged, any eccentricity of mania or disease as yet unrepresented, there was still hope that man had not been poisoned but transformed….”

What Auden describes is jadedness, the primary malady of all romantics.

Introducing Gaston Burssens (1896 – 1965)

Fabula rasa (1945) by Gaston Burssens (this edition 1964)

I am not much of a fiction reader, nor have I ever been much of a poetry reader. My favorite literature is books about books. Literary criticism or literary theory.

I make exceptions.

The best work I read last year was Michaux’s Plume[1] which happens to be a work of prose poetry, a genre which can be traced most readily to Baudelaire and Poe. A genre which is plotless but nevertheless more concrete than pure poetry.

Saturday I bought the work above. It is worth its price for the introductory notes alone.

Literary critic Paul de Wispelaere reviewed it in the chapter “De groteske wereld en de wereld van de groteske,” in his collection Het Perzische Tapijt (1966). In this essay de Wispelaere juxtaposes Fabula Rasa with the paraprose of Gust Gils, another Flemish writer who wrote in the tradition of the literary grotesque. Fabula Rasa’s Belgian-French counterpart is Plume by Henri Michaux.

While researching this post I also stumbled upon prose by Flanders’ cult poet par excellence Paul Van Ostaijen: De bende van de stronk (The stump gang, 1932, grotesques). I will want a copy of that.

Jahsonic

Aantekeningen uit Dodenstad.

Category Archives: literature

Nelson Algren @100

RIP Nicholas Hughes (1962 – 2009)

Carlo Jacono @80 and Italian exploitation

André Pieyre de Mandiargues @100

RIP Pierre Bourgeade (1927 – 2009)

Young Lust (1971-1972)

Jean Richepin @160

RIP John Updike (1932 – 2009)

I am a romantic at heart. Of the dark variety.

Introducing Gaston Burssens (1896 – 1965)