I’ve briefly mentioned the Anglophone litblog A journey round my skull in my previous post[1]. Today is the day to give this wonderful blog[2] a proper introduction.

The occasion is the blog’s recent post[3] on Xenos Books‘ translation of the 1932 Scarecrow & Other Anomalies by Argentine poet Oliverio Girondo.

The blog takes its name[4] from Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy‘s autobiographical novel A Journey Round My Skull (which reminded me of Maistre’s A Journey Around My Room) and is self-described as an “unhealthy book fetishism from a reader, collector, and amateur historian of forgotten literature.” Cult fiction and experimental literature receive encyclopedic treatment. This encyclopedism does not preclude lack of actual experience. Like myself, Will (the first name of its author), is in the habit of posting about books he has not yet read but is investigating for future reference:

“I haven’t read all the books I’m listing on this blog (including this one and Karinthy‘s Grave and Gay …). I realized that I gather a lot of information about books before I buy them, but never record this research. Writing about books in my collection is forcing me to research them again. This time I’ll have a record. When I do finally get a chance to read the book, I’ll re-post the entry with my comments.”[5]

The blog features information on cult fiction from the likes of Gilbert Alter-Gilbert[6], Marianne Thalmann[7], Clemens Brentano[8], Roger Caillois[9], Jean Paul[10], Robert Walser[11][12][13], Marcel Schwob[14], Johannes R. Becher[15], P.F. Thomése[16], Julien Gracq[17] and Joao Guimaraes Rosa[18], as well as informative profiles on French science-fiction[19], erotica[20] and cheap avant garde books[21].

The blog leads to ubiquitous connections …

[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

The book above, with an interesting preface by Xenos Books:

“The crazy thing is so spectacularly original that even though alerted by my advance notice you are still going to be more surprised by Scarecrow than by anything else you have ever read in your life, even if you are ninety-five and have spent every free moment fiendishly consuming all of the most fantastic symbolist, futurist, cubist, surrealist, expressionist, anarchist, dadaist, existentialist, creationist, ultraist, vanguardist, magical realist, modernist, postmodernist and every other -ist compositions that you could lay your hands on, plus the farthest-out non-ist compositions as well, including Lucian‘s True Story, Rabelais‘ Adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel and Fyodor Dostoyevsky‘s Bobok. There is no way that you can prepare for the experience of coming face to face with Girondo’s scarecrow.” –from the Anti-Preface of Karl Kvitko

… leads to a film it inspired in 1994:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PokBvBXrT3U]

The Dark Side of the Heart (1994), directed by Eliseo Subiela.

(Spanish language, but be sure to watch until the end)

See previous Jahsonic introductions.