Charlotte Roche on wetlands and damp areas

Feuchtgebiete by Charlotte Roche

Stern read it.

Feuchtgebiete by The Infatuated

It’s waiting to be read (and translated)

Feuchtgebiete by herruwe

She’s reading it too.

Feuchtgebiete is Charlotte Roche‘s debut novel. Semi-autobiographical, it was first published in German in 2008 by DuMont and was the world’s best-selling novel in March 2008. For supporters it is a piece of erotic literature; for critics it is cleverly marketed pornography.

The title, which might be translated as “wetlands” or “damp areas,” here refers to a woman’s nether regions, i.e. her vagina and anus.

Charlotte Roche is featured in this clip:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4dfnsGW3C0]

Tip of the hat to Ineke Van Nieuwenhove, the Belgian journalist who recently did an article for Goedele on plastic surgery for vulvas, less-well-known as labiaplasty.

Gratuitous nudity #11 and Icon of Erotic Art #32

sophie dahl by modelvancouver

Sophie Dahl, i-D, 1997

Sophie Dahl first came to my attention with her Opium (perfume) ad[1].

Today, following a link that started[2] at Trevor Brown‘s blog, which celebrated Takashi Itsuki‘s acrotomophiliac eroticism, which backlinked[3] to the new magazine Coilhouse (amazing new magazine, started as a blog in Aug 2007), I arrived at the photography of Nick Knight. On his SHOWstudio.com site, one finds this image[4] (first published in i-D, 1997), which frankly, leaves me sick with desire. Just what is it that brings on this sickness? It’s the softness of her skin, the presumed quality of her fatty tissue, the pot belly and the pear-shaped breasts. And the nails. Amen.

This is a first for my series, where an image is both an instance of gratuitous nudity and an Icon of Erotic Art.

Jean-François Bizot (1944 – 2007)

Remembering Jean-François Bizot

The Novaplanet.com obituary to Hector Zazou led to my much belated discovery that French tastemaker Jean-François Bizot died one year ago on the same day as Zazou (that’s how I found out). If your new to Bizot, and you have money to spare, go to an online shop and buy the book Underground, l’histoire and the accompanying cd Underground Moderne.

On Zazou, Bizot said:

“In England they have Peter Gabriel, in America they have David Byrne, in France we have Hector Zazou.” See my theory of equivalents and synchronicity.

David Byrne’s obituary of Bizot.

“Later, in the 80s, [Bizot] and some others started Radio Nova. At various periods, it might have been the best radio station in the world. No joke. They played alt-rock before there was such a thing, Raï, African pop music, Chanson, Latin American music, hip hop, and experimental music. We all wanted to hear it, and this was where we could. Finally.”[1]

The Independent‘s obituary.

“Jean-François Bizot had an enormous influence on the cultural life of France over the past 40 years. Between 1970 and 1975, and again between 1979 and 1994, he was at the helm of the counter-culture monthly Actuel. This started out as a French take on the underground press, not too far removed from the Village Voice and the Los Angeles Free Press in the US, or Oz and the International Times in the UK, but eventually evolved into required reading not so much for the hippies as for the hip crowd.”[2]

From the CD Underground Moderne (with YouTube links where available)

Norman Whitfield (1943 – 2008)

Norman Whitfield died yesterday.

“Smiling Faces Sometimes” by The Undisputed Truth,  (Whitfield / Strong)

Now you are sad. You remember going religiously to the Passage 44 in Brussels every week to rent 10 CDs, you were determined to learn as much about music as was possible in a very short time. You discovered The Temptations at about the same time you discovered Lee Perry. Your love affair with black music was about to start.

Whitfield remains an underrated music personality. In the words of pop historian and DJ David Haslam:

“The trad agenda set by commentators in the sixties, heavy with value judgments – glorifying the work of the Velvet Underground over Motown releases, the production skills of Brian Wilson over those of Norman Whitfield, and the social significance and songwriting talent of John Lennon rather than James Brown – persists.”

David Haslam

Amen.

Introducing Illusory Confections

Introducing Illusory Confections

Marcel Roux

Self-portrait of Marcel Roux

A good blog watches part of the blogosphere you don’t frequently visit but ideally overlaps with your own blogroll for about 30% to 50%. This makes sure that you have common ground (the usual suspects). More than that percentage is too much overlap, you might as well be on your own blog.

The blogroll of the blog I am about to introduce, Illusory Confections[1] shares a good deal of links with my own blog, among which the recently discovered A journey round my skull, BibliOdyssey, Femme Femme Femme, Herbert Pfostl‘s Paper graveyard, Morbid Anatomy and John Coulthart‘s Feuilleton.

Its motto reads:

“We are left over from the time of Przybyszewski,
Ghosts who love Lautrec and despair”

It introduces a film of Pierre-Auguste Renoir[2] at work, photographs by Zola[3] and Mucha[4] and artwork by the underrated Marcel Roux[5], the latter “similar to Rops in content and style”.

One of its exemplary posts is titled “Wherein Mirbeau, Schlichter, and personal fashion statements collide, if somewhat disjointedly [6].

I have one minor gripe with the blog. It isn’t in the habit of crediting its visuals. So it is impossible to know whether the excellent morbid pictures in its latest posts[7] [8] [9] are by the blog’s owner or by someone else.

The “pin-up girl” of the French Surrealists

Augustine, Charcot's star patient at Salpêtrière by you.

Charcot‘s Louise Augustine, later dubbed the “pin-up girl” of the French Surrealists, attempted many escapes. The hospital’s last entry concerning Augustine, dated September 9, 1880, notes that she “escaped from the Salpetriere, disguised as a man.”  [2]

Surprisingly, Les démoniaques dans l’art – Charcot et Richer[3], a book I acquired over the summer, does not feature the photograph depicted above, nor others from this set[4].

British writer Helen Kitson has written a fictionalized account of the Charcot/Augustine history here[5].

An excerpt:

‘I have named her Augustine.’
‘Named a lunatic after a saint! Well, perhaps they are much the same. The idiot, the mystic…’
‘She is not an idiot.’
She listens at the door, biting her fingernails. She needs to know what they want from her so that she can perform when asked. She has to know how mad she’s supposed to be. Satisfied, she goes back to her room where she dreams of blood and fire. Faces hidden behind shrouds. Dead men.

Visual postscript:

illustration du livre Hystéro-épilepsie de Paul Richer 1881

“You tease, she thought, you wicked tease”

For lovers of erotic literature.

Tale of the Tub

American author Evie Byrne found the origins of an engraving with a tub[1] and wrote her own version of this Decameron tale (seventh day, second story) which was taken from Apuleius’s The Golden Ass.

When her husband comes home, Peronella hides her lover in a tub and tricks her husband in believing that the lover is a purchaser who is inspecting the tub’s soundness and cleanness. The husband then crawls under the tub and starts cleaning it, the lover takes his mistress “like a Parthian mare,” and the cuckolded husband carries the tub to the lover’s home afterwards.

Or in an early English translation:

“Peronella hideth a lover of hers in a vat, upon her husband’s unlooked for return, and hearing from the latter that he hath sold the vat, avoucheth herself to have sold it to one who is presently therewithin, to see if it be sound; whereupon the gallant, jumping out of the vat, causeth the husband scrape it out for him and after carry it home to his house ”

On from Evie’s excellent version:

“You tease, she thought, you wicked tease, but she tipped her rear end up, inviting more caresses. Beneath her belly, her husband began to use the rasp, sending deep vibrations through the wood. Giannello snaked his hand beneath her skirts and she widened her stance so he could feel that she was wet and hot as the mouth of hell. Even with her husband beneath her, because no matter where they were, or what they did, she was ready to take Giannello. It was that simple.”

According to “The Daily Blague”[2] Ravel’s one-act opera L’heure espagnole was based on this tale.

Stories of cuckoldry are always highly erotic, just why is that?

Pink Floyd member dies

Rick Wright (1943 – 2008) of Pink Floyd is dead. See this clip[1] from “Us and Them” and this one from “Paintbox,”[2]; both have writing credits by Wright.

I’m not much of a Pink Floyd fan, their art rock was just too arty, or not arty enough, I can’t explain. The only intensive listening I have done is to their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which I thought was brilliant. And the band member of Floyd that elicited most of my sympathy was Syd Barrett.