The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe – (1974) – D.G. Compton

The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe – (1974) – D.G. Compton
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Image sourced here.

Bertrand Tavernier based his 1980 film Deathwatch on this 1974 novel. In the film Romy Schneider plays a dying woman whose last days are watched on national television via a camera implanted in the brain of a journalist Harvey Keitel.

David Guy Compton (1930 – ) is a British author. He often writes science fiction set in the near future. He published his first science fiction novel, The Quality of Mercy, in 1965. He has not become hugely popular, but did achieve some recognition after co-writing a SF novel, Ragnarok, with Dr. John Gribbin.

He has written murder mysteries as Guy Compton (the first in 1962) and even a few romance novels as Frances Lynch.

In Bertrand Tavernier’s Death Watch (1980), Romy Schneider plays the dying heroine with the doubly punning surname Catherine Mortenhoe, whose death is being recorded on national TV in an ongoing soap opera of morbid video verité. — Garrett Stewart via Between Film and Screen: Modernism’s Photo Synthesis (2000)

A review:

I’ve read two novels by British writer D. G. Compton: Synthajoy (1968) and The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (1974; also published as The Unsleeping Eye). Both novels deal with ethical problems raised by the use of technology to eavesdrop on human emotions. Both emphasize the human rather than the scientific side of the story, and they experiment with the subjective viewpoint of the narrator in a way reminiscent of Philip K. Dick. However, Compton’s writing style is more refined than Dick’s, which also makes it harder to overlook the implausibility of the technical innovations posited in each novel. –Glenn Frantz via http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/roboman/www/sigma/review/conmort.html [Oct 2006]

See also: reality TV – Deathwatch – 1974 – television – voyeurism

Sir Kenneth’s Clark 1969 book Civilisation

While in Bruges, I also visited second hand book store De Slegte and while I passed on René Wellek’s Theory of Literature, I bought Sir Kenneth’s Clark 1969 book Civilisation. This book contains the script of the BBC television series with the same name.

From the foreword:

“Writing for television is fundamentally different from writing a book.

[In writing for television] “generalisations are inevitable and, in order not to be boring, must be slightly risky. There is nothing new in this. It is how we talk about things sitting round the room after dinner; and television should retain the character of the spoken word, with the rhythms of ordinary speech, and even some of the off-hand imprecise language that prevents conversation from becoming pompous.”

“I believe in television as a medium, and was prepared to give up two years of writing to see what could be done with it.”

See also: 1969 – television – civilization

Groeningemuseum, Bruges, Belgium

The Flaying of the Corrupt Judge Sisamnes (1498-99) – Gérard David

Went to Bruges yesterday and visited the Groeningemuseum which houses Bruges’s collection of Flemish Primitives. The primary attraction was Bosch’s triptych of The Last Judgement. The most vivid memory of my (short) visit was Gérard David’s gruesome painting of The Flaying of the Corrupt Judge Sisamnes (1498-99).

According to Herodotos, Sisamnes was a corrupt judge under Cambyses II of Persia. He accepted a bribe and delivered an unjust verdict. As a result, the king had him arrested and flayed alive. His skin was then used to cover the seat in which his son would sit in judgement. Sisamnes was the subject of two paintings by Gerard David, “The Arrestation of Sisamnes” and “Flaying of Sisamnes” both done in 1498. Together they make up the Cambyses diptych. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisamnes [Sept 2006]

A similarly themed painting is Apollo Flaying Marsyas (1637) – Jusepe de Ribera

See also: art horror – Flemish Primitives – 1400s

English criticism of Michel Houellebecq

Stephen Mitchelmore in This Space:

I have yet to read Michel Houellebecq. This is because I asked a friend (with infallible judgement), who had, for an opinion. Shrugging his shoulders and turning his mouth down at the corners, he said: nothing special … and when you have Thomas Bernhard …

Ah yes, Thomas Bernhard: the funniest and, indeed, most readable literary iconoclast of European fiction. Odd, I’ve long thought, how the market for Houellebecq’s virulence and extremism doesn’t extend to Bernhard.

But maybe not so odd, I now think, having read John Banville’s Bookforum essay on the French writer, an essay that takes in Houellebecq’s long essay on HP Lovecraft. It seems Lovecraft is the clue to why Bernhard’s name is not read close to Houellebecq’s (except here of course). –Stephen Mitchelmore in This Space

Stephen Mitchelmore goes on to compare Lovecraft unfavourably to Borges.

A digression to Borges and Lovecraft by Bruce Lord:

I had read many of Jorge Luis Borges  short stories several years before discovering Lovecraft, let alone studying the latter seriously, and so the idea of Borges owing any debt to or admitting any influence from HPL was new and somewhat shocking to me when I first encountered it.  While reading “Dreams In The Witch House” for the first time, however, I found it to be quite Borgesian (I didn’t have any problem with taking such an anachronistic view of the relationship, as Borges has based entire stories around such errors).  The story of an increasingly alienated and detached academic who becomes lost in his field of study and ends up transcending the known laws of the universe reminded me of the hapless people caught in “The Library Of Babel.”  In a similar vein, both authors used the technique of referring to fictional literary and scientific sources as well as legitimate ones (often combining the two in lists of books or thinkers) in order to better facilitate their stories  fantastic elements.  –Bruce Lord via Contrasoma.

And here is more by Stephen Mitchelmore on Houellebecq.

Premature burial

Premature Burial (1854) – Antoine Wiertz

“Can you possibly conceive it. The unendurable oppression of the lungs, the stifling fumes of the earth, the rigid embrace of the coffin, the blackness of absolute night and the silence, like an overwhelming sea.” –Guy Carrell in The Premature Burial (1962)

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Premature_Burial

See also: grave – asphyxia – E. A. Poe – Antoine Wiertz

The praise of folly

My native town has an exhibition with the title The praise of folly (after the book by 16th century Dutch writer Erasmus). It features paintings by Antoine Wiertz, Félicien Rops, Léon Herbo, Armand Rassenfosse, Jan Steen, etc… and write-ups by Belgian writers. The exhibition is divided thematically in

  • Luxuria
  • Avaritia
  • Acedia
  • Ira
  • Invidia
  • Gula
  • Superbia

Google galleries: 1 2 3 4 5

Rosine à sa toilette (1865) – Antoine Wiertz

The Reader of Novels (1853) – Antoine Wiertz

Psyché () – Léon Herbo

Singulier Animal (1893) – Armand Rassenfosse

Couple in the Bedroom () – Jan Steen