‘Card Catalogue’ – Alistair Ian Blyth

During an online life of more than 25 years, it would be strange not to run into kindred souls.

One such soul is the translator and writer Alistair Ian Blyth.

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

It so happens that Alistair has a new novel out. Its title is Card Catalogue and it is due to be published or already published.

In Alistair’s own words:

Card Catalogue features ruminations on the metaphysics of dust, oneiric libraries, an exhaustive catalogue of mentions of the cockroach in the classic Russian novel, and, of course, the Marlbrough Theme.

RIP David Roback (1958 – 2020)

“Fade into You” (1994)

David Roback was an American guitarist, best-known for co-writing “Fade into You” (1994). That was a song by Mazzy Star and it featured the vocals of Hope Sandoval.

Listening to this, I can’t help but think that Lana Del Rey has a very similar sound and voice. Not surprisingly, both Mazzy Star and Lana Del Rey are considered dream pop.

RIP José Mojica ‘Coffin Joe’ Marins (1936 – 2020)

José Mojica Marins was a Brazilian film director, best-known for his persona “Coffin Joe“.

 At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964)

I just finished watching At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964) and it’s actually quite good. I especially like the atheist bits, his materialist world view, his Nietzschean take on things.

For example, Coffin Joe eats meat on Holy Friday, just to taunt his catholic fellow townspeople.

And consider the opening oration of Coffin Joe:

“What is life?
It is the beggining of death.
What is death?
It is the end of life!
What is the existence?
It is the continuity of blood.
What is blood?
It is the reason of the existence!”

All this blasphemous discourse makes you wonder how this went down in Brasil. After all, it was 1964, another four years for 1968 to happen … and … did that even ‘happen’ in Brasil, the sexual revolution?

See atheism in Brazil, the sexual revolution in Brazil.

RIP Flavio Bucci (1947 – 2020)

Flavio Bucci was an Italian actor known in my canon for his tiny part in the metafilm Closed Circuit (1978).

I wrote about that film here.

In that film Flavio Bucci sports thick glasses and plays the part of a nerdy sociologist who takes notes of the audience’s reactions during the screening of the film.

Afterwards he is interrogated by the police. Has he seen anything which can solve the murder of a man in the audience by a gun man IN the film?

You can see Mr. Bucci from 27:20 onwards.

Mr. Bucci also played in the sex comedy Gegè Bellavita (1978) which can be found in full on YouTube.

RIP Andrew Weatherall (1963 – 2020)

Andrew Weatherall was an English DJ, record producer, and remixer.

There was a time when music research took up most of my time. It coincided with the golden age of the music compilation, roughly from 1990 to 2005.

 Fabric 19 (2004)

From that era stem Nine O’Clock Drop (2000) and Fabric 19 (2004).

Andrew Weatherall is also the man who made me discover “Black But Sweet” (1931) via his “Wilmot” composition.

RIP Claire Bretécher (1940 – 2020)

Claire Bretécher was a French cartoonist, co-founder of L’Écho des savanes.

I used to buy issues of L’Écho des savanes in the late 1980s, a particularly fruitful time for comics, with highlights such as Tanino Liberatore, Enki Bilal, Wim T. Schippers, Jacques Tardi, Guido Crepax, Jean Giraud, Milo Manara, Georges Pichard and François Schuiten.

There was something subversive about the whole comics scene in those days, what you may now call the pre-internet days. Shops all of over Europe catered to the tastes of underground comic lovers, or so it seemed.

Only now that Claire Bretécher is dead, I discover her Agrippine character who was the heroin of nine albums. On the first self-titled album of 1988 Agrippine is shown reading the fictional Heidegger in the Congo (1988), a reference to Tintin in the Congo (1931).

I have not had the time to fully investigate  Heidegger in the Congo but I suppose the link is that Heidegger was a Nazi and that Hergé’s album in the Congo is now considered racist.

Above, you will find an episode of the televised  Agrippine.

Alas. No subtitles.

RIP Lyle Mays (1953 – 2020)

Lyle Mays was an American musician.

He shares writing credits on “This Is Not America” (1985)

“This Is Not America” (1985)

I saw the film that composition stems from. I saw that film when it came out and never forgot the music. I later bought the twelve inch. I sold my collection of records when I moved into my current apartment in 2015.

RIP Pierre ‘eden, eden, eden’ Guyotat (1940 – 2020)

Pierre Guyotat was a French writer. He is one of the last writers in the history of Western literature to have his book banned. The book was Eden, Eden, Eden and is a actually an enumeration of obscenities and atrocities in the tradition of Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom (1785, 1904).

The backdrop is the Algerian war, which was not really an Algerian war but a French war. Or at least a French-Algerian war. Pierre Guyotat fought in that war as a teenager and was arrested on charges of inciting to desert and put in a hole in the ground for three months.

RIP Kirk “i am spartacus” Douglas (1916 – 2020)

I’m Spartacus!

Kirk Douglas was an American actor best-known for playing Spartacus in the film Spartacus (1960).

In modern times, Spartacus became an icon for communists and socialists. Karl Marx listed Spartacus as one of his heroes and described him as “the most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history” and a “great general, noble character, real representative of the ancient proletariat“.

RIP Dyanne ‘SS-Ilsa’ Thorne (1936 – 2020)

Dyanne Thorne was an American actress best known for her film Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974).

Unidentified documentary on the career of Thorne

I actually saw that film.

Ilsa conducts sadistic scientific experiments designed to demonstrate that women are more capable of enduring pain than men are, and therefore should be allowed to fight in the army. Ilsa is also portrayed as having a voracious sexual appetite for her male prisoners, whom she then castrates and kills.

It plays with the tropes of male anxiety of sexual inadequacy and the fear of castration.

Her character was very loosely based on that of Ilse Koch.