tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-217524712024-03-16T18:51:31.957+00:00Woody Haut's BlogA weblog dedicated to noir fiction and film, music, poetry and politics.Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.comBlogger387125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-70449993723522883442024-02-11T11:40:00.003+00:002024-02-11T11:49:08.627+00:00BELIEVING IS SEEING: On Writing On Dangerous Ground<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIRldqIeEStz_mzdJj66jJIQJUnL7H-CkKZw0EsbJtisrRpKdcvmlAwVBMrRkmwmgGp5uAozM4TMK-2KWGxC2tISOZIh0ZMnRsC2GhV4uGXSUs_ebjd9TWYXhDc63snvz7W1jJp6fooj9h-Nd46rRcuCqCh7D1nAvNJjV4OFIocM5OMwoeAlweUg/s2475/On%20Dangerous%20Ground%20Front%20Cover%20v7%20(1).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2475" data-original-width="1554" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIRldqIeEStz_mzdJj66jJIQJUnL7H-CkKZw0EsbJtisrRpKdcvmlAwVBMrRkmwmgGp5uAozM4TMK-2KWGxC2tISOZIh0ZMnRsC2GhV4uGXSUs_ebjd9TWYXhDc63snvz7W1jJp6fooj9h-Nd46rRcuCqCh7D1nAvNJjV4OFIocM5OMwoeAlweUg/s320/On%20Dangerous%20Ground%20Front%20Cover%20v7%20(1).jpg" width="201" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 13px;"><b><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">What Is Noir?</span></i></b></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Is more than darkness. Is</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Corruption of the heart. Is</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">behind closed doors, board-</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">room or street. Is fucked</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>Whether you do, don</i><span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><i>t sing,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Moan, sniff or shoot. Is a</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">ticket to all we have, never</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">enough. Is greed, lust, a fatal</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">kiss, the banker, cop, criminal, or</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">any other poor sucker who</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">screams for mercy. Is a</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">dream of autonomy, femme</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">fatality causality, breathing,</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">“</span><i>Hey, baby, let</i><span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><i>s take it all.”</i></span></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Is a corpse, a handful of dust</span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">and ultimately who cares, if </span></i></p><p class="p4" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">the only punishment is death.</span></i></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i></i><br /></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I began writing On Dangerous Ground, a book, for the most part,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>comprised of 50 poems based on classic examples of film noir, sometime around 2012. At the time I’d no idea I<span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span>d be working on the book intermittently over the next ten years. I knew I wanted each poem to be accompanied by an image from the film that was being considered. My intention was to write solely about the images, what they contained and implied. But it wasn’t long before I found myself shifting from that remit, deploying, instead, the images more as starting points, which, in turn, allowed me to move outwards, into the world surrounding those images. Which is why the images became a kind of memory theater, setting off thoughts, reactions, rants and investigations, coherent or otherwise. A tangential process that dependent not only on the images, and how, as a viewer, I responded to them, but on various aspects of the films themselves: dialogue, lighting, set designs, and the role directors, screenwriters, cinematographers and producers. While some might take the poems simply as eccentrically humorous, fractured and perhaps contentious reviews and reactions, the intention was, on the one hand, to comment on the world around the films, and, on the other hand, to invite the reader to launch his or her own investigation into this or any subject that might reveal as much as it hides.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">As I rewatched the films, and began writing about them, I found myself viewing them in a different light, as artefacts to be acted upon rather than packaged commodities existing in a static environment. And so<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the writing of On Dangerous Ground became a two-way process: the films activated the poems, but the poems reanimated the films, allowing me to go wherever I liked with them, from glossing the surface to drilling down into them, addressing subjects like crime, guilt, innocence, bourgeois values, late capitalism, and gendered space.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Given that much of my past writing- thirty years in the trenches of noir fiction and film- why suddenly turn to poetry as the basis for my investigation? Admittedly, at first glance, it’s a slightly off-the-wall direction to take. But, for me, it was fitting. Primarily because, prior to writing about noir fiction and film, as well as writing novels that inhabited that terrain, poetry had been my first port of call. Not that my relationship to poetry<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>hasn’t, over the years, succumbed to a series of disgruntlements and separations. Blame it I guess on the term “poet,” and the bad faith it often entails, or absolutist dictums as Pound’s about poets being the antennae of the race (about which one can only ask, what race might the great poet have been referring to?). Even so my relationship with poetry was never to escalate into anything approaching a full-fledged divorce.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And so I still carry the baggage, if not the scars, stretching back to the mid-1960s, in Los Angeles, then San Francisco, with various publications and a range of mentors, from the academic-<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Henri Coulette, Philip Levine, Jack Gilbert- to the peripatetic- Michael Michael McClure, Charles Olson, Amiri Baraka and Ed Dorn. Though in recent years any interest has seems to have veered towards the more linguistically-oriented, such as Clark Coolidge, Michael Gizzi, and Tom Raworth, not to mention political screeds by the likes of the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>wonderful Sean Bonney and Keston Sutherland. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In spite, or maybe because of that, I’ve always felt there exists a relationship, however tenuous, between poetry- at least the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>kind I tend to favour, that moves outwards into the world while conveying a degree of linguistic wit- and film noir. By negotiating that thin line that separates romanticism from fatalism, film noir can often be said to be as poetic as it is stylised. One need look no further than the obvious, films like Robert Wise’s The Set Up (1949) and Nicholas Ray’s Party Girl (1958), both of which were originally rhymed narrative poems by Joseph Moncure March, or, for that matter, Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil (1948), whose screenplay was written in blank verse. It could even be said that poetry and film noir share certain elements: they rely on set formats, tend to manipulate narrative coherency, and often proceed by implication rather than by anything more blatant. As for the doomed film noir protagonist, it’s not unusual for him, and it is usually <i>him</i>, to have the temperament of a thwarted poet, from the sadistic cop Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) in Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground (1952) to the soda shop gangster Shubunka (Barry Sullivan) in Gordon Wiles’s The Gangster (19470, While, Slavoj Zizek, in his essay from the 1990s, “From Courtly Love to the <span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">‘</span>Crying Game,<span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span>” insists that film noir’s proverbial femme fatale can be traced back to the Troubadour poets and their objects of obsession, though few of the latter could have been as deadly as Kathy (Jane Greer) in Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (1947) or Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie) in Jack Bernhard’s Decoy (1946).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Added reason why On Dangerous Ground was a logical step from my previous books like Pulp Culture and Heartbreak & Vine, Cry For a Nickel Die For a Dime and Days of Smoke. Of course, it could be that the transition seems unusual only because there are few, if any, poetry collections that centre on film noir. On the other hand, there’s no shortage of poets who’ve established a working relationship with such films. Amongst those influenced by the genre one could name poets like Alice Notely, Robert Polito, Geoffrey O<span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span>Brien,, Nicholas Christopher, and, moving back in time, Weldon Keyes and Kenneth Fearing. Even Raymond Chandler began his writing career as a young man composing doggrel for the Westminster Gazette, while the great Dorothy B. Hughes garnered the Yale Prize For Younger Poets long before she wrote such classics as In a Lonely Place or Ride the Pink Horse. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">On Dangerous Ground opens with an epigraph from Edward Dorn’s hilarious mock-epic of the west Gunslinger- “Ontology! I’m just/telling you a story/about this projector, that’s all.” Metaphorically-speaking, that’s the idea behind the poems in On Dangerous Ground. Which is to say, the images project the poems and their derivatives onto the page, in a manner not dissimilar from the way Gunslinger’s<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>literate projector</i> is meant to turn images into text. At least that’s the idea, however fanciful and playful that process might be.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Though such an enterprise isn’t without its pitfalls. After all, Dorn’s projector is <i>literate</i>, not <i>literal</i>. Likewise, On Dangerous Ground makes no pretence at being objective, much less literal. If objectivity were the end result of such a projector, it’s function would be limited to turning film noir images into either prurient prose or stale criticism. Rather, On Dangerous Ground seeks to take those images and manipulate them for all they’re worth. Albeit in an era of algorithms and AI, where subjectivity remains the name of the game, and <i>illiterate </i>projectors threaten to proliferate beyond control.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">And so the poems in On Dangerous Ground become increasingly convoluted, which, all else being equal, might reflect<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the apparent contradictions regarding the machinery of Hollywood and its place in the structure of corporate America. It also points towards why the images, in pursuit of those contradictions, seek the uniformity of a block form, once referred to as a rhetorical figure. It’s a form mostly influenced by how the poems appear on the page, though never at the exclusion of breath, rhythm, sound, justified line breaks and other impingements and internalities. To be sure, giving the appearance of poetry while casting doubt on whether it is or isn’t. All this to avoid anything resembling the obviously poetic or constructed. At the same time, it’s something of a ruse. Because what looks like poetry might, in fact, be prose if it were not something called poetry. However much the poems embrace or reject their status, in the end it comes down to language and its deployment, what Robert Duncan used to call <i>tone-leading. </i>Though in this case nothing quite so highfalutin: just words and phrases that grind out further words and phrases, not excluding puns, irreverent asides and exploratory gestures, that leads to something that might resemble meaning, be it nuanced or otherwise,. What makes film noir amenable to this approach is its range of possible interpretation. Hopefully not unlike the poems themselves, embedded in their own interpretive, jazz-inflected whirlwind, political for some, though perhaps mere pop-corn inducing enjoyment for others. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Why title it On Dangerous Ground?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Besides it being one of my favourite movies, film noir, from the end of WW2 to the end of the 1950s, really did find itself, cognisant or not, trespassing onto dangerous ground. By which I mean so many of those films reflected and questioned the values of the era, from consumerism to the paranoia regarding the cold war and the bomb to fear of women in post-war society. Created, in large part, by leftists (Nicholas Ray, Jules Dassin), soon-to-be black-listed writers and directors (Joseph Losey, Abe Biberman, Dalton Trumbo, John Berry), and European exiles, influenced by German Expressionism (Jacques Tourneur, Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak), their movies might have been screened in black and white, but the world they depicted was anything but. At least not in hands of such cinematographers as John Alton, Burnett Guffey and Nicholas Muscuraca; or screenwriters like AI Bezzerides, Daniel Fuchs and Ben Hecht.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But this was back when film noir had license to embrace its rough edges and romantic notions regarding the criminal, the cop, the private eye, the musician, the psychopath, the patsy, the autonomous woman, and other such subjects, a genre that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>yet to be categorised, commodified and eventually stripped of its populist concerns and politics, .<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A word about the films selected for the book. For the most part, they are obvious choices, with one or two outliers. Films that might appear in anyone’s list of noir favourites. The collection as a whole is bookended by two poems unrelated to any specific film: one which introduces the book and the final poem which reminds the reader there is always, as Columbo was wont to say, “One More Thing.” Though, full disclosure, there’s a clear discrepancy between the poem that opens the book- in this essay entitled “What Is Noir?” but, in the book simply called “Preface”- and the subsequent poems in the collection. As well as serving as an introduction, the primary function of “Preface” is to preempt the question that comprises its title in this essay, one that’s asked wherever the subject of noir fiction or film is discussed. Moreover, it’s the sort of poem, with its late-night, tough-guy attitude, one might might expect to find in a collection of film noir poetry. Despite its loyalty to the usual tropes, the poem is really an act of misdirection, to entice the reader- the sort who might admire films like Kiss Me, Deadly and Detour and such writers as Himes, Goodis and Thompson, but who has never delved all that deeply into poetry- to turn the page and be surprised, perplexed or interested in the linguistic onslaught that follows. All of which is played to the hilt, right up to the final page, when, once again, the screen goes blank, and the reader, formerly the viewer, is left to their own devices.</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Heat, Sleep, Steal, Night, Knife, Goodbye. This one</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> goes out to who would remain anonymous, their</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> ships lost at sea. Continents long since absent,</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> as insomniacs out of the past darkly. Falling</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> adjectives like confetti between more frames</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> per<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>second than reality can ever hope to count.”</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(from “One More Thing”)</span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p6" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">(an edited version of this appeared in On the Sea Wall, which you can find <a href="https://www.ronslate.com/from-on-dangerous-ground/">here</a>)</span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i></i><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i></i><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: white; color: #535353; font-family: Verdana; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><i></i><br /></p>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-55389446879821317772024-01-22T16:21:00.001+00:002024-01-22T16:59:22.084+00:00Inside the Mind of an Improvisor- The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, edited by Sam V.H. Reese (NYRB Books)<div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYYQTugExTHYDQa0uh7FpKtBrr9nOAYyyibGnzms5lo9sXaCKv22FRpVGJ4AN7SfrNs9xXWBMDLrVxPSOejWx2WuUDwcKXEZhogpfjgVL-t4c_2C_pqBWdRY9MEnAei2ePgu7TyLFj86yWJ1Jshx3YHcA13hCPLd2YvNnlQzmqpzioU_17cnz_LA/s1022/Screenshot%202024-01-20%20at%2006.28.03.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1022" data-original-width="698" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYYQTugExTHYDQa0uh7FpKtBrr9nOAYyyibGnzms5lo9sXaCKv22FRpVGJ4AN7SfrNs9xXWBMDLrVxPSOejWx2WuUDwcKXEZhogpfjgVL-t4c_2C_pqBWdRY9MEnAei2ePgu7TyLFj86yWJ1Jshx3YHcA13hCPLd2YvNnlQzmqpzioU_17cnz_LA/w438-h640/Screenshot%202024-01-20%20at%2006.28.03.png" width="438" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="text-align: center;">The great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins will be 94 this September. Until a few years ago when pulmonary fibrosis forced him to retire from playing music, he was arguably the preeminent improvisor in jazz, and had been so for a number of decades. Ironically, Rollins, who grew up in Harlem, his parents having relocated there from the Virgin Islands, has always been not so much a loner as the music's supreme individualist, insisting, over his long career, on going his own way, whether that meant honing his chops on Brooklyn Bridge, cutting his hair Mohican-style, appearing as a cowboy and recording I'm An Old Cowhand on his 1957 album Way Out West, or his penchant for solo performes. Ironically, even though he has played alongside just about every in-demand post-WW2 musician, Rollins, unlike Coltrane, Coleman, Miles, etc, is perhaps singular in not being associated with a stable group of musicians. In other words, there is no definitive Sonny Rollins quartet or quintet that comes to mind when thinking of his music. As pianist and writer Ethan Iverson has pointed out, Rollins' bands are not his music. </span></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-size: x-large; text-align: left;"><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i style="text-align: left;">"It happens all the time, I know- but it's not going to happen to me.You guys have forgotten that you are here to play for me. You're supposed to be playing </i><span style="text-align: left;">for me.</span><i style="text-align: left;"> Accompanying me. Helping me to do something." </i></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="text-align: center;">More evidence of Rollins' individualism, someone who was constantly testing the waters, changing line-ups according to the occasion and the evolution of his music. Through it all the one constant feature of his music has been his increasingly powerful sound, straight out of the islands through Harlem, influenced by Coleman Hawkins ("<i>My musical idol."</i>) as much as Louis Jordan or Charlie Parker. Not to mention a unique sense of improvisation and timing, and a wealth of material- his own as well as the Great American Songbook, to dip into at a moment's notice. One can literally</span><span style="text-align: center;"> listen to Newk for hours without hearing a single cliché save those he emits with a sense of humour and irony. </span></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"There is today in existence a fraternity of people. People who were all irrepressibly drawn to the 'horn of horns,' 'the instrument of instruments,' the saxophone. Within its proportions we saw a better and more beautiful world. We saw, and see the means towards a better human being; towards the perfection of ourselves."</span></i></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: center;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="text-align: center;">The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, edited by Sam Reese (to be published in April 2024), provides an insight into what makes this incredible musician tick. The notebooks, which begin in 1959 and end in 2010, cover the greater part of his musical career. Naturally, much of it is about music- some of which might be hard to grasp by non-musicians- but many of the entries veer off into other interesting and unusual directions, taking in matters spiritual, political, dietary, physical (breathing and playing exercises, yoga, fasting), medical (the effect of dentistry on his playing), and cultural. There are also various personal reminders to himself as well as letters to such dignitaries as Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton. With such a</span><span style="text-align: center;"> range of interests and intellectual depth, it's not surprising that Rollins, aware that everything changes and all things must come to an end, would be humble enough to accept his transition into retirement. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i style="text-align: center;">"The idea of 'teaching' music in the prescribed manner</i><i style="text-align: center;"> is our attempt</i><i style="text-align: center;"> to present people with a view of that finer side of their </i><i style="text-align: center;">nature which</i><i style="text-align: center;"><span> </span><span> is akin to such things as trees, grass, sky, among other natural </span></i><i style="text-align: center;">phenomena."<span> </span></i></span><div><div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Are there any similar notebooks by jazz musicians? Off-hand, I can't think of any. Though what did come to mind while reading The Notebooks... were those two pieces of paper on which Thelonious Monk wrote out guidelines (see below) for his, or any, musicians. Then I thought about Ornette holding forth in Stephen Rush's Free Jazz, Harmolodics and Ornette Coleman. The only other comparative book that comes to mind is the more conventionally organised A Power Stronger Than Itself by AACM musician and composer George Lewis. However, Rollins' Notebooks is more substantial than Monk's wonderful instructions, easier to grasp than either Rush's book, and easier to read than Lewis's incredible history of the AACM and American Experimental Music. </span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>"Someone once said 'the easiest way is not always the best way.' Although no doubt this </i><i>quotation was well intentioned it is in fact only half correct. In truth and in all practical applications...the easiest is the best way."</i></span></div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In the end, The Notebooks show Rollins to be what we have long expected- a person of intelligence, with a wide range of interests, and no small amount of wisdom. The world is lucky to have been graced by his music- from his playing with Bud and Richie Powell, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Max Roach, Horace Silver, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk to Herbie Hancock, Tommy Flanagan, Jim Hall, Don Cherry and Bill Higgins. Actually, it's hard to imagine a world in which Sonny Rollins' music does not exist. Of course, as with anyone's notebooks, you have to have some interest in, and appreciation of, the person making those entries. But since Rollins remains one of the best known names in jazz, there should be no shortage of listeners ready and willing to turn the pages of this volume that weighs in at only slightly more 150 pages. With all that it includes, it's the ideal book to read before, after, or alongside Aidan Levy's biography, Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins, along with your favourite Sonny Rollins tune playing in the background. <i> </i></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i style="text-align: center;">"No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up."</i></span></div><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;">"'Technology is the means of going backwards faster.'- Huxley"</i></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TGcsIaErFFw" width="320" youtube-src-id="TGcsIaErFFw"></iframe></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>"I like to play and let the crowd settle and then lull and then wake them up with something </i>outrageous<i>... [So] that just when they begin to lose interest I shock them back to reality... the reality of me, me and my sound, my communication through ancient ritual sound."</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> <i> "Invested with sanctity</i><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> (Schopenhauer)</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> Phenomenology</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> Ideologs</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> (Ide-a-logs)</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> Polemical</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> Geo-political</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> Mitigate</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> Metamorphosis</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> Antipathy</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> Antithesis</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> The order has been whispering to me at just such times as I would lose vision. </span><br /></i></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> Reaching me in a deeply personal revelation of a universal principle, testifying</i></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i> to the impersonality of character which I seek."</i></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixPF2gJA_S9sg7m3E6XZklkgSMaBb75aDqHYazSOEfMGge06DTiSiIepxfMEB4LY4pi2L_K5LFfo7PikmJFfTiQ-ujOfMEM5pdYI7r9DSCpEVTBHDLTq2FxJt3rCf6itdK9B_ohAO19AOCL5R0W8jPGPy4orG9ZBPDSsBj_eAorBABSIgMmr5ffg/s1296/Screenshot%202024-01-20%20at%2006.29.46.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="856" data-original-width="1296" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixPF2gJA_S9sg7m3E6XZklkgSMaBb75aDqHYazSOEfMGge06DTiSiIepxfMEB4LY4pi2L_K5LFfo7PikmJFfTiQ-ujOfMEM5pdYI7r9DSCpEVTBHDLTq2FxJt3rCf6itdK9B_ohAO19AOCL5R0W8jPGPy4orG9ZBPDSsBj_eAorBABSIgMmr5ffg/s320/Screenshot%202024-01-20%20at%2006.29.46.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVvr9jeNmuKiqJAoioZZ5q97IWrIv79LOD3xQeYUZj_vK4KbITzc6hTumoz-GHW1p1lrfV7EongHaZDaSb3eMk3EPRW-vvP6spR7lTmqxO1iD2dn4qvz5GBrSk_uDNrsW1Qm4E1Jhtz-Lv7tYCIZ2T8n-BQCskVo3gXK4tmJx0m38w_qbKbYhcA/s1294/Screenshot%202024-01-20%20at%2006.29.59.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="792" data-original-width="1294" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVvr9jeNmuKiqJAoioZZ5q97IWrIv79LOD3xQeYUZj_vK4KbITzc6hTumoz-GHW1p1lrfV7EongHaZDaSb3eMk3EPRW-vvP6spR7lTmqxO1iD2dn4qvz5GBrSk_uDNrsW1Qm4E1Jhtz-Lv7tYCIZ2T8n-BQCskVo3gXK4tmJx0m38w_qbKbYhcA/s320/Screenshot%202024-01-20%20at%2006.29.59.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Monk's Advice to Musicians</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div></blockquote><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8hj1ozpCUOl5yV0xbXK6dVtZTnTsrorgckbWvedNw_0yOQ9sCHUioTtWuHfhOYYT-uFNhlET12zpd8aJxgi9PLPCVoaVW7MkEw1trSZaXDmwvYoJNdtxCkggPBASF3PP9i59MocUdIICqx3lt0sIBTBk5HhNKGobeUviAaMQL-kyDR-DkQS2sVQ/s1070/Screenshot%202024-01-20%20at%2017.49.24.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1070" data-original-width="748" height="339" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8hj1ozpCUOl5yV0xbXK6dVtZTnTsrorgckbWvedNw_0yOQ9sCHUioTtWuHfhOYYT-uFNhlET12zpd8aJxgi9PLPCVoaVW7MkEw1trSZaXDmwvYoJNdtxCkggPBASF3PP9i59MocUdIICqx3lt0sIBTBk5HhNKGobeUviAaMQL-kyDR-DkQS2sVQ/w237-h339/Screenshot%202024-01-20%20at%2017.49.24.png" width="237" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-40770748584707294842024-01-09T18:21:00.001+00:002024-02-13T16:14:33.849+00:00Waiting For Robert Johnson<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxplZIIxaasAIjBQ9m0ihUsLA-Dpp52QHrR3QibYbAfjb4cu_ZoxPC8xfhdaOOrDedhlqE0SUO0SzJy2q9BznNHugTzNcIHWWfCdEnUECVOM3Vf3vhNZjQgxUoyPifPvulGuiFjinjMX_qv7zoUqdWBUNj4mjoYkvTEQxmUcuQL-FrJUpOzLg/s990/Screenshot%202023-04-12%20at%2012.06.58.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="990" data-original-width="670" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxplZIIxaasAIjBQ9m0ihUsLA-Dpp52QHrR3QibYbAfjb4cu_ZoxPC8xfhdaOOrDedhlqE0SUO0SzJy2q9BznNHugTzNcIHWWfCdEnUECVOM3Vf3vhNZjQgxUoyPifPvulGuiFjinjMX_qv7zoUqdWBUNj4mjoYkvTEQxmUcuQL-FrJUpOzLg/s320/Screenshot%202023-04-12%20at%2012.06.58.png" width="217" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">We've been waiting for this one for something like half a century. Was it worth the wait? Well, yes and no. These days, however important, it's only one more brick in the Robert Johnson wall, now a cottage industry all its own. Johnson's been mythologised by everyone from Samuel Charters and John Hammond Sr to Bob Dylan and John Hammond Jr. as well as demythologised by Elijah Wald. Through it all one sometimes forgets that that real people have been, and still are, part of Robert Johnson's legacy. Perhaps McCormick's book, after all these years of waiting, was always going to be anti-climatic, all the more compounded by the author's personal problems. Yet I was enthralled by the book, even if there were times that I began to wonder about its veracity. Still, given McCormick's work in general, I was more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">Biography of a Phantom could easily qualify as a crime novel. Not only is it an investigation, but Mack’s style and approach to Robert Johnson, is obviously based on Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and the tropes of hardboiled narratives.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">Okay, the book is flawed, as was, of course, McCormick's approach.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;"> His mistreatment of Johnson's relatives, such as Carrie Thompson, cannot be dismissed. Which is why I think it's important to quote the book's editor, John W. Troutman, when he writes in the book's Afterwards: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">“This book...ultimately is less about the life of Robert Johnson than it is </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">about the human hellhounds and psychological phantoms that affected everyone </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">involved. Their impact and reverberations seem interconnected and boundless, beginning with the lynchings and other racially motivated violence that terrorized </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">and jeopardized Johnson’s family as well as Black communities throughout </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">Mississippi during the early 1900s. They extend to the ineffable consequences of </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">entombing Johnson’s humanity in a mythology that ascribed his musical brilliance </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">literally to the doings of the devil, rather than to recognizing the labor of </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">his craft, and the allusions and allegory in the poetic wellspring of Black songwriters </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">that Johnson was drawing from and replenishing. They manifest in the </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">historical plunder and exploitation of Black music and musicians by the record </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">industry, and the toll weighed on Johnson’s family members as they endured </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">decades of litigation over Johnson’s recordings and likeness. They manifest in </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">the condition that both fueled McCormick’s manic research production and vast </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">assembly of knowledge, and that also relentlessly tormented him, constraining </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">his ability to make good choices, and then expanding the suffering of all those </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">around him when his choices were bad. It is a story of tragedy, suffered by all, </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">where mental health plays a role, but so does racism, greed, and the instruments </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">of white supremacy in the legal system and corporate structure, in which the concerns </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">of Carrie Thompson were so easily and consistently dismissed."</span></p>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-20741410194475422722023-12-08T17:27:00.001+00:002023-12-08T17:27:30.198+00:00My Favourite Music of 2023<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMNopSjCTuvaw4c-JfvGdcYw5LUTwo-GbiKiqcD2FC-8jGugiy9JQxIfj7SvOtm-a_c-2op7cLPwKIvnrauh5ezfd72lxwr5CgwOIYfHC0TRTTlb2pKyEya8pVSjHp5a_QcvXeoAHuCe433eR2kcRby8na4BkL2fKReleCJl3kktc9-2XfbtdaEQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="490" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMNopSjCTuvaw4c-JfvGdcYw5LUTwo-GbiKiqcD2FC-8jGugiy9JQxIfj7SvOtm-a_c-2op7cLPwKIvnrauh5ezfd72lxwr5CgwOIYfHC0TRTTlb2pKyEya8pVSjHp5a_QcvXeoAHuCe433eR2kcRby8na4BkL2fKReleCJl3kktc9-2XfbtdaEQ" width="236" /></a></div></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhXHIsph8DMQU9UdeofwFSdFWkcORrGEwmGfgfwDu-oG24tevifRBZQoMItfL7KyWThpfjccQAeyLn9myale2sjaX9UzqZnfR-zWcQstQiwfeDG2aMg9HEZ1BlpwXbq1gyG8fzNR4K49qGzgu47awQLfgmIVGg3_gVrRIz4pCJiEzud-7Ylj1x9RA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="470" data-original-width="484" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhXHIsph8DMQU9UdeofwFSdFWkcORrGEwmGfgfwDu-oG24tevifRBZQoMItfL7KyWThpfjccQAeyLn9myale2sjaX9UzqZnfR-zWcQstQiwfeDG2aMg9HEZ1BlpwXbq1gyG8fzNR4K49qGzgu47awQLfgmIVGg3_gVrRIz4pCJiEzud-7Ylj1x9RA" width="247" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhYF-ZUgp9SYHQBHe3wRcwUjFkFyR-qoxyeZla0_re3ObhCFrBiU6vYj0VW-hGW56mcy5i1gmbsiT3fmwlZk4pAkLwD9iNShiDihh04mT-6iaf0VO56ufARYJpYo0nrYQ7KXq_KknxfoERum3MepwgRkbpknvc5EeisaV64PdRlviZFetNSyzRXKw" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="488" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhYF-ZUgp9SYHQBHe3wRcwUjFkFyR-qoxyeZla0_re3ObhCFrBiU6vYj0VW-hGW56mcy5i1gmbsiT3fmwlZk4pAkLwD9iNShiDihh04mT-6iaf0VO56ufARYJpYo0nrYQ7KXq_KknxfoERum3MepwgRkbpknvc5EeisaV64PdRlviZFetNSyzRXKw" width="234" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hasan Ibn Ali, Reaching For the Stars</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxtNu8ZGyySRpOWC3B1ckc8URb_kTIgi39Y35miQp32DxD-e5T5I_1OR3Ib7n6W0N37LWxTKd32n7gRMHpIOpDRIufbTLCT7FkSXrxbNnfO-1fFJifp2wrx99BcphmtzZjYJ4jxS6sr0WDdY_r1L5OfgTzZv4EyQ8lV-lbsfC9rhJe__eNNL5hIw" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="484" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxtNu8ZGyySRpOWC3B1ckc8URb_kTIgi39Y35miQp32DxD-e5T5I_1OR3Ib7n6W0N37LWxTKd32n7gRMHpIOpDRIufbTLCT7FkSXrxbNnfO-1fFJifp2wrx99BcphmtzZjYJ4jxS6sr0WDdY_r1L5OfgTzZv4EyQ8lV-lbsfC9rhJe__eNNL5hIw" width="246" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgzBxnwq-yWGt46K03lyVAZatiethJCzAOC7PAbiRSuCuJg94On4Gznv2FfafqxNSQdFyBXPDCG4dnyxHeVC5_Zy9rL6WVhHZiaEikgqry4V-DvlN3iFVYmVfFou1d9dhNT1ikSMLVmclGt4vpng0SyvMpAZEb0U5bB1hV6dbP00haACc7I_3tsVA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="476" data-original-width="476" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgzBxnwq-yWGt46K03lyVAZatiethJCzAOC7PAbiRSuCuJg94On4Gznv2FfafqxNSQdFyBXPDCG4dnyxHeVC5_Zy9rL6WVhHZiaEikgqry4V-DvlN3iFVYmVfFou1d9dhNT1ikSMLVmclGt4vpng0SyvMpAZEb0U5bB1hV6dbP00haACc7I_3tsVA" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiEFWG4ISxKfHG2TkXV95rj7uOkinQPMh-i7q2OtNoqCH4xi5n-pL73SXFs-f6AqWbQg_YYCDuyS9dGAGALo9JXu8ZQg4U3KDd9uSMJyg0zdsitKbLUuQx635beaOANIryLn3TuDP2Jqh6ys3Mr7ZAKgvxBBUzXKf_Fhx9jz2OxGzX3KyrEE3A2Hg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="460" data-original-width="482" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiEFWG4ISxKfHG2TkXV95rj7uOkinQPMh-i7q2OtNoqCH4xi5n-pL73SXFs-f6AqWbQg_YYCDuyS9dGAGALo9JXu8ZQg4U3KDd9uSMJyg0zdsitKbLUuQx635beaOANIryLn3TuDP2Jqh6ys3Mr7ZAKgvxBBUzXKf_Fhx9jz2OxGzX3KyrEE3A2Hg" width="251" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiM_CB-_P7Cp0rSbogREEOlmNuTOyi24nfPpRjnVccZKlG6ObI0lyYn41tWc3IYKs6aVm-XnSpww36X8VFW7B-0MiGzgyy3MANgpSn33aIdzYxgDPCGL7s7y5ABttyE09fNNDHOWs3cXLPnWAUedkXxKH-OsJbODC1AzszIgY35WJmGR09OQitMlQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1076" data-original-width="1110" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiM_CB-_P7Cp0rSbogREEOlmNuTOyi24nfPpRjnVccZKlG6ObI0lyYn41tWc3IYKs6aVm-XnSpww36X8VFW7B-0MiGzgyy3MANgpSn33aIdzYxgDPCGL7s7y5ABttyE09fNNDHOWs3cXLPnWAUedkXxKH-OsJbODC1AzszIgY35WJmGR09OQitMlQ" width="248" /></a></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgfhKUKmS2blRwkFoiVDv17pIzp79QMiK9XT13q9yExqX08JybTSBDBzxYyIS_87aD1dbKcp5Q75ItXljJEzpY4DTYcH5NZca9reSVExE1tt5Z1dS2hDFUIGUJ55Ae_dVRedCB-li51iv_RT6r5c7_w34j0Mwzorz0Sde6MHcSvb5hufO9e6P3JOw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1044" data-original-width="1104" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgfhKUKmS2blRwkFoiVDv17pIzp79QMiK9XT13q9yExqX08JybTSBDBzxYyIS_87aD1dbKcp5Q75ItXljJEzpY4DTYcH5NZca9reSVExE1tt5Z1dS2hDFUIGUJ55Ae_dVRedCB-li51iv_RT6r5c7_w34j0Mwzorz0Sde6MHcSvb5hufO9e6P3JOw" width="254" /></a></div><br /><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg2eQYUHZabZgTPPN83IqiJhG8sf88csw1KKvUFGKRfOKwvDzwgkxYYMtd19aEwabL4NgY_3sHXwVRClMAEw-hXVzmiDd0925P2q-mdc_vA__fm41WDlkjIa2QlTRceDfRY3XRERVoocYHnVX-Wg11P5u9bp-7Iha5zMVi26bmTYLZEQiLRMsGDHw" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="468" data-original-width="458" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg2eQYUHZabZgTPPN83IqiJhG8sf88csw1KKvUFGKRfOKwvDzwgkxYYMtd19aEwabL4NgY_3sHXwVRClMAEw-hXVzmiDd0925P2q-mdc_vA__fm41WDlkjIa2QlTRceDfRY3XRERVoocYHnVX-Wg11P5u9bp-7Iha5zMVi26bmTYLZEQiLRMsGDHw" width="235" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jesse Mae Hemphill, She Wolf</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiUJDoebTUM_9CczIist3q6Swoi-rDBSv5Z5L9JvYSGK2wgJFkL6XRfbW6QRXa4nqulSfgPz8fMjXdczr3flql1VA1NwuP3TUemV0oHiH5GTmdRr7Y0Nbnr9DfBusYwj_3cIV1qwiP3hF7bkseZKoayqnVuxtlBz-wNzGhOhjLLYhMUryuN4_OzoA" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="478" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiUJDoebTUM_9CczIist3q6Swoi-rDBSv5Z5L9JvYSGK2wgJFkL6XRfbW6QRXa4nqulSfgPz8fMjXdczr3flql1VA1NwuP3TUemV0oHiH5GTmdRr7Y0Nbnr9DfBusYwj_3cIV1qwiP3hF7bkseZKoayqnVuxtlBz-wNzGhOhjLLYhMUryuN4_OzoA" width="233" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #565959; font-size: 14px; text-align: start;">Qasim Naqvi, Wadada Leo Smith, Andrew Cyrille<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhXlfag0AxiJm0sG1P2Wk_ZC2jnM7RJA4Yv1aZEJ0WK6o6c-8h5ZxfmqYhWkcnL0Ge3lmjfDsMlMUqU2rbskPSbxvh8CyREK9PCuHgp0T7X2zjTL-wYHQ1X61Hn9Rv2VceYO9uawmlCGr5LPbnDLCBhWMwMabweOJrhAgZeK8DRVwKxx721azY40w" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="694" data-original-width="698" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhXlfag0AxiJm0sG1P2Wk_ZC2jnM7RJA4Yv1aZEJ0WK6o6c-8h5ZxfmqYhWkcnL0Ge3lmjfDsMlMUqU2rbskPSbxvh8CyREK9PCuHgp0T7X2zjTL-wYHQ1X61Hn9Rv2VceYO9uawmlCGr5LPbnDLCBhWMwMabweOJrhAgZeK8DRVwKxx721azY40w" width="241" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jeff Parker, Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><div style="text-align: start;"><span face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #363636;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 28px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: start;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbw8n9hA8dQvstXTv_A6v50Lud3ACs_2LzbMiN5swBuNNHoR8GRTd7UcFa1FKUQf2s7hL91WrYE5LVor_QTzZ17WQWFVpOkpkw_zHNHk40nIQrkMksWEJW-xL_X82ZBqjHaSqGf9S9sodUO_maODE51aodWGNkFSvDLIK-DVCWvti-QyKl_0G3Xg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="746" data-original-width="738" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbw8n9hA8dQvstXTv_A6v50Lud3ACs_2LzbMiN5swBuNNHoR8GRTd7UcFa1FKUQf2s7hL91WrYE5LVor_QTzZ17WQWFVpOkpkw_zHNHk40nIQrkMksWEJW-xL_X82ZBqjHaSqGf9S9sodUO_maODE51aodWGNkFSvDLIK-DVCWvti-QyKl_0G3Xg" width="237" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhTIRUtelnb5ITV6wRMN_RlfeOiv9zVLt9gGDTEAwXNlAEtWUO7qHepGWb0f78l6RgshUSxke8dCsit6py5ZYTCaSJH81A4-8F42lgNM7HRAux9CWpkcdQiYLgbONKu3lNMD_DDOGL8Eiht5yPPS_FxRMEBNWvMzPTycPP_PgnxeJC34hglnTE-3A" style="margin-left: 1em; 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text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXnZeqhAJOrkGSdl96n81OYlDcR32S-xvaEqPHybgdC4r96_jg2KJeu6AOaetnOcDYbBj808NerrexHkJGWpf5E2U4U54FqXCr_4MzJeW95yb77PLslIaEJY1l8yK9Kw-taqpyJwVmdTCEgcZPymHCiqw-LvoscWE_ElJXGGpoURJs-9BI8yq-cg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="484" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXnZeqhAJOrkGSdl96n81OYlDcR32S-xvaEqPHybgdC4r96_jg2KJeu6AOaetnOcDYbBj808NerrexHkJGWpf5E2U4U54FqXCr_4MzJeW95yb77PLslIaEJY1l8yK9Kw-taqpyJwVmdTCEgcZPymHCiqw-LvoscWE_ElJXGGpoURJs-9BI8yq-cg" width="239" /></a></div><br /><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-62790105602437995382023-12-06T18:14:00.002+00:002023-12-27T10:40:26.819+00:00Favourite Books of 2023<p><u><br /><br /></u></p><p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: right;"><div style="text-align: center;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgb-bNRwjK_xuEBPHqiVIF3XYKjct_eb-sTcxk0j4fVY21wNUnhHH4MCdkihyFoLp6BLmx71BUtKcnHoHxB1RxveT60hE5lYK0ZR2agsIjR0T5IXmJ1EUEyJmkf-Mvl3ZtCQX5cjFpCLtCXJWb-pCPy1X5KXjTgzVcl3kd-0ckKouOUCeDO5SLGDg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="746" data-original-width="494" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgb-bNRwjK_xuEBPHqiVIF3XYKjct_eb-sTcxk0j4fVY21wNUnhHH4MCdkihyFoLp6BLmx71BUtKcnHoHxB1RxveT60hE5lYK0ZR2agsIjR0T5IXmJ1EUEyJmkf-Mvl3ZtCQX5cjFpCLtCXJWb-pCPy1X5KXjTgzVcl3kd-0ckKouOUCeDO5SLGDg=w132-h200" width="132" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQn54yeb14ib3HIqGgdIJ1l7hEBWZ1J2jNJsY4LA7wX-f5rxbU5PwhSm0L6xMO1QNQVTBOt1fIICVE54gJaKsQowcP5HMkthhNHCOI2dqwLYdE4aLKmWgGhSZfyOykxjFJUrKUacYBgnkZqucga_RPRV15s4eBnVvoL0BmTH8c60_ciuKVAfeXRw" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="238" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQn54yeb14ib3HIqGgdIJ1l7hEBWZ1J2jNJsY4LA7wX-f5rxbU5PwhSm0L6xMO1QNQVTBOt1fIICVE54gJaKsQowcP5HMkthhNHCOI2dqwLYdE4aLKmWgGhSZfyOykxjFJUrKUacYBgnkZqucga_RPRV15s4eBnVvoL0BmTH8c60_ciuKVAfeXRw=w147-h211" width="147" /></a></div></div></div><br /><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg8__bcvAoys596S7A9NvAmU_RL4zAZW-Yi2aUNReAU6dsrkh6ZB8a8Le2Xnn3tKCedXZRqU5zOIgdxCuTn6hCQy9rtOf3bP6LoEaSsR8PSiUIl5Ib9QvJfVeYBhzv-uyaMW3yoCzd86doaDqRgjlKuJ5lvFvEWkYBnucDYnPkRqCQZXggvEIq48Q" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="240" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg8__bcvAoys596S7A9NvAmU_RL4zAZW-Yi2aUNReAU6dsrkh6ZB8a8Le2Xnn3tKCedXZRqU5zOIgdxCuTn6hCQy9rtOf3bP6LoEaSsR8PSiUIl5Ib9QvJfVeYBhzv-uyaMW3yoCzd86doaDqRgjlKuJ5lvFvEWkYBnucDYnPkRqCQZXggvEIq48Q=w142-h200" width="142" /></a><img alt="" data-original-height="358" data-original-width="276" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiB95bNgtJMAiTCbOFef-8upFXPEmAKMRkgSuRUojMSy-7BNkJ_6QmpPl347AHcNKpKoiaIVJrSLjEFM2ep_jjXfvn2wOmfdX56h17TZP-YkWk4DvvgcUl-aEWtnz5uu0MVpIU94L8quB1umv66PzyXM8-QA6fDn-TkBx3D2xUB2b9RhDrf7A3k_A=w150-h195" width="150" /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiB95bNgtJMAiTCbOFef-8upFXPEmAKMRkgSuRUojMSy-7BNkJ_6QmpPl347AHcNKpKoiaIVJrSLjEFM2ep_jjXfvn2wOmfdX56h17TZP-YkWk4DvvgcUl-aEWtnz5uu0MVpIU94L8quB1umv66PzyXM8-QA6fDn-TkBx3D2xUB2b9RhDrf7A3k_A"><br /></a><br /><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="362" data-original-width="226" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiJtLT7mb20EvZaC8qQpvfD5tuCs4DVJ7UpjwZC_2ANed__d-7XANVhyX3MISCetYavddOMgPG_J3-Jd7CmNQGCLe0piWHhKcJQOOwJ5R5iO8-0PKVopQIGFbOpkHfJjZiNlwdCNJt21VMqr8vGR7KaPT0mN7ZbY27kiUe0uJbIAHB4QUjlLUefhg=w118-h189" width="118" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><b>In no particular order:</b></p><p><br /></p><p>-Cruz by Nicolas Ferraro (Soho Crime). </p><p>-Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper (Faber) </p><p>-Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music by Henry Threadgill (Knopf) </p><p>-Biography of a Phantom by Mack McCormic</p><p>-Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman (Fitzcarraldo Editions) </p><p><span face=""Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0f1111; font-size: 14px;">- </span>Death Watch by Stona Fitch (Arrow Editions)</p><p>-The Last Songbird by Daniel Weizmann (Melville House)</p><p>-Revolution- An Intellectual History by Enzo Traverso (Verso)</p><p>-Writers & Missionaries by Adam Shatz (Verso)</p><p>-The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster)</p><p>-Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy by Steven Powell (Bloomsbury) </p><p>-The Crystal Text by Clark Coolidge (City Lights)</p><p>-Skeletons in the Closet by Jean-Patrick Manchette (NYRB)</p><p>-The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright (Library of America)</p><p>-Glass Pearls by Emeric Pressburger (Faber)</p><br />Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-35500259367098411902023-08-31T13:59:00.007+01:002023-08-31T14:46:58.890+01:00 Writing On Dangerous Ground: From the Poetry of Film Noir to Film Noir Poetry<p><b style="font-size: 11px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p><b style="font-size: 11px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i></i></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: 11px;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiOaMsbrp0abmB72vziZgP-M5Sbjcq1sPaTCx4oe1qn1SAamQR6H_6uE1-21trR0WaaTYlIYIiacC9hSN5t_HYjKKOnv9bjPKG6z5EvIlxIxnPm1DzLEPpewNNHg6jQ_Xrjhaph7VvPF8NiqG3J_TcbWsnm8s4C5vdqBCLhVINyeBcl8I5KnM0R2A" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2475" data-original-width="1554" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiOaMsbrp0abmB72vziZgP-M5Sbjcq1sPaTCx4oe1qn1SAamQR6H_6uE1-21trR0WaaTYlIYIiacC9hSN5t_HYjKKOnv9bjPKG6z5EvIlxIxnPm1DzLEPpewNNHg6jQ_Xrjhaph7VvPF8NiqG3J_TcbWsnm8s4C5vdqBCLhVINyeBcl8I5KnM0R2A" width="151" /></span></a></i></b></div><p><b style="font-size: 11px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">What Is Noir?</span></i></b></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">Is more than darkness. Is</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">Corruption of the heart. Is</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">behind closed doors, board-</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">room or street. Is fucked</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">Whether you do, don’t sing,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">Moan, sniff or shoot. Is a</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">ticket to all we have, never</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">enough. Is greed, lust, a fatal</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">kiss, the banker, cop, criminal, or</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">any other poor sucker who</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">screams for mercy. Is a</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">dream of autonomy, femme</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">fatality causality, breathing,</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Hey, baby, let’s take it all.”</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">Is a corpse, a handful of dust</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">and ultimately who cares, if</span></i><i><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">the only punishment is death.</span></i></p><p class="p3" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">A poetic response to what constitutes noir, whether on the page or on the screen, isn’t as unusual as one might think. There have been, after all, any number of poets who’ve been attracted to noir fiction, and, by extension, film noir. And any number of noir writers who began as poets, stretching back to Raymond Chandler, who, even before his stories began to appear in Black Mask, was publishing poetry, admittedly doggrel, in The Westminster Gazette. To make sense out of the relationship between poetry and noir fiction and film, one need only recall the legendary French crime publisher Marcel Duhamel’s advice to Chester Himes in the late 1940s regarding the house rules for Serie Noire crime fiction: “Always action in detail. Make pictures. Like motion pictures…No streams of consciousness at all. We don’t give a damn who’s thinking what- only what they’re doing. Always doing something. From one scene to another. Don’t worry about it making sense.” A statement that isn’t far removed from William Carlos Williams’s imagist declaration, “No ideas but in things.” Like modern lyric poetry, noir, whether on page or screen, favours minimalism, a quality one sees in the films of Jules Dassin, Joseph Lewis, Anthony Mann, Robert Siodmak, and early Kubrick, as well as in the writing of Dashiell Hammett and, to an even higher degree, in Paul Cain. A technique whose precise imagery sharpens one’s focus on details and the overall narrative contour.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Despite the attraction, poets, depending on how serious they took to their task, have had varying degrees of success in the genre. Some like Dorothy B. Hughes, Kenneth Fearing, Alfred Hayes, Charles Willeford and Stephen Dobyns, would find a home in noir fiction, and produce successful novels, while others, such Richard Hugo and Jack Spicer were destined to be dabblers, producing work of limited interest. Then there are those, like John Harvey and the late Jim Nisbet who have been able to move between the two types of writing. Some, as dissimilar as Henri Coulette, Robert Polito, Michael Gizzi and Alice Notley (Negativity's Kiss) have been heavily influenced by noir film and fiction.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Not to mention those whose poetry contains noirish elements, from Weldon Kees and Charles Reznikoff to John Wieners, and Charles Bukowski, from Lynda Hull to Summer Brenner and Frank Stanford, or, like the Irish poet Martina Evans (“As Mitchum said- Crossfire (1947)- the snakes were loose.” And “<i>If you tell your dream, you don’t have to dream it/anymore, says Alan Ladd, Crossfire (1942)</i> simply include elements of film noir.</span></p><p class="p3" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It stands to reason that a poetic genre like film noir should, in turn, engender poetic responses. Nevertheless, I can’t off-hand think of another book of poetry that takes the same approach as On Dangerous Ground. Of course, there have been critics, such as Manny Farber, James Naremore, Nicholas Christopher, Robert Polito, Geoffrey O’Brien and Sarah Imogen Smith who have written about the genre of film noir in a poetic manner. A less eccentric path to follow, their writing- at least three of them, O’Brien (Arabian Nights), Christopher (Desperate Characters) and Polito (Hollywood & God), are, in fact, film-noir influenced poets- derives from a passion for film and an ability to communicate their perceptions in an intelligent, concise and perceptive manner. Yet such writing is substantially different from someone writing poems about film noir, much less with the hope of challenging the usual passive nature of viewing such films.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">My intention: to take 50 classic examples of film noir, and create a poem surrounding each of them. And, in doing so, investigate not only the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>films but the world in which they were made and viewed, then and now. The poems themselves derived from whatever happened to attract my attention: a piece of dialogue, camerawork, lighting, a particular scene, a plot, an individual performance, sartorial style, the director, or simply the film’s ambiance, and its nexus in space and time. In many cases, I ended up writing about those films in terms of their politics, not quite free associating, but more like what poet the late poet Robert Duncan used to call “tone leading.” In other words, not a thought-out process but more akin to after-thoughts, resulting at times in nothing more than rants and raves about the world as it was and is. Such is the fractured nature of the world and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the poems themselves. In the end, the poems in On Dangerous Ground could be thought as distortions, often humorous, of the films under consideration, like scrambled film reviews that exist at a particular moment, distilled through time, whose shelf life will last until the next viewing, by which time another set of linguistic prompts or images might attract my attention. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Why the title?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>For one thing, Nicholas Ray’s 1951 film, On Dangerous Ground, with a screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides, has always been one of my favourite films, and one that has stood the test of time. But the title also relates to film noir as a genre, as well as to the position of anyone who attempts to explicate such films places, whatever their agenda. Not to mention how the title describes Ray’s film: a sadistic urban cop confronts and falls under the spell of a blind woman, although up to that point he has no conception of how vulnerable people can be, including himself, so blind to any subtleties. His own rough justice turned inside out as the various narratives reflect and refract one another. All that the snow not so much a symbol of purity as a condition of life. It’s all dangerous ground- the city, the place from which the boy-killer falls, the relationship between the cop and the blind woman. It’s a world, however modified for general consumption, in which everyone is vulnerable- cop, blind woman, child. All the product, so typical of film noir, of a cross-section of cultures, under the influence of European emigres and Popular Front leftists: Wisconsinite Ray, of German-Norwegian parentage, Greek-Armenian A.I. Bezzerides, filmed by a New Yorker, George Diskant, whose roots can most likely be traced back to Russia, and Ida Lupino, a Londoner, who not only starred in the film but directed various parts when Ray was too ill to continue.</span></p><p class="p3" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Basing a book of poems on films might be unusual, but it didn’t take a great leap of the imagination to come up with the idea. After all, these films which I’ve long been obsessed by have always been prime fodder for interpretation, and ideal for riffing off of. Moreover, these days they are all within easy reach.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>On the other hand, any subject might have served a similar function. That is, had I been a different person. All that’s required in a subject is that can be viewed from a variety of perspectives, and used as a means of investigating the culture. In my case, the poems, written off and on over some ten years, were at times no more than an excuse to watch and think about the films. But as I watched them, and proceeded to write about them, it made me view the films in a different way, as artifacts to be acted upon rather than packaged and left on the shelf. So it was a two-way process, the poems activated the films, but the films clearly activated the poems, allowing me to go anywhere I liked with them, from glossing the surface of a given film to scouring its depths, while, at the same time, addressing subjects like crime, guilt, innocence, bourgeois values, late capitalism, and gendered space. Which made the films timeless, this even though they are so much of a period. Not that anyone could deny that, in the end, they are just movies- Ju-Ju beans for the eyes. Put them under the slightest scrutiny and they reveal themselves not only as documents of the culture, but something like a series of dreams about failed utopias. Half a century on, these films- spanning the years 1941 to 1976- can still captivate, and capable of affecting us on a personal as well as political level. Film noir poetry? “Give it a name,” as they say line in Scott Rosenberg’s 1995 Things to Do In Denver When You’re Dead. A title deriving from a Warren Zevon song in which that aficionado of noir film and fiction goes on to sing, “You won't need a cab to find a priest/Maybe you should find a place to stay/Some place where they never change the sheets/And you just roll around Denver all day.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Which goes to show that the relationship between poetry and noir, whether on page or screen, can take surprising forms. Hopefully the poems that constitute On Dangerous Ground will, if nothing else,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>lead to further investigations, no matter that form they might take.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-size: 11px; white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-size: 11px; white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-size: 11px; white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-size: 11px; white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-size: 11px; white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: 11px;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="s1" style="text-decoration-line: underline;"><b></b></span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: verdana; text-decoration-line: underline;"><b>Ten Films and Their Opening Lines</b></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-family: verdana; text-decoration-line: underline;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Big Heat: “<i>Shocking, only if suburbia can/be paradise.”</i></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Dark Passage: “<i>It’s never easy, clocking the world, driving/the back roads and waterfront</i>.”</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Fallen Angel: “<i>That was then, when Otto could still/see in the dark, and anti-fascism was a/thing” </i>Human Desire: <i>“How many/doors to make a room to make/an exit.</i>”</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In a Lonely Place: “<i>A shattered world, future so bleak/it’s hardly worth the effort</i>.”</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Killers: “<i>Night time the proverbial/for irritable hoodlums…”</i></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Kiss Me Deadly: “<i>It’s the American Way, atomic/L.A. devolving into the future</i>.”</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Nightmare Alley: “<i>Forget the reprobates, crawling parasites and/fallen angels…”</i></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On Dangerous Ground: “<i>With darkness bleeding into/domesticity…”</i></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sweet Smell of Success: <i>A nostalgia of jazz, location shots, and barely/palatable venom</i>.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Where the Sidewalk Ends: <i>“A cop is basically a criminal,”/with an instinct for…legalised/violence”</i></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i></i><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i></i>(An earlier version of this entry appeared in <a href="https://www.crimetime.co.uk/writing-on-dangerous-ground-from-the-poetry-of-film-noir-to-film-noir-poetry/">Crime Time</a>.)</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i>On Dangerous Ground is available from </i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dangerous-Ground-Film-Noir-Poems-ebook/dp/B0C6T2DK5R/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3DD2O66VCKCOM&keywords=Haut,+On+Dangerous+Ground&qid=1691008791&sprefix=haut+on+dangerous+ground,aps,68&sr=8-1"><span class="s1">Amazon</span></a><i> and through </i><a href="https://www.close2thebone.co.uk/wp/"><span class="s1">Close to the Bone Press</span></a><i>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i></i><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-38002645718416627062023-07-20T14:08:00.002+01:002023-07-21T22:04:01.046+01:00Tumbling Full Throttle Into Oblivion: The Last Songbird by Daniel Weizmann<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;">“This hard-boiled stuff — it’s a menace.”</span></p><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px; padding-left: 80px;">— Dashiell Hammett, 1950</p></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;"> </p><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;">At the center of Daniel Weizmann’s new wave noir novel, <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Last Songbird</em>, is Adam “Addy” Zantz, a nebbish-like Lyft driver and would-be songwriter who, at moments opportune or not, can’t stop semi-composed lyrics from popping into his head. As he drives through L.A.’s streets, mean as well as meaningless, he obsesses about what might have been. He’s unable to come to terms with his ex- and former songwriting partner, having left him for a more professional songwriter-boyfriend. Nor can he <span lang="IT" style="box-sizing: inherit;">relinquish</span> his attachment to Annie Linden, a 73-year old former celebrity singer-songwriter (think Stevie Nicks crossed with Joni Mitchell), still worshipped by her fans, whom Adam drives to and from her Malibu home no matter the time of day. When her body is washed ashore in Hermosa Beach, the wrong person is arrested, and Adam feels he owes it to Annie to find the actual killer, as well as honour a request she made that he find something — Adam doesn’t yet know what — from her past. What keeps him on this two-fold case is not only his connection to a woman he regards as a kindred, if self-centered, spirit, but because she was, on the basis of a demo he once played for her in his car, the only person ever to express an appreciation for his potential as a songwriter.</p></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-33510 alignright lazy loaded" data-sizes="(max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px" data-src="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-cover-480x725.jpg" data-srcset="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-cover-480x725.jpg 480w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-cover-240x362.jpg 240w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-cover.jpg 720w" data-was-processed="true" decoding="async" height="300" sizes="(max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px" src="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-cover-480x725.jpg" srcset="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-cover-480x725.jpg 480w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-cover-240x362.jpg 240w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-cover.jpg 720w" style="border-style: none; box-sizing: inherit; display: block; float: right; height: auto; margin-left: 1.5em; max-width: 100%; min-height: 1px;" width="199" />Something of a Harold and Maude type of relationship, perhaps, but as any all-night cab driver can attest, unlikely fly-by-night friendships and adventures are commonplace in that line of work. Driving the graveyard shift in San Francisco in the late 1960s, every night, for me felt like an adventure, stopping only just short of what Zantz experiences. Maybe it was the drugs, at the time <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">de rigueur</i> for driving into the early morning light, enhancing everything, not least the paranoia that insisted on riding shotgun, on the lookout for the Zodiac or some other encrazed individual with a grudge against cabbies. Although more fleeting than Zantz’s obsession with Annie, I remember falling for an older French woman — probably no more than in her early 30’s — straight out of Jacques Demy’s Model Shop — who read palms in Fisherman’s Wharf to pay for her and her daughter’s return to Paris. Fresh out of San Francisco State, I willingly contributed to her traveling expenses. Driving a cab is like that, the sort of job, whether permanent or precarious, that attracts <span lang="FR" style="box-sizing: inherit;">a certain </span>type, the sort who’d otherwise be writing poetry or a novel, or, as in Adam’s case, songs, and who can’t help but view their taxi as their personal theater, sometimes of the absurd, at other times of <span lang="ES-TRAD" style="box-sizing: inherit;">cruelty</span>, depending on their fare, and on the way the cultural winds happen to be blowing on that particular day. It’s also the perfect job for someone investigating the culture. After all, in that line of work, as Weizmann demonstrates, contact with the world in all its sleazy glory is unavoidable, thrusting its presence on you whether you seek it out or not.</p></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;">All of which is to say, what might seem far-fetched in the light of day can be ghostly real once the sun goes down, and you’re at the mercy of the laws of chance. Because once all those upstanding citizens go home from their jobs or entertainments of choice, and the streets fill up with the denizens of the night, anything can happen. It simply goes with the territory. And this is what Weizmann so ably captures, placing Addy in a world just a step outside his comfort zone and comprehension, subject, for better or worse, to the winds of fate. Consequently, <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Last Songbird</em> can be added to that swathe of crime novels, now a sub-genre all its own, that focus on taxi cab drivers, such as Lee Durkee’s <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Last Taxi Driver</em>, Jack Clark’s <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Nobody’s Angel</em>, Fuminor Nakamura’s <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Boy In the Earth</em>, and others. Not to mention a film like Martin Scorsese’s <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Taxi Driver.</em> And who can forget the anarcho-syndicalist taxi cab driver, played by Elijah Cook Jr. in Wim Wenders’ film <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Hammett</em>, with a screenplay written by, amongst others, noirists Joe Gores and Ross Thomas.</p></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;">But it seems like it takes more than one sub-genre to venture into the depths of present day Los Angeles. Certainly Weizmann’s first-person narrative could also be categorised as Jewish-noir. Born in Israel during the 1967 Six Day War and the Summer of Love, then arriving in Hollywood as an infant, Weizmann litters his novel with Jewish characters and vernacular. No so much in the vein of Jerome Charyn’s Isaac Sidel novels, but more like those loosely knit narratives from the 1970s that wore their secular Jewishness lightly, such as Andrew Bergman’s <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Hollywood</em> <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">and Levine</em> or Roger Simon’s <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Big Fix</em>. All of them highly readable and seemingly innocent regarding the harder edges of the genre, as if they’d only recently discovered the likes of Hammett or Chandler. Not really pastiche but using the genre’s tropes to explain this great big ball of confusion called the modern world. Without over-committing itself, <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Last Songbird</em> plays on those same tropes, but without the fake cynicism or wise-guy <span lang="IT" style="box-sizing: inherit;">attitude</span>, resulting in a narrative that takes the chaos of the city and the era as given.</p></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-33511 alignleft lazy loaded" data-sizes="(max-width: 226px) 100vw, 226px" data-src="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-pic-480x638.jpg" data-srcset="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-pic-480x638.jpg 480w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-pic-768x1020.jpg 768w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-pic-240x319.jpg 240w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-pic.jpg 792w" data-was-processed="true" decoding="async" height="300" sizes="(max-width: 226px) 100vw, 226px" src="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-pic-480x638.jpg" srcset="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-pic-480x638.jpg 480w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-pic-768x1020.jpg 768w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-pic-240x319.jpg 240w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-pic.jpg 792w" style="border-style: none; box-sizing: inherit; display: block; float: left; height: auto; margin-right: 1.5em; max-width: 100%; min-height: 1px;" width="226" /></p><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;">Equally, one could claim that <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Last Songbird</em> belongs in still another sub-genre, that which investigates and revolves around the music industry. These run the gamut from Day Keene’s <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Payola</em>, Arthur Lyons’ <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Three With a Bullet</em> and Bill Moody’s <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Death of a Tenor Man</em> to Elaine Jesmer’s <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Number One With a Bullet,</em> Laurence Gonzales’s <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Jambeaux</em> and, dare I say it, my own <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Cry For a Nickel, Die For a Dime</em>. Do all these sub-genres thrown together simply indicate the lack of substance or commitment on the part of the author? Not necessarily. After all, unlike novels by the likes of Jim Thompson, David Goodis or Chester Himes, not every noir novel requires its author to put him or herself on the line, or to dig down so deep that it is difficult to understand how resurfacing can be possible. While Addy faces his own particular meltdown, there’s no reason to suspect that Weizmann might be undergoing a similar crisis; rather, one gets the impression that he is simply putting his considerable skills into constructing a good story while saying something that might resonate with the reader.</p></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;">Noir-light it might be, but <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Last Songbird</em> has a lot going for it as it moves across Los Angeles, hitting various psycho-geographical points. And in going along for the ride, one moves from strip malls and strip joints to freeways and backstreets, from suburban McMansions to sleazy inner city apartments, from the Pacific Coast Highway to beach towns and criss-crossing freeways. At times it seems as though the novel’s various characters — “Every person a song in disguise” — are creatures of these various geographical points. There’s Addy’s semi-estranged suburban sister (actually his cousin), a relatively successful lawyer who is both jealous of Addy and looks down on him; the crazy dead mother, whom Addy recalls spending her final alcoholic years living with him out of her car; Annie’s ex-husband, a misogynistic creep who “In another life would have made <span lang="FR" style="box-sizing: inherit;">dynamite</span> extra in <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Fiddler On the Roof</em>,” lives in Venice where he plots his takeover of the post-Annie pie; Addy<span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="box-sizing: inherit;">’</span>s friend, Ephraim, aka “Double Fry,” an orthodox Jewish photographer who lives on a boat at the beach, monitors police calls and dishes out words of Jewish wisdom; Bix, a fall-guy employed by Annie and allowed to live on her premises; Annie<span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="box-sizing: inherit;">’</span><span lang="FR" style="box-sizing: inherit;">s feminist ex-</span>lover who lives near San Luis Obispo; and a machine shop owner, a black guy who, way back when, taught Annie to play guitar, and lives in <span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="box-sizing: inherit;">“</span>the last semi-industrial section of West Adams.” Add to that the assortment of young tearaways, women haters, sauna salesmen, memorabilia collectors, new age reprobates and, of course, pushy cops. Characters that seem to shape shift as the narrative progresses, none more so than Annie, both before and after her death.</p></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;">In fact, <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Last Songbird</em> is the kind of novel that sneaks up on you. Before you know it, what began as an ordinary run-out written in a pedestrian style soon starts to show flashes of street-level lyricism and incisiveness. Perhaps it’s conscious on Weizmann’s part. Or maybe it just seems that way, as the novel quickly gathers steam until you feel you’re trapped in a narrative that might have been concocted by Raymond Chandler had the latter not had an elite private education and petit-bourgeois inclinations. But in the end, when it comes to a clear writing style along with the politics to back it up, Weizmann has more in common with Hammett, perhaps accompanied by the ingestion of some kind of Pynchon-pill of the Inherent Vice variety, whose effect makes things all the more dizzying and unpredictable, until L.A. turns into his own personal Poisonville:</p></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;">“Bottrell returned with a cardboard file box and dropped into his lavender chair, which had shrunk into children’s furniture under his large frame. His reappearance gear-shifted the mood to even worse- I had been badly mistaken when I read him breezy. Now, he radiated the seething <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">noblesse oblige</i> of the Burdened Frontiersman. With Nguyen at least, you knew where you stood: Indochinese testosterone and shit to prove. There was geopolitical turbulence in her snicker as she took the box from Bottrell and drew some ancient forms from a folder — handwritten. <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">My</i> handwriting.”</p></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-33512 alignright lazy loaded" data-sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-src="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-taxi-480x349.png" data-srcset="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-taxi-480x349.png 480w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-taxi-768x559.png 768w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-taxi-240x175.png 240w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-taxi.png 792w" data-was-processed="true" decoding="async" height="218" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" src="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-taxi-480x349.png" srcset="https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-taxi-480x349.png 480w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-taxi-768x559.png 768w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-taxi-240x175.png 240w, https://www.ronslate.com/wp-content/uploads/Weizmann-taxi.png 792w" style="border-style: none; box-sizing: inherit; display: block; float: right; height: auto; margin-left: 1.5em; max-width: 100%; min-height: 1px;" width="300" />But Weizmann has the sense to shy away from the mock Chandlerisms one has come to expect from so many neo-noir novels, opting instead for zingers that almost always hit their target, albeit in an off-centered way. Like morphing the overused Larkin <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">family</i> lines, which in Weizmann’s hands become “It takes a whole family to go insane.” Or playing off those same psycho-geographical cliches regarding what it’s like to live in a manufactured paradise: <span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="box-sizing: inherit;">“</span>Wherever you were, you were equidistant to the middle of nowhere. I tried to approximate the act of walking with an agonizing herky-jerky limp. The ape crawled up a staircase.” Okay, it’s true, Weizmann’s syntax can sometimes be a bit eccentric, defying grammar but rarely logic. At least to my ears, but then, no longer in L.A.’s linguistic loop, that could just be what passes for common <span lang="FR" style="box-sizing: inherit;">usage</span> in the southland these days. Because Weizmann never comes across as embittered or cynical, he can, suddenly shift attention away from the other to his hapless narrator:</p></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;">“His organized yard, his bony shoulders and lazy hands and gold LCD watch, all gave the impression of a clam, clear mind, a sober tinkerer. But really he was buzzed on booze and propane and voltage — and he was hiding permanently in this metal pile-up. Hiding, just like the old man in Public Storage. How many of these hiders did any American city contain? I’m guessing tens of thousands. Including me.”</p></div><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="Body" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;">Having said all of that, I don’t really know how good — whatever “good” might mean — <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Last Songbird</em> actually is. All I can say is that it’s been one of the most entertaining crime novels I’ve read for some time. Full of surprises, Weizmann kept me guessing right to the end, unusual for such books these days. Nor am I sure how all the disparate parts of the novel come together. But somehow they do. This even though Weizmann takes the reader from one extreme to the other, but while doing so, never vacating the political terrain regarding gender politics, power relationships, family life, friendship, or celebrity culture. Weizmann, whose checkered past includes the anthology <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Drinking With Bukowski</em> and the charming <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">A History of Rock — A Grade-Schoolers Vision of Rock Music 1977-1980</em>, as well as pages of new wave journalism, often filed under the name Shredder, for <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Flipside</em> and <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">The</em> <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">L.A. Weekly</em>, accomplishes all of this with a light touch. More importantly, he fulfils one of the genre<span dir="RTL" lang="AR-SA" style="box-sizing: inherit;">’</span>s main requirements: that a fictional investigator, at the very least, investigate himself as much as the world around him. Although others have walked this way before, and some have ventured into more dangerous territory, Weizmann, with a nod towards Addy’s investigative future, can be congratulated on providing sufficient hard-boiled menace without tumbling full throttle into oblivion.</p></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;">[Published by Melville House on May 23, 2023, 336 pages, $17.99 paperback]</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e2521; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px;">The above originally appeared in <a href="http://ronslate.com">On the Sea Wall</a>.</p>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-69337887314468453172023-05-05T16:23:00.000+01:002023-05-05T16:23:38.936+01:00An Outsider on the Inside: Writers & Missionaries- Essays on the Radical Imagination by Adam Shatz<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS9MJBy72-EDQvMDTHb78eU7QQrRoInygE5vXSbWZN-c6iAs94o1Tj_s0-P8P8UB_sgbHwB6pAsn3zko6pLHvKjegs6DY96usW-SDy29e4Ci-jypZv6Zlsopfq-bLbCJUmhZ_TJxas-3w52yYOEMoHC9SIkBF_T94kf6lURGiYqlqACooxOz0/s886/Screenshot%202023-04-11%20at%2018.22.25.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="886" data-original-width="598" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS9MJBy72-EDQvMDTHb78eU7QQrRoInygE5vXSbWZN-c6iAs94o1Tj_s0-P8P8UB_sgbHwB6pAsn3zko6pLHvKjegs6DY96usW-SDy29e4Ci-jypZv6Zlsopfq-bLbCJUmhZ_TJxas-3w52yYOEMoHC9SIkBF_T94kf6lURGiYqlqACooxOz0/w135-h200/Screenshot%202023-04-11%20at%2018.22.25.png" width="135" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><div><i>"Legend has it that, in 1956, when Soviet tanks overthrew the council government in Budapest, an officer asked Georg Lukács to hand over his weapon and the latter gave him his pen."</i></div><div><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> (Enzo Traverso, Revolution: An Intellectual History)</span><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>For some time now, Adam Shatz has been producing informative and well-considered essays, reportage and interviews in publications like the London Review of Books, New York Review of Books and The Nation. In addition, he also hosts Myself With Others, a podcast in which he converses with an assortment of writers, musicians and public intellectuals, most of whom it turns out seem to be his friends. But what first brought his work to my attention were his articles on jazz, deep and lengthy pieces, the kind one doesn't come across very often, on the likes of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, Frank Kimbrough, etc.. Perhaps the latter will constitute a future volume, because it's a subject that's noticeably absent in Shatz's excellent Writers & Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination. Instead, what Shatz has put together here is a series of essays- most of which have appeared in one form or another in the above periodicals- focusing on writers and intellectuals and how they have been able to articulate their politics given the factions, circumstances and hardline positions that exist, whether today or in the recent past. Related to that is the degree to which such writers manage to accomplish this without sacrificing their humanity or perspective. It's a situation that the New York-based Shatz also addresses when it comes to his own writing. In other words, faced with present day inequities, how does someone in his profession negotiate the tightrope that separates journalism from activism, reportage from propaganda. </div><div><br /></div><div>To this end, Writers & Missionaries kicks-off with a series of essays on a number of Middle East writers. These include Fouad Ajami, and his winding road from Lebanese intellectual to neocon favourite; the Algerian writer and politically liberal Kamel Daoud; the life and death of the Israeli-Palestinian director of the Freedom Theatre Juliano Mer-Khamis; and the Palestinian nationalism of the renown Edward Said. All of them nuanced in their perspective, even if none, with the exception of Said, are exactly household names. But that only makes these chapters all the more informative, interesting and important. </div><div><br /></div><div>Shatz then sets his sights on Paris with a series of finely modulated entries on three African American writers: Chester Himes, Richard Wright and William Gardner Smith. With all three having self-exiled in Paris at roughly the same time, Shatz examines how this group of writers were able to deal with the relationship between their politics and their displacement, as well as the dynamics surrounding the racism they were escaping from and the racism inherent in their adoptive country, particularly when it comes to the relationship between Algerians and the French state, which, as exotic exiles, they did or did not notice, much less act upon. Shatz remains in France for the next section, in which he tackles a handful of French writers and intellectuals: Levi-Strauss, Derrida, Barthes, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Michel Houllebecq, as well as film-makers Claude Lanzman and Jean-Pierre Melville. The latter two constitute an interesting comparison: the former an ultra-Zionist who directed Shoah, and the latter a WW2 <i>maquis</i> activist, whose participation would influence his future films, whether those with a war time or film noir setting. Shatz concludes this section with another interesting comparison: that of Jean-Paul Sartre and the leftist Egyptian writer Arwa Salih, and their respective positions regarding the Algerian war of independence, Israel and the plight of the Palestinians. </div><div><br /></div><div>Even if one is familiar with some of the writers discussed, Shatz’s perspective will invariably be enlightening. For instance, his reading of Michel Houllebecq might surprise those who harbour, as I do, an instinctive dislike for this <i>racaille</i> of contemporary French fiction. Enough, at any rate, to make any hardened Houllebecq critic consider having another look at his writing. Though perhaps the same can't be said about Alain Robbe-Grillet. After reading that particular chapter, it would be difficult for many to read this most renown of nouveau roman novelists without taking into account his sadomasochistic tendencies, turning that famous camera-eye style into something that has less to do with the cinema or hardboiled fiction than with the cold stare of pornography. It's a flirtation that, in turn, might also cause some to feel a pang of guilt for being advocates of that particular writer, along with his proclamations regarding the future direction of the novel. </div><div> </div><div>Shatz ends Writers & Missionaries with two extended essays in which he looks at his own life: the first, from which the book's title is taken, concerns his relationship to the Middle East, and, as a non-Zionist Jew, his identification with, and commitment to, those who live there, albeit as an outsider; and, lastly, an extended essay on his teenage years as an obsessive but creative high-end chef, which, like the previous essay, reads as a stand-in for Shatz's own political evolution as a leftist with an internationalist perspective. </div><div><p>It's no stretch of the imagination to think of Shatz as one of those cosmopolitan intellectuals that Enzo Traverso describes in his book Revolution: An Intellectual History (Traverso being one of Shatz’s “rabbis,” and subject of a fascinating interview on an LRB podcast), though, if rootless, Shatz is no doubt more so in spirit than in fact. An intellectual in an age of <i>informationals</i>, Shatz certainly remains on the <i>missionary</i> end of the spectrum, minus the colonial baggage and dogmatism normally associated with the term. Negotiating that slippery slope, Shatz digs deep into the circumstances of his subjects, allowing them- the oppressed, the exiled, the outsider- to speak, whenever possible, for themselves. In the end, he reminds us that, though a vanishing breed, public intellectuals who double as cross-cultural ambassadors play a vital role in the function and drift of what is possible. This as opposed to the critique du siécle about which Shatz also ponders, namely, why write at a time when the meaning of authorship is being questioned? This dialectic could be taken as the sub-structure of Shatz's book, one he alludes to on more than one occasion. Addressing that conundrum, Shatz holds fast to his progressive politics, observing, explaining and interpreting, particularly when it comes to Middle East resistance movements, while zeroing in on particular activists. All the while knowing that no matter how much he might identify with such movements and activists, he, whether by profession, disposition, politics or culture, will invariably remain something of an outsider. But t’s that self-assumed role that informs his writing and which makes it so accessible. Reading Shatz, one inevitably discovers currents and thinkers that, considering the sharp shocks of today's instantaneous culture, one might otherwise have never known about. Speaking personally, if not for Shatz, I would never have known about several of the Middle Eastern writers included in this volume, nor, to go further afield, would I have comes across the likes of Traverso as well as the incredible anti-fascist forger Adolfo Kaminsky (A Forger's Life), the former a subject of a Shatz interview, and the latter the focus of an LRB article. Whether as interrogator, journalist, public critic, Shatz remains an important contributor in a world that can be as boundary-defying as it is parochial.</p><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCOMyp9EiUQlnRSCrh72OKENGAuWH516OzU4jIAhrpiSpCwZtbu4QyTQZLvtgcB0qss_SoHVo6MNe9ryfR-8J-e0jTKg6nXQhLleORSgvwbkBck4WI8qG0_joiBU_Zunbg5GHOONgue2_5GMw-bHnnsxgPkC6oK0yawtRPegIF58YkrXX08fg/s1000/Screenshot%202023-04-11%20at%2018.23.59.png" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="660" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCOMyp9EiUQlnRSCrh72OKENGAuWH516OzU4jIAhrpiSpCwZtbu4QyTQZLvtgcB0qss_SoHVo6MNe9ryfR-8J-e0jTKg6nXQhLleORSgvwbkBck4WI8qG0_joiBU_Zunbg5GHOONgue2_5GMw-bHnnsxgPkC6oK0yawtRPegIF58YkrXX08fg/w132-h200/Screenshot%202023-04-11%20at%2018.23.59.png" width="132" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRbxFD-mzgjlteFLwtb5xhg5H2Z2btcPVT24hUDeVE-aw1bsT8LMjjmzqKZZG0rr2u0y3-MPZDhtieYUwEJAFAXcoQNbMN45AKOnKBznp-4q6Bh5km_oWf1-AeZ1TCWImkt6l8oSnqitf0WSjw0N-LLfZfm_o4TOljbHxaLo6D9VpqBIo8OVI/s472/Screenshot%202023-04-11%20at%2018.31.41.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="472" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRbxFD-mzgjlteFLwtb5xhg5H2Z2btcPVT24hUDeVE-aw1bsT8LMjjmzqKZZG0rr2u0y3-MPZDhtieYUwEJAFAXcoQNbMN45AKOnKBznp-4q6Bh5km_oWf1-AeZ1TCWImkt6l8oSnqitf0WSjw0N-LLfZfm_o4TOljbHxaLo6D9VpqBIo8OVI/w200-h190/Screenshot%202023-04-11%20at%2018.31.41.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><br /></div></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-37287626511390473602023-02-07T21:44:00.000+00:002023-02-07T21:44:14.050+00:00Obsession in the Pursuit of Virtue is No Vice: Love Me Fierce In Danger by Steven Powell- The Life of James Ellroy<p> <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoMP2Ed_dODMolirY0vD1c3LkW9L2I3Ul-7M0IaeogDdVAASHojDAN5TY4UDg342seFj7j4_HMYiTHfANpw_W22wNJnKdhnMF5ytZgYc5zRaFUTRhXtGVUlkT4wMuQFj_8XcE2NLPJhaeRQvNwfEK_5yjuAIK_t-Y0E5PxPLBtTCP0E3xYCIM/s1374/Screenshot%202023-02-04%20at%2021.39.27.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1374" data-original-width="1222" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoMP2Ed_dODMolirY0vD1c3LkW9L2I3Ul-7M0IaeogDdVAASHojDAN5TY4UDg342seFj7j4_HMYiTHfANpw_W22wNJnKdhnMF5ytZgYc5zRaFUTRhXtGVUlkT4wMuQFj_8XcE2NLPJhaeRQvNwfEK_5yjuAIK_t-Y0E5PxPLBtTCP0E3xYCIM/w178-h200/Screenshot%202023-02-04%20at%2021.39.27.png" width="178" /></a></div>As any serious Ellroy reader knows, Jean Hilliker Ellroy was murdered, her body found early Sunday morning, June 22nd, 1958 in El Monte, California. On that same night, in Pasadena, I recall, or at least I think I recall, that I was with a group of fellow junior high school friends, all of us some 13 years old, a week or so into our summer vacation. We had just come down from the nearby railroad tracks where the Super Chief dutifully passed by twice a day, and were aimlessly walking down Colorado Blvd, east of Rosemead, some eight miles from El Monte. From out of nowhere several police cars arrived, sirens shrieking, roadblocks put in place, and we were told to get off the street and go home. <div><div><br /></div><div>Ever since hearing about Jean Ellroy's murder, I've associated it with that night in Pasadena. Did the two events really have anything to do with one another? Or was it just a coincidence? And did they really happen on the same night? To be truthful, I can't say one way or the other. Or was it one of those dreams that, over time, slowly morphs into reality? Perhaps the police had been tipped off about a possible suspect- that "swarthy man" they were looking for- or maybe they'd been thrown into action by another case altogether? What occurred on that evening, that is if anything occurred at all, has stayed with me for many years, even using it- minus anything about what had taken place in El Monte- as the opening to my recent novel Skin Flick. </div><div><br /></div><div>Not that Powell's scrupulously researched and extremely readable biography was of any help in disentangling the facts from my fiction, or dispelling the notion that I can definitively say I really do remember the night Ellroy's mother was murdered. Even so, it's Powell's account of his subject's early life that I found most fascinating, from Ellroy's brief period in the San Gabriel Valley to his years in L.A.'s Fairfax district, from breaking into houses of women he was fixated on to caddying at various elite Hollywood golf courses. No wonder Powell's description of those days often reads like an early Ellroy novel. Which is to be expected since, as Powell points out, Ellroy has long utilised the details of his life, particularly in those early novels, as fodder for his fiction. </div><div><br /></div><div>Thankfully, Powell isn't afraid to present Ellroy in all his guises: good, bad and ugly. Whether dog lover, barking manic, right-winger, womaniser, self-promoter, friend, drug addict, alcoholic, rehab attendee, etc., though, of course, the most important guise of all, that of a brilliant and feverish writer who has challenged the norms of crime and historical fiction. As well as rummaging through Ellroy's life, Powell offers up a series of close readings of the demon dog's major works. However obligatory, this unfortunately constitutes, for me, one of the least interesting aspects of the book. Maybe because Ellroy's plots are as dizzying, if not more so, than those of Raymond Chandler. And, for some perverse reason, my instinct is to let any incomprehension speak for itself. Indeed, I might have glossed over Powell's readings if not for his lucid ability to deconstruct those very plots. By the same token, I found my curiosity regarding Ellroy's life and corresponding fiction, beginning to fade in direct proportion to his rise in notoriety and entrance into the monied world of high stakes publishing and Hollywood movie making. Perhaps that's because his public shtick had by then become all-too predictable, his novels increasingly fragmented and dispersed, and his private demons all too obvious. Having said that, Powell doesn't flinch when contrasting Ellroy's outward demeanour with the messiness of his inner life. Not my <i>truc, </i>it's true, but such is the nature of biographical writing and Powell handles it as well as anyone could possibly be expected to do.</div><div><br /></div><div>That Ellroy's L.A. and mine are relatively congruent clearly has something to do with why my obsessive interest in Ellroy reached its zenith early on, reading, as they were published, Brown's Requiem and Clandestine, followed by his Lloyd Hopkins series, and, in what I still regard as the apogee of his oeuvre, the first The L.A. Quartet and American Tabloid. His follow-up, My Dark Places, important as it might have been for Ellroy, and however popular amongst his fans, marked a modulation, not so much in Ellroy's writing style- that had already been accomplished- as in how he was presenting his writing and himself to the public. Though I read with interest the novels that followed- Cold Six Thousand, Blood's a Rover and Perfidia- I found my attention was focusing less on the plots of those books than on their construction, contours and linguistic inventiveness. As for murk and muck of This Storm and Widespread Panic, I have to admit I've yet to take the plunge, but expect more of the same, if not even more so. </div><div><br /></div><div>A friend once said, "The problem with Ellroy is that he's a frustrated poet." In fact, his writing makes more sense if one thinks of it in that way. Particularly his later work, which might be regarded as something closer to epic poetry than to prose, as imagistic as it is scriptorial, its bullet-like lines and vernacularisms more akin to spontaneous bop-prosody than genre-ridden hardboiled prose. And let's face it, the extremes to which Ellroy goes when it comes to his public persona can sometimes seem more like that of a classic over-the-top romantic poet than a writer of historical crime fiction. </div><div><br /></div><div>Nevertheless, I can't imagine many Ellroy readers who won't want to read Love Me Fierce.... And well they should. Because, even if you thought you knew Ellroy, there will be something in Powell's book to surprise you, something that will offer a greater understanding of Ellroy and how he's been able to turn the complexities of his life and the world around him into the totality of his fiction. In the end, this is as clear-headed a portrait of Ellroy as we're likely to get. Moreover, one comes away from Powell's book reassured that the richness of Ellroy's fictional world-building can't help but provide an access to institutional machinery- whether the police, politicians, the underworld, Hollywood producers, up-market publishers, high rollers and power brokers- and, by doing so, fills a gap separating the market from the realities of everyday life. Though, if you'll excuse me, I can't help but think about that summer's night in 1958 still convinced it might be true. </div></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-63002930341811635752023-02-04T14:37:00.000+00:002023-02-04T14:37:13.969+00:00Reading Robert Kelly: A City Full of Voices, A Voice Full of Cities<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsfMZaEC6P79KpQg6VqNGF2C3kmnw_srDCxaxMxFzm_xYQ0nK7AL3xVKeM4eRRdnU5XLoNFvRhI2fYNdu3uUW5oyqVGIFZnSLC-HeQPe1jW_qHASOzW64B1O7J_1rjHPCw7WW6iVHpHhcPeGTgCk1Hxkamux0yi5iw69OELxig_ZSt9bzlFq8/s870/Screenshot%202023-01-17%20at%2015.47.43.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="870" data-original-width="554" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsfMZaEC6P79KpQg6VqNGF2C3kmnw_srDCxaxMxFzm_xYQ0nK7AL3xVKeM4eRRdnU5XLoNFvRhI2fYNdu3uUW5oyqVGIFZnSLC-HeQPe1jW_qHASOzW64B1O7J_1rjHPCw7WW6iVHpHhcPeGTgCk1Hxkamux0yi5iw69OELxig_ZSt9bzlFq8/w203-h320/Screenshot%202023-01-17%20at%2015.47.43.png" width="203" /></a></div><div><i>"The mind loves the unknown." </i></div><div> Magritte</div><div><br /></div>It wasn't in a poetry magazine that I first came across the work of Robert Kelly, but in the underground film house-journal Film Culture. It was sometime in 1965 that I happened upon Kelly's short entry on Stan Brakhage's Art of Vision (RK: "Mind at the mercy of the eye at last."). It was some months later, while living in Mexico City, that I first encountered Kelly's poetry, El Corno Emplumado's edition of Her Body Against Time. Up to then I was primarily reading Michael McClure and LeRoi Jones/not yet Baraka, with Olson and Dorn waiting in the wings. Nevertheless, I would carry Kelly's book with me from Mexico to New York to Los Angeles and, finally, San Francisco. <div><div> </div><div>Brakhage, in turn, wrote two published letters to Kelly, which I was certain I had also read in Film Culture, but apparently not. But both those letters and the Robert Kelly's essay can be found in A Voice Full of Cities: The Collected Essays of Robert Kelly (2014) and A City Full of Voices: Essays On the Work of Robert Kelly (2019). Edited by Pierre Joris, Peter Cockelbergh and Joel Newberger, and published by Contra Mundum Press, these books are clearly works of love, whose editors who have not only gathered together Kelly's many contributions, but have enlisted an army of contributors, all clearly <i>au courant</i><i> </i>when it comes to Kelly's work, coming at it, as they do, from different angles. Which makes these two volumes a heavy lift, whether metaphorically or literally; in fact, some 1400 pages in all. Though so prolific has Kelly been that even that number would no doubt pale compared to what might constitute his collected works. </div><div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK4PYtDP_1ZBL52N47yH0w5UMbcUSFGDFcBQ49yL0e5gl3NQF6L3_A0jducj6J2epcyE-zu9pPIlMWdp_uECPw7MLw_bwENct7elC9CuGnf5jHB6-TjU-xgoFLxdR3nWpt3X45rYxEwoR4Zx7j-qpZdZvdV2zTSA693EI6pa9Gb6Lwvmwf4vQ/s880/Screenshot%202023-01-17%20at%2015.48.27.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="880" data-original-width="604" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK4PYtDP_1ZBL52N47yH0w5UMbcUSFGDFcBQ49yL0e5gl3NQF6L3_A0jducj6J2epcyE-zu9pPIlMWdp_uECPw7MLw_bwENct7elC9CuGnf5jHB6-TjU-xgoFLxdR3nWpt3X45rYxEwoR4Zx7j-qpZdZvdV2zTSA693EI6pa9Gb6Lwvmwf4vQ/s320/Screenshot%202023-01-17%20at%2015.48.27.png" width="220" /></a></div><br />Reading Ken Irby's review of Her Body Against Time in A City Full of Voices, I began to wonder if I had come across that review when it first appeared in Kulchur, before I'd read Kelly's book. It's possible... But even as a poetry greenhorn, I remember being impressed by the depth of Kelly's vision and the how his poetry was not only his world but how the world seemed like fodder for his poetry. A condition echoed in lines- purloined from Jed Rasula's excellent "A Book On Line and Measure" in A City Full...- in a later lengthy poem entitled The World, in which Kelly reminds us that "there is no/form not/organic no/mind not mine."</div><div><br /></div><div>Or it could have been that any poet who wrote about Brakhage, and, in turn, any poet that Brakhage found important enough to write about, was going to be of interest to me. So infected was I at the time by the visual poetry of what was then called the New American Cinema. The common denominator being the investment both placed in <i>seeing,</i> not to mention their articulation of that investment. As Kelly writes in Her Body..., "how much more/will I see/ or see again..." Couple that with their take on Olson's "'You go all around the subject.' And I sd, 'I didn't know there was a sub-/ject,'", and it's no wonder that I would fall under Kelly's spell, just as I had been by Brakhage's films, not to mention how both were able to dissect their own work and that of others. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>For some reason my reading of Kelly's work tailed off sometime after the publication of his book length poem The Loom (Black Sparrow). Around which time I heard he'd been appointed poet-in-residence at Caltech, which of course prompted fanciful notions that such an institution, in my home town at that, might be giving this particular poet space to practice some kind of Duncanian alchemical magic, while, at the same time, hoping it wasn't an indication that it was trying to revive its sleazier roots personified by the likes of arch-huckster L. Ron Hubbard and rocket-man and dark arts dabbler Jack Parsons. Now that I think about it, what kept me from continuing my reading of Kelly's work was that I simply couldn't keep up with the volume of his output, though it should be said that my interests around that time were solidly <i>Dornian</i>. It goes without saying that reading Kelly is no small matter, but entails a level of attention that not everyone is ready or willing to give to it. Still, for me, Kelly's notion of "the city," or "polis," as Olson would have it, would continue to resonate. That is to say, the city as a place of discovery, not just in Paul Goodman's sense of an Empire City, but a modernist twist on the Augustine's belief that "outside the city man is either god or beast;" which is to say, a place in which one is allowed to discover a poetics out of that experience. </div><div><p></p><p>Fast forward half a century and I find I'm once again attracted to Kelly's work, or, at least for the time being, his essays. Call me perverse, but for some reason I've always had a weakness for prose written by poets. Which, for me, makes A Voice Full of Cities such a delight. By the same token, it's invariably interesting to read those who write about Kelly, covering as they do in A City Full of Voices a range of interests and ways of thinking about Kelly's poetry. </p><p>Even had I been able to do so, it would have been difficult to keep up with Kelly's incredible output. After all it constitutes a life. As Guy Davenport has written, "There is no end to a Kelly poem...It's a cataract of energy." His essays, reviews, stories and novels (unfortunately his fiction isn't included, but perhaps would constitute a volume on its own) are much more than an addendum to his poetry, while, at the same time, squelching the notion that prose is necessarily a more literal or less poetic form of writing. But here they are, his essays, which, if nothing else, demonstrate once again the breadth of his work. </p><p>Now in his late 80s, Kelly has moved from the articulation of a working poetics (<i>deep image</i>) to an autobiographical and investigatory poetics, which necessarily includes the aesthetics of various poets, film-makers, artists, novelists, philosophers, friends, etc.. The common denominator here is the relationship between seeing and <i>vision, </i>turning, as Brakhage did, a physical deficiency into a personal aesthetic. And so Kelly's essays, moving from the late 1950s to the near-present, constitute a map of thoughts and images- if one can separate the two- making these two volumes a celebration of Kelly's poetic life by a range of respondents, each with their own insights, from early takes by the likes of Olson "not imageS but IMAGE," Creeley, Blackburn, Irby, Sitney, Eshleman and Davenport to later writers like Joris, Cockelbergh, Quasha, Silliman, Fisher, Yau, and Chernicoff. Proving that no single person has the definitive word or ability to encompass Kelly's oeuvre. As Billie Chernicoff asks at the beginning of On Robert Kelly's Seaspel, "How does he do it?" To which she says she has no answer. I would agree. One can only shake one's head and wonder, while marvelling at the flow of words, the intensity of thought and vision. </p><p>Click on <a href="https://youtu.be/MB4EcLDg-w4">here</a> for a short interview with RK by George Quasha.: https://youtu.be/MB4EcLDg-w4</p><p><br /><br /><br /></p></div></div></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-24625793792422856152022-11-08T21:45:00.000+00:002022-11-08T21:45:40.865+00:00Ted Berrigan's Get the Money: The Collected Prose (1961-1983)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFbrJLBVDiEqCwLjYQpotPH7dBOUpAC99ihIbUhq5e4I_trES0Cyigv7fks_Bkh5If2ib4ex4SNINx_Ls3BA8UW2H0XbsLn_Hjz0InvwKljb6iof7PEPSUdexSn4xIMLVfBy8h3_7YMkRCPKd54cqLnS2a4lYLkEvosUZjht9j_UNUzd9--wE/s1436/Screenshot%202022-09-24%20at%2014.02.15.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1436" data-original-width="1216" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFbrJLBVDiEqCwLjYQpotPH7dBOUpAC99ihIbUhq5e4I_trES0Cyigv7fks_Bkh5If2ib4ex4SNINx_Ls3BA8UW2H0XbsLn_Hjz0InvwKljb6iof7PEPSUdexSn4xIMLVfBy8h3_7YMkRCPKd54cqLnS2a4lYLkEvosUZjht9j_UNUzd9--wE/s320/Screenshot%202022-09-24%20at%2014.02.15.png" width="271" /></a></div><p></p>It was 1963 or '64, in the library at Cal State L.A., that I came across my first Ted Berrigan poems. At the time I was solidly into the likes of Charles Olson, LeRoi (not yet Baraka) Jones, Michael McClure and Frank O'Hara- in fact, just about anyone in Don Allen’s New American Poetry- but I'd never come across anything quite like Berrigan's poems. They seemed so off-hand and playful, with none of the heaviness and obscurantics associated with Pound and his various poetic progeny. Naturally, I thought about writing like Berrigan- who wouldn't? His work seemed so natural in its reach and drift, so easy to emulate. Well, if only... A year later at San Francisco State I was handing over a clutch of Berrigan-like poems to John Logan who, for better or worse, had been hired as the college's in-house poet. He looked at the pages like they were pieces of rotting fruit, quite likely the product of an idiot. Not that I cared. After all, Logan wasn't someone I'd ever thought of emulating, nor even considered interesting as a poet. He was, I thought at the time, just another old guy who had a decent line in self-pity. <div><div><br /></div><div>Still mining the open stacks, and with nothing better to do, I started to peruse back issues of Kulchur, enticed as I was by the magazine's masthead and table of contents carrying such names as Sorrentino, Corso, Di Prima, Dorn, Don Phelps and Fielding Dawson. And, of course, Berrigan. Not poems this time, but reviews. Open, humorous, but also deadly serious, Berrigan's prose turned out to be every bit as beguiling as his poetry. So much so that it sent me back to the poems, this time his Sonnets, or what I could find of them, since the Grove Press edition had yet to be published. So of the moment were they that as the moment passed, so eventually did my attention. Which led me to wonder whether poems like his were even meant to last. But if poetry wasn't of and for the moment, then exactly what was it of and for? Posterity? I wasn't really sure there was such a thing. </div><div><br /></div><div>But that kind of speculation soon faded, replaced by more immediate concerns of a personal and political nature. Fast forward thirty years and five thousand miles away, I was willingly forking out twelve quid for a secondhand copy of Berrigan’s Collected Poetry. Those same poems, I discovered, had in the intervening years turned into heart-wrenching reminders of a particular time and place, and the promise of what could have been and might still be. Sure, they were submerged in a certain kind of quotidian immodesty, but, despite time and technology, that is very much part of their charm. Like a great deal of art of that period, those poems<i> </i>represent a community and way of viewing the world. With his polaroid exactness Berrigan's poems, like those of O'Hara, Paul Blackburn and Philip Whalen, wear their intelligence as lightly as possible, never making a <i>thing</i> out to it, which, in fact, was typical of the New York/Tulsa school (Padgett, Gallup, Brainard). Always in search of the sweet spot of everyday reality, less a product of the street than of windows, galleries, poetry readings and the work of other writers. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>Much the same could be said of Berrigan's criticism and journals, both of which are abundantly represented in Get The Money: The Collected Prose (1961-1983), published by City Lights (eds., Edmund Berrigan, Anslem Berrigan, Alice Notley, Nick Sturm). In entry after entry, Berrigan pursues and captures the presence, and more often than not the essence, of whatever he scrutinises, whether a painting, poem, novel, or person, always in search of its fundamental <i>is-ness.</i> Not defensive "in the presence of the spontaneously beautiful," but, as Berrigan writes in a review of Ron Padgett's In Advance of the Broken Tone Arm, but which might be applied to himself, "Padgett doesn't really take any chance in beauty's presence; he is simply there." That being the case, Berrigan, as the title of this volume suggests, mockingly pursues payment, knowing that what he is advocating and producing will most likely have little if any monetary value. Though who would have been able to say that there wouldn't one day be a market for what was then thought to be unmarketable. That Berrigan has nothing to lose or gain makes his critiques all the more honest, cogent, personal and playful. This in an era when the apparent chaos was such that most criticism, with the exception of magazines like Kulchur, were lagging behind, or simply didn't get, what Berrigan was promoting. </div><div><p>Coming in at just under 300 pages, Get the Money!, with entries on the likes of Kenward Elmslie, FT Prince, Red Grooms, Alice Neel, John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Anne Waldman, Jim Carroll, Tom Raworth, Joel Oppenheimer, and much more, will surely be this year's favourite commodity for any fetishistic punter with an inkling for Berrigan's work, or, for that matter, the New York poetry and art scene during those years. All proof that Berrigan's prose is never less than an extension of his poetry, indicative of his engagement with what is going on around him. As the Whitehead quote Berrigan inserts as the epigraph to his journals, reads, "What is going to happen is already happening." That word, <i>happening,</i> for better or worse, so synonymous with the era and its sense of community. Likewise, behind the dash-it-off, who-gives-a fuck attitude, Get the Money attests to someone lasered into the push and pull of both public and private with an apparent recklessness that never fails to connect. Or one could equally say that Berrigan's critique is never less than an extension of the object being criticised. Even if that object is no more than an opportunity for him to demonstrate his literary chops. As in his "review" of Burroughs' Nova Express, which could be read as a flexing of Berrigan's literary muscles, or as a conscious, if overly enthusiastic, extension of the novel. Even though, at the other end of the scale, "Frank O'Hara Dead at 40" comes across as a completely straight and touching, but manufactured, tribute. A case perhaps of Get the Money for real, but not without feeling. Just as the occasion dictates, but tame when compared with the following, written in a more familiar manner: </p><p>"In fact, it would be much easier for me to get something said about this book if I could briefly turn into Charles Olson or John Lennon or Martin Luther King. Then I'd just lean forward into the TV camera and intensely, 'If you really want to know what it's all about, read Frank O'Hara, that's right, FRANK O'HARA... Whereupon...Joe Levine would rush production on his new movie, <i>Life on Earth,</i> the biography of Frank O'Hara, starring young James Cagney as Frank... and Gig Young as John Ashbery, Rod Steiger as Jane Freilicher. What excitement!"</p><p>All of which makes Berrigan if not political, at least doggedly democratic in his merging of subject and object. Though sometimes it does seem like he's the focal point, cheerleader and barker-in-chief of a semi-secret society. <i>Democratic, </i>then<i>, </i>but only in a world within a world within a world, exemplified by the various entries about Berrigan's friends, Berrigan himself, or Berrigan <i>and</i> his friends. But wait a sec... Wasn't that what poetry communities, significant or otherwise, were about in those pre-internet age? Even at the risk of over-reach, or, in this case, over-sell, as Berrigan shamelessly tests the limits, however playfully, insisting as always on <i>le droit du poete.</i><i> </i>A tendency that, in today's world of identity politics and territorial armour, might be questionable. But this is now and that was then. Whatever the subterranean politics, Berrigan remains as large as life, missed by many and forgotten by no one who inhabited that world and its margins. All of which leaves one to speculate about Berrigan's letters, which, if gathered together, would undoubtedly complete the picture of this most late twentieth century of twentieth century poets. </p></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fcy2JTprNF0" width="320" youtube-src-id="Fcy2JTprNF0"></iframe></div></div></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-33342623754401243652022-10-20T14:19:00.002+01:002022-11-03T15:58:43.523+00:00Lofts and Corners: From Holy Ghost: The Life & Death of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler by Richard Kolada to The Cricket: Black Music in Evolution 1968-69 (edited by David Grundy, original editors Amiri Baraka, A.B. Spellman, Larry Neal)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihXWlzWndRPitGw0BOGf2QA7gBG0LyEyVzC746tff01CuYvpmdd76hGAX9P20eqNhFELvZJ8tCgc225t9TFecQnZPnxz-_iB1l-ku92MK7XmJO1L6JyAV1XMxU7TQ74xCqMtZo6ZHh3tVBAvgsgTeF6tHmoR3R3hj6B_sGRNuI-5vzhBwvZLU/s802/Screenshot%202022-10-04%20at%2010.32.16.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="802" data-original-width="568" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihXWlzWndRPitGw0BOGf2QA7gBG0LyEyVzC746tff01CuYvpmdd76hGAX9P20eqNhFELvZJ8tCgc225t9TFecQnZPnxz-_iB1l-ku92MK7XmJO1L6JyAV1XMxU7TQ74xCqMtZo6ZHh3tVBAvgsgTeF6tHmoR3R3hj6B_sGRNuI-5vzhBwvZLU/s320/Screenshot%202022-10-04%20at%2010.32.16.png" width="227" /></a></div>Though I think I first heard about Albert Ayler through Amiri Baraka's LeRoi Jones Apple Cores column in Downbeat in the mid-1960s, I can't actually recall when I first heard his music. It just seems like it's always been part of the musical landscape. However, I do remember being surprised to find, when visiting London, Paris and Amsterdam in 1967, that nearly everyone I ran into seemed to have an Ayler LP in their collection. Of course, by then Ayler had already played extensively in Europe. Another example of an artist better appreciated abroad than at home. <div><p></p><p>Much to my disappointment, I never actually heard Ayler play live. Mainly because he never travelled to the west coast. Had he come to San Francisco, he would have found, as Archie Shepp had, an attentive audience amongst the jazz cognoscenti in the city. I once asked my friend, the poet Lewis Macadams, who had seen Ayler at Sluggs, what it was like to hear Ayler up close. Lewis said the only thing he could compare it to was the sound Tibetan monks made when chanting along side those long trumpets. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlT0LTvoFWmZj-ea2rnboMWQ0MP-n1hVSMHiP4G5qewZHOFrC3wiMdvaIU7DsCriptVUpB2MHev8x0CT1MNwpv6grbIklAuehS3eRJf-nTUtKJmGk5SirSuKUGbG_zgMHnNYsqMhv8BJHYNlkcetrRoA-5AoMUG9EQhm3nN1tIsd13LJk_t9k/s1604/Screenshot%202022-10-04%20at%2015.06.47.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1498" data-original-width="1604" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlT0LTvoFWmZj-ea2rnboMWQ0MP-n1hVSMHiP4G5qewZHOFrC3wiMdvaIU7DsCriptVUpB2MHev8x0CT1MNwpv6grbIklAuehS3eRJf-nTUtKJmGk5SirSuKUGbG_zgMHnNYsqMhv8BJHYNlkcetrRoA-5AoMUG9EQhm3nN1tIsd13LJk_t9k/w200-h187/Screenshot%202022-10-04%20at%2015.06.47.png" width="200" /></a></div>An apt comparison, but one that conveys just one side of Ayler's playing. Likewise, Ayler would always emphasise the spiritual nature of his music. Not that jazz, prior to Ayler and, of course, Coltrane, had been devoid of spirituality. After all, jazz is at the very least partially rooted in gospel music. Likewise, the rise of Islam amongst musicians in the late 1940s onwards couldn't help but give the music a spiritual dimension. Then, of course, there's the transcendent nature of the music itself. </div><div><br /></div><div>But rarely had the spiritual side been stated so bluntly and so boldly. With titles referencing angels, ghosts, bells and the search for spiritual unity, Ayler's sound sought to transform basic melodies into congruent waves and clusters. So deep and immense was his sound that it was able to attract a select but diverse audience, from black activists and nationalists to spaced-out hippies, from culture vultures to producers in pursuit of either art or mammon. So intense and seemingly anarchic was his music that perhaps it's understandable Ayler has never been placed on the free jazz pedestal alongside Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, or Cecil Taylor. Could it be that, these days, the academically trained might be able to churn out antiseptic solos by Coltrane and Coleman, and marvel at what they perceive as the Euro-modernism of Taylor, but only a select few would dare to emulate Ayler. Which is understandable. After all, how would one go about "teaching" Ayler. It would be like trying to instruct someone in how to capture the wind. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>As Richard Koloda's diligently researched and long overdue book, published by Jawbone Editions, suggests, Ayler's music recalls an entire history of African American music, from folk melodies to gospel songs, from field hollers to pre-blues fife and drum music, from marching band rhythms to futuristic sheets of sound. Moving far beyond the restrictions of The Great American Songbook, Ayler's music referenced the past, while pointing to a utopian landscape of possibility (<i>black futurism</i> for real). Naturally, opinion would be divided amongst critics, some of whom thought, and perhaps still think, Ayler a charlatan, while others were simply bemused by his playing. All of this Koloda documents in his book. As well as Ayler's heartfelt belief that he had a higher calling, leading him to link up with Ornette and, most important of all, Coltrane (playing, per Coltrane request, at the latter's funeral). Though his music might be outside the realm of academia, his influence is nevertheless apparent in musicians like Charles Gayle, Frank Wright, Evan Parker, Peter Brotzman, Vernon Johnson, Frank Lowe, David Ware, Marion Brown, Archie Shepp, Joe McPhee, David Murray and Mark Ribot. </div><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYOlhog6IV6b2hAjWjldIAyUBbESsWrXdahcGecys_uPMWJ6kqASj-1mIEy6OJ803V8w2H01mKjqBCQGIOCR5AMSGpSP6c21Tj5kl6_1g-GzHuV4Q-ZM5lH72UOM921m6SKNCCHzOoZ4p6Oq3sA8_sNjzb6iYplCssXbcD82HKp6ZlPbCWwcQ/s1598/Screenshot%202022-10-04%20at%2015.07.01.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1034" data-original-width="1598" height="129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYOlhog6IV6b2hAjWjldIAyUBbESsWrXdahcGecys_uPMWJ6kqASj-1mIEy6OJ803V8w2H01mKjqBCQGIOCR5AMSGpSP6c21Tj5kl6_1g-GzHuV4Q-ZM5lH72UOM921m6SKNCCHzOoZ4p6Oq3sA8_sNjzb6iYplCssXbcD82HKp6ZlPbCWwcQ/w200-h129/Screenshot%202022-10-04%20at%2015.07.01.png" width="200" /></a></div><div>Koloda is excellent when it comes to the burden Ayler would carry for his single-mindedness. Though at times, the author's investigation, reliant as it is on information recycled from periodicals and commentators of the time, can verge on the pedestrian. On the other hand, he does manage to bring a great deal of information together, and, while doing so, provides his fair share of primary research, whether through interviews- including those with Ayler's brother and musical cohort, Donald Ayler, and their father Edward- as well as his communiques with various relevant parties. Koloda is particularly good when it comes to detailing the pressures put on Ayler by a record label like Impulse, which sought to alter the direction of Ayler's music so it might appeal to a wider audience, and which might well have had something to do with Ayler's decline into depression and ultimately his death. Though Koloda presents a number scenarios, he doesn't come to any specific conclusion regarding Ayler's demise. Immediately his body was pulled from the East River, questions were raised, and Koloda addresses each of them. Could it have been suicide by drowning for someone known to be frightened of water; a drug deal gone wrong though Ayler wasn't known to ingest anything stronger than marijuana; a gangland murder of someone who had no apparent ties with the mob? Speculation has long been rife, so much so that, in France, there was even a Gallimard Serie Noir paperback anthology entitled The Death of Albert Ayler. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcePfLKrHx57Wxu054W1F5pi_QBJ88lycp50_gQemVgx5RI22yBhhAqPvnB6EpaJtV2-ltcyS2h-BY5MRo5iDKopLsTqOUR0C9RTQ3V6b6d0RBgsy0juAyyvd8YfOuX5sL963gXFxhSIFcRWiU8WyweBDicAqdOphn9mB00QEKipu8C6OtMcY/s1298/Screenshot%202022-10-06%20at%2009.27.33.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="870" data-original-width="1298" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcePfLKrHx57Wxu054W1F5pi_QBJ88lycp50_gQemVgx5RI22yBhhAqPvnB6EpaJtV2-ltcyS2h-BY5MRo5iDKopLsTqOUR0C9RTQ3V6b6d0RBgsy0juAyyvd8YfOuX5sL963gXFxhSIFcRWiU8WyweBDicAqdOphn9mB00QEKipu8C6OtMcY/s320/Screenshot%202022-10-06%20at%2009.27.33.png" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p></p>Of course, most dedicated Ayler fans are likely to have their own quibbles with Koloda's book. Personally, I thought he was a bit harsh when discussing Baraka's role in Ayler's music, implying that Baraka was using Ayler for his own political ends. While there might be some truth to that, it's also clear that Baraka was the loudest and most persuasive of Ayler advocates. Another quibble: Koloda at times succumbs to his own research, relying a bit too much on detailing gigs, recording sessions, and critical reaction. I would have preferred even more interviews and stories from those who knew or were influenced by Ayler. But, then, perhaps not all biographers can be as thorough as Stanley Crouch was in researching the story of Charlie Parker's early life in Kansas City Lightning. Having said that, such reservations shouldn't stop any dedicated Aylerite from getting hold of this book. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGLXUisUBBAmP3_sJVlOhDeGf2ew0Fd3-gjEiffl_uaPuJeK3TK5fGeU-XkqQLpYAAOcfsF0cfUPTybE9ONsuZxdfpU8qsz9HRv2X9G63Cphyz-L8y5OKZpV3ZFozoXYyRSLo2OzcAK_XWF8ONrAuMg8pLHDHmHCKp8_JPjJ5s1OhBIGnlR58/s2856/Screenshot%202022-10-08%20at%2016.19.06.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1474" data-original-width="2856" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGLXUisUBBAmP3_sJVlOhDeGf2ew0Fd3-gjEiffl_uaPuJeK3TK5fGeU-XkqQLpYAAOcfsF0cfUPTybE9ONsuZxdfpU8qsz9HRv2X9G63Cphyz-L8y5OKZpV3ZFozoXYyRSLo2OzcAK_XWF8ONrAuMg8pLHDHmHCKp8_JPjJ5s1OhBIGnlR58/w640-h330/Screenshot%202022-10-08%20at%2016.19.06.png" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>It's sometimes forgotten how articulate Ayler could be. A number of radio interviews can be found on-line, then there's his apocalyptic and quixotic article- a mixture of UFO sightings, William Blake, the Pentecostal church and the Nation of Islam- To Mr. Jones, I Had a Vision ("Don't forget that arguing with each other is bad because if you do the devil angel is laughing in the closet... You see if you argue the Holy angels leave you because they are of oneness of harmony, so don't bring on the devil.") that appeared in the short-lived (1968-69) but influential magazine The Cricket. Edited by Baraka (calling himself at the time Imamu Ameer Baraka), poet/critic A.B. Spellman (Four Lives in Bebop) and poet/scholar Larry Neal, The Cricket should be essential for anyone interested in Ayler and the sensibility that informed the music of that era. Despite its short life-span, The Cricket was arguably the best and most political publication devoted to the emerging black music scene. Created after the 1967 Newark riots, and distributed for free, the magazine contained not only reviews of live and recorded black music, but also poetry, essays and short plays. Not that it was alone in presentation or advocacy. There were other publications as political but perhaps not so Afro-centric, such as those from the Artists Workshop in Detroit (Work, Wh'ere, Guerrilla). But The Cricket, if not the most experimental, was the most immediate, rooted in and around the community in which the music was centred, its specific purpose to challenge the dominance of white writers in reporting on black music, and critique the role of white club and record owners in exploiting the music. With copies for many years difficult to come by, the magazine has by now taken on a legendary status amongst those who remember those times and that music.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of which makes the recent republication of the magazine, put together in an amazing single volume, published by Blank Forms Editions, by British poet and scholar David Grundy (author of A Black Arts Poetry Machine: Amiri Baraka and the Umbra Poets), an occasion for celebration. Because, following Spellman's Preface and Grundy's excellent and comprehensive overview, what one finds here are contributions by the likes of Baraka, Spellman, and Neal, as well as musicians such as Ayler, Milford Graves, Oliver Nelson, Sun Ra, and Mtume, poets like Sonia Sanchez, critics (though, at the time, still a drummer) Stanley Crouch, poet and novelist Ishmael Reed, and many others. </div><div><br /></div><div>Determinedly of the moment, The Cricket's revolutionary passion and insight are apparent on just about every page. If some of the articles seem overly stylised, all one can say is such were the times, the posture and the perspective. To be fair, the magazine wasn't simply a booster for the "new thing;" its writers were ready and willing to criticise the music when they thought it fell short. For instance, there's Mwanfunzi Katibu's take-down of Shepp's Three For a Quarter One For a Dime album, or Larry Neal's critique of Ayler's contentious latter day Impulse LP New Grass. Regarding the latter, Neal was stating the obvious when he wrote that the record was the result of Ayler being leaned-on by Impulse in order to court a wider and whiter audience. Few, including Koloda, would disagree. Though Neal was less bothered by Ayler attempt to court a wider audience as he was by the music itself which he considered lacking in focus and subtlety. </div><div><br /></div><div>Reading The Cricket is to be cast back to a time- right down to its mimeo font and spacing- when the music was everything, and everything was at stake, politically as well as artistically. A time when ethics and aesthetics sought to be one and the same, and the likes of Albert Ayler were walking a tight-rope, bursting with energy but ultimately fighting a losing battle with the profiteers that be. One can't help but miss those days when the music so highly charged and political, when it was still something mostly learned from listening and watching, whether in clubs or jam sessions, before jazz became, for better or worse, institutionalised in places of higher learning. But let's leave the last word to the surviving member of The Cricket's editorial team, A.B. Spellman. Regarding the technology of that time, seemingly so primitive yet so political, and the means by which such publications could exist, Spellman, only half-jokingly, writes in his Preface, "Someone should do an homage to the Gestetner mimeograph machine. It was, if not the heart,
at least the vascular system of the myriad movements of the day. It was clumsy, extremely
messy—you got blue ink on all of your clothes; blue ink soaked into the flesh of your hands for
days. But with a mimeograph machine, a couple of reams of paper, a good stapler, you could
have yourself a publication. We didn’t need no stinkin’ internet."</div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwtzFGF56Kt5nQdzh5ykwmpfJS6QoFDXfrXVh0If17y7kFabqVxZAwv3m0QPlOKvQsm_3sEaJoSXJbJmhuTtyYAB_1ZRRD01erz3NLuYG6LTNcGiJ4JAHKmJmy38vuJVwmDUxBF0jhUI4QOZyXI_XelxHqZwYjIVUhJa-GsqVgyJXhLXdwiHQ/s570/Screenshot%202022-10-06%20at%2016.42.25.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="378" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwtzFGF56Kt5nQdzh5ykwmpfJS6QoFDXfrXVh0If17y7kFabqVxZAwv3m0QPlOKvQsm_3sEaJoSXJbJmhuTtyYAB_1ZRRD01erz3NLuYG6LTNcGiJ4JAHKmJmy38vuJVwmDUxBF0jhUI4QOZyXI_XelxHqZwYjIVUhJa-GsqVgyJXhLXdwiHQ/w133-h200/Screenshot%202022-10-06%20at%2016.42.25.png" width="133" /></a></div></div><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><br /><br /></div></div></div></div></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-38849407787722687532022-09-29T11:13:00.003+01:002022-09-29T11:13:40.085+01:00Writing Skin Flick<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ZWRAIjVF4ukBSEYiMAPOSM7qQzyAqsCb5IGqU2gM96vPqmkvN1iX12kfqTAVhTYtxXMmDLb8kq88lYxV0LW4aqTjmyU2Ta5IeCb2LhYKHqaY-SiHV4J8Dyxa_Q8W7kF4IFeumLvaYnDwo1Ge17yR3hc7edqkq2VuLk4s7gpQIi3NG5IDbiA/s616/Screenshot%202022-09-17%20at%2009.27.13.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="406" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ZWRAIjVF4ukBSEYiMAPOSM7qQzyAqsCb5IGqU2gM96vPqmkvN1iX12kfqTAVhTYtxXMmDLb8kq88lYxV0LW4aqTjmyU2Ta5IeCb2LhYKHqaY-SiHV4J8Dyxa_Q8W7kF4IFeumLvaYnDwo1Ge17yR3hc7edqkq2VuLk4s7gpQIi3NG5IDbiA/s320/Screenshot%202022-09-17%20at%2009.27.13.png" width="211" /></a></div><div><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; font-family: "Open Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">It would be an understatement to say that between the writing of what would become Skin Flick and its eventual publication a lot has happened in the world. So much so that I feel as though the real author of my most recent novel could well be someone else altogether. Perhaps my evil twin or a case of identity thief. Or is it that we are simply living in a different world from the one we inhabited around the time I began writing the novel which would have been sometime around 2010. Though I have a dim recollection at the time of wanting to write something under similar conditions to those that faced pulp paperback writers in the late 1940s and 1950s regarding deadlines, word count, narrative drive heading into the unknown, etc.. Of course, those who wrote for the likes of Gold Medal and Lion were hardly dabblers when it came to the conditions they wrote under, but working writers who ground out books because their lives and livelihood depended on what they were able to produce. Nevertheless, I gave myself a time limit- was it six weeks or six months? I can no longer recall- to write what would become Skin Flick. Though I might as well have had said six years, because the book has taken that long, thanks to various factors, including Covid, for the book to go from its initial writing to its publication. Within that time Skin Flick has gone through the various permutations and title changes. Consequently, the novel that took the shortest amount of time to write of any of the books I’ve written, has taken the longest amount of time to complete and finally publish.</p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; font-family: "Open Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">When I began the novel I remember being engrossed in certain purveyors of self-abasement, such as Dan Fante and Jerry Stahl. As well as memories of Hubert Selby's Requiem For a Dream. There was, and remains, something appealing about such writers with their first-person narratives, and no perceivable limit to the depths they are willing to descend. Which has to do with their honesty, sense of humour and perspective, the latter of which sometimes manifests itself as having no perspective at all. Of course, who, other than the writers themselves, can say with any exactitude that what they write might be nothing more than a masquerade. In any case, there is that side to Skin Flick’s mock confessional, first-person narrative which starts off in something akin to Ross Macdonald territory before gradually descending into that world one normally associates with Fante and Stahl, if not the likes of David Goodis and Jim Thompson. Which is to say that Skin Flick moves from the everyday to the perverse, albeit from the viewpoint of a not-all-that-successful freelance journalist, who begins with the best of intentions, to help an old friend, but who, despite or because of his flaws, ends up trapped in his own pursuit, just marginally less warped than those he’s pursuing.</p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; font-family: "Open Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">The result is a deep dive into the greed-is-good 1980’s, and its assorted depravities, from real estate scams and bank scandals, to the rise of Jesus-is-coming-so-why-worry-about-the-future mindset, from the corruption of the “sexual revolution” to pornography as the last refuge of the desperate and raw product of late capitalism. While the title refers to the often used term for a certain type of movie, it also suggests the exploitation of bodies on a personal as well as political level, that beauty, from skin deep to deep down, can easily be flicked away by power and money. But, then, that was a time when even the most righteous were, to varying degrees, guilty of whatever crimes and misdemeanours the culture had to offer. And the reason why, with its quotidian contradictions, Skin Flick is a novel in which no one escapes unscathed.</p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; font-family: "Open Sans", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">("Writing Skin Flick" first appeared in a slightly different version in <a href="https://www.crimetime.co.uk/writing-skin-flick-woody-haut-talks-to-crime-time/">Crime Time)</a></p></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-78630220204449131552022-06-16T15:11:00.000+01:002022-06-16T15:11:26.610+01:00Derek Raymond Revisited<p>The couple days have been spent revisiting Derek Raymond's (aka Robin Cook) autobiography The Hidden Files. I remember, when it came out, some expressed disappointment because they said the book did not have the same edge and dark focus of his crime/noir novels. That its prose and presentation was a bit self-conscious, as though Robin was trying to prove his worth as a writer. Maybe there was some truth in the latter, though at the time of its publication, I enjoyed the book immensely. But, for some reason, I hadn't looked at it since. This even though I've re-read Robin's Factory novels, and some of his others (Crust On Its Uppers, A State of Denmark, The Legacy of the Stiff Upper Lip, etc.) at various times since their publication or re-publication. Re-reading The Hidden Files was not only a great pleasure but I found it quite moving. For me, no matter how under-appreciated it might have been at the time, The Hidden Files really does deserve to be up there with the likes of Cyril Connolly's Enemies of Promise, a kind of scaled down version of Anthony Powell's multi-volumed Dance to the Music of Time. For me there has always been something admirable about old Etonians- and I seem to have known a few over the years- who have the political and personal nous to reject their class, their education, and sense of entitlement. Certainly no one personifies that kind of downward mobility more than Robin. What a pleasure it was during late 1980s and early 1990s to run into him on the streets of Kilburn, where we were neighbours, or at events at Compendium or Murder One. As I was revisiting The Hidden Files I couldn't help but be reminded of those days, which led me to dig out my 1992 interview with Robin which took place at this favourite pub, The Coach and Horses in Soho, and subsequent article that appeared in the Observer Magazine later on that same year. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-6uLjl_MnPmYohVZPEAXPzRroY2vlVdv3FtSAAu4RbTw_Ak_IWIaBqE91-cXQ97MQ54p2ljV3Q1Fsi4UwpewdzWydOZgpi78poVYPMxJLR82Bs-F91leBjCoZMiaeGMwHAEGQ2c2Dx3DYystTKLeFWIeekxEEDVmjyR_DZVAdQUQ0fHOhvtU/s1574/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.47.16.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1574" data-original-width="1292" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-6uLjl_MnPmYohVZPEAXPzRroY2vlVdv3FtSAAu4RbTw_Ak_IWIaBqE91-cXQ97MQ54p2ljV3Q1Fsi4UwpewdzWydOZgpi78poVYPMxJLR82Bs-F91leBjCoZMiaeGMwHAEGQ2c2Dx3DYystTKLeFWIeekxEEDVmjyR_DZVAdQUQ0fHOhvtU/w526-h640/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.47.16.png" width="526" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN-yeCY-OFdDOXeU_Mweq0qqXkPJxeEoEsf5FoD0wpm_itfag6RQBKwEzF4q11IsDcWdBx67awLkPjXGbfPLK95He4sZ2MIw6gfLzsTeLvATCExyNCzo04_DV9ld9FCvF1fdl3TrC8lbRW8VXrasNXWzW9PI7YZCtK8X1f46Li5F3kpJWwh3I/s1578/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.47.37.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1578" data-original-width="1272" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN-yeCY-OFdDOXeU_Mweq0qqXkPJxeEoEsf5FoD0wpm_itfag6RQBKwEzF4q11IsDcWdBx67awLkPjXGbfPLK95He4sZ2MIw6gfLzsTeLvATCExyNCzo04_DV9ld9FCvF1fdl3TrC8lbRW8VXrasNXWzW9PI7YZCtK8X1f46Li5F3kpJWwh3I/w515-h640/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.47.37.png" width="515" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ8sVSmu8CQdG__WlxFSSB5j0SJr_XsXsy4pbGDhchJz3wcSiAvIaQQ3HCW4ZRwgIxtVejWTJ5P_aheHV3yUKxTOcYGavry3ljXcBHCKQYIyPKfCKuvVini9ROg6XW2qm7CIMAqe1FrnV0-Q5IP2oldqnkAzrJXyXIhRDskyvVgK39ikjXWho/s1584/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.47.58.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1584" data-original-width="1232" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ8sVSmu8CQdG__WlxFSSB5j0SJr_XsXsy4pbGDhchJz3wcSiAvIaQQ3HCW4ZRwgIxtVejWTJ5P_aheHV3yUKxTOcYGavry3ljXcBHCKQYIyPKfCKuvVini9ROg6XW2qm7CIMAqe1FrnV0-Q5IP2oldqnkAzrJXyXIhRDskyvVgK39ikjXWho/w498-h640/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.47.58.png" width="498" /></a></div><br />Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-1321083860772645802022-06-01T12:03:00.002+01:002022-06-05T11:29:42.591+01:00CLR James: Then & Now<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><h1><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic5H3ih7BiAP2LgF-TDOtyBwvzDh9za81bQU3qyEYonbXj0F67SvDC5AEIDLoq8BHuKpb_H_lUobwEzfQzmheIWMIIZq7PRic6ohfVitFUPuu-eKtCISJwuk-EdkPDWYH2nlxCSp_b_iMCEOxW3HZ7jQSII8kpBvA5OgIoQ33LCRcK1gauFjE/s504/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2011.26.45.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="326" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic5H3ih7BiAP2LgF-TDOtyBwvzDh9za81bQU3qyEYonbXj0F67SvDC5AEIDLoq8BHuKpb_H_lUobwEzfQzmheIWMIIZq7PRic6ohfVitFUPuu-eKtCISJwuk-EdkPDWYH2nlxCSp_b_iMCEOxW3HZ7jQSII8kpBvA5OgIoQ33LCRcK1gauFjE/w202-h320/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2011.26.45.png" width="202" /></span></span></a></h1></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span><span>Reading John L. Williams' excellent biography of CLR James put me in mind of an interview I was fortunate enough to conduct with James in the Spring of 1989, just a few weeks before his death. The interview appeared in Labour Briefing as well as in Ed & Jenny Dorn's Rolling Stock, accompanied by an account of a memorial for CLR James</span> held some months later (all of which I've inserted below). These days I feel privileged to have been able to meet such a formidable writer and thinker.</span> One of the things I liked about Williams' detailed and scrupulously researched account of James' life is that, with no particular factional axe to grind, the facts of James' life quite rightly stand on their own. And those facts and that life are truly impressive. Likewise the range of those with whom James crossed paths, whether in the world of politics or cricket. And there are, of course, many surprises. While I was aware of the likes of Trotsky, Eric Williams, Kenyatta, and cricket commentator John Arlott, I hadn't known about James' friendship with Ernest Borneman (author the excellent noir novel Face On the Cutting Floor). But, then, James' life really was, as the title states, <i>beyond the boundaries. </i>Suffice it to say that anyone interested in James or, for that matter, black history, colonialism and empire, or simply the function and drift of 20th century politics and culture should do themselves a favour and take a serious look at this book. </span><div><div><div><div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">As a postscript, I can, like Williams, recall seeing the CLR James BBC documentary. Though it must have been a repeat because I would have put watching the film sometime in the early 1980s. I say that because my first encounter with James occurred a bit before viewing the documentary. I was travelling by train to teach a class in the west of England when I heard a lilting West Indian voice coming from the back of the carriage holding forth on how the ill-fated SDP (which had recently been formed in 1981 by disgruntled rightwing Labour MPs) was destined to fail. Not because of its politics but simply because of the way the House of Commons was constructed. That is, its actual space did not allow for a major third party opposition. I'd never heard anyone talk about the politics of physical space in that manner (though I had yet to read anything so abstract as Bachelard's Poetics of Space, I was reminded at the time of the seemingly endless debate a decade earlier about the shape of the table prior to the peace negotiations at the end of the Vietnam war). I turned and saw a group of young black students surrounding this man who was holding forth. But it was only while watching the aforementioned BBC documentary that I realised that person was, in fact, CLR James. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtD0DEwUMNCbgP9n6a9YoTE9DmjDZ1ZZOQ7mKsjwqIKuLOB1P3x5r1_kK7C-EcUkyqxN2HaDM6uIybv8R2i5TR03PP5WhCxWtOODOM8TmbhBdeRZBendNGzC0sb-HAUU_amz7KJteG0pBqY5XAY8nfOzLFd3HAzXSF-JXSXCnLVPYJjL7dSzw/s2340/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2011.19.48.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1134" data-original-width="2340" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtD0DEwUMNCbgP9n6a9YoTE9DmjDZ1ZZOQ7mKsjwqIKuLOB1P3x5r1_kK7C-EcUkyqxN2HaDM6uIybv8R2i5TR03PP5WhCxWtOODOM8TmbhBdeRZBendNGzC0sb-HAUU_amz7KJteG0pBqY5XAY8nfOzLFd3HAzXSF-JXSXCnLVPYJjL7dSzw/w555-h310/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2011.19.48.png" width="555" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTYx9f7Hd7SI0-a7xlyUVzBWejAGNY_rvJWGgI9d5QxVt-BKQHzNJ7z_6QVSWZbF9tTjLT8dHRpQA0nrzN4V2FTBuJdUQFdiH10R5x5b2pTCukfOQuC7DDdTa2ka1tWOtKc_9Fzyg_lo8BoIm4CrIVQJUNfYJyqdeAtV2kqBBbGcC76Nyb1N8/s1550/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.35.05.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1550" data-original-width="708" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTYx9f7Hd7SI0-a7xlyUVzBWejAGNY_rvJWGgI9d5QxVt-BKQHzNJ7z_6QVSWZbF9tTjLT8dHRpQA0nrzN4V2FTBuJdUQFdiH10R5x5b2pTCukfOQuC7DDdTa2ka1tWOtKc_9Fzyg_lo8BoIm4CrIVQJUNfYJyqdeAtV2kqBBbGcC76Nyb1N8/w293-h640/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.35.05.png" width="293" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqzlxXXN_9t6Y40Z7R47Hna410-qMJu7MFfm5pqLuss5l4mCdIzdKLKcbP5h9jb1kCb2NEBBIIw-Fu0IdkGUpeEs5VkAIt06YiY6nqagNLVb19p9AoOC9LpamKXEeKYHuRU7NnE5sVOFMmb2IK-ZyxCpd5bSBXZy0txNpnFLA-2wcA_S4rYoU/s1562/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.35.31.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1562" data-original-width="826" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqzlxXXN_9t6Y40Z7R47Hna410-qMJu7MFfm5pqLuss5l4mCdIzdKLKcbP5h9jb1kCb2NEBBIIw-Fu0IdkGUpeEs5VkAIt06YiY6nqagNLVb19p9AoOC9LpamKXEeKYHuRU7NnE5sVOFMmb2IK-ZyxCpd5bSBXZy0txNpnFLA-2wcA_S4rYoU/w338-h640/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.35.31.png" width="338" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT1dKpGl0QQj4oz4Gni5t0u6IxHCQ3_4__mLlmiU3Aqhr8_GtRBkXEteU3ONUP0TBcQWIdevoFsLaDsyN4r1Is83L_590eSWTk0ePXYvqaeMYqzAvpsol_Gynsh4-aFd-AUniAeR-sfrJfGEB7wwRWoYQ545ues4jAsIHfFTlVyYAhksP-h5g/s1802/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.35.50.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1570" data-original-width="1802" height="558" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT1dKpGl0QQj4oz4Gni5t0u6IxHCQ3_4__mLlmiU3Aqhr8_GtRBkXEteU3ONUP0TBcQWIdevoFsLaDsyN4r1Is83L_590eSWTk0ePXYvqaeMYqzAvpsol_Gynsh4-aFd-AUniAeR-sfrJfGEB7wwRWoYQ545ues4jAsIHfFTlVyYAhksP-h5g/w555-h558/Screenshot%202022-05-31%20at%2010.35.50.png" width="555" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-57832009949100625122022-03-11T14:28:00.002+00:002022-03-11T14:30:29.354+00:00Still Dangerous, Still New: Dangerous Visions and New Worlds- Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre. <p></p><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhv8_IU7jzAI3wdON0QNy8do9_0EuZswchBR6Y0yCfoy0fP88RHZBIvkc8o9WGJiOvmd5t5OdCY51duV80UON4Q08NlSf0BOsJCfwIO3D6IP2B63NS0UbRuMa4Nk5f3bML9JZq-PR_Y9FIwJt4NEk5hnTF6IkDTo8lvRPBQy-P6wNyF-S5t0Z0=s1292" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1292" data-original-width="1004" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhv8_IU7jzAI3wdON0QNy8do9_0EuZswchBR6Y0yCfoy0fP88RHZBIvkc8o9WGJiOvmd5t5OdCY51duV80UON4Q08NlSf0BOsJCfwIO3D6IP2B63NS0UbRuMa4Nk5f3bML9JZq-PR_Y9FIwJt4NEk5hnTF6IkDTo8lvRPBQy-P6wNyF-S5t0Z0=s320" width="249" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;">It was a long-haired donkey-jacketed council labourer from Yorkshire named Tex who introduced me to Michael Moorcock's New Worlds magazine. It was that glorious summer of 1967 when, as someone once said, there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air. I had been staying briefly in a house in Bermondsey. It was most likely the only time I ever had anything close to what one could call a conversation with the taciturn Tex, this one lasting only long enough for him to hand me the magazine, mumble a sentence or two before going back to his thousand-piece jigsaw he and his girlfriend had been working on for as long as I'd staying there. In the weeks that followed it seemed like everyone I ran into was reading the magazine. And one or two were even writing for it. With Michael Moorcock, not yet the author of all those Jerry Cornelius novels and so much more, at its helm, the magazine set out to explore, not the cliché-ridden realms of outer space, but that murky world referred to at the time as inner space, and, in doing so, make speculative fiction a kind of road map directing readers to what might be possible in a world that was being turned upside down. </span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Moorcock had Roberts and Vinter to thank for purchasing the magazine in 1964. Soon Moorcock had what amounted to a free editorial reign. Within its cheaply printed pages readers could find stories by a cadre of these so-called New Wave writers, whether Tom Disch, Brian Aldiss, M. John Harrison, J.G. Ballard, D.M Thomas, or Moorcock himself. These writers were mostly young, neither baked in the cynicism of the genre nor aligned with its mainstream tendencies. Moreover, contributors were as likely to be influenced by Burroughs and Pynchon, as Sturgeon, Stapleton, PK Dick, Lieber or David Lindsay. As for those who read the magazine, they were sort who preferred perusing International Times and Tariq Ali’s Black Dwarf rather than the mainstream or traditional leftist press. Given New Worlds outsider status, it was inevitable that it would meet some resistance. One of its stories, Bug Jack Barron, by Norman Spinard, which appeared in a March 1968 New Worlds, so outraged those in certain quarters that it led to a ban on the magazine’s distribution stretching from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to WH Smiths in the UK, not to mention a debate in the British Parliament regarding the misuse of Arts Council funding, which had been, to a large degree, subsidising the magazine. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">If not flying its proverbial freak flag, New Worlds was doing its best to move against the tide of sci-if technocrats- no point mentioning names- whose space operas and stories of planetary expansionism and futurist war games had long dominated the genre. Not quite a case of anything goes, for Moorcock and his followers it was more a matter of transforming old tropes and creating new ones. All of which was coincident with the interest, thanks to psychedelics and soft drugs, in expanded consciousness, inner rather than outer space, as well as individual freedom. As Moorcock himself said, it was a time “when we let the rockets explore the multiverse in terms of the human psyche. Powered by a faith that fiction- especially speculative fiction- could change the world, the New Wave allied with the underground press, the left, and the world of rock ‘n’ roll to create a cultural explosion.” Moreover, in keeping with the politics of the era, Moorcock, in 1969, was not only beginning to think of New Worlds as a magazine of experimental literature as much as speculative fiction, but decided, whether of his own volition or by the persuasion of others, to democratise his editorship, and allow others to take on some of the editorial responsibilities. Which could have been a sign that the magazine was running out of revolutionary steam. Indeed, it would never quite recover, even though New Worlds would continue for some years, eventually, to publishers Sphere and Corgi, morphing into a periodic paperback anthology. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, in the U.S. the energetic and seemingly ever youthful Harlan Ellison was churning out his Dangerous Visions anthologies, beginning with a Doubleday edition in 1967. As excellent as the stories in Ellison's anthologies were- a sign of Ellison's acumen as an editor- the books were never, as far as I was concerned, quite as radical a departure from mainstream science fiction as were the stories found in New Worlds. It could be the authors who appeared in the pages of Ellison's paperback were a bit more established, as might befit the demands of a mass market paperback publisher. But that didn't mean that they didn't attract a legion of readers, myself included, who picked them up wherever and whenever they appeared. Most likely in liquor store and bus station paperback racks or on newspaper stands rather than in legitimate book stores. It was at one such liquor store on Haight Street in San Francisco that I came across Ellison’s first anthology. That book, and their follow-ups, functioned, for me, as a kind of entry level drug, providing me with my first taste of Zelazny, Leiber, Delaney, and PK Dick’s mind-bending Faith of Our Fathers, a story with which I soon became obsessed. The stories were all accompanied by Ellison's pithy and evocative intros- just a few sentences to prepare the reader for their deep dive into each particular vision. Yet those anthologies lacked the same immediacy as New Worlds, nor did they have the explicit intention to, in Moorcock’s words, “create a cultural explosion.” Still, they were necessary for those seeking something more mind expanding than what science fiction was accustomed to serving up at the time. Ellison’s series would continue into the 2000s, but it was that first handful of editions that appeared from 1967-69 that were, for me, the most interesting. Or it could simply be that their contributors were, whatever their past output, fairly new to a neophyte reader as I was at the time. Interestingly, there was a degree of cross-over between the two publications. British writers such as Aldiss and John Brunner would appear in Ellison’s publications, while American writers like Spinard, Ellison, Delaney, John Sladek, Rachel Pollack and Pamela Zoline would crop up in the pages of New Worlds. </span></div><div><div><p><span style="font-size: medium;">So it’s appropriate that these two publications would form the basis, and focal point, for a study of radical science fiction from 1950-1985. In fact, Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre, while keeping those publications firmly in mind, move both backwards and forwards in time with essays that extend the rebellious spirit, however varied, of New Worlds and Dangerous Visions. Nette and McIntyre’s volume really does cut a wide swathe, with excellently-researched essays from a variety of contributors on subjects that move across the board: from that utopias, dystopias, the bomb, revolution, the Vietnam war, race relations, feminism, the sexual revolution, ecology, and drugs, to sub-genres like Russian, gay, and young adult sci-fi, as well as chapters on publishers, editors, and writers, both obscure and well-known, from Moorcock, Judith Merril, Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delaney, Barry Malzberg, J.G. Ballard, Ursula LeGuin, Roger Zelazny, to Denis Jackson, Hank Lopez, R.A. Lafferty, Octavia Butler, and James Tiptree. With something for everyone, there are bound to be writers discussed that will be unfamiliar to readers. I for one had never come across the likes of Hank Lopez (Afro Six) or Denis Jackson ("Flying Saucers and Black Power"!). Likewise, there’s a plethora of paperback covers, all excellently reproduced which will make readers want to track down some of these titles on secondhand sites and bookstores. </span></p></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In all, this is as complete a history of that period- 1950-1985- one is likely to come across. Though as I thumbed through its pages it did make me think about how so much of what considered radical during those years has now more or less become mainstream speculative fiction. But that probably says as much about how the genre has evolved as it does about this who now read the genre. If there is a criticism to make about the collection, it's that it doesn’t include contributions by the writers themselves. <span style="caret-color: rgb(15, 17, 17); color: #0f1111;">But then, in the end, this is essentially a book by sci-fi critics ands fans for other sci-if fans. Which it does in a format that has become something of a template for its editors. That is if their two collaborations- </span> Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction 1950 to 1980, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture 1950-1980- are anything to go by. All of which makes me<span style="caret-color: rgb(15, 17, 17); color: #0f1111; font-family: inherit;"> wonder if Tex, minus the donkey jacket, is still around, and, if he is, if he's still reading what he once was so excited about. I hope so. Because, i</span>f nothing else, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds illustrates that it wasn’t, as the editors attest, so much a “long 1960s,” as a perpetual 1960s, however much those years and what they stood for have been, and continue to undergo such revision. </span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgEQ5Vy6OwrrCgSesTF1u3u_mFt16Bwx7eiNuyA6iKtJ32pkficmXG1XaWRXynPC_wF4ed4C1CaGuoCZ4dFtWgnuGEvGpxCGyQ_gfchY30Av8lcjLMBDSNlgxsqUrNSFQOhYQwFHIUaV-rcI2E-_PwNC1xGehCN7vISmnU34j5KsxtI76l1IXY=s394" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="294" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgEQ5Vy6OwrrCgSesTF1u3u_mFt16Bwx7eiNuyA6iKtJ32pkficmXG1XaWRXynPC_wF4ed4C1CaGuoCZ4dFtWgnuGEvGpxCGyQ_gfchY30Av8lcjLMBDSNlgxsqUrNSFQOhYQwFHIUaV-rcI2E-_PwNC1xGehCN7vISmnU34j5KsxtI76l1IXY=w150-h200" width="150" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiFwVCmzLOGAwDqtjdZle8bifeKzgzFAxcN5Y_GENpTknqlKzc6yUy48ocXlDX182Tgz4vkDCpoNn3DBz0C8gFCUUrArPJg-2xrwnpupwWVQ420cO-Xjq88N8PUjFtfvLTSkq6jpWa46ENjV7WDWQSBdYNLimpqduT9jhjYjUcTHZA-H1kcH_k=s1002" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1002" data-original-width="614" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiFwVCmzLOGAwDqtjdZle8bifeKzgzFAxcN5Y_GENpTknqlKzc6yUy48ocXlDX182Tgz4vkDCpoNn3DBz0C8gFCUUrArPJg-2xrwnpupwWVQ420cO-Xjq88N8PUjFtfvLTSkq6jpWa46ENjV7WDWQSBdYNLimpqduT9jhjYjUcTHZA-H1kcH_k=w123-h200" width="123" /></a></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiiD9pPlQktrC3gw-R0k4mvNIdEmnDAdg_hI_lGRV-WwLM1wJW36gRz7zIJeF6pFf_fAFYKNxkqBvoIn_VXme6-ay5rZPpIyvit4wiNo8mYguQ0SQZhbDZ93aDDSRKSxinN4smu1lhUzljghvSIjZ7sKb4qp-ONDB-DlIqkYamVGQ1R-4-YQ4I=s496" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="408" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiiD9pPlQktrC3gw-R0k4mvNIdEmnDAdg_hI_lGRV-WwLM1wJW36gRz7zIJeF6pFf_fAFYKNxkqBvoIn_VXme6-ay5rZPpIyvit4wiNo8mYguQ0SQZhbDZ93aDDSRKSxinN4smu1lhUzljghvSIjZ7sKb4qp-ONDB-DlIqkYamVGQ1R-4-YQ4I=w166-h200" width="166" /></a></div><p></p><p></p><br /><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKcaEe7vYeloToN-OHeFhHuQeHxl_-4SmrRAwD1EqTMqfvxOPFd41k1Q0HydauG6LxMdjQvNHq9mcFwD6xNFg2VC8tz4dOB56qoqwC2pG-wkv7QPY3v0QIFe_N-Z0PfR22bKVpjcIssGUV7SgMejL7XcQVTXV0FiN_YAOO0WdVKnFQVJf7QHU=s754" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="754" data-original-width="602" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKcaEe7vYeloToN-OHeFhHuQeHxl_-4SmrRAwD1EqTMqfvxOPFd41k1Q0HydauG6LxMdjQvNHq9mcFwD6xNFg2VC8tz4dOB56qoqwC2pG-wkv7QPY3v0QIFe_N-Z0PfR22bKVpjcIssGUV7SgMejL7XcQVTXV0FiN_YAOO0WdVKnFQVJf7QHU=w160-h200" width="160" /></a><br /></p><br /><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-90395341041548079822022-01-10T16:40:00.010+00:002022-06-05T11:33:23.857+01:00On Dangerous Ground: Woman On the Run (Norman Foster, 1950), "One More Thing" (Apologies to Columbo).<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4s5XmC8XNPA/YaOnpZzyLLI/AAAAAAAADEM/4gIpMdGhl0kf50dese4_lxN-_F5tnNC4ACLcBGAsYHQ/Screenshot%2B2021-11-28%2Bat%2B16.00.25.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="652" height="237" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4s5XmC8XNPA/YaOnpZzyLLI/AAAAAAAADEM/4gIpMdGhl0kf50dese4_lxN-_F5tnNC4ACLcBGAsYHQ/Screenshot%2B2021-11-28%2Bat%2B16.00.25.png" width="320" /></span></a></b></div><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /></span></b><p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Woman On the Run (Norman Foster, 1950)</span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">Who finds Playland sinister necessarily gumshoes </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">fate, not unlike Pinocchio ogling the Fat Lady before </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">dodging phallic double-parkers, bumper stickers </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">decrying the benefits of spousal abuse. Payback hot </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">wire exhaust fumes stodgily mashing suburban mush. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">They said it was over even before it was over, the song </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">celebrating insinuation, or, better yet, the benefits of</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">capitalist degeneration. Those westward petit-bourgeois </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">wankers, ensconced in ocean-side condominiums, </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">wallowing in cryptic crossword clues and anxious </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">evenings of cathode narcolepsy. Gawked while stuffing </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">coupons into letterbox conspiracies. Others say only </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">movies make it real, concentrating the mind on guilt </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">rather than <i>gelt</i>. Leaving idle hands and loose ends to </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">track some alienated dog walker, thrust into the numinous </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">night. Witnessing shock and awe gangland murder not </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">far from where Kid Schlemiel once shared a joint with </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">Janis Joplin, who, for all I know, was in fact Daffy Duck </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">in disguise. Or is that stating the obvious? One person's </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">truth being another's collective amnesia. But, yes, the man </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">on the leash, marriage on the rocks, would have been </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">better off had he allowed his mutt to simply crap on </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">the carpet. Yet any deliberation over whose tail is wagging </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">what dog can only be speculative. That mask of civility </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">frozen at the seams, Mrs Dog Walker totes the medicine </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">that might alleviate her husband's frozen heart. But loyalty </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">only goes so far; it's not that she wants him dead, just out </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">of the way. Even if the guy she confides in is not now, </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">nor ever has been, a confirmed newshound. Still, he speaks </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">in complete sentences and treats her as if she just might </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">actually qualify as human. But tattoo this: never fully </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">trust a man in a film, circa 1950, who purports to take </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">a woman seriously. As for Foster, his bona fides are </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">themselves slightly suspicious, from the Mercury Players </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">to Mr Moto and Charlie Chan. Schlepped his puny budget </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">from L.A. to San Francisco to hoover the city's crevices. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">Call it psycho-geography, but only if emphasising the prefix </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">of that neologism. As if the gaffer might have been stealing </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">glances at Schlemiel's tear-stained Baedeker, to give him</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">license to prowl the city like a wounded coyote woofing </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">and warping at every pit stop. Either smart before its time </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">or retrograde after the fact, its laws and stipulations bleed </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">the Avenues to the zoo and ocean. Holy smokey eyes, </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">what politics of inevitability do not decry<i> le bon </i><i>temps </i></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>roulet</i> remain forever contradictory, insisting the plot </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: large;">is not the story, the narrative barely the end of the matter.</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-oVEhKcgZ_UA/YaOn-0xThmI/AAAAAAAADEU/6q1ZhmVJHV8w4F152-TdkXzahjjbRzR2gCLcBGAsYHQ/Screenshot%2B2021-11-28%2Bat%2B16.01.54.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" data-original-height="592" data-original-width="1062" height="179" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-oVEhKcgZ_UA/YaOn-0xThmI/AAAAAAAADEU/6q1ZhmVJHV8w4F152-TdkXzahjjbRzR2gCLcBGAsYHQ/Screenshot%2B2021-11-28%2Bat%2B16.01.54.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">"One More Thing "</span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Adjectives like floating insects in a Hollywood swimming pool. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>So 1950s, </i>larger than life, inflated by superlatives. Magnified to</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">billboard proportions. Though these days <i>big</i> would be <i>biggest.</i> </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Leading to the inevitable, if ambiguous: <i>The Biggest </i><i>Sleep</i>: perhaps </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">a euphemism for the most boring movie ever, or could it be a pill </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">to get you through a troubled night? <i>The Biggest </i><i>Clock</i>, a travelogue, </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">or a typo in a porno ad? <i>The Biggest </i><i>Combo</i>, a burger place on </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">the Strip or the world’s largest aggregation of musicians. Back then </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>big</i> really did mean something. Like, before the first feature, a Big </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Boy to forget the Big One, before the final shrug, as in <i>big </i><i>fucking </i></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>deal. </i>Nodding out in sky scraping impeccable nonchalance. Framed </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">by cigar-choking expressionist emigrés, their motto: <i>I shot </i><i>therefore </i></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>I was. </i>Time leading to paranoia, perversion to crime, and sleep, </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">not orgasm, the little death. That coffee thrown in Gloria’s face a </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">reality only when she clocks herself in the mirror. A woman with </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">a scar, <i>sister </i><i>under </i><i>the mink</i>, more dangerous than a gun or an </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">explosion. The mark so deep it becomes irredeemable. Which helps </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">explain why it's always night in high-contrast simulacra. Why in </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">the land of the minuscule, a less than average shyster can so easily </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">become king. That is, if size matters, if modifiers have more import </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">than that which they modify: <i>Clock, </i><i>Combo, </i><i>Heat, </i><i>Sleep, </i><i>Steal, </i></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Night, </i><i>Knife, </i><i>Goodbye. </i>This one goes out to who would remain </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">anonymous, their ships lost at sea. Continents long since absent, </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">as insomniacs out of the past darkly. Falling adjectives like confetti </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">between more frames per second than reality can ever hope to count. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-40225656463375431892021-11-28T15:40:00.000+00:002021-11-28T15:40:54.075+00:00The Long Half-Life of Proletarian Prose: On Michael Gold and Maxwell Bodenheim<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nTGJqzAL7hA/YaIqbIwUm4I/AAAAAAAADEA/mMETmupisRMkRoNKVuB8LDkTO8BvSJ-vgCLcBGAsYHQ/s808/Screenshot%2B2021-11-27%2Bat%2B12.53.11.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="808" data-original-width="550" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nTGJqzAL7hA/YaIqbIwUm4I/AAAAAAAADEA/mMETmupisRMkRoNKVuB8LDkTO8BvSJ-vgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-11-27%2Bat%2B12.53.11.png" width="218" /></a></div><br /><span face="adobe-caslon-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif" style="caret-color: rgb(203, 213, 224); font-size: 20px;">PERHAPS IT’S NOSTALGIA that has allowed proletariat writing to enjoy a half-life that defies its poor reputation. Though few literary sophisticates read the likes of Jack Conroy, Meridel Le Sueur, Jim Tully, or Tom Kromer, the fallout from such writing, abundant and popular prior to and just after World War II, remains with us in various guises. There are elements of it in noir and hard-boiled fiction, past as well as present. It’s also an undercurrent in early Beat writing, even if the latter was in part a reaction to the sectarianism that proletariat writing produced. In fact, traces of it exist in any writing that comes from and speaks to those on the wrong end of the economic order.</span><p></p><p style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(203, 213, 224); font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 2rem;">From the Depression to the beginning of the Cold War, Michael Gold was arguably proletariat writing’s leading advocate, as well as one of its primary practitioners. As one learns from Patrick Chura’s excellent biography, <em style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box;">Michael Gold: The People’s Writer</em>, the tentacles of Gold’s influence, in his heyday, spread far and wide. Moreover, Chura, in what constitutes the first full-scale Gold biography, drives home the point that anyone who professes to represent a progressive point of view owes no small debt to Gold, who, since the early 1950s, has gone largely unrecognized.</p><p style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(203, 213, 224); font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 2rem;">Born Itzok Isaac Granich in 1894, Gold chose to assume the name of a Jewish abolitionist civil war veteran in the midst of the notorious 1919–’20 Palmer Raids. A lifelong communist, he is best known, if known at all, for <em style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box;">Jews Without Money</em>, a semi-autobiographical novel that lifted the lid on New York’s poverty-stricken Lower East Side Jewish immigrant community. The literary equivalent of Lewis Hine’s famous New York photographs, <em style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box;">Jews Without Money</em> remains a powerful work that, since its publication in 1930, has never been out of print.</p><p style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(203, 213, 224); font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 2rem; padding-left: 40px;">My parents hated all this filth. But it was America, one had to accept it. And these were our neighbors. It’s impossible to live in a tenement without being mixed up with the tragedies and cockroaches of one’s neighbors. There’s no privacy in a tenement. So there was always some girl or other in our kitchen, pouring out a tale of wretchedness to my mother, drinking tea and warming herself at my mother’s wonderful heart. That’s how I came to know some of the stories of these girls.</p><p style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(203, 213, 224); font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 2rem;"></p><p style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(203, 213, 224); font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 2rem;">At the time of the novel’s appearance, Gold was being called an American Gorky. Through a series of vignettes, based, for the most part, on his own impoverished family and their neighbors, Gold captured the lives of poor Jewish immigrants of the era in prose as unvarnished as that of the most hard-boiled of writers.</p><p></p><p style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(203, 213, 224); font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 2rem;"><em style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box;">Jews Without Money</em> would be Gold’s primary literary achievement, but he also wrote poems, plays, and stories, as well as fiery polemics that, for over 30 years, appeared in a variety of progressive periodicals. H. L. Mencken considered Gold’s stories hardcore enough to be published in his <em style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box;">American Mercury</em>, which, until the early 1930s, specialized in tough guy regional writing by the likes of James M. Cain, Edward Anderson, Jim Tully, and John Fante. However, Gold’s tenure as a Mencken protégé didn’t last long, mainly because he felt Mencken was coaxing working-class writers like Tully into highlighting their anti-social exploits without any ideological comment, critique, or context. Had Gold been more flexible and less politically conscious, he might have, with Mencken’s backing, been more widely read. Fortunately for leftists, Gold was too preoccupied with political matters, preferring to put his efforts into periodicals like <em style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box;">The Masses</em>, <em style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box;">New Masses</em>, the <em style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box;">Daily Worker</em>, and <em style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box;">Liberator</em>. Had he not done so, there’s no telling how many plays, stories, and poems Gold might have produced, or how far his literary star might have ascended.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_WdYuX3l7cI/YaIqjomrinI/AAAAAAAADEE/XTRxGm9Y_lstlsrxBsekXR_V6P0szCIAQCLcBGAsYHQ/s784/Screenshot%2B2021-11-27%2Bat%2B12.53.32.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="784" data-original-width="552" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_WdYuX3l7cI/YaIqjomrinI/AAAAAAAADEE/XTRxGm9Y_lstlsrxBsekXR_V6P0szCIAQCLcBGAsYHQ/w141-h200/Screenshot%2B2021-11-27%2Bat%2B12.53.32.png" width="141" /></a></div><p></p><p style="--tw-ring-color: rgba(66,153,225,0.5); --tw-ring-inset: var(--tw-empty, ); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(203, 213, 224); font-family: adobe-caslon-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 2rem;">(Click <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-long-half-life-of-proletarian-prose-on-michael-gold-and-maxwell-bodenheim/">here</a> to read the remainder of this L.A. Review of Books article, including the second part on poet and novelist Maxwell Bodenheim)</p>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-17206929319443475992021-11-26T14:52:00.000+00:002021-11-26T14:52:58.592+00:00On Dangerous Ground: Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), The Window (1949)<p> </p><p><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XTNZY7ekqnc/YM8Syk9jt7I/AAAAAAAAC50/MqFBAQ5E6nIxPeScoHrCfrkGwb6GPS7vACLcBGAsYHQ/s844/Screenshot%2B2021-06-20%2Bat%2B11.03.34.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="844" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XTNZY7ekqnc/YM8Syk9jt7I/AAAAAAAAC50/MqFBAQ5E6nIxPeScoHrCfrkGwb6GPS7vACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-06-20%2Bat%2B11.03.34.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></b><p></p><p><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></b></p><p><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></b></p><p><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></b></p><p><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></b></p><p><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></b></p><p><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></b></p><p><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></b></p><p><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px;">Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger, 1950)</b></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">"A cop is basically a criminal,” </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">with “an instinct for...legalized </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">violence.” Not so much symptomatic</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">as stating the obvious. Back before</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">the bald guy entered the picture. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">It's a daddy-thing, I guess. The old </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">guy works for the man or </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">the mob, or is there a difference? </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Reeking blood brother nemesis. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">“I didn’t know a guy could hate </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">that much.” Say, what? Blame </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">the city, schmuck-face. All that </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">neon moral ambiguity. Kills the </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">soul as well as the robbery suspect. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Who never hopped a red-eye </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">heading for Dreamland. Dumped </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">the body but not the soul. They </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">say if you throw an egg from </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">the Dead Zone nine times out </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">of ten you'll hit a fucking Cartesian. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Framing the question, not </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">the cabbie- his high-flag </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">drenched in sassafras, headlong </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">towards an imperfect circle. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Blissed-out rainwater and graveyard </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">tips. Tight-wadded miracles </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">frenetically enbedded in a father </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">who falls for the murdered man’s </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">wife. As watered down as Luke </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">the Drifter retching for redemption </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">cralwing through a cookie jar </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">delirium. Prompting the great </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">man to feign ignorance: “I remember </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">nothing.” Low box office, high </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">impact, late night fodder, legalised-</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">something-or-other, without a </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">man-oh-manifesto to fall back on. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"> </p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><b></b><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1cS0HjJcQms/YM8S66e4IqI/AAAAAAAAC54/Pv-ZIuNYz8ULL0tFiGgDdgelcGvSWCqOgCLcBGAsYHQ/s852/Screenshot%2B2021-06-20%2Bat%2B11.03.45.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="626" data-original-width="852" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1cS0HjJcQms/YM8S66e4IqI/AAAAAAAAC54/Pv-ZIuNYz8ULL0tFiGgDdgelcGvSWCqOgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-06-20%2Bat%2B11.03.45.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>The Window (Ted Tetzlaff, 1949)</b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">So many roads, so far to gawk, </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Yet, who, with any certainty, </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">can claim a reliable narrator. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">If not imprisoned, witnessing a</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">crime, or living a lie, whether </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">barnstorming in black and white </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">or embeded in a complexity </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">of claustrophobic tenements </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">reeking of boiled tongue and </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">rancid cabbage. Lower East Side </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">gentrification dollars whinpering in </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">the wind-up. Walls cackling, </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">deaf to lack, lustre and rodents </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">the size of small seizures. Told to play </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">outside, the kid says “But there’s </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">nowhere to go.” Who verifies ash </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">can aesthetics, misty yet murky, </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">and oh, so Naked City, if only </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">from the waste down. Tinseltown </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">slobbering. Dream now, die later, </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Woolrich. a fly in an overturned jar. </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">As for the kid, age 31, on the outskirts</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">of the Factory, overdosed in the</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">remnants of his childhood. From </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Peter Pan to John Doe and a pauper’s </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">grave. Said, “I was carried on a satin </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">cushion, then dropped in a garbage </p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">can,” a singularity without mercy. </p><div><br /></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-48945728674812973452021-11-12T17:15:00.001+00:002021-11-12T17:15:34.341+00:00Reading Lisa Jarnot on Robert Duncan<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V7ORdprdd0U/YYegGFnen6I/AAAAAAAADCg/7ReefMLm5EAaVD_V9WTp59G2kaL_glofwCLcBGAsYHQ/s828/Screenshot%2B2021-11-07%2Bat%2B09.43.03.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="828" data-original-width="550" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V7ORdprdd0U/YYegGFnen6I/AAAAAAAADCg/7ReefMLm5EAaVD_V9WTp59G2kaL_glofwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-11-07%2Bat%2B09.43.03.png" width="213" /></a></div>Reading over the past couple weeks Lisa Jarnot's excellent 2012 biography of Robert Duncan, I was particularly impressed by the way she was able to construct a linear narrative that, unlike many biographies, remained constantly interesting and engaging. This was due not only to her well-defined abilities as a writer, but to Duncan's always-interesting inner and gadfly outer life, all of which is supplemented by letters to his partner Jess and others, his journals, not to mention the effect of what some might describe as Duncan's mesmerising logorrhoea which so many who met him over the years could not help but comment upon. <div><br /></div><div>Another aspect of The Ambassador From Venus book was the way Jarnot is invariably able to locate the exact quote from Duncan's work to amplify her point and represent Duncan's life. Though she refrains from parsing the poems- this is, she points out, not a book of criticism- rather, she simply places bits of poems in their appropriate context. No easy task given Duncan's reliance on metaphor and myth, and his perambulations, which if not Olsonian- i.e., you talk all around the subject/I didn't know there was a subject- embedded somewhere between the esoteric and the imaginative. </div><div><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E530u9BT_O0/YY5uElhTmAI/AAAAAAAADDY/3g5dlHB6Iis7GvENHgofeU22GPnN-N4eACLcBGAsYHQ/s942/Screenshot%2B2021-11-12%2Bat%2B13.27.41.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="772" data-original-width="942" height="312" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E530u9BT_O0/YY5uElhTmAI/AAAAAAAADDY/3g5dlHB6Iis7GvENHgofeU22GPnN-N4eACLcBGAsYHQ/w316-h312/Screenshot%2B2021-11-12%2Bat%2B13.27.41.png" width="316" /></a></div>While Jarnot succeeds at capturing Duncan quotidian reality, she, of course, cannot possibly record every step taken by her subject, even in his public mode. Such as the astonished look on Duncan's face upon hearing a particularly off-the-wall image in an otherwise unremarkable poem by Richard Brautigan at a benefit against the war in Vietnam in 1969. Or Jarnot does briefly mention a reading Duncan gave at UCLA in 1964. I was a teenager, and it must have been one of the first poetry readings I had occasion to attend. What I remember, and which Jarnot doesn't mention, was Duncan's response to a photographer who was moving around snapping photos during his reading. It prompted Duncan to stop and ask the photographer to stop. When the photographer continued taking photographs, Duncan asked him if he knew what a poet's curse was. However, I did come across towards the end of Jarnot's book, a similar incident in May, 1980, at a reading with Ed Dorn at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Duncan's words being similar to those he made some fifteen years earlier: "There are two things a poet can do: praise and curse." Going on to say his curse will take effect within six months. It made me wonder how many such curses Duncan issued over the years, and to what effect.<br /><p></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OyKAqXzCfNE/YY5s2eaIC7I/AAAAAAAADDI/5al1oMtp3KktdWyzejjpwTZMScykf21zQCLcBGAsYHQ/s754/Screenshot%2B2021-11-12%2Bat%2B13.28.37.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="590" data-original-width="754" height="229" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OyKAqXzCfNE/YY5s2eaIC7I/AAAAAAAADDI/5al1oMtp3KktdWyzejjpwTZMScykf21zQCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h229/Screenshot%2B2021-11-12%2Bat%2B13.28.37.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Duncan issuing a poet's curse?</td></tr></tbody></table>His praises are, of course, another matter. They were many. Leading me to another memorable Duncan moment, also not cited by Jarnot. This time at a reading he, and others, gave at the San Francisco State student union in 1971. The reading, which I attended with Jack Gilbert and Linda Gregg, was sponsored by the college's Gay Liberation organisation. While Duncan was holding forth, it was hard not to notice a fair number of young women- some no more than teenagers- who constituted much of the audience, making regular retreats, usually in pairs, to the toilets at the back of the room, then returning with smiling but flushed faces. I don't remember what poems Duncan- never one who could be described as entirely monogamous- read, but I do recall what he talked about. It was one of his extended monologues, this time on the subject of falling in and out of love, eros, and the metaphysics, if can call it that, of stable relationships. He did this in his usual, if slightly subdued, stream-of-consciousness manner, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him. But he was also in some way subtly commenting on it, not at all criticising it, but giving it a foundation and field of possibility. It was both a humorous and a very human interaction. It could be that Duncan's poetry and talk went over the heads of many of the young women, but that was often the case with Duncan's public performances. Still, there was something very touching in Duncan trying and most likely failing to communicate with his young audience. It hardly mattered that they were interested in more tactile matters. While Jack and Linda and whoever else was with us were quick to comment on the Sapphic aspect of the occasion, no one seemed to have taken into account Duncan's contribution. Yet it was a rare example, one that would have added to Jarnot's book, of Duncan engaging with those who, for the most part, weren't all that interested in what this 50+ year old poet was saying or reading. Not that Duncan, always the teacher, talker, visionary poet and anarchist, was going to let that stop him. It was a rare kind of poet's praise. Leaving the poet's curse for those attempting to steal his soul with intrusive shots. <p></p></div></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-72047992082888135872021-10-04T16:52:00.001+01:002021-10-06T13:23:44.467+01:00Sounding For Harry Smith- Early Pacific Northwest Influences by Bret Lunsford<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M-T0EeNXLQM/YQgg5VX6ygI/AAAAAAAAC94/AN2ISJyV1XAPR6bTSMXIBScRGGSDq_8hgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1380/Screenshot%2B2021-08-02%2Bat%2B17.43.43.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1380" data-original-width="1248" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M-T0EeNXLQM/YQgg5VX6ygI/AAAAAAAAC94/AN2ISJyV1XAPR6bTSMXIBScRGGSDq_8hgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-08-02%2Bat%2B17.43.43.png" width="289" /></a></div><div>I’ve always been amazed by the way some individuals can move so quickly from eccentric outsider, even untouchable, to national treasure. Film-maker, painter, collector, anthologiser, and raconteur, Harry Smith no doubt tried his best to resist that sort of transformation, but his record of accomplishments and his sense of aesthetics, were against him, at least amongst a certain segment of the culture. But thanks to sheer insistence, and a cantankerous nature, he still, to some degree, managed to do so.</div><div><br /><div>I began collecting Smith ephemera- interviews, recordings, articles- sometime in the late 1960s. Initially there was little to be found, the odd interview with P. Adams in Film Culture (1965) and John Cohen in Sing Out (1969), as well as an article or two by likes of Jonas Mekas in Film Culture or the Village Voice. But my interest in Smith went back further to first seeing his films in 1963 or 64 at John Fles’s ground-breaking Movies Round Midnight at the Cinema Theater in Los Angeles. A couple years later I would be showing Smith's films, amongst others, at the Straight-Ashbury Viewing Society, and then at San Francisco State’s Experimental College where I was teaching a class called The New American Cinema. Though I hadn't at first realised the Harry Smith who so painstakingly put together these complex and beautiful hand-painted films was the same Harry Smith who collated the Anthology of American Folk Music that I had spent so much time listening to in the basement of the Pasadena Public Library. Music that would influence those modern practitioners I was listening to such as the New Lost City Ramblers and, to some extent, Dylan, not to mention those I was taking lessons from like Stu Jamieson and David Lindley.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P1LnGCiY0tk/YVRDxOahiqI/AAAAAAAAC_A/HYURZ5TvajISN7I3mO8gr1YRSdzWl-sewCLcBGAsYHQ/s1282/Screenshot%2B2021-09-29%2Bat%2B11.44.27.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1282" height="187" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P1LnGCiY0tk/YVRDxOahiqI/AAAAAAAAC_A/HYURZ5TvajISN7I3mO8gr1YRSdzWl-sewCLcBGAsYHQ/w285-h187/Screenshot%2B2021-09-29%2Bat%2B11.44.27.png" width="285" /></a></div></div><div><p></p><p>Even though I read all those articles and interviews, I was never less than hungry for information about Harry Smith. Where could this guy have possibly come from? He seemed to play with interviewers when it came to talking about background, which seemed to only add to his myth. His movies hinted at a knowledge of be-bop, the Kabbala, the music of Kurt Weil, while his collecting, from records to objects of various sorts, were clearly the work of someone with a deep knowledge of American music and indigenous life. Not to mention his work as a sound engineer, recording Native American peyote ceremonies and music by groups like the Fugs and his interaction with Kabbalist Lionel Zirpin, and recordings, for the most part unreleased, of Zirpin's grandfather, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Margolies Abulafia (according to Raymond Foye, due for release at some point, likewise Smith's Naropa lectures on Native American cosmology).</p><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D_O4MMSKhtM/YVREfnlJhUI/AAAAAAAAC_I/cPIJNfZmnlIJZitZaX_yMhronzYwULdYQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1274/Screenshot%2B2021-09-29%2Bat%2B11.48.04.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Gouache on black paper, circa 1975" border="0" data-original-height="1074" data-original-width="1274" height="247" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D_O4MMSKhtM/YVREfnlJhUI/AAAAAAAAC_I/cPIJNfZmnlIJZitZaX_yMhronzYwULdYQCLcBGAsYHQ/w293-h247/Screenshot%2B2021-09-29%2Bat%2B11.48.04.png" width="293" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gouache on black paper, circa <br />1975</td></tr></tbody></table>But in accordance with his elusive answers in interviews, the question remained: where did Smith come from? I mean, <i>really</i> come from. What corner of the world and culture could have produced someone like Smith. Or was he just a one-off that could have come from anywhere? Albeit on some level, he could just as well have come from another planet, perhaps in the same planetary system that produced Sun Ra or that ranting genius down the road apiece. A planet populated by outsiders who travelled to earth to live amongst other aliens and alienated. Of course, Smith was a hurricane unto himself- I won't say an <i>American phenomenon</i>, though I'm tempted to do so- who grew up in the 1920 and early 1930s in the northwest, Anacortes and Bellingham to be precise, which is as geographically marginal as it gets, unless, of course that is where you come from, and even then. It helps to know that Smith comes from a world steeped in Native American culture, a fishing based community, whose survival depended on its utilitarianism. </div><div><br /></div><div>Thanks to Bret Lunsford’s beautifully put together and diligently researched <i>Sounding For Harry Smith</i> (see the trailer for the book below), we can now glimpse the world Smith comes from. Though it’s a world that has passed most of us by, Lunsford has managed to dig into the archives, to find the people who knew Smith, or the people who knew the people who knew Smith, to recreate the culture from which he emerged. It's a world seemingly lost in time, but here substantiated by photographs and the historical record Lunsford has uncovered. Of course, that past is not all that far off, which only illustrates how much has changed over the last hundred years. Which makes<i> Sounding… </i>partly a history and partly an archeological study of sorts, reminiscent of another book I've recently come across, The Sea View Has Me Again by Patrick Wright, about the German novelist Uwe Johnson and his stay on the Isle of Sheppey, in the UK. Both books divide their narrative between person and place, no matter how incongruous that place might seem. Of course, such books are, to some extent, cannot help but fail if only because no such study can explain the likes of subjects such as Johnson or Smith. However, both books come as close as one can get. To the degree that one comes away knowing not only a lot more about their subjects and their world. A native of the region, Lunsford, regarding his locality, might at times venture a little too far into the weeds, but that doesn't matter- one could say the same about Wright's book, or, for that matter, Charles Olson's Maximus Poems- because it's the undercurrents that matter. In the end <i>Sounding... </i>is a book born out of a love for both a place and a person, with enough photographs, maps, stories and ephemera to satisfy any true Smith obsessive. </div><div><br /></div><div>In combining historicity and biography, Lunsford has produced an exemplary piece of investigative writing. In that way it complements the handful of other books on Smith, such as <i>American Magus</i> edited by Paola Igliori, and Rani Singh's collection of interviews, <i>Think of the Self Speaking</i>, not to mention Daniel Darrin's short but sharp <i>Harry Smith- Fragments of a Northwest Life</i>, which explores the intervening years between growing up in the Northwest and becoming the Harry Smith one knows today. The fact is, Smith for a growing handful of multi-disciplinarians a life sentence. Anyone serving such a sentence, or even those seeking parole, will want to give this book their close attention. It is, after all, not only about Smith but about an America, perhaps not so much lost as rarely found, not so much about the weird as about those ghosts who haunt the present. In an increasingly homogenised world, where everything, even the likes of Harry Smith, can be turned into a commodity, that seems like an honest and important activity to pursue. </div><div><br /></div><p>For a concise overview of Harry Smith, could do worse than check out Raymond Foye's on-line entry which can be found <a href="http://philiptaaffe.info/critical-texts/raymond-foye/" rel="" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p>Finally, here's a trailer of sorts for Lunsford's book preceded by what is for me a memorable extract from John Cohen's 1969 interview, republished in Singh's Think of the Self Speaking, of Smith revealing something of his past, while, at the same time, revealing his puckish sense of humour. </p><p><i>"John Cohen: Someone once told me that you were thinking for a while that your father might have been some English mystic who was travelling through.</i></p><p><i>Harry Smith: That was Aleister Crowley, and as a matter of fact, my mother did know Crowley at about that time. She saw him running naked down the beach, perhaps in 1913 or 1915. I wish I had gone more into the chronology of my antecedents.</i></p><p><i>JC: But he's not your father.</i></p><p><i>HS: I don't know.</i></p><p><i>JC: Oh, you mean there's a possibility?</i></p><p><i>HS: Sure. I suppose there's a possibility that President Coolidge was. Because of my father's and grandfather's interest in mysticism, the basement was full of books on whether Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays, alchemy, and so forth. I had a whole blacksmith shop. I spent a lot of time trying to transmute lead into gold. My father was in the salmon fishing business, and during the war they fished the Fraser and Columbia rivers dry, so the canneries closed, and that was my playground as a child." </i></p><p><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="308" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qhDREt97fHw" width="370" youtube-src-id="qhDREt97fHw"></iframe> </p></div></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-7648015040619341212021-07-05T14:47:00.001+01:002021-07-05T15:28:52.703+01:00The Big Spill-over: Recent books by William Gardner Smith, Lee Durkee, Billy Wilder, John Sanford, Paul Buck, Kirby Doyle, John Wieners, Anna Mendelssohn, Katherine Gogou <p><br /></p><p>The books have been piling up again. So here are some short reviews of a few- fiction, journalism, poetry- that have recently come my way. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IUYqTRsWBhg/YNL1zCHrLrI/AAAAAAAAC6U/2o3NwmlscCU5ZlLE-Gdc_V5eA-0ywUlSgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1010/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B09.49.46.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1010" data-original-width="660" height="193" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IUYqTRsWBhg/YNL1zCHrLrI/AAAAAAAAC6U/2o3NwmlscCU5ZlLE-Gdc_V5eA-0ywUlSgCLcBGAsYHQ/w127-h193/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B09.49.46.png" width="127" /></a></div><div><br /></div>1) <b>The Stone Face by William Gardner Smith. </b>NYRB. Simeon, an African-American journalist not similar from the author, decides, after a confrontation with a group of sailors in his native Philadelphia, to exchange the racism of America for the racial tolerance of early 1960s Paris. This at a time when the city of lights was considered a sanctuary, particularly for many black American writers, painters and musicians. But Simeon discovers that Paris has its own form of racism, in this case directed at the Algerian population. This at a time when the Algerian war for independence was reaching its final stage. Simeon discovers that, despite his skin colour, he is considered the enemy, by default implicated in his country's foreign crimes. And that he and his fellow African Americans are only a step away from being thought of as white. Unlike most of his ex-pat friends, Simeon realises the contradiction that he, as an American, is entangled, and chooses to side with the Algerians. According to Adam Shatz, in his informative introduction, The Stone Face was the first novel anywhere to address the 1961 Paris massacre in which the head of police, Papon, a Nazi collaborator and official in the Vichy government, sent scores of Algerian demonstrators to their death. When it comes to addressing the politics of racism and America's place in the world, Smith's book compares favourably with the writing of any other ex-pat of that era, including the likes of Baldwin, Himes and Wright. <div><p></p><p><br /></p><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h_Ll9Btx5NI/YNL2MKJLdLI/AAAAAAAAC6c/bewPMMKSqTgN9XFO9rJwhMW5FDQiaOGygCLcBGAsYHQ/s988/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B09.51.37.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="988" data-original-width="598" height="155" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h_Ll9Btx5NI/YNL2MKJLdLI/AAAAAAAAC6c/bewPMMKSqTgN9XFO9rJwhMW5FDQiaOGygCLcBGAsYHQ/w118-h155/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B09.51.37.png" width="118" /></a></div>2) <b>The Last Taxi Driver by Lee Durkee</b>. No Exit Press/Tin House. As a former midnight shift Yellow Cab driver in San Francisco in the late 1960s, I can attest to the veracity of Durkee's book, as well as to the humorous encounters which every cab driver experiences, not to mention the sideways perspective that goes with the job. I used to refer what my cab as my own personal theater of the absurd, but in Durkee's it might have transformed into a theater of cruelty. That's because the competition is greater, the stakes are higher and job protection hardly exists at all. Rather than nestling in the warm but corrupt arms of the Brotherhood of Teamsters which was the case in my day, Durkee portrays a world in which cab drivers, like so many others, are without a union to protect them, and so easy prey as precariats in our current Uber world. As Durkee shows, no one who drives a cab escapes unscathed. I still have dreams about reporting at the Yellow Cab lot south of Market Street, flashing my Teamsters withdrawal card, only for the dispatcher to yell at me for not showing up for work for the last fifty years, then reluctantly giving me a cab the usual faulty brakes. Of course, Durkee's shift comes decades later. It’s the modern world, worse than ever, but every bit as absurdly humourous.<p></p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FN898KPDsoU/YNL3XzO3NVI/AAAAAAAAC6k/EL9jtFxzhekXM7TqDVfV7YpEIPb4AFQTQCLcBGAsYHQ/s978/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B09.56.27.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="978" data-original-width="638" height="190" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FN898KPDsoU/YNL3XzO3NVI/AAAAAAAAC6k/EL9jtFxzhekXM7TqDVfV7YpEIPb4AFQTQCLcBGAsYHQ/w131-h190/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B09.56.27.png" width="131" /></a></div>3)<b> </b>Billy Wilder On Assignment, ed by Noah Isenberg, trans by Shelley Frisch. Princeton University Press. A real eye opener not only when it comes to Weimar Berlin in the 1920s but to Wilder's uncanny ability as a journalist specialising in vignettes and short-form dispatches. From describing his days as a dancer for hire to his interviews with a variety of famous people, Wilder’s voice shines through, and will be familiar to anyone who loves the wit, sardonic take on the world and humour, of his films. In fact, many of these pieces read as though they could have been yesterday rather than nearly a century ago. I remember Andrew Sarris, in a lecture at the NFT in the 1970s, say that Wilder, not long after arriving in America, wrote to his mother in the old country, and told her that he was doing well but had changed his first name to Thornton. I thought, at the time, that Sarris had been joking, and the story couldn't be true. But after reading Wilder On Assignement, I realise that Sarris was simply stating a biographical fact. <p></p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ICUchB9SSSA/YNL5P5eRoOI/AAAAAAAAC60/8FK-XVd1zng2s1H0BETMHAkLUNjgiLwIACLcBGAsYHQ/s672/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B10.04.38.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="456" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ICUchB9SSSA/YNL5P5eRoOI/AAAAAAAAC60/8FK-XVd1zng2s1H0BETMHAkLUNjgiLwIACLcBGAsYHQ/w136-h200/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B10.04.38.png" width="136" /></a></div>4) <b>The Old Man's Place by John Sanford. Brash Press.</b> This along with the evocatively titled Make My Bed In Hell, both published recently by Brash, represent two pulp noir novels by a writer, real name Julian Shapiro, perhaps best known for his proletariat novel, The People From Heaven and several volumes of autobiography. Sanford, who was also a minor Hollywood screenwriter and friend of Nathaniel West’s, was married to the successful screenwriter Marguerite Roberts, with whom Sanford collaborated on the 1941 film Honky Tonk. Both Sanford and Roberts were members of the Communist Party and victims of the blacklist. Make My Bed In Hell and The Old Man's Place, the latter loosely adapted for the screen by Edwin. Sherwin in 1971, as well as being evocative of a particular time and place, are good enough to be placed next to novels by such writers as Jim Thompson, Erskine Caldwell, and James M. Cain. Moreover, they demonstrate the thin line that exists between early pulp noir and proletariat fiction. One can’t help but wonder how Sanford, who ended up writing over twenty books, would have fared had he continued churning out novels in the vein of these two pulp novels, rather than pursue a Hollywood career or that of a memoirist.<div><div><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dM04JYEFgLQ/YNL5zx9n1wI/AAAAAAAAC7E/a05TSVgQVyEh0Y-g2bbn-NSlI-M_UpF1QCLcBGAsYHQ/s930/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B10.07.06.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="930" data-original-width="600" height="192" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dM04JYEFgLQ/YNL5zx9n1wI/AAAAAAAAC7E/a05TSVgQVyEh0Y-g2bbn-NSlI-M_UpF1QCLcBGAsYHQ/w129-h192/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B10.07.06.png" width="129" /></a></div>5)<b> Along the River Run by Paul Buck</b>. Prototype Press. Essential for anyone travelling to Lisbon, or, for that matter, anywhere in the EU. It centres on two Milwallian lads on the run from the authorities in London who have to negotiate the city with only Farage-like wide boy skills. This is a novel that doesn’t have to try too hard to portray the clash of cultures, as Brexit xenophobia rubs up, beer and testosterone fuelled, against European class values. At the same time, it's as evocative of the city as anything by the likes of Pessoa. While reading Buck's novel, I was reminded of the time I was mugged at gunpoint after leaving a Fado cafe well after midnight in the Alfama district. The muggers got away with whatever euros I had before scampering off into the night. I reluctantly made an insurance claim, but to do so the police insisted on taking me on a tour of various seedy bars in the criminal quarter to see if I could possibly point out the guilty party. Of course, I couldn't. But being the noirist that I am, I really did appreciate the guided tour. </div><div><p></p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NRC4s3Vt-xc/YNL6ImDfe8I/AAAAAAAAC7M/3XH6wzHQ94gX6k_2BMWkN9hOzACfwGhswCLcBGAsYHQ/s556/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B10.08.26.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="556" data-original-width="398" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NRC4s3Vt-xc/YNL6ImDfe8I/AAAAAAAAC7M/3XH6wzHQ94gX6k_2BMWkN9hOzACfwGhswCLcBGAsYHQ/w143-h200/Screenshot%2B2021-06-23%2Bat%2B10.08.26.png" width="143" /></a></div>6) <b>Happiness Bastard by Kirby Doyle</b>. Another one from Tough Poets Press. This one from my old digger comrade, and arguably the most unread, if not under-appreciated poet to appear in Don Allen's 1960s anthology New American Poetry. This is Kirby's only published novel that I know of. It's one of those works that borders between the unreadable and the unputdownable. Written in the manner of early Kerouac, which is to say on a single scroll of paper, it comes across as a work of debauched genius, and a must read for anyone interested in Beat or Digger culture. It's also unlike anything one is likely to come across. Less like On the Road than Dylan's Tarantula. I hadn’t realised that Kirby had taken culinary classes at San Francisco State. Maybe he should have teamed up with the poet Frank Lima and film-maker Peter Kubelka and opened an international haute-cuisine restaurant based on Digger principles.<p></p></div><div><br /></div><div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a8VjE_wSy6o/YNsRY-NmUzI/AAAAAAAAC8E/_9Aq1LdB73cmtenZh0wtdJ3i37DZin3jgCLcBGAsYHQ/s820/Screenshot%2B2021-06-29%2Bat%2B13.25.34.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="568" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a8VjE_wSy6o/YNsRY-NmUzI/AAAAAAAAC8E/_9Aq1LdB73cmtenZh0wtdJ3i37DZin3jgCLcBGAsYHQ/w139-h200/Screenshot%2B2021-06-29%2Bat%2B13.25.34.png" width="139" /></a></div>7) <b>Yours Presently, The Selected Letters of John Wieners, ed by Michael Seth Stewart</b>. University of New Mexico Press. A wonderful collection of missives from Wieners to, for the most part, an assortment of mid-to-late 20th century writers, the likes of which include Creeley, Kyger, Olson, Dorn, Duncan, and Blaser, Whalen, DiPrima, Levertov, Rumaker, Ginsberg, Irving Rosenthal, etc.. These letters could be read as a cultural history stretching from the mid-1950s to the 1990s. For me, few surpass Wieners when it comes to writing lyrical poetry of such heart-wrenching beauty. And, of course, these letters, so revealing in themselves, whether having to do with poetry, drugs, or gay culture, have to be read in conjunction with Wieners' work. Even so, they qualify as more than marginalia to that body of work, but illustrate what goes into the making of a poet, as well as the thin line between poet as victim/object and poet as activist, rather than that dodgy concept of poet as some kind of “antenna” (a Poundian concept that is, at best, suspect), <i>derangé</i> or as a necessarily damaged soul.</div><div><p></p><p><br /></p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jKFX7X89vVM/YNsSVZ3DPyI/AAAAAAAAC8M/CE9TMhQ8r9MH6Qn5vbYcuw2Ka6XAJolEACLcBGAsYHQ/s522/Screenshot%2B2021-06-29%2Bat%2B13.29.51.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="518" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jKFX7X89vVM/YNsSVZ3DPyI/AAAAAAAAC8M/CE9TMhQ8r9MH6Qn5vbYcuw2Ka6XAJolEACLcBGAsYHQ/w199-h200/Screenshot%2B2021-06-29%2Bat%2B13.29.51.png" width="199" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table>8) <b>I'm Working Here, The Collected Poems of Anna Mendelssohn </b>(Shearsman). There is something to be said for anyone with the courage, or should that be audacity, to make poetry their life, and to do so without succumbing to bad faith or cynicism or reducing their work to the lowest common denominator. But Mendelssohn succeeded at doing just that. By now Mendelssohn's backstory is familiar: as a member of the 1970s militant Angry Brigade, she was imprisoned for some four years for conspiracy to cause explosion. On her release, writing under the name Grace Lake, she began to devote herself exclusively to her poetry and artwork. Even so, it seemed that during her lifetime she never showed more than a passing interest in seeing her work in print. The title, I'm Working Here, seems fitting, implying, as it does, a circumscribed space and poems unlike anyone else's, that ranged from the lyrical to the expostulatory, from the ecstatic to the subtly political and surreal, from the linguistically dense to the playful and elusive. All with an intensity that sweeps her lines across the page, less because she could not stop herself than seeking to include everything. Reading her, it’s possible to trace her hermetically sealed world as it migrates from the political to the personal and back again, in a lifetime's loop that becomes its own biography. </div><div><br /></div><div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BOlyxHWng4A/YNsVJsps1CI/AAAAAAAAC8U/0bNhZAMnoZU5B08OwL66dB0YpnaLvtquwCLcBGAsYHQ/s562/Screenshot%2B2021-06-29%2Bat%2B13.41.53.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="400" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BOlyxHWng4A/YNsVJsps1CI/AAAAAAAAC8U/0bNhZAMnoZU5B08OwL66dB0YpnaLvtquwCLcBGAsYHQ/w143-h200/Screenshot%2B2021-06-29%2Bat%2B13.41.53.png" width="143" /></a></div>9) <span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Now Let's See What You're Gonna Do, Poems 1978-2002</b> (The Divers Collection, fmsbw) by Katerina Gogou. These poems are so full of fire, so human, so reckless and vulnerable, that they threaten to burn up in your hands. As personal as they are political, these poems, for the most part, do not make </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">for easy reading, and are not for the faint hearted. Nevertheless, they remain inspiriing. A well known Greek actor and leftist, Gogou killed herself in 1993, having reached the end of her tether emotionally as well as politically. Only for her writing to be resurrected by such admirers as poets Sean Bonney, Jack Hirschman and Nanos Valaoritis. One wonders how Gogou would have responded, poetically and politically, had she lived to see recent events in her country, from the rise and fall of Syriza to the resurgence of fascists like those in Golden Dawn. Hirschman says the Greek Communist Party is evoked in her poems like a lover who has betrayed her. And perhaps that is so. Certainly her poems, like those of Pasolini, move beyond the organised left, to the heart and soul of the marginalised, a call to arms to claim a space for the dispossessed and vulnerable that she hoped would emerge from the page. Who knows, perhaps one day her poems might succeed in doing just that. </span></div><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></div><div><p></p></div></div></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-6000950547966813262021-06-20T10:50:00.003+01:002021-11-22T10:07:57.837+00:00On Dangerous Ground: Try and Get Me (1950), Where Danger Lives (1950)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PG4CLVl2BWA/X9N7kJOgxqI/AAAAAAAACzg/A0480rdYl7UDUuoT3J_YyOm8ZB_rZKO5QCLcBGAsYHQ/s792/Screenshot%2B2020-12-11%2Bat%2B14.00.10.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="792" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PG4CLVl2BWA/X9N7kJOgxqI/AAAAAAAACzg/A0480rdYl7UDUuoT3J_YyOm8ZB_rZKO5QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2020-12-11%2Bat%2B14.00.10.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><span><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span><br /></span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Try and Get Me (Cyril Endfield, 1950)</span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>Take away this San Jose, </span><span>replete counter-</span><span>factual </span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">lynchings, deep into the genotypical. And if </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">offending the offendable, remove the offence,</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">or, for that matter, sleazoid jurisprudence. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Preambled by yet another religious nutter, his </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">sign, gulp, muddy water, turkey in all this </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">chinoiserie<i>:</i> like, <span>"How </span><span>much </span><span>are you guilty </span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>for </span><span>the evils </span><span>in the world?" </span><span>Swallow,</span> head down. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Numb post-war suburban man, washed with a yen </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">for monopoly capitalism. Lurking in a tostada-</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">with-all-the-trimmings clink. Ain’t no get outta </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">jail free card in this star spangled banana republic. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And "no law against what's right." But what <i>is</i> right? </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Poor pendejo<i>,</i> coming back to his little chickadee. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In darkness, a window, his only art, <i>sans</i> tv to </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">distract, <i>sans</i><i> </i>disposable dosh to schlep his sitcom </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">son to a ball game. Still, ducks will slurp for the </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">nearest psycho, and rungs on the ladder will break </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">with lumpen farce, Elmer Fudding <i>raison</i><i> </i>robbery. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Born to shoot shit, his marriage crumbles for lack </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">of middle-class moxy. Spilling beans on a barroom </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">floor, to a wallflower displaying her magnificent </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">ambersons, plumaged to shop the schmuckable, </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">revving the reviled to break <i>into</i><i> </i>jail, their monkeys </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">signifying one man's guilt might well be another </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">man's <i>gelt</i>. Whether<i> </i><span>b</span>ackroom boy or tinselled </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">mensch<i>, </i>seething to insert an immigrant root-canal </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">cosmopolitan, eurosplaining<i> </i>vigilantism. Pre-</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Murdoched with a by-lined Green Stamp wallop, </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>sans</i> hostages to redeem, for this, buy easy bay lurch. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pR_3DBgBS48/X9N8skxTfCI/AAAAAAAACzs/JZDl4yGk368CRdg8UdkyRobIaMfv5z95QCLcBGAsYHQ/s834/Screenshot%2B2020-12-11%2Bat%2B14.04.59.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="612" data-original-width="834" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pR_3DBgBS48/X9N8skxTfCI/AAAAAAAACzs/JZDl4yGk368CRdg8UdkyRobIaMfv5z95QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2020-12-11%2Bat%2B14.04.59.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Where Danger Lives (John Farrow, 1950)</span></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Who doesn’t “do” anxiety, influence or discontents. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">High rollers, disguised as low hitters. Dodge-ball </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">pretenders and four-square curators. Likewise, scionic </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">border rats, and their calico partners. Blimey! It’s a </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">replicant of Willeford’s Wild Wives, six years later. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Uncredited, forgotten, unmentioned, or marooned in </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>anodyneland.</i> But let’s gloss this lipstick, mire this </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">pig in graveyard proverbials. Picture a wealthy young </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">wife, her past perturbing her present, secondhand</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">clocking a handsome young doctor. We wonder, is</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">the old guy her husband or father? Well, Cassandra </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">is nothing if not complex. That Dr Mitch and the old </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">man come to blows, is more ontological than generational. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That Dr Mitch dances like Sluggo, must impair his</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">gamut of suicidal tendencies. Like travelling to Mexico, </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">with warts and all peccadilloes. Nearing the border, her </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">psychosis riles, tries to kill Dr Mitch. Hardly <i>una </i></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>mojada,</i> but shot all the same, straight to the core of her </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">consequentialism. Her confession prompting a debate </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">on the nature of false consciousness. Is this a stitch-up, </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">or simply a gold digger’s diet? Ubiquitous, granular </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">paranoia, so lopsided this autonomy, so why can’t these </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">fuckers recycle their trash as they do their movies or </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">wives? <i>I had no choice. I fell under her spell. </i>As old as </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hollywood, clueless though it was and always has been. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><br /><b></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px;"><b></b></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-77299039078658947022021-06-10T10:59:00.000+01:002021-06-10T10:59:22.513+01:00Prisoners On the Page: Myron Brinig's The Flutter of an Eyelid<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hWlbqsmlbGg/YMHdtlUjF5I/AAAAAAAAC5Q/l7nLfRgJnQgoMZKWrk9ObX68T0i9uIA9ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1156/Screenshot%2B2021-06-10%2Bat%2B10.38.19.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1156" data-original-width="824" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hWlbqsmlbGg/YMHdtlUjF5I/AAAAAAAAC5Q/l7nLfRgJnQgoMZKWrk9ObX68T0i9uIA9ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-06-10%2Bat%2B10.38.19.png" /></span></a></div><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px; min-height: 15px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">It must have been over 20 years ago that I first became obsessed with the seldom-spotted existence of Myron Brinig’s Southern California-based 1933 novel </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Flutter of an Eyelid</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">. The novel had been mentioned in two related but very different books I’d been reading, Mike Davis</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">s </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster </i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">and Kevin Starr</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">s </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s.</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> Had I been paying more attention, I would have remembered a similar shout-out in Carey McWilliams</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">s seminal 1946 </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Southern California: An Island on the Land</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">. It wasn</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">t just the novel</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">s evocative title that grabbed me, but the descriptions of its setting and devastating finale, as well as the controversy surrounding it in its own time. Back then I thought I knew a bit about California fiction from the 1930s, but here was a book I</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">d never seen, much less read. And for good reason. In spite of, or maybe because of, its merits, Brinig</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">’</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">s novel had then been languishing in obscurity for over half a century. Fortunately, thanks to this elegant edition from Tough Poets Press, with complementary illustrations by the renowned Lynd Ward, </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Flutter</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> has, after some 90 years, finally risen to captivate anew.</span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Given their respective agendas, Davis and Starr emphasized different aspects of Brinig’s novel. As a leftist cultural critic, Davis applies, as one might expect, a political lens, referring to <i>Flutter</i> as a “savage satirical novel that ends in mock apocalypse,” a precursor to — and arguably more original than — Nathaniel West’s <i>Day of the Locust</i>, which was published six years later. Meanwhile Starr, the former state librarian and eminent California historian, presents Brinig’s novel simply as one of the more interesting, eccentric, and scandalous works in a litany of neglected works from that era. In fact, Starr appears to be more impressed by the audacity of the novel than by its literary qualities, much less its prognostications regarding geographical retribution for the populations’ excesses and sins. </span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Davis’s special interest lies in Southern California catastrophe literature, a sub-genre that, at the time of <i>Flutter’s</i> publication, had yet to become as fashionable as it would in subsequent years. He claims that from 1931 to 1940 Los Angeles had been decimated in literature on at least seven occasions. With its literal and figurative fault lines, California, and L.A. in particular, seemed destined, even in the 1930s, to meet an untimely end — an end that would , for various <i>retributionists</i>, be its just comeuppance for decadence, economic inequalities, real estate speculation, cults, quackery, and the obsession with celebrity.</span></p><div><br /></div><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Davis make a further claim — namely, that Brinig was one of the first novelists to suggest a destructive correspondence between evangelicalism and not only bohemia, but the various cults of which Californians have always been so fond. That said, Starr, though largely apolitical, had the nous to place <i>Flutter</i> amidst a handful of other relatively unacknowledged 1930s classics, such as <i>You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up</i> by Richard Hallas (pseudonym of Eric Knight), <i>The Long Haul </i>by A. I. Bezzerides, <i>Count Ten</i> by Hans Otto Storm, or the better known <i>They Shoot Horses, Don’t They</i> by Horace McCoy. Of those novels, it’s <i>You Play the Black</i> to which <i>Flutter</i> might best be compared. In many ways, <i>Flutter</i> reads like a cross between Hallas’s dark novel and an array of other, more diverse works, from Evelyn Waugh’s to James Branch Cabell’s, with perhaps a soupçon of Wyndham Lewis, whose <i>Apes of God </i>is accented by a similar cattiness. At the same time, Brinig’s novel is so original that it is quite capable of holding its own in such company.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Born in Minneapolis in 1896, Brinig grew up in Butte, Montana where his Jewish Romanian father ran a dry goods store catering to local miners and their families. Brinig would attend NYU, followed by a spell working for Daryl Zanuck’s studios in Fort Lee. By the time <i>Flutter</i> appeared, he had already published five novels. This one appears to have been the result of a short, but uncomfortable, stay in Los Angeles at the beginning of the 1930s. At the time, Brinig was by all accounts on a fast track to literary notoriety — one that, in the year of <i>Flutter’s</i> publication, took him to New Mexico, where he was feted by that doyenne of Taos, Mabel Dodge Luhan. She was so impressed by Brinig, who she thought might become an American D.H. Lawrence, that she suggested he help write her memoirs. Brinig claimed the rough draft of Luhan’s life was “one of the most damning arraignments of modern white society in literature.” After he placed his stamp on her story, the two had a falling-out, echoing what one suspects had taken place in Southern California a couple years earlier. Luhan achieved her revenge in a 1935 short story, “Derision is Easy,” in which she portrayed Brinig as a voyeur seeking to penetrate the inner lives of others to use in his fiction. In turn, Brinig would offer a portrait of Luhan in his 1941 novel <i>All of Their Lives,</i> a no-holds-barred account that included the Luhan-like character’s fictional death by lightning. Brinig clearly had a fondness for such endings, with nature meting out revenge on some deserving person or population; there was also his 1937 novel <i>The Sisters,</i> which ends with the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">None of his other novels, however, is as strange as <i>Flutter</i>. His earlier books had mostly been set in Butte. The protagonist of <i>Singerman </i>(1929) was based on Brinig’s immigrant father; <i>Wide Open Town</i> (1931), depicted disputes and disasters in the local mining community, including the lynching of a character based on Wobbly organizer Frank Little (recalling Dashiell Hammett’s <i>Red Harvest</i>, published three years earlier); and <i>This Man Is My Brother (</i>1932), also set in Montana, bravely portrayed the lives of two gay siblings. At the time, some were comparing Brinig to Thomas Wolfe, but anyone familiar with more recent novels of the West might, when reading <i>Wide Open Town,</i> be put in mind of Oakley Hall’s classic <i>Warlock</i> (1958). Yet so different is <i>Flutter</i> from <i>Wide Open Town</i> and the other novels that came before that one might be excused for thinking it belonged to some other author.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(You can read the remainder of this article at the<a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/prisoners-of-the-page-on-myron-brinigs-the-flutter-of-an-eyelid/"> L.A. Review of Books</a>)</span></p>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21752471.post-92179651088977948352021-05-18T15:20:00.003+01:002021-05-18T15:20:39.217+01:00Willy Vlautin’s The Night Always Comes<p></p><div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y26r_L3R-fc/YJ_tZz24v5I/AAAAAAAAC4c/IEDgaTDZDXMdgQE5mwAIqyYtfL2U-szQACLcBGAsYHQ/s1316/Screenshot%2B2021-05-15%2Bat%2B16.48.38.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="890" data-original-width="1316" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y26r_L3R-fc/YJ_tZz24v5I/AAAAAAAAC4c/IEDgaTDZDXMdgQE5mwAIqyYtfL2U-szQACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2B2021-05-15%2Bat%2B16.48.38.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">"This is the saddest story I have ever heard," reads the opening sentence of Ford Maddox Ford's novel The Good Soldier. One could say the same about Willy Vlautin's latest work of fiction, The Night Always Comes. If not the saddest, then something close to it. But it's also, for me, Vlautin’s best novel yet. On the other hand, I'm prejudiced, since Vlautin has recently become one of my favourites. Though I have to admit it did take me several years to come to that conclusion, or even to fully appreciate his writing. Of course, I'd always liked his deeply rooted band Richmond Fontaine and, more recently, The Delines. But that might have been why I’d always been reluctant to give his work the attention it deserved. In my defence, I can only say, what an idiot I can sometimes be. </span></div><div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">In fact, it was only in the past year, filled as it has been with hardship and grieving, in both a general and personal sense, that I found myself with more than enough time to finally discover why Vlautin is rated so highly by so many writers I respect. So, over the past seven or eight months I've read each of his books in the order in which they were written. Despite my culture-lag, I can say in all honesty that there are few writers capable to conveying such compassion for ordinary, troubled souls as does Vlautin, and to do so in such a non-nonsense, straightforward and readable manner. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Although the tone of his work, with its cast of hard-bitten characters, might strike a similar chord, Vlautin draws upon a range of influences. Foremost, of course, is his adherence to historically rich tradition of noir fiction and, by extension, film. But he also occasionally calls on elements of science fiction, and, even more so, novels of the west. And like many hardcore noirists, Vlautin has clearly been influenced by certain proletariat writers, with their concern for the plight of people exploited and beaten down by those who the power to do so. But if Vlautin in his latest novel is reminiscent of anyone, it must surely be David Goodis, whose tragic and haunting tales focus on a range of troubled souls. In fact, it sometimes seems like Vlautin is channelling Goodis, while throwing in a touch of Jim Thompson to keep things interesting and unpredictable. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The novel itself revolves around Lynette, a twenty-something who's been extremely hard done by, some might say trampled on, by others, who, for the most part, happen to be men. In addition she has a history of personal problems. All of which she is doing her best to overcome, and to do what's right for those close to her. But that's made difficult not only by various people standing in her way, but by the prevailing state of things. All around her, she can't help but note that her home town of Portland is becoming increasingly gentrified. But Lynette, who, to save money, holds down more than one job while occasionally engaging in some dubious activities, inhabits a world in which trickle-down economics has not trickled down far enough to benefit her in any substantial way. And probably never will. She lives in a rented run down house with her disabled brother and mother. The latter, in contrast to Lynette, is nothing if not beaten down by a lifetime of hard work, bad luck and bad decisions, and has no interest in sharing Lynette’s dream of buying their ramshackle house to give them a leg-up on a slippery ladder that might lead to solvency. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">I mentioned the influence of proletariat fiction in Vlautin’s work. For me that's most apparent in Lynette’s mother’s five page inebriated assessment of the world at the end of the book, which reads like a 21st century inversion- filled with despair rather than hope- of Ma Joad’s “we keep a comin” speech at the end of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It's a grim assessment regarding the state of things. Even so, Vlautin doesn’t portray Lynette's mother, despite her view of the world, as a bad person but simply someone who has been destroyed by the system, whose future has been used up, but, despite what appears to be cruelty, might see in Lynette a glimmer of hope. There aren’t many writers able to create such realistic characters and do so with such depth and humanity. In this day and age that’s saying a lot.</span></p></div>Woody Hauthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13837720724248494747noreply@blogger.com0