Author: Biblioklept

The Old People (Book acquired, Sept. 2021)

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The Old People is a 2014 novel by A.J. Perry. The Old People gets a new life thanks to Carrying Woman Originals, an imprint of Cow Eye Press, which also published Perry’s novel Cow Country a few years ago.  As you can see in the photo above, Perry’s name is not on the cover. There’s no blurb on the back. Perry’s name shows up on the editions page and then on a second title page that faces the edition page (but not on the first title page).

I was under metaphorical water in September when The Old People arrived, having decided to recommit to doing a good job at my job, by which I mean trying to provide much more feedback and coaching and general mental attendance to my students than I think I was giving in the last (covid-drenched) semesters, all the while worrying about the utter idiocy of Florida Fall 2021’s Death Campaign. Anyway, I stacked it in a growing stack of other TBR copies and retreated into Barthelme’s stories I’d already read a few times when I made the time to read for pleasure.

I moved the stack around today, dropping The Old People to the floor. I picked it up, decided to read the opening pages, and then kept reading. It’s really good! I mean, it’s a really strange thing. It’s a book about tying a knot, which I guess is a metaphor, but it’s really focused on that metaphor’s concrete component. Pages and pages of digging holes and tying knots. I’m not sure exactly what The Old People reminds me of, but it taps into the intersection of myth and anthropology, all without being precious or pretentious (so far, anyway). I hunted down a blurb on Cow Eye’s site:

Since the beginnings of darkest silence the people of a mythical island have spent their days tying the ancient knot that binds them to their past. To tie this knot they must dig a hole; to dig a hole they first must have fire; and to make a fire that is hot enough for hole digging, the knot that they have been tying must finally be tied. From silence to mud to rope to knot to wood to words to fire, the Old People will work to tie their knot under the cool shade of the island’s original knotmaking.

 

“1492” — Emma Lazarus

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Work — Jeffery Edwards

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Work, 1972 by Jeffery Edwards (b. 1945)

The Artist in Her Studio — Paula Rego

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The Artist in Her Studio, 1993 by Paula Rego (b. 1935)

“Hell Pig” — Aimee Nezhukumatathil

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“Hell Pig”
by
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
To keep me from staying out late at night,
my mother warned of the Hell Pig. Black and full
of hot drool, eyes the color of a lung—it’d follow me
home if I stayed past my curfew. How to tell my friends
to press Pause in the middle of a video, say their good-byes
while I shuffled up the stairs and into my father’s waiting
blue car? How to explain this to my dates, whisper
why we could not finish this dance? It’s not like the pig
had any special powers or could take a tiny bite
from my leg—only assurances that it was simply
scandal to be followed home. When my date and I
pull into my driveway and dim the lights, we take
care to make all the small noises that get made
in times like these even smaller: squeaks in the seats,
a slow spin of the radio dial, the silver click of my belt.
Too late. A single black hair flickers awake the ear
of the dark animal waiting for me at the end of the walk.
My fumbling of keys and various straps a wild dance
to the door—the pig grunting in tune to each hurried step, each
of his wet breaths puffing into tiny clouds, a small storm brewing.

Melville’s Bartleby, but just the punctation

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Melville’s Bartleby, but just the punctuation.

The Acrobat Schulz V — Albert Birkle

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The Acrobat Schulz V, 1921 by Albert Birkle (1900-1986 )

Autumn Scenery — He Duoling

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Autumn Scenery, 1988 by He Duoling (b. 1948)

Boring Dolls — Jeanne Mammen

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Boring Dolls, 1929 by Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976)

I’m Supposed to Be Fun — Rae Klein

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I’m Supposed to Be Fun, 2021 by Rae Klein (b. 1995)

The Raft — Adrian Ghenie

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The Raft, 2019 by Adrian Ghenie (b. 1977)

I wanted to be a painter | Fragments are the only forms I trust (Donald Barthelme)

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You’ve noticed the wall? I pin things on it, souvenirs. There is the red hat, there the book of instructions for the Ant Farm And this is a traffic ticket written on a saint’s day (which saint? I don’t remember) in 1 954 just outside a fat little town (which town? I don’t remember) in Ohio by a cop who asked me what I did. I said I wrote poppycock for the president of a university, true then.

You can see how far I’ve come. Lunar hostility studies aren’t for everyone.

It’s my hope that these . . souvenirs . . will someday merge, blur–cohere is the word, maybe-into something meaningful. A grand word, meaningful. What do I look for? A work of art, I’ll not accept anything less Yes I know it’s shatteringly ingenuous but I wanted to be a painter. They get away with murder in my view; Mr. X. on the Times agrees with me. You don’t know how I envy them They can pick up a Baby Ruth wrapper on the street, glue it to the canvas (in the right place, of course, there’s that), and lot people crowd about and cry, “A real Baby Ruth wrapper, by God; what could be realer than that!” Fantastic metaphysical advantage. You hate them, if you’re ambitious.

The Ant Farm instructions are a souvenir of Sylvia. The red hat came from Cardinal Y. We’re friends, in a way.

I wanted to be one, when I was young, a painter. But I couldn’t stand stretching the canvas. Does things to the fingernails. And that’s the first place people look.

Fragments are the only forms I trust.

From “See the Moon?” by Donald Barthelme.

Pierre Senges’ Ahab (Sequels) (Book acquired, mid-September 2021)

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Ahab (Sequels) is the latest English-language translation of a Pierre Senges novel—and. Again, the translation is by Jacob Siefring (who’s brought us couple of Senges’ marvelous oddities) and Tegan Raleigh and is published by the good people at Contra Mundum. Their blurb:

The reader will find here the true aftermath of the adventures of Ahab, self-described captain, survivor of his last fight against a giant fish. We will see how this retiree with a wooden leg tried to sell his whale story to the highest bidder — in the form of a Broadway musical, then a Hollywood script. Along the way, we will encounter Cole Porter and his chorus girls, but also Cary Grant, Orson Welles, Joseph von Sternberg and Scott Fitzgerald, drowned in his alcohol, as well as a host of producers, shady to varying degrees. We will remember the passage of young Ahab embarking at seventeen for London in the hope of playing Shakespeare there, and the circumstances which presided over the meeting of the librettist Da Ponte with Herman Melville in 1838. We will learn, ultimately, the best way to make the Manhattan cocktail a success and with what tenacity the indestructible Moby Dick seeks revenge on his nemesis.

At 550 pages, Ahab, like Moby-Dick, is a big boy, but I’m looking forward to digging in.

The Neophyte (First Experience of the Monastery) — Gustave Doré

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The Neophyte (First Experience of the Monastery), 1868 by Gustave Doré (1832-1883)

The Flea — Graham Sutherland

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The Flea, 1979 by Graham Sutherland (1903-1980)

Riposte — Boris Taslitzky

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Riposte, 1951 by Boris Taslitzky (1911-2005)

Lovers in a Graveyard — George Warner Allen

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Lovers in a Graveyard by George Warner Allen (1916–1988)