From Upstream Color, 2013. Direction and cinematography by Shane Carruth. Via Film Grab.
Author: Biblioklept
Miss Europe — Kent Monkman
Miss Europe, 2016 by Kent Monkman (b. 1965)
“Why I Might Go to the Next Football Game” — Denis Johnson
“Why I Might Go to the Next Football Game”
by
Denis Johnson
sometimes you know
things: once at a
birthday party a little
girl looked at her new party
gloves and said she
liked me, making suddenly the light much
brighter so that the very small
hairs shone above her lip. i felt
stuffed, like a swimming pool, with
words, like i knew something that was in
a great tangled knot. and when we sat
down i saw there were
tiny glistenings on her
legs, too. i knew
something for sure then. but it
was too big, or like the outside too
everywhere, or maybe
hiding inside, behind
the bicycles where i later
kissed her, not using my tongue. it was
too giant and thin to squirm
into, and be so well inside of, or
too well hidden to punch, and feel. a few
days later on the asphalt playground i
tackled her. she skinned her
elbow, and i even
punched her and felt her, felt
how soft the hairs were. i thought
that i would make a fine football-playing
poet, but now i know
it is better to be an old, breathing
man wrapped in a great coat in the stands, who
remains standing after each play, who knows
something, who rotates in his place
rasping over and over the thing
he knows: “whydidnhe pass? the other
end was wide open! the end
was wide open! the end was wide open . . . ”
This system’s well constructed
Ennui — Walter Sickert
Ennui, c. 1914 by Walter Sickert (1860–1942)
Morning after the Flood — Mary Adshead
Morning after the Flood, 1928 by Mary Adshead (1904–1995)
Seminar — Eric White
Seminar, 2019 by Eric White (b. 1968)
Photograph from “The Postmodernists Dinner” — Jill Krementz
Photograph from “The Postmodernists Dinner,” 1983 by Jill Krementz (b. 1940)
From the University of Houston’s collection of Barthelme’s papers. The entry’s description:
Left to right: unidentified, unidentified, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, Robert Coover (turned), unidentified, Kurt Vonnegut, Walter Abish (with patch), William Gaddis (squatting), unidentified, William Gass, unidentified, unidentified. In 1983, Barthelme arranged a “Postmodernists Dinner” for the group of writers who were often lumped together under the “postmodernist” label. The reclusive Thomas Pynchon declined the invitation.
It would be swell if anyone could identify the women in the photograph. [Ed. note–the woman to Walter Abish’s left (behind Gass) is the artist Cecile Abish, Walter’s wife. Thanks to Terry in the comments.]
In his 2009 Barthelme biography Hiding Man, Tracy Daugherty offers the following recollection of the “Postmodernist Dinner” from novelist Walter Abish:
Around this time — in the spring of 1983 — “Donald had this idea to make a dinner in SoHo,” says Water Abish. “A major dinner for a group of writers, and he planned it very, very carefully. It was a strange event. Amusing and intriguing. He invited…well, that was the thing of it. The list. I was astounded that he consulted me but he called and said, ‘Should we invite so-and-so?’ Naturally, I did the only decent thing and said ‘Absolutely’ to everyone he mentioned. I pushed for Gaddis. Gass was there, and Coover and Hawkes, Vonnegut and his wife, Jill Krementz, who took photographs, I think. Don’s agent, Lynn Nesbit, was there. She was always very friendly. Susan Sontag was the only woman writer invited.
Daugherty continues:
Pynchon couldn’t make it. He wrote Don to apologize. He said he was ‘between coasts, Arkansas or Lubbock or someplace like ‘at.”
Abish recollects that the meal was at a very expensive restaurant, prefix, and the writers had to pay their own way. There were about 21 attendees, and Barthelme was “Very, very dour.”
Here is Pynchon’s letter declining the invite (via Jessamyn West, both on Twitter and her wonderful Donald Barthelme appreciation page):
I had never seen the photograph until today when Ethelmer shared it with me on Twitter. Thanks!
Colossus — John Jacobsmeyer
Colossus, 2019 by John Jacobsmeyer (b. 1964)
Sallow/Fur — Anna Bjerger
Sallow/Fur, 2018 by Anna Bjerger (b. 1973)
Annunciation after Titian — Gerhard Richter
Annunciation after Titian, 1973 by Gerhard Richter (b. 1932)
Dante — Audun Grimstad
S.D. Chrostowska’s The Eyelid (Book acquired, 23 Dec. 2019)
An AR copy of S.D. Chrostowska’s novel The Eyelid showed up at Biblioklept World Headquarters a few days before Xmas. I was inundated with books, both review copies and gifts and gifts to myself, but still excited—I think Chrostowska’s novel Permission is great. (I was lucky enough to interview Chrostowska about the novel, too.)
The book’s blurb points to a kind of sci-fi or dystopian plot that I wouldn’t necessarily have expected from Chrostowska (all the better):
In the near future, sleep has been banned. Our unnamed, dream-prone narrator finds himself following Chevauchet, a diplomat of Onirica, a foreign republic of dreams, to resist the prohibition. On a mission to combat the state-sponsored drugging of citizens with uppers for greater productivity, they traverse an eerie landscape in an everlasting autumn, able to see inside other people’s nightmares and dreams. As Comprehensive Illusion — a social media-like entity that hijacks creativity — overtakes the masses, Chevauchet, the old radical, weakens and disappears, leaving our narrator to take up Chevauchet’s dictum that “daydreaming is directly subversive” and forge ahead on his own.
In slippery, exhilarating and erudite prose, The Eyelid revels in the camaraderie of free thinking that can only happen on the lam, aiming to rescue a species that can no longer dream.
The Eyelid is forthcoming from Coach House Proof in April of this year.
The Visit — Prudence Flint
The Visit, 2018 by Prudence Flint (b. 1962)
The Gallien Girl — Frantisek Kupka
The Gallien Girl, 1910 by Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957)
Reverie — Gertrude Abercrombie
Reverie, 1948 by Gertrude Abercrombie (1909–1977)
Exquisite Corpse — The Chapman Brothers
Exquisite Corpse, 2000 by Jake Chapman (b. 1966) and Dinos Chapman (b. 1962)
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