American Flamingo (detail), 1838 by John James Audubon (1785-1851)
Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball), 1983 by George Tooker (1920-2011)
The Glass Teat, Harlan Ellison. Ace Books (1983 reprint). Cover art by Barclay Shaw. 319 pages.
The Other Glass Teat, Harlan Ellison. Ace Books (1983). Cover art by Barclay Shaw. 397 pages.
Part of an ostensible review of the sitcom Happy Days; from Ellison’s column published on 3 July 1970 and reprinted in The Other Glass Teat:
One begins to realize that our national middle-class hunger to return to two decades of Depression, world war, Prohibition, Racism Unadmitted, Covert Fascination with Sex, Deadly Innocence, Isolationism, Provincialism, and Deprivation Remembered as Good Old Days has become a cultural sickness.
The past has always been a rich source for fun and profit. Nostalgia is a good thing. It keeps us from forgetting our roots. Readers of this column know I trip down Memory Lane myself frequently. But it is clearly evident that when an entire nation refuses to accept the responsibilities of its own future, when it seeks release in a morbid fascination with its past, and when it elevates the dusty dead days of the past to a pinnacle position of Olympian grandeur … we are in serious trouble.
“Football”
by
Richard Brautigan
The confidence that he got by being selected all-state in football lasted him all of his life. He was killed in an automobile accident when he was twenty-two. He was buried on a rainy afternoon.
Halfway through the burial service the minister forgot what he was talking about. Everybody stood there at the grave waiting for him to remember.
Then he remembered.
“This young man,” he said. “Played football.”
Self Portrait, 1650 by Dirck Helmbreker (1633-1696)
Castigo francés (French punishment), Notebook G.48 (c. 1824-1828) by Francisco Goya (1746-1828)
What an interesting few weeks it’s been! Here’s (some of) what I’ve been reading so far this year:
I’m in the middle of Stephen Dixon’s novel Interstate. It is a devastating, ugly, addictive, beautiful novel; I have no idea if it is “good” or not but I love it. I can’t really think of a single person I know (in real life) I could recommend it to. We played cards with some friends and one of them asked about what I was reading, and I said a novel called Interstate by this guy Stephen Dixon, and she asked of course What’s it about? and I said something, Well, this guy’s driving on the interstate with his daughters and two guys in a van pull up along side him and start shooting at them, killing his younger daughter–this happens in like, the first few paragraphs–and then we see how this event destroys his life–but then Dixon repeats the initial scenario like seven more times with different (but all really tragic so far) outcomes–and it’s written in this addictive vocal style that might be really off-putting to many readers, and it also makes really fascinating use of the coordinating conjunction for, which may just be a verbal tic –and it’s also really funny at times? I am not trying to sell this novel to anyone but I love it.
My reading experience of Briana Loewinsohn’s graphic novel Raised by Ghosts was kinda sorta the opposite of Dixon’s Interstate in that after I finished it I immediately pressed it on my wife and then my kids and then texted some of my oldest friends about it (oldest in the previous clause should be understood to modify the friendship, not the actual friend’s years–although we’re all getting older). We’re all getting older, all the time, and Raised by Ghosts provoked an aged nostalgia in me. I’m about half a year older than Loewinsohn and so much of her semi-autobiographical novel resonated with me. She gets everything right about what it was like to be a little bit of a weirdo at school in the nineties. There’s this wonderful passage on how important it was to get a handwritten note from a friend; there’s a page that’s nothing but a notebook page filled with band names; there’s a marvelous scene where our hero loses her shit watching You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I should have a proper review this week or next, but great stuff. (The whole family loved it, by the way.)
I’ve been reading a collection of Dino Buzzati short stories translated by Lawrence Venuti; my technique is to read one of the shorter stories when I feel a bit of dread or anxiety from, like, reading something else. (The collection is called The Bewitched Bourgeois by the way.) I’ve enjoyed reading them, and have especially enjoyed allowing myself to read them at random instead of following the collection’s chronological trajectory. Very Kafka, very Borges, but also very original.
Not in the picture above, but I’ve also been working my way through a digital copy of Vladimir Sorokin’s short story collection Dispatches from the District Committee, in translation by Max Lawton (and illustrated by Gregory Klassen). Great gross stuff.
I picked up a collection of Jane Bowles’ sketches, letters, and other ephemera a few weeks ago–I love her stuff, but really it was that these were contained in the somewhat-rare Black Sparrow Press edition Feminine Wiles. I’m pretty sure all of the stuff here is collected in My Sister’s Hand in Mine, but I’ve enjoyed dipping into this one more. It’s slim, not bulky, but that bulky boy’s around her (My Sister’s) if I need him.
My uncle sent me a copy of Werner Herzog’s 2022 memoir Every Man for Himself and God Against All for Christmas (in translation by Michael Hofmann). I devoured the first few chapters and then a colleague hipped me to the fact that there’s an audiobook of Herzog reading his memoir (available on Spotify and other platforms) — so on my commute I’ve been listening to him read his own memoir, which is just amazing. Like fucking amazing. Hearing him say phrases like “the escapades of Christopher Robin, Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore” or that “chipmunks…have something consoling about them” is surreal. There are like fifty insane things that happen in every chapter, and if Dwight Garner of the failing New York Times attested that he didn’t “believe a word” of the memoir, I take the opposite tack. Everything is true, everything is permitted.
Finally, I can’t really say I’ve been “reading” Remedios Varo: El hilo invisible by Jose Antonio Gil and Magnolia Rivera. My grasp of Spanish cannot graspingly grasp too much of the Spanish (although my iPhone’s picture-text-translate thing works fine when I’m really curious), but the book is a lovely visual catalog of not just one of my favorite artist’s works (including many pieces I haven’t seen before), but also documents her visual influences. I picked it up at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City back in January, still floating on the high of seeing many of Varo’s lovely paintings there that afternoon.
Neuromancer, William Gibson. Ace Books (1984 imprint; 29th printing). No cover designer or artist credited. 271 pages.
ISFDB gives the cover artist as Rick Berry.
I borrowed and never returned Neuromancer from one of my best friends. We were best friends in middle school, but I stole this book like senior year of high school or maybe the year after. 1997ish, when the world seemed fairly settled.
According to a blog I wrote in 2006 (JFC), I lost my friend’s copy to one of my students, who took it and never returned it. Did I buy this 29th printing to replace the copy that I’d sorta-kinda-stolen years ago? I can’t recall. I vaguely recall doing so, but it’s also possible I’ve fabricated the past, creating memories like a man wielding large shears and bolts of felt might create strange stupid felt shapes.
Tilford, I’m sorry. You probably can’t have your book back, but you can have this one. Just let me know.
I would love to bottle the feeling of reading those first three Gibson novels and to sip from that bottle, but that’s nostalgia, and fuck nostalgia.
The apparatus consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top.
The condemned is secured with a pillory at the bottom of the frame, holding the position of the neck directly below the blade.
The blade is then released, swiftly and forcefully decapitating the condemned with a single, clean pass; the head falls into a basket or other receptacle below.
The design of the apparatus — more reliable and less painful for the condemned — was conceived in accordance with enlightened ideals of human rights.
The apparatus took the name of the physician who proposed its implementation. He was a noted opponent of the death penalty and was displeased with the breaking wheel. He did not invent the apparatus.
The physician brought his proposal to a committee. The committee sought inspiration from precursor apparatuses. Many of these prior instruments crushed the neck or used blunt force to take off a head, but a number of them also used a crescent blade to behead and a hinged two-part yoke to immobilize the victim’s neck.
The committee brought their proposal to the sovereign, who caused such an apparatus to be designed and built. The engineer for the prototype was noted as a designer of harpsichords.
The state’s official executioner claimed in his memoirs that the sovereign, an amateur locksmith, recommended that the device employ an oblique blade rather than a crescent one, lest the blade not be able to sever all necks; the sovereign’s own neck was offered up discreetly as an example.
The first specimen to test the apparatus was a highwayman. He was led to the scaffold wearing a red shirt.
The apparatus was also red in color.
A large crowd had gathered. The event took only a few seconds.
The crowd was dissatisfied with the apparatus. They felt it was too swift and clinically effective to provide proper entertainment. They cried out for the wheel, the sword, the wooden gallows.
But the enlightened ones hailed the apparatus as a success.
And in time, the general public grew to love the apparatus too.
The apparatus acquired many fond nicknames:
The Regretful Climb
The National Razor
The Fanlight
The Widow
The Silence Mill
The Machine
The Paper Trimmer
Capet’s Necktie
The Patriotic Shortener
The Half-Moon
The Timbers of Justice
Charlot’s Rocking-chair
The apparatus was wildly successful. Over 17,000 persons were subjected to it over just a thirteen-month period.
(That 17,000 included such notables as the sovereign himself.)
But over time, the enlightened and the general public alike grew bored with the apparatus. It had once been proudly displayed and attended and utilized in the city’s grandest plazas, but over the decades the apparatus was moved to more and more discreet locations, out of the public eye.
It was officially retired by the state’s government just short of two centuries of service.
But its memory and example endures.
February, from the Apiary Almanac, 1960 by Polly Mudge (1938-1976)
Groundhog Day, 1959 by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)
“The Little Berliner”
by
Robert Walser
Translated by Harriett Watts
PAPA boxed my ears today, in a most fond and fatherly manner, of course. I had used the expression: “Father, you must be nuts.” It was indeed a bit careless of me. “Ladies should employ exquisite language,” our German teacher says. She’s horrible. But Papa won’t allow me to ridicule her, and perhaps he’s right. After all, one does go to school to exhibit a certain zeal for learning and a certain respect. Besides, it is cheap and vulgar to discover funny things in a fellow human being and then to laugh at them. Young ladies should accustom themselves to the fine and the noble—I quite see that. No one desires any work from me, no one will ever demand it of me; but everyone will expect to find that I am refined in my ways. Shall I enter some profession in later life? Of course not! I’ll be an elegant young wife; I shall get married. It is possible that I’ll torment my husband. But that would be terrible. One always despises oneself whenever one feels the need to despise someone else. I am twelve years old. I must be very precocious—otherwise, I would never think of such things. Shall I have children? And how will that come about? If my future husband isn’t a despicable human being, then, yes, then I’m sure of it, I shall have a child. Then I shall bring up this child. But I still have to be brought up myself. What silly thoughts one can have!
Berlin is the most beautiful, the most cultivated city in the world. I would be detestable if I weren’t unshakably convinced of this. Doesn’t the Kaiser live here? Would he need to live here if he didn’t like it here best of all? The other day I saw the royal children in an open car. They are enchanting. The crown prince looks like a high-spirited young god, and how beautiful seemed the noble lady at his side. She was completely hidden in fragrant furs. It seemed that blossoms rained down upon the pair out of the blue sky. The Tiergarten is marvelous. I go walking there almost every day with our young lady, the governess. One can go for hours under the green trees, on straight or winding paths. Even Father, who doesn’t really need to be enthusiastic about anything, is enthusiastic about the Tiergarten. Father is a cultivated man. I’m convinced he loves me madly. It would be horrible if he read this, but I shall tear up what I have written. Actually, it is not at all fitting to be still so silly and immature and, at the same time, already want to keep a diary. But, from time to time, one becomes somewhat bored, and then one easily gives way to what is not quite right. The governess is very nice. Well, I mean, in general. She is devoted and she loves me. In addition, she has real respect for Papa—that is the most important thing. She is slender of figure. Our previous governess was fat as a frog. She always seemed to be about to burst. She was English. She’s still English today, of course, but from the moment she allowed herself liberties, she was no longer our concern. Father kicked her out.
The two of us, Papa and I, are soon to take a trip. It is that time of the year now when respectable people simply have to take a trip. Isn’t it a suspicious sort of person who doesn’t take a trip at such a time of blossoming and blooming? Papa goes to the seashore and apparently lies there day after day and lets himself be baked dark brown by the summer sun. He always looks healthiest in September. The paleness of exhaustion is not becoming to his face. Incidentally, I myself love the suntanned look in a man’s face. It is as if he had just come home from war. Isn’t that just like a child’s nonsense? Well, I’m still a child, of course. As far as I’m concerned, I’m taking a trip to the south. First of all, a little while to Munich and then to Venice, where a person who is unspeakably close to me lives—Mama. For reasons whose depths I cannot understand and consequently cannot evaluate, my parents live apart. Most of the time I live with Father. But naturally Mother also has the right to possess me at least for a while. I can scarcely wait for the approaching trip. I like to travel, and I think that almost all people must like to travel. One boards the train, it departs, and off it goes into the distance. One sits and is carried into the remote unknown. How well-off I am, really! What do I know of need, of poverty? Nothing at all. I also don’t find it the least bit necessary that I should experience anything so base. But I do feel sorry for the poor children. I would jump out the window under such conditions. Continue reading ““The Little Berliner” — Robert Walser”
February, 1979 by Alex Colville (1920-2013)
February, c. 1680s by Cornelis Dusart, 1660-1704
February, 1938 by Evelyn Dunbar (1906-1960)
Hotel Service, 2023 by Eric Fischl (b. 1948)
Biblioklept 