That spring, Basquiat threw a big party at his SoHo loft on Crosby Street to celebrate his opening in a group show at the Marlborough Gallery. David [Byrne] was back in town and he showed up. David Hockney, the photographer/painter was there, and Byrne accosted him. “I started doing these photo montages a few months ago and I think it was before you were doing them.”
David Byrne was claiming David Hockney ripped him off much the same way Andrea Kovacs had accused the first David of the same thing years before over his mosaic-Polaroid cover of More Songs About Buildings and Food.
David Byrne was pretty high at that party.
Hockney ignored him.
David thought Hockney was wearing a hearing aid, or maybe listening to opera.
—David Bowman, This Must Be The Place: The Adventures of the Talking Heads In the Twentieth Century
One Story’s egalitarian treatment of submissions… should be an encouragement to new and aspiring writers…. Cheston Knapp’s romantic tennis drama, “A Minor Momentousness in the History of Love,” is his first published story (and reminds me a lot of the movie Brown Sugar). Grant Munroe’s hilarious “Corporate Park,” is his first published work of fiction (and if you think the idea of a mountain lion in an office building is a little far-fetched just remember: “There’s a tiger in the bathroom!” from The Hangover). Knapp and Munroe are in the company of eight other writers with varied backgrounds as novelists, fellows, creative writing professors, screenwriters, and anthology editors.
A few weeks ago I started reading about Carl Jung’s Red Book, a 205-page manuscript that Jung wrote and illustrated between 1914 and 1930, which (until last year) had been locked in a Swiss bank vault since the psychiatrist’s passing in 1961. After its publication, the media responded with numerous articles and reviews. One of those articles showed a neat excerpt: an illustration (representative of a “mythic image”) that Jung had drawn. It’s of a man being pierced by a beam of light.
The instant I saw that, I thought back to sci-fi novelist Philip K. Dick, whose bizarre mystical experiences began in the early 70s. From his article in Wikipedia:
On February 20, 1974, Dick was recovering from the effects of sodium pentothal administered for the extraction of an impacted wisdom tooth. Answering the door to receive delivery of extra analgesic, he noticed that the delivery woman was wearing a pendant with a symbol that he called the “vesicle pisces.” This name seems to have been based on his confusion of two related symbols, the ichthys (two intersecting arcs delineating a fish in profile) that early Christians used as a secret symbol, and the vesica piscis. After the delivery woman’s departure, Dick began experiencing strange visions.
What the article doesn’t mention is the means by which these visions were triggered: namely, a beam of light emanating from the ichthys.
There are some really cool parallels between the Jung’s illustration and Dick’s encounter. In both cases, the beams involve women—though, strangely, the origin and target relationship of the two beams is inverted: in Jung’s illustration, the beam emanates from a woman’s head, hitting the man in the heart; in Dick’s vision, the beam emanates from the woman’s heart (beneath the ichthys), striking him in the head.
Even Jung’s caption to the image seems to fit Dick’s situation at the time, and prefigures the quasi-schizophrenia into which he subsequently descended. Regarding his image, Jung wrote:
“This material man has risen too high in the world of the spirits, so the spirit of the heart has pierced him with the golden beam. He fell into a state of ecstasy, and disassembled….”
In Dick’s case, this “disassembling” entailed a splintering of his own persona. Again, from Wikipedia:
As the visions increased in length and frequency, Dick claimed he began to live a double life, one as himself, “Philip K. Dick”, and one as “Thomas”, a Christian persecuted by Romans in the 1st century A.D. Despite his history of drug use and elevated stroke risk, Dick began seeking other rationalist and religious explanations for these experiences. He referred to the “transcendentally rational mind” as “Zebra”, “God” and “VALIS.” Dick wrote about the experiences, first in the semi-autobiographical novel Radio Free Albemuth and then in VALIS, The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, i.e., the VALIS trilogy. At one point Dick felt that he had been taken over by the spirit of the prophet Elijah.
Only adding to the weirdness of this seeming coincidence is my discovery that Dick was highly influenced by Jung’s writing—yet there’s no way that Dick could have seen that specific illustration, of course, given that the Red Book was, at that point in time, safely locked away in a vault. No one, save Jung, had yet seen it. (Though it’s possible Jung had drawn or discussed another similar event elsewhere. I’m not sure.)
Maybe both men shared similar cerebral disorders? Incredible that a beam of light would appear in both cases. Also uncanny, I think, in a Borgesian way—because it almost seems as if Jung, writing 100 years ago, had been influenced by Dick’s vision.
Evelyn Waugh (1903—1966) is one of my favorite comic authors. Sadly, he’s not too well known in America. And if he is known, it’s usually for Brideshead Revisited, his least funny novel. It’s not a comedy at all, really. Which is why it might be, given his incredible gift for satire, my least favorite of his early works.
The money books, I think, are the four he published prior to BR:
Decline and Fall (1928)
Black Mischief (1932)
A Handful of Dust (1934)
Put Out More Flags (1942)
With Decline and Fall being the best, and A Handful of Dust as the close second. (Though Put Out More Flags, even if it fails as a novel, may be his funniest.)
Here’s the thing about Waugh’s humor, which may explain why it’s more appreciated in England than it is in America: it’s cruel. It’s unabashedly mean. None of his characters are ever completely innocent, half of them are inevitably and unjustly tripped up—even killed—by bizarre circumstances, and the remaining half treat the pains of the former half with aristocratic indifference. There’s a good example of this in an early scene in Decline and Fall, set at a third-tier public school. On Visiting Day, the students are herded around by a band of doltish teachers, forced to participate in “sport” before their aloof upper-class parents. One of those teachers, Mr. Prendergast, drunk off one drink, is given the role of Starter—which he carries out using not a starting pistol, but an old WWI service revolver:
“I shall say, ‘Are you ready? one, two, three!’ and then fire,” said Mr. Pendergast. “Are you ready? One”—there was a terrific report. “Oh, dear! I’m sorry”—but the race had begun. Clearly Tangent was not going to win; he was sitting on the grass crying because he had been wounded in the foot by Mr. Pendergast’s bullet. Philbrick carried him, wailing dismally, into the refreshment tent, where Dingy helped him off with his shoe. His heel was slightly grazed. Dingy gave him a large slice of cake, and he hobbled out surrounded by a sympathetic crowd.
“That won’t hurt him,” said [Tangent's mother,] Lady Circumference, “but I think some one ought to remove the pistol from that old man before he does anything serious.”
“I knew that was going to happen,” said Lord Circumference.
“A most unfortunate beginning,” said the Doctor.
“Am I going to die?” said Tangent, his mouth full of cake.
“For God’s sake, look after Prendy,” said Grimes in Paul’s ear. “The man’s as tight as a lord, and on one whisky, too.”
“First blood to me!” said Mr. Predergast gleefully.
“The last race will be run again,” said Paul down the megaphone. “Starter, Mr. Philbrick; time-keeper, Mr. Predergast.”
It would be one thing if Tangent were only shot on the foot. But as the novel moves forward we’re given updates on his state of his appendage—which runs from “grazed” to “infected” to “gangrenous” to “in need of etherless amputation.” Until, finally, near the end, we read a cast-off mention of Tangent’s death.
There’s a documentary about the Waugh family on YouTube. It’s a multi-generational biography, showcasing a four (possibly five) generations of brilliant, strong, witty writers, with Evelyn—both the best writer out of all of them, and the biggest bastard out of all them all—featured prominently. Worth watching, I think.
Like the host of Russian satirists that preceded him–Gogol, Zoshchenko, Bulgakov–Sorokin jumps in impish dance around a host of unspeakable subjects, subjects made taboo by the State, weaknesses that are are never explicitly named, but hang on the minds of everyone. Where Gogol poked fun at the stifling and torturous bureaucracy of Czarist Russia, and Zoshchenko laughed at the stupidity of petty officialdom in the early years of the Revolution, Sorokin takes on the mind-numbing banality of life during late-era Soviet Communism.
The photos were taken by my aunt, Xandra Castleton, at my family’s home on Lake Erie, in Kingsville. The little girl is my cousin Jasmin, who was in town from San Francisco for her christening. I’m the goon with the knife.
In other news, I have a new folktale up at McSweeney’s.
Back home in Kingsville, Ontario. Visiting the family. This summer’s weather is perfect: crisp in the morning, pleasant and breezy during the day, cool in the evening. All the local produce, thanks to the cooler temperatures and heavy rainfall, is the best that it’s been in years.
While here, a new edition of Swink Magazine — where I serve as co-editor of fiction with Summer Block Kumar — was published. Everyone’s happy to see Drew Johnson’s latest story, “Edson to 1958″, on display. We were lucky to find the story in the slush pile, and sharp to nab it before it was taken elsewhere.
The story’s an excerpt from the biography of a hapless fictional poet named Norman Patrick Edson (or Fey Edson, as he’s later called). The piece follows the poet’s life from birth (1916), through youth and war in the Spanish Civil War, then self-imposed exile in Mexico. It concludes with the 1958 publication of a poem based on the dramatic — and wildly comic — conclusion to that exile: a brawl in Mexico City that involved several real historical figures, including the eccentric composer Colnon Nancarrow, novelist William Gaddis, and jazz cornet player Bill Davison.
The story’s absurdities are livened by the biographer’s earnest, dry delivery. The use of a period poem to both close the narrative and give voice to the story’s main character — who until the very end (even, arguably, after the end) remains a blank and enigmatic subject — is wry and novel. There is no epiphanic conclusion, no melancholy acceptance of life’s trappings. Only a swift, humorous, almost Saki-eske change of perspective. It’s an excellent piece of fiction.
"Searching the Library of Babel," The Rumpus, August 6, 2009
"Corporate Folktales: The Tale of the CTO's Apprentice's Wife," McSweeney's.net, July 24, 2009
"Corporate Folktales: How the Operation's Analyst Slew the Monster on the 37th Floor Server Room," McSweeney's.net, July 6, 2009
"Corporate Folktales: How Bernanke Tackled the Depression, As Recorded 150 Years From Now by Post-Apocalyptic Hobo Folklorists," McSweeney's.net, May 18, 2009
"Corporate Folktales: An E-Mail to God," McSweeney's.net, April 9, 2009
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