Feature
Originally reviewed in Necessary Fiction 11.14.2011
The artist statement of sorts, “Fiction”, that begins the first half of the stories in A.D. Jameson’s Amazing Adult Fantasy, teaches us how to read the entire collection: we’re told that we’re reading a book that’s been lost in a fire, that the book we’re reading doesn’t exist. A better metaphor for childhood, the gratuitous fiction of how we remember it, might not exist either.
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(Recently, Monkey Bicycle interviewed Mutable author Colin Winnette about Revelation, his writing process, pressures, and hopes for the future. This interview can be found below.)
MB: What is your religious background?
CW: I’m not a religious person at all, really. Far from it. But I had the unique experience of being a non-religious person growing up in a small town in Northeast Texas. So throughout my life I was steeped in various devoted interpretations of biblical narrative. The closest our family ever came to adopting a religion was when, in an arguably noble attempt to set our family on a, well if not more righteous, certainly more socially accepted path, my older sister (who was very young at the time) insisted our family begin attending church. The idea was that we would then be more like the other families in town, more like her friends’ families, and a little less…our strange selves. My parents were very open-minded and supportive, so we went. I don’t remember which denomination it was, or even what we did there. I only remember dressing up for a few Sundays in a row, then being very happy when we abandoned the project. Christianity, in one form or another, was the dominant religion in our hometown, but I never really got into it and, aside from this little experiment, I was never really asked to. Then, in grade school, I had a good friend who was Muslim, (his was the only Muslim family in our school, I think) and I used to talk to him a lot about his beliefs and his particular religious practices, and the benefits/challenges of these. I distinctly remember him telling me that I had to believe him about something or other because he couldn’t lie as it was against his religion. That struck me then as very convenient; to have a system of beliefs that worked as a set of rules governing your behavior. In my head, he didn’t have to worry about lying because he couldn’t lie. It was against the rules. I was open to, and enthusiastic about, his religious experiences and accounts because he was my friend and they were so unfamiliar to me. The idea of finding something like that for myself became appealing, and I asked my mother to take me to the library so I might read up on various religions and see which one best suited me. Then I too might have a set of rules by which to live. On the one hand, the project was a failure. No single text, or tradition, really fit me that well, but it all seemed really wild and each religion exhibited these great imaginative capabilities. I was learning a lot. At the same time, I was struggling my way through Tolkien, some Shakespeare, Greek mythology, that kind of thing. It’s probably for this reason that I have always viewed religious texts simply as powerful narratives, as literature, rather than existential truths or solid guidebooks for how to live. At best, I guess, they’re examples of how things could be, or might have been. But, again, this was just my experience. Since then I’ve always studied religious texts as/alongside literary texts, particularly the Bible, as it was such a dominant narrative voice in the town/state/country where I grew up. This was one of the initial sparks for this project, engaging a biblical narrative on literary terms, and exposing it to the same manipulations/experimentation one might any other literary tradition.
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(We’ve written about David Lindsay before, but all the same, this week wanted to present you with some of his own words, a selection from one of Lindsay’s lesser known novels, entitled The Haunted Woman, a book that reads like Victorian Scooby Dooby Doo with a hefty dosage of spiritualism and a good deal of romantic intrigue. Below is a selection from the first chapter.)
In the latter half of August, Marshall Stokes went to New York, in order to wind up the estate of the lately-deceased brother of the lady to whom he was betrothed. As a busy underwriting member of Lloyd’s, he could ill afford the time—he was over there for upwards of a fortnight—but no alternative had presented itself. Miss Loment had no connections in America, she possessed no other relations, except a widowed aunt, with whom she lived, and it was clearly out of the question for either of the two ladies to travel across in person, to examine books, interview lawyers, deal with claims, etc.—they had not the necessary business experience. The task, therefore, had devolved on Marshall. He had not been able to conclude the business, but he had put it in a fair way of being concluded, and had appointed a reputable firm to act as Miss Loment’s representatives. The estate was worth forty thousand dollars.
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The duty to produce alienates the passion for creation. Productive labour is part and parcel of the technology of law and order. The working day grows shorter as the empire of conditioning extends.
In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create. What spark of humanity, of a possible creativity, can remain alive in a being dragged out of sleep at six every morning, jolted about in suburban trains, deafened by the racket of machinery, bleached and steamed by meaningless sounds and gestures, spun dry by statistical controls, and tossed out at the end of the day into the entrance halls of railway stations, those cathedrals of departure for the hell of weekdays and the nugatory paradise of weekends, where the crowd communes in weariness and boredom? From adolescence to retirement each 24-hour cycle repeats the same shattering bombardment, like bullets hitting a window: mechanical repetition, time-which-is-money, submission to bosses, boredom, exhaustion. From the butchering of youth’s energy to the gaping wound of old age, life cracks in every direction under the blows of forced labour. Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live. The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry. Already the front against forced labour is being formed; its gestures of refusal are moulding the consciousness of the future. Every call for productivity in the conditions chosen by capitalist and Soviet economy is a call to slavery.
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Mr. Beaser: Is there any limit you can think of that you would not put in a magazine because you thought a child should not see or read about it?
Mr. Gaines: My only limits are the bounds of good taste, what I consider good taste.
Sen. Kefauver [alluding to the cover illustration for Crime SuspenStories #22 shown above]: This seems to be a man with a bloody ax holding a woman’s head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?
Mr. Gaines: Yes, sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic….
Sen. Kefauver: This is the July one [Crime SuspenStories #23]. It seems to be a man with a woman in a boat and he is choking her to death with a crowbar. Is that in good taste?
Mr. Gaines: I think so.
Shape, Aykut Aydoğdu
In 1989, Professor Graziella Magherini, a Florentine psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, made her name with the publication of The Stendhal Syndrome, addressing clinical instances of queasiness, disorientation, heightened sensitivity, and panic in people confronted by great works of art or architecture. Named after Stendhal, the pen name of Marie-Henri Bayle, best known for his novels The Red and the Black and Charterhouse of Parma, whose diary contained an account of his visit to the Church at Santa Croce, where he fainted in sympathetic response to a painting. This affliction, also dubbed Hyperkulturemia or Florence syndrome, is a psychosomatic illness that can cause rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations, usually when a person’s viewing art that is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art in a single place. The term can also be used to describe a similar reaction to a surfeit of choice in other circumstances, e.g. when confronted with immense beauty in the natural world, or when overwhelmed by the viewing possibilities presented by Netflix.
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The Hungry Brain is supposedly the best bar in America and it is getting further and further away with every step I take. Later, my brother will tell his friends how he had been psychically dragging me the whole way, whatever that means. Then we’ve been walking for I don’t know how long and we’re standing in another bar called the Burlington. It’s got just enough lighting to allow a person to maneuver from one end of the bar to the other without hurting themselves, but not enough lighting for anyone’s acne to be noticeable, and Jules and I are discussing walking BACK to the Hungry Brain, and the show is about to begin. Which, in the end, we just slipped in the back and I ordered a beer in a stupid little plastic cup, and there was this awkward-seeming guy with an acoustic guitar on stage. I thought, “Oh God.” The man with the acoustic guitar began to play.
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The French Song was originally written by Gabriel Boyer in an effort to test the boundaries of his knowledge of French and recorded on Walking Stick (’01). Lyrics go something like this: “French it’s the language of fingers, french it’s the language of fingers, hey hey hee hee ha ha the language of fingers / Do re mi it isn’t fa, do re mi it isn’t fa, hey hey hee hee ha ha, it isn’t fa / But french it’s in the head / But the fingers are in regret / But your tongue is on my eyes / But your fingers are in my heart.” I leave the rest of the song up to your own fertile imagination.
This song was recorded with the Dynavox 2000 at Exile Studios in the Fall of 2002 with back-up vocals by Corey Tatarczuk and Annie Heringer, with Corey also playing bass and Annie playing accoustic guitar. Malcolm Felder was on drums, Dalton Eljer on electric guitar, Gregory Kenney on keyboards, and Gabriel Boyer performing lead vocals and piano. It was recorded just a few short months after The Textbook Tapes and with largely the same aesthetic in mind, and involving many of the same performers. Since that time it’s been sitting in our storehouses waiting for the moment when we would unleash it on your unsuspecting ears. This is the month, and today is the day.
Feel free to listen or download below.
Animal Hospital‘s Kevin Micka makes beautiful music. His luscious soundscapes mesmerize as they dig deep in with loops that dig deep and wailing riffs that cut. Long ago, we were lucky enough to put out one of his albums, Good or Plenty, Streets + Avenues, and have been following his career since with a keen interest. One side project of note is his Animal Hospital Ensemble, in which a group of players come together to perform under Micka’s direction. Enjoy the performance!
Chapter I.
Whatsoever you have heard, O mortals, concerning our Fraternity by the trumpet sound of the Fama R.C., do not either believe it hastily, or willfully suspect it. It is Jehovah who, seeing how the world is falling to decay, and near its end, doth hasten it again to its beginning, inverting the course of Nature, and so what heretofore hath been sought with great pains and dayly labour He doth lay open now to those thinking of no such thing, offering it to the willing and thrusting it upon the reluctant, that it may become to the good that which will smooth the troubles of human life and break the violence of unexpected blows of Fortune, but to the ungodly that which will augment their sins and their punishments.
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I had recently arrived back stateside from China. Ben & Jerry’s seemed like something you should only eat on your wedding day, and the idea of a pile of meat between two pieces of bread seemed just gross. American supermarkets looked like the supermarkets of royalty, so pristine, so many beautifully packaged and meaty cuts of meat. There is something about the absence of fat in the marketplace. It says, This is a country where no one starves.
I had flown into San Francisco, and from there to Oregon, then Missouri and Chicago, but right now we’re at the True/False Film Festival, and I am staying with my brother in Columbia, MO, because there are three films I want to discuss from that festival. If you have not seen these films, you may want to cease reading this article now as there will be spoilers. How is it possible for there to be spoilers in documentary films? This is one of the things I have learned! The three films are, Stories We Tell, The Act of Killing, and The Institute.
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Here I am explaining what SPINY RETINAS is.
It is an epic poem, or if you prefer, a narrative poem, or perhaps still if you prefer, a “hybrid text piece” that was compiled slowly over the course of the last six years (2006 – 2012). Perhaps you do not prefer. I love you just the same.
It was constructed using automatic writing technique and addresses and/or speaks to war, politics, and religion (stereotypes and cultural myths explored through use of military and theological hierarchical titles); rape culture, gender roles, and sexism; and pop culture in general. The following books, films, and/or television shows were used as reference points to create SPINY RETINAS: I Dream of Jeanie episodes, John Ashbery’s Girls on the Run, David Lynch’s Lost Highway, Jennifer Chambers Lynch’s Boxing Helena, and Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America.
This piece was created using aleatoric method/approach and poetic language was used carelessly, unabashedly, often with such extreme force the author found herself shaking simultaneously with utter pleasure and despair. It was a freeing exercise, like running around nude in a random suburban neighborhood at 2 a.m. with a clear squirt gun or picking the first cucumber of the season or even hanging upside down on the monkey bars.
Lawrence & Gibson is a publishing cooperative hailing from New Zealand who have released the work of satirical rake, Richard Meros, wry short stories by William Dewey, the mysterious and notorious Urlich Haarburste’s novel of Roy Orbison in Cling Film, and of course A D Jameson’s Giant Slugs.
Some time ago, a Skype conversation was had between the offices of Mutable and our friends down in Wellington. Hopefully our numbers will only grow! Soon, the world will be full of small publishers holding hands across the globe as they change the very fabric of thought using the tools at their disposal, the printed word in all its pristine glory!
Please, go to their websiteand learn about them and who they are!
1.
There have been tons of discussions over the last 25 years about The Future of The Book, The Death of The Novel, and the End of Writing As We Know It, but what really concerns me most is the freedom of speech in a multinational, corporate-driven world marketplace. Is our ability to freely express ourselves to the people out there who might want to read us always already predetermined by the economic cronyism of Big Money, Mass Media and Military Might? A reigning market terrorism and globally exclusive mass media culture have disembodied our voices to the point that we no longer find it necessary to communicate on an intelligent basis.
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Ramses (Retrograde)’s Jason Allen—also of ComoRevi Butterfly and the Blank Bankers—who played on and produced Mutable’s No Place to Die—who has been affiliated with FROG (FRiends Of Gamelan), is a great lover and student of Indonesian music, and is friends with Alex Yoffe among others—has graciously shared his library of casio compositions, and we here at Mutable chose this as one of the saner options. Enjoy!
(A S Hamrah, known to us affectionately as “The Hammer”, as in, “And the hammer came down…”, has always astounded us with the precision of his observations and the general power of his critical punch. Recently, he interviewed Lynda Carter, better known as Wonder Woman. The first few paragraphs of this interview can be found below.)
“You look hot.” The first words Lynda Carter spoke to me were a variation of the same ones I had spent more than 30 years waiting to say to her. But Ms. Carter did not mean “hot” that way. What she meant was that I was a mess, and sweating. By the time my long wait to meet her was over—it ended at the Thalia restaurant in midtown on a humid afternoon last Wednesday—I was in rough shape.
I had had a few decades to prepare for this interview with Wonder Woman. When I finally got the chance, the one superpower I possess kicked in—my ability to melt when the dew point hits 60. The closet thing I resembled to a superhero was Frosty the Snowman, in warm weather, two eyes made out of coal swimming in a pool of water.
I had just gotten off a delayed flight at J.F.K. Sitting at the bar waiting for Ms. Carter, wearing the same clothes I had been in for the past 28 hours, during which time I had not slept because the guy sitting next to me on the plane spent the flight jabbing me with his elbow while playing video games on an iPad, I could not be trusted to hold a door for her, much less coherently discuss her days as Wonder Woman on television, her singing gig at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room or her new recording, Crazy Little Things. Where was the bartender with that soda water I ordered?
Before he could deliver it, Ms. Carter appeared in the doorway of the restaurant, silhouetted by the noon sun streaming in from Eighth Avenue, outlined like a four-color drawing in a comic book but in 3-D.
[The rest of this article can be found at The New York Observer.]
As proclaimed by General Maxwell Taylor: „The lesson of Vietnam was that we were too late in recognizing the extent of the subversive threat. Every young, emerging country must be constantly on alert, watching for those symptoms which, if allowed to develop unrestrained, may grow into a disastrous situation.
„We have learned the need for a strong police force and a strong police intelligence organization to assist in identifying…the symptoms of an incipient subversive situation.“
Corporations and government joined to fund a flock of propaganda and surveillance agencies involved in trade and espionage. **A divided Berlin was the hot focus for these agencies.
Read MoreOriginally published in The Collagist
Amazing Adult Fantasy, A D Jameson’s debut collection of fiction, asks us to think carefully, as adults, about our childhoods. Not only our childhoods, however, but the nature of fiction and fictions, the imagination, and our relationship with them as we ‘grow up’ and supposedly “put away childish things.” The epigram that starts the collection, Paul speaking to the Corinthians, is one of the many clues Jameson gives us for thinking about the book, for understanding the sometimes contradictory ideas that govern its form and his approach to familiar and even iconic characters from our youth.
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Two years ago a group of Asian non-government organizations held a conference in Malaysia concerning the right to self-determination in East Timor. The conference lasted for 10 minutes before it was broken up by a group closely associated with the Malaysian government, who had bowed to pressure from Suharto to not allow the conference.
The East Timorese have been fighting for their independence since they were invaded by Indonesia in 1975. An estimated 200,000 East Timor citizens have been killed or disappeared, roughly 1/3 of the population.
East Timor is one of the significant sites of 20th century genocide and Suharto has been a prime recipient of investment funds from the Deutche Bank.
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In his groundbreaking book, Russian Thinkers, Isaiah Berlin distinguishes between 19th Century French attitudes towards their writers and the attitudes of their 19th Century Russian counterparts. The French, he claims, considered the life of the writer to be extraneous, that the style and the skill of the author was paramount, while for Russians an author and his life were indistinguishable. I have always sided with the Russians in this regard.
The writer is not just a detached craftsman or stylist, but a person writing about people. Do I believe in this person or not? In the world as this person depicts it? Is this author a false prophet or a true prophet? This is how I think of writing. How very Old Testament of me. Which brings us to the New Sincerity.
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