What greater pleasure for hemmed-in modern man than turning off the infernal computer, agent of Control, Inc. (aka, ‘We Know What You’re Doing’) so he (or she or it or they) can play with scissors paper and glue ? Making book in the literal sense. That was, after all, where it all began, in Gutenberg’s workshop and at small underground rags where the page layout guy was high on whatever spray they used to keep articles on boards. And so finally fed up with my excuses and the delays caused by the never-ending demands about my existence in France, I shut down. Well, almost literally. (See Part Two.) I started to dream again.
A few readers will remember me going on about Writer’s Exchange and may be forgiven for wondering what it’s all about.
In these days when the Bigs, media and cultural institutions, are so thoroughly ‘captured,’ woke prisoners of the reigning ideology of virtue over talent, small publishers have all the action. They publish the Nobels and the latest experimental literature.
So I’ve decided to act as if I were rich, with bottomless pockets and ambition to create a living organism, starting with a private edition of Brecht’s poems, erotic, sexy and silly, another side of one of the 20th century’s iconic poets and playwrights, poems too long buried in massive anthologies that mere mortals strapped for coffee money can’t afford. I made the translations years ago, back in the day when I was on good terms with the Bigs, only to have the book refused by one publisher after another. Basically, anything about sex scares them. It’s not just that they might offend someone (that’s a given), but they don’t know how they feel about the subject and wish it would go away. Unless of course, it’s Trans, and then they’ll eagerly publish shallow, pointless manifestos as full length books. Because, you know. Even a small American outfit that dabbles in erotica, that went so far as to create a printer-ready edition of the book, turned tail, afraid of sourpuss German rights holders. A touch more on that below.
Copyright, yet another conspiracy to keep things under wrap, won’t expire for Bertolt B for five more years. We’ll test the waters. Why not get the book out there ? Whose afraid of 40 pages of poems about love and life ? Maybe the prisoners of the Great Publishing Complex will take notice and issue an injunction or sue me. They’re welcome to. What fun ! What have they ever done for BB ? German publishers surpressed Poems About Love until the early Sixties and never allowed an American edition. So here we go. Cross examination will be a pleasure.
(Despite the backing of kind persons with academic prestige, Suhrkamp, rights administrators for the Brecht estate, refused permission for Eros to the West-Coast publishers, who proceeded to roll over and play dead. By the way, Brecht’s grandchildren, who let Suhrkamp carry out the business, are said to be riven by never-ending, rancorous disputes. Might help to find out about that.)
Why WE (Writer’s Exchange, until I think of a snazzier title) ? Because if one writer has fallen off the map, now agentless, lives in Europe where he writes novels beyond the pall of American taste, it’s fair to assume there must be others, and not just Americans. They, too, need encouragement, something more than a bed and desk. That’s what it’s all about.
So it’s onward with Eros. The poems are defiantly human, humane, messy, sometimes sexist, sometimes thrilling, always artful. Many are written from a woman’s point of view. None of it is a good fit these days but I’m tired of having them kicking around with the rest of my unpublished mss. All of which begs the question, what are people writing these days on the subject ? I subscribe to pages purporting to be about sex, and much reads like soft porn or worse, bad poetry, linguistic games with no sweat, no thrills, no art.
Eros is all of forty pages and so, with computer on, I learn design and layout programs. First Brecht, and in the autumn, my novel Volte Face Paris. (In French, le Plouc de Paris.) Distributors already contacted. Onto the swingboats we go.
Maybe in some spare moment you’ll have time to ponder arguments made by the well-known Brit-American author Lionel Shriver, who’s written a few bestsellers and still runs afoul of the new Puritans :
https://unherd.com/2019/09/im-sick-of-fighting-moronic-culture-wars/?=refinnar
Back to the Old Confessional
I’ve been bad. No, not drinking, carousing, sinning in various forms – not enough of that. I’ve viciously neglected Riffs, and lost a few subscribers along the way, deservedly so. Cursed with paperwork (medical affairs American and French, Social Security in both countries, teeth falling out, permission to stay in France, tour guiding work for the Olympic summer), I lost the practice of being a writer, sitting for hours or even days unmolested, wrestling people and scenes into reality. I used to be someone who wrote stories and novels, even if my agent didn’t give two shakes. I felt so unbearably alone and fell apart so completely, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything beyond getting out of bed and sometimes not even that, much less get pen to paper. The ‘attention economy’ had me by the balls.
Finally I shut the computer and began writing and drawing by hand. When I couldn’t take any more of being a submerged isolato in a Paris apartment tower, I threw a suitcase together and jumped on the midnight bus to Bologna and parts of Italy I’d never seen. Only to come back and find Reality waiting for me with a smirk on its face. Notes, notes for articles, covering the walls and the desktop – and now the Préfec in Lons is demanding yet more documents. (Another adventure.) Apologies are stupid, and change nothing. I was stranded on an island created by none other than myself. The only thing I seem to be able to do is lift weights and go for the occasional swim, which doesn’t do much for humanity or my writing. At times like this I remember the poet who fell to his knees on the Staten Island Ferry, swearing he would dedicate his life to ‘saving the working class.’ We must all have some grand ambition, no ? Even a misguided one, or really, what’s the human adventure about ? Getting to work on time ? Absorbing the latest information, because real life is now on-line ? Maybe the Grand Ambition is the problem itself, and I should accept my fate, just another EU citizen who grumbles about les fonctionnaires and spends his time logging in his essential data ? No thanks. Aux armes, citoyens !
If things carry on like this, I’ll either wander into the mist or convert to a cult that spends all day singing in grottoes. Thanks for your patience.
Any articles I post while swimming through a sea of paperwork will be free for all. High hopes to get back to regular service soon. Free subscriptions remain available; there are 120 articles about France and Europe in the archives here on Riffs.
Is “Cascando" in your book?
"why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed
is it not better abort than be barren
the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives
saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love
the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words
terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending
I and all the others that will love you
if they love you
unless they love you”
― Samuel Beckett
Je comprends et je compatis . Don’t give up