Indulge me, is all I ask.
Sunday, June 29, 2008

Sometimes your buddy here at the Entertainment Industry spreads himself a trifle thin and puts into publication things he's carelessly edited. The trusting, kind souls at Stop Smiling let him get away with this often -- they have deadlines, too -- and so you will find in the latest, Gambling-oriented edition of that magazine a column of mine that bears comparison, grammatically, to scrambled eggs. Here is the correction to that article, which will soon appear on the Stop Smiling poetry archive. All I want is your unconditional love.

----

THE SUBTLE ART OF EGOTISM

Night Wraps The Sky: Writings by and About Mayakovsky
edited by Micheal Almereyda
Farrar Straus and Giroux, $27.00

I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose and Provocation
Francis Picabia, trans. Marc Lowenthal
MIT, $40.00


Every generation for which poetry isn’t a matter of mere diligence and hard work eventually comes around to Vladimir Mayakovsky. Brash, violent, mercurial, the greatest exponent, avant la lettre, of slam poetry (if poetry could ever be said to “slam,” Mayakovsky’s could), Mayakovsky herded his audience before many a public performance with a hush (“Quiet, my kittens...”) and then, while reciting poems of violent passion, theocide and weird bodily transformations, stepped aside every so often to outholler any and all of his numerous hecklers. And they were numerous. In his lifetime Mayakovsky acted as representative for the literate violence of the movement called futurism. As he matured, he lent his voice to the contentious rule of Vladimir Lenin. Yet he was loved more than any English-speaking poet could dream. When he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the heart in 1934, upwards of 30,000 people attended his funeral.

Filmmaker Michael Almereyda has assembled a new collection of Mayakovsky’s work, Night Wraps the Sky, in hopes that the Russian futurist will catch on in our own more meritorious age. Alas, we’ll have to wait longer to see a substantial new translation of this very important Russian author’s work, similar in scope to the 1970 Hayward and Reavey translation currently available. This will be, as my Russian-speaking friends tell me, quite difficult: Mayakovsky’s wordplay is uniquely specific to his native language and does not carry over nicely into English. So, though the new translations in Almereyda’s book do pop with life, there are far too few of them. Instead, this is a scrapbook. Memories of Mayakovsky’s life, pictures, and assessments of his legacy are presented here so as to carry over his passion to “shine through to the new tomorrow.” Admirers of beautiful contention will love this, and Night Wraps the Sky should whet their appetites for more.

Another of modernism’s great egoists made a comeback late last year in an exhaustive edition, handsomely designed. Francis Picabia was the self proclaimed “genius, idiot, funny guy” –- add to that, autodidact, reactionary, nihilist –- of French Dadaism. As a painter, he considered himself a rival to Picasso, and when he couldn’t paint, he wrote poems, aphorisms, manifestos and diatribes, all collected in I Am A Beautiful Monster.

Picabia, who flourished in the first three decades of the 20th century, seemed to demand from his contemporaries the respect of a 19th century bourgeois painter of the Ernest Messonier type (with all the roast beef that implies), all the while presenting a public face more or less like Popeye. “My head swells / enough to drive one mad,” he wrote. That swollen head of his got him in trouble with his contemporaries every step of the way.

His poems—tightly wound machines of invective and sharp imagery—feature the most beautiful illogic ever created in that most illogical century. He was also a very strong aphorist, which shows the influence of Nietzche, the only writer he read with anything approaching real seriousness. I find on one page: “It’s really only nonentities who have genius in their lifetime.” And on another: “Spinoza is the only one who hasn’t read Spinoza.” You don’t chew these little morsels without having to spit them out.

The translations from the French by Marc Lowenthal are a real triumph and give nothing to decorum. A shame, then, to find his rather decorous commentary throughout the book—often one will find commentaries wedged between every poem. It’s as if, having unleashed Picabia’s fury on his contemporaries, Lowenthal felt it necessary to qualify it at every step, and the attempt comes across as a little schoolmarmish, especially since Picabia does such a fine job of explaining himself. He once made a sandwich board and forced surrealist doyen Andre Breton wear it around: it distills both Picabia’s Dadaism and the essential conservativism inherent in that movement: “IN ORDER TO LOVE SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO HAVE SEEN IT AND HEARD IT FOR A LONG TIME YOU BUNCH OF IDIOTS.”

posted by Greg Purcell @ 2:43 PM, ,


Battlestar Melodramatica
Thursday, June 26, 2008

Woah. Let's back up a minute. Battlestar Galactica is getting pretty stupid, right? No? Is it just me? You saw it that last episode, right? Like, the scene where Edward James Olmos, alone in his cabin, punches out the mirror, downs a bottle of space-whiskey and then (cut without transition) is found inconsolably weeping in his son's arms, in a scene edited exactly like a Warner Brothers cartoon? If you didn't burst into laughter at that point you must have ice water running through your veins. The show has already become pornography for those who really like to see military types saluting, weeping, or, preferably, both. But this was too much. Fine, I do get it. I do. Edward james Olmos is a good actor, he works really hard, and has been rewarded with a lot of bit parts. I can picture it in my head, how we came to this. Flash back five years. Olmos, fresh from walk-on parts in The West Wing and Touched by an Angel, gets a call from his agent:

AGENT
Eddie, I've got a regular gig for you. Okay, don't get mad. Promise you won't get mad.

OLMOS
I won't get mad, I promise.

AGENT
This could be a regular franchise type of thing. Regular work.

OLMOS
Give it to me.

AGENT
They're remaking Battlestar Galactica for the Sci Fi Network.

OLMOS
Oh, for Christ's...

AGENT
You'll be the lead, Eddie.

OLMOS
(Sigh.) What am I in this one, the Mexican space-drug smuggler? Or, what, the hard-nosed Mexican chief of the space-police? Just give it to me straight.

AGENT
Space captain, sir. You'll be the space captain, or general, or something. The boss.

OLMOS
Just send me the script. I've got to eat. Listen, I've got the one request..

AGENT
I know, Eddie...

OLMOS
I won't wear tights. No fucking tights.

WEEKS PASS

OLMOS
This isn't too bad. Lot's of dialogue, which is nice.

AGENT
And it's a franchise type of thing, potentially.

OLMOS
Let's do this.

TWO YEARS LATER

OLMOS
"Heavy is the head that wears the crown." What do you think?

AGENT
Great, Eddie. What is that, Shakespeare?

OLMOS
Fantastic stuff. Hey, you get any director gigs for me?

AGENT
Just Battlestar, but I'm working on it.

OLMOS
I need to direct. I've got to get in that seat, man.

AGENT
Genius like yours can't be put out to pasture, Eddie. I'm working on it.

OLMOS
Hey, what did you think about that scene where I busted up after finding out Ty was a Cylon?

AGENT
I'll tell you the truth, Eddie. (beat) I was weeping when I saw that.

OLMOS
That's quality television.

AGENT
You're not wrong.

OLMOS
I really felt it, man. I felt that one.

posted by Greg Purcell @ 12:57 PM, ,


Bedlam
Monday, June 23, 2008


Just saw Bedlam again. The Lewton/Robson team puts almost too fine a point on redeeming the lunatics in this, one of the last films Lewton produced before he lost his wartime pull in the industry. Lewton was determined, as he usually was, to draw a humanist parable out of the raw material of the horror film, and it is in this spirit that Boris Karloff, as Chief Apothecary Simms, represents archetypal tyranny while his inmates of his asylum represent, in almost Capraesque fashion, ordinary folks. They all have bunny eyes. It's Karloff's corrupt order versus the inmates' Romantic disorder.

Yet these inmates are also the monsters on the lobby poster, and as such they are contractually obligated to spring out of the shadows now and again and give the audience a jolt. You don't see their eyes in these scenes, just grasping hands. The horror/civics-lesson divide always gets a little muddled in a Lewton film, which is what's great about them and what turns them into unofficial Hollywood tragedies. Simone Simon, torn between her desire for her husband and her instinct to bite his face off in Cat People, is a clean, classic example. In the case of Bedlam, however, the tragic character is a voiceless mob, and the effect is pretty bizarre.

The climactic horror setpiece in the film, in which the inmates hold court over their tyrannical warden, is a neat set-up, one that echoes M and Fury and even Sullivan's Travels, yet with the promise horror films have that these films don't: that no lawful hand will necessarily come down on Peter Lorre's shoulder at the end of the movie and whisk him away, that no ingenuity or plot contrivance will get Joel McCrea off the chain gang. Yet there's no through-line in the scene in Bedlam, no empathetic characters, just two monsters, tyranny and democracy, pulling the moral of the story into taffy. You've got a guy screaming "cut him in half!" (entertainment!) over and over as the more principled inmates argue (humanism!) for his release: and, since Bedlam is a principled movie, all too much so in this case, this release is granted. Immediately after the inmates enact Roosevelt's Universal Declaration of Human Rights Karloff is (entertainment!) stabbed -- not luridly, almost gently -- with a trowel, and so the panicked inmates mortar Karloff into a wall. When, a few scenes later, the stalwart Quaker hero discovers the fresh mortar, he is inclined to say something about it, but the heroine compels him to keep his mouth shut. (Humanism! no wait, that's awfully pragmatic, isn't it?) "Why should thy hand be added to the weight that those people must bear?" she asks, eyes still large and electrified; she's obviously become unhinged from having been a forced inmate of the asylum herself. You expect him to do his UDHR routine and lecture her about the rights of all men, weak and strong, etc. No. He simply laughs, and it almost looks as if they are going to kiss as the Hogarthian end title appears on the screen. Weirdest scene in Bedlam: the only horror movie I can think of that ends with an explicitly stated moral compromise.

posted by Greg Purcell @ 12:49 AM, ,


Another Late Night
Monday, June 16, 2008

About once a month I find myself in that lizard-stem-driven state the internet inspires, where at two in the morning I'm googling myself and my friends and all my ex-girlfriends and the alumni of my old high school as well as weighing the merits of the greatest television cop show intros, looking up recipes for nostalgic, disgusting foods I'll never eat again but sort of want to, watching lizards talk bad about seahorses, or searching the Internet Movie Database for great but unappreciated minor actors and so forth. Eventually, and here's the point I'm trying to make, I wind up close to my vocation and wind up looking at poetry blogs. There are a lot of them out there, knitting away. Most of it is brutally out of touch and intellectual in the stupidest sense of the word: see if you can get through the following blog essay and its subsequent reader responses (or, really, any thread relating to the once-inspiring flarf movement) without wanting to take a long nap.

Still, names I know are mentioned, in rare instances I am mentioned in passing as reading with or having read with some more luminous name, and so I read, 2 in the morning becomes 3 in the morning, I find my hobby mirrored by the fruitlessly ambitious as a profession or a revolution (usually both) and myself actually caring about discussions of post-avant poetics or what is the proper motivation for innovative poetic strategy. At the end of it all I just generally feel as if I've been watching suicide porn for the last hour and want to lay down with my head beneath the water -- no thrashing, gently -- and die. In these perambulations, I always come back to two blogs, both of them a cut above the pack and both of them depressing, in their own way.

Joshua Clover's blog is interesting in part because his intellectual qualities are unperturbed by self-consciousness. He has a self confidence that can be profitably argued with, and an ability to reckon with the fact of popular culture -- the way it works, the way it sounds and feels, the way in which it is far more interesting than most poetry -- that bolsters even those ideological claims of his I can't allow myself to agree with.

Jim Behrle, on the other hand, is more complicated. Good luck finding the majority of his acidic little cartoons (Ron: "My answer to the boxers versus briefs question should be engraved onto the side of the Library of Congress" Curtis: "My thong is glistening with devotion!"), as he seems to erase all links to them as he goes along. The effect is funny, at first, then oppressive. The man is inconsolable -- to him, a crowded professional field is akin to apocalypse. For Jim, there are poets everywhere: poets spilling out of the cracks between the saturated wood, poets crawling between the tracks of the subway with the rats, poets of Zeus-like power observing him from the sky, poets serving their kids BBQ on engine-red picnic tables on perfectly manicured suburban lawns, and all of them have blogs, and all passionless, all watering down the sweet Coca-cola of the real with their bloviating. He's right of course, both about the number of poets (and bricklayers, and white-collar office workers, for that matter), and about their ineffectuality. But what does he want, for Robert Lowell to walk the Earth once more? Artists will never be great again, and I take that as a good sign. As many people as possible should play at art and sport, and should not bore us with their professional status or lack thereof. Otherwise, I can't see what politics -- or their weird proxy, blogs -- are for.

posted by Greg Purcell @ 1:57 AM, ,


Gastropods
Wednesday, June 11, 2008


Even after a small rain in Astoria the front walk is teeming with gastropods. It's like the wild kingdom. Snail shells ring the front arch like christmas lights, powered not by electricity but translucent pulsing meat. Slugs meet in the middle of the sidewalk, entwine, and leave a residue that look as if they've been liquefied. I step out and feel the little snap of their shells beneath my shoes. When the sun comes out the stragglers shrivel up like ancient worshipful cats, the kind the Egyptians used to put hats on. Am I within the five boroughs or an alien planet or what?

posted by Greg Purcell @ 12:36 PM, ,


Desert Island Books
Monday, June 09, 2008

Went to a great comic bookstore on Friday, before it got so friggin' hot out (97 degrees): Desert Island, out in Williamsburg. Gabe Fowler, the proprietor, has a really smart selection of stuff on his shelves, and Johnny Ryan was there to sign books. Ryan looked a little lost behind his desk, surrounded by his admirers, a gaggle of middle aged comic geeks who formed a wall between him and the good looking hipsters in attendance for the free beer. I believe some of them were on sale. Closed Mondays.

posted by Greg Purcell @ 2:20 PM, ,


Dear Former Barnes and Noble Customers
Wednesday, June 04, 2008

That Barnes and Noble over on Astor Place was pretty cool, huh? What did it have, three floors? Three floors on which to kick back, have a little breakfast, drink your soda pop, have a little snack of ice cream, crumbly cookies, etc. You could take a little nap there, right? A little nap in the Military section, using a pillow made from books on the fearsome Messerschmidt 262. I get sleepy just thinking about it. To ensure good blood flow, you may have even grabbed a fat stack of books on Raw Foods you got from the Cooking section and tucked them behind your knees. Woah, wait... Military? Cooking? Those aren't the same sections, right? No problem; they had employees to take care of that for you, wheeling their little carts around. Maybe you even had a crush on one of those little babies. Too bad it closed.

Now you're all coming into St. Mark's Bookshop, and we appreciate the business. Sorry about the legroom. Please, don't let it stop you from actually curling up right in our most heavily trafficked aisles. It's true you might find our business culture a touch unfamiliar at first. Most of us are hired on the basis of actually knowing something about the books we sell, and assume that our customers will need help in one or another aspect of book selection. We have a small staff and this keeps us pretty productive. If lately we seem a little derelict in regard to those duties, it may be because we've been focusing our attentions elsewhere. On small things. Like, for a long time we've had customers who could employ a few basic skills, such as standing upright, and alphabetization. This made them capable of reshelving books they'd pulled down without any assistance from us, even on some of the higher shelfs. No longer. Half our days are spent now cleaning up after our customers, tearing down little book towers with filthy Starbucks-cup spires and restocking them. Did I say Starbuck's cups? I meant also to say Pinkberry cups, Raisinets bags, ticket stubs, broken wine bottles, used tissue, half-eaten McDonald's hamburgers and splayed-out Village Voices. I guess those little diamonds-in-the-rough over at B & N used to take care of that for you, huh? College kids are great; they'll do anything. They're like coal miners except they vote for Obama.

Oh, and to answer your questions: 1) no, sorry, we don't have any books on Dreamweaver; 2) you'll find The Secret under New Age, in the aisle just past philosophy; and 3) our bathroom is in the back. You're welcome to use it as long as you can find a college student to come in and clean it at the end of the day.

Please come again.

Thanks,
The St. Mark's Bookshop Staff

posted by Greg Purcell @ 10:48 AM, ,


Hey Bo Diddley
Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Bo Diddley Bo Diddley have you seen
The wonders of this world got teenaged mean
It's gotten so I don't want to see a sight
But the king-like bodies puffing day and night
The king-like bodies tussle down the back
Of my yard to the No Diddley in Iraq
No Diddley No Money in the Bronx
Make a pretty-drumkit out of old timeclocks
Make a stratocaster from a cardboard box
Try to make a penny from a wheezily fox
Bo Diddley Bo Diddley have you heard
New York trains sound like mockingbirds
Chicago trains sound like killing cats
When they get together make a pitter-de-pat
Pitter-de-pat down the track it squeaks
And when it gets to Pelham man it's knees get weak
A meteor you know has got nickel to burn
Bo Diddley I think your nickels were earned
Tumbling through the sky like Daedelus's son
Bo Diddley don't it just look like fun
Put a Tungusa rabbit in a flashpop run
To make a fat impression for miles around
Bo Diddley don't you think it makes a sound
Bo Diddley Bo Diddley please relax
Rest a little while in your coffin box
And when you come back you can finish this song
When ground's all black and the rabbit's long gone
--1928-2008

posted by Greg Purcell @ 1:01 PM, ,


Vipers
Sunday, June 01, 2008

posted by Greg Purcell @ 10:00 PM, ,


“Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee,” (Harold Ickes) may be one of the more depressing utterances of this campaign. I mean just the cadence of it, its perfect mingling of the imperial and the meritorious which pretty much sums up American governance right now. One isn't against credentials, necessarily, nor the committees that disburse them (well, I am, for the reason that credentials are in essence disappointing to those who depend on them, the human spirit being as it is sort of stupidly aspirational, but we'll leave that point for now). One dislikes that this is the idea, now, behind Clinton's campaign. Pushing on towards the void.

I am not absolutely convinced of Barak Obama's idealism--his selling point is really that he's a creative bureaucrat--but Clinton at this point is running a campaign of pure nihilism. First, she's for the disenfranchisement of the rebel states, now she's shocked (to quote Sen. John Yerkes Iselin) shocked! to think that those poor delegate's votes could be cast away. Which, given the electoral college, is perfectly fair. The system is unequipped to handle anything but unequivocal support of one or another candidate, and its weakness is to the advantage of anyone ambitious to ferret them out. We've run into its limits repeatedly over the course of this miserable decade, of which the Supreme Court decision of 2000 was the most damning example. We won't scrap the electoral system, because we're lazy and to do so would admit defeat, but to look closely at its reform would be to catch a shock from its ad hoc and undemocratic vibe. I admit Michigan and Florida had to be made examples for illegitimately shuffling their primaries around, yet still I sympathize with the impatience of their legislators. So then, somewhere in this morass, it was decided to award half of the formerly banned delegates a seat at the convention. On what precedent? Is it extralegal? Who knows? Everything's now being taken to the credentials committee.

posted by Greg Purcell @ 10:16 AM, ,