mercredi, juin 27, 2007

DAVID MARKSON


En fouinant sur le web.....Magnifique couverture pour un Lot 49 qui semble se relooker avec succès.

"L'auteur de ce livre envisage d’arrêter d’écrire. Las du manège romanesque et de ses vains artifices, il accumule alors anecdotes, citations et autres « curiosités culturelles » sur les artistes de tous les pays et de tous les temps, compilant les causes de décès, soulignant les ironies de la postérité, signalant des hasards surprenants… Peu à peu, certains motifs émergent de cette litanie terrifiante, tels que la vanité de l'art ou l'absurdité de la mort, tandis que l'hypocondriaque « Écrivain » s'efforce de donner un sens à son refus de jouer le jeu littéraire.

Joute verbale entre le sublime et le ridicule, florilège piégé autant que monologue intérieur, Arrêtez d'écrire questionne notre culture, notre mémoire, et finit par évoquer un énigmatique jeu de l'oie où le lecteur, sans cesse déstabilisé, ne peut s'empêcher de relancer à son tour les dés pipés de la lecture."

mercredi, juin 20, 2007

ENTER,NO



enter no(silence is the blood whose flesh
is singing)silence:but unsinging. In
spectral such hugest how hush,one

dead leaf stirring makes a crash

-far away(as far as alive)lies
april;and i breathe-move-and-seem some
perpetually roaming whylessness-

autumn has gone:will winter never come?

o come,terrible anonymity;enfold
phantom me with the murdering minus of cold
-open this ghost with millionary knives of wind-
scatter his nothing all over what angry skies and

gently
(very whiteness:absolute peace,
never imaginable mystery)
descend

EE Cummings

Mais QUE FOUTENT LES EDITEURS (Part 7)


De retour de Londres, Cartwright est victime d’une tentative d’assassinat.
Quelques jours plus tôt, l’appartement de son ami Di Gorro a été cambriolé, la pellicule du documentaire que Cartwright et lui ont tourné quelques années plus tôt exposé à la lumière, détruit.
Qui en veut à Cartwright ? Qui peut être menacé par le contenu du film ?
Il s’agissait avec celui-ci de donner la parole à des révolutionnaires, des terroristes, des groupes radicaux, des tenants du complexe militaro industriels et autres cultes ésotériques – voyage dans la contre-culture, la folie technologique et la contestation violente, de Londres à Chartres, en passant par Bastia et Stonehenge, sans ligne narrative – images brutes ouvertes à la libre interprétation de chacun.
Cartwright fait retour sur le film, à partir du journal de tournage. Les occurrences se multiplient, les pistes se recoupent, il se retrouve bientôt au milieu d’un réseau aux mailles multiples.
Qui se cache vraiment derrière Outer Films, la société qui a produit le film ? Qui a engagé cette seconde équipe, qui tournait en même temps que Cartwright et Di Gorro ? Un deuxième film, serait venu doubler le leur – pour quelle raison ? Et si un autre montage révélait une autre vision des choses ? A-t-on volontairement tenu Cartwright à l’écart des implications réelles du film ?
Et les proches de Cartwright ne sont-ils pas partie du complot ? Si plus encore que le film, c’était sa famille que l’on cherchait à détruire ? Claire, sa nièce, employée par Outer Films, Monty Graf, le petit ami de celle-ci, la mystérieuse Jane Aut, sœur de Monty, et épouse de Phil Aut, propriétaire de Outer Films. Et Reid, le fiancé de Jenny, la fille de Cartwright – sa propre femme : tous semblent en savoir plus sur le film qu’ils ne veulent bien le dire.
A moins qu’ils ne fassent tous qu’interpréter le film en fonction de leurs intérêts personnels, de leurs structures psychiques ? Chaque rencontre que fait Cartwright semble en effet ouvrir à une signification nouvelle de son film – qui, finalement, semble n’exister que dans un espace indéfini entre son interlocuteur et lui, avec un sens différent à chaque fois (Conception Powersienne en diable !)
Cartwright arrivera-t-il au cœur du mensonge ? Et pour trouver quoi ? Le véritable objet du film n’était-il pas la manipulation ? Cartwright n’est-il alors qu’une marionnette – et qui tire les ficelles ?

Les informations se coupent, se recoupent, les connexions se multiplient, les interprétations se chevauchent à l’infini, au gré de courants contraires. Expérience de la prolifération de sens. Plus Cartwright recueille d’informations, plus le bruit augmente, moins son idée du tout est claire. Jusqu’au moment où enfin il change de perspective et se met en quête non plus d’informations mais de relations, se plaçant ainsi au centre d’un réseau, puis d’un ensemble de réseaux, dans lequel la vérité, le sens du Réel et du Vrai s’estompent, pour ne laisser comme seule issue que la recension, le catalogage, la topographie d’un monde ou le référent a sombré. Plus de clarification possible dans un monde ou la donnée a fait place au symptôme – place à la seule perception et à la mesure. Trouver sa place au centre d’un réseau, d’une multitudes de systèmes. Prise de conscience de n’être pas au centre, mais un centre parmi une multitude. L’homme comme laboratoire de fiction, appréhension instable du réel, nébuleuse du système nerveux, le langage comme interface imparfaite : multiplication des interprétations, des ramifications, des appréhensions, des réseaux du possible. Et si le monde échappait à toute prise, même subjective ?

« Les évènements de LC ne sont pas linéaires ; ce sont des collections de dispersions en direction de ce que vous pourriez appeler désordre, ou des transitions provisoires, des noeuds ou des points magnétiques ou tout ce rassemble. Transcender la métaphore et aller vers l'homologie, voilà mon propos. » Joseph McElroy

Fiction neuronale par excellence, Lookout Cartridge, est le frère de sang de Gravity, paru la même année. Tirons un seul des fils de ce chef d’œuvre absolu, dont l’absence ici tient du scandale, la perte de la contre-culture dès le début des années 70, et le nouvel environnement technologique. McElroy écrit – et prends la mesure à ce moment précis, tournant crucial, de ce qui est en train d’arriver sous ses yeux. Plus que la destruction d'un film, c'est de la destruction de l'idéalisme dont il s'agit. Le changement historique, qui avec l’avènement des médias finit de bouleverser l’idée d’une Vérité ultime derrière les apparences. Plus que le film, c'est l'espoir de cette vérité qui est détruit. Conséquence immédiate, au cœur même du roman, l’impossibilité qu’il y a désormais à traiter les évènements, les faits, les existences mêmes en dehors d’une technique (écrite ou non) qui par nature déforme en ajoutant du sens. L’impossibilité d’une neutralité.

Hormis le fait de cacher au public français cette vérité cruelle – que DeLillo est un nain austère – impossible de savoir pourquoi Lookout, comme l’ensemble des œuvres de McElroy, n’a jamais franchi l’atlantique. Vous me direz qu’il a bien fallut vingt ans à Powers avant de nous arriver. Si, pourtant, messieurs les éditeurs, il devait n’y en avoir qu’un….

CREAMY




THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY

Before long someone does settle in across the table, with a pasta salad and a peach melba. The woman wipes her spoon and fork with a napkin that she puts in her pocket, and then unfolds another for her lap, tucking the corners under so it makes a hexagon. She smiles at Adeline. The metal braces in her mouth are disturbing, like visual static. Metal braces on older faces make Adeline uneasy because her mom never had money for an orthodontist when she was young, and she grew up thinking her mouth needed improving. Now that she has the money, she doesn't want to bother; but now, seeing this woman makes her run her tongue across her teeth.

"I'm Sybil from accounting. I don't think I've seen you in here before. Are you from customer service?"

"No. I'm a programmer. My name is Dolores," says Adeline.

"I thought it was just customer service and accounting in here from one to two. Aren't your people supposed to be eleven to twelve?"

A woman who knows the rules. Adeline likes that, "They made an exception today, because of my problem."

"Pleased to meet you, Dolores." She sucks down a few swirls of rotini. "Which problem is yours?"

"My boyfriend."

"Oh, boyfriend problem."

"Yeah, that one." Adeline swallows a spoonful of chowder, and then starts to speak. "We've been living together more than three years. He's a great guy, a little old-fashioned, a writer; well, not really a writer. He's a novelist. I actually love him a lot. He's sensitive and he's loyal. I don't know. Sometimes we take separate vacations, but we're usually together. Sex is good. It lasts forever." Adeline suddenly feels in her belly she is going to tell too much too fast, but she can't stop herself. "He knows things. Like the history of the forklift, and how it changed warehousing. Sometimes he tells me that. That's good. Isn't that good? He was a forklift operator for years, before he changed his name from Ralph to Roger and became a novelist. We always get along great, until this weekend, and we didn't even argue." Sybil is expressionless. The recessed lighting glints off her braces as she slowly eats. "But I'll tell you, he was doing something to me; I mean, down there, like he does. Usually I like it, but this is going on too long, and I pull on his ponytail to see if I can get him to stop, and something very weird happens." Adeline waits for Sybil to ask what, but her silence continues. "I pull on his ponytail and his head comes off."

The pause is heavy, a moment like a balloon that can't shed its ballast. Nothing rises. Nothing from Sybil. Sweet Roger, Adeline thinks. She wants to say, "O woe is me. Oy yoy yoy yoy yoy!" Sybil remains expressionless, and Adeline feels the silence packed with monotony. Tears heat her eyes. A fleck of pasta is caught on Sybil's braces.

Sybil asks, "What is his social security number, please?"

"I don't know, Sybil. Right now I feel like I'm out here, you know, on the edge of nature, with all the smaller shadows. Shadow of the inch. Spoonshadow. The wild minkshadow. Wee shadows. Of a comma. Shadow of the tampon. But I just held his head up and it was still talking. That's impossible. Wrong! But he was talking. Oy yoy yoy yoy yoy!"

"What is his middle initial? His daytime phone number or a number where he can be reached, like a cell phone or fax number?"

"And then his body was walking around with a big, you know? Everything going into the deeps. Down the well. Shadow of the chestnut. Shadow of moth. Pillshadow." Adeline was earnest, but also enjoyed the words she was starting to talk. She could be the queen of shadows. Or King Shadeline. "It was a big erection. You know, shadow of a tiptoe. Dropshadow. Shadow breathshadow."

"Has he done business with D-M before?"

"I need to find something out. What does the red mean? What happens in the blue?" Adeline brushes a tear from her cheek. "And then when I was working, I started seeing it and hearing him."

" Is this a private or a corporate account? Is there an 8oo number? To what address will we send the statement?"

Adeline sees now that the employee is looking into her face as if it was a monitor, and she is waiting for the responses to come up. There is no satisfaction here for Adeline.

(...) Suddenly, rather like a mudball some kid splats against a window, she is hit by the recognition that she has forgotten how many letters there are in the alphabet. She thinks it's an even number -- twenty-two, or twenty-six, or twenty-four. It's in the twenties. Maybe twenty-eight. Or maybe she's wrong, and it's an odd number after all -- twenty-five or twenty-seven. Maybe that's wrong and it reaches the thirties. She's quite sure it's not in the teens. That's too few.

She'll recite the whole thing, she decides, and count them each by one; so, she leans her head back against the car and starts from the beginning. "A B C D..." She gets pretty far, all the way to K, before she has doubts. She sniffs the air. Still something familiar. She isn't so sure about the J. Maybe she put it in too early. It comes after O, before T. O J T P; then she can't remember if N comes first, or M. At least she knows they come together in the sequence, she's pretty sure. M N L U R? N M W...? M O N U R Y...? N U M I N O...? numino? minemony? No. Not two N's. She pushes ahead with it, and knows it's coming to the end when she hits L U W Y Z V X. She's satisfied. X at the end satisfies Adeline.

dimanche, juin 17, 2007

Gracie goes to schooner school


Throughout my so-called career (I'm more inclined to think of it as a "careen"), my goal (seldom articulated, even to myself) has been to twine ideas and images into big subversive pretzels of life, death and goofiness on the chance that they might help keep the world lively and give it the flexibility to endure. The degree to which I've been successful I suppose only history can judge, provided history is not too preoccupied watching digital video to pay any notice to wood-pulp junkies like me. In any case, it doesn't matter much because after nearly 40 years of pursuing phantasmagorical novels down shadowy hallways, I've recently aimed my cognitive flashlight at an entirely different corner of the crumbling castle of literature.
Specifically, I've decided to write a children's book. A children's book about beer.

I got the idea from a cartoon in The New Yorker. Don't sneer, ye purists, ye holders of lofty ideals. Marcel Proust, around 1913, took one glance at a cookie and was inspired to pen a 900-page tome that some experts rank high among the greatest novels ever written (and that despite the fact that the number of Americans who've actually read "Remembrance of Things Past" cover to cover would likely fit inside the cookie oven at any commercial bakery). When it comes to inspiration, a witty drawing has got to be as trustworthy as baked goods, unless, of course, one happens to have the munchies.

Anyway, the New Yorker cartoon depicts two men sitting several stools apart in a bar. One of the men wears a conservative business suit and a no-nonsense expression. The other is shabbily dressed, unshaven, and looks as if he makes a habit of lingering too long at the tap: in other words, your typical writer. In the caption, the businessman is saying to the sad-sack scribe, "I doubt that a children's book about beer would sell."

Now, most readers would simply chuckle or smile at this little joke, turn the page and forget about it. Not I, I'm afraid. For better or for worse, I took it as a challenge.

Let me emphasize that my kiddie brewski opus is not intended as satire with which to amuse cynical adults. Neither is it to be a cautionary tale designed to warn the young away from the perils of irresponsible suds surfing. On the other hand, it certainly isn't meant to entice kids to take up drinking at an earlier age than most will anyway: kindergarten keggers are probably not in society's best interest. Such an approach would not only be unconscionable but as the cartoon businessman predicts, it likely wouldn't sell.

No, my purpose is to enlighten, to decipher for curious children another of the adult world's perplexing mysteries (knowing that most parents talk to their offspring about the ubiquitous presence of beer in our culture with no more frequency or lucidity than they address the subject of sex). And, obviously, I'm also out to make the children's best-seller list if not actually win the Newbery Medal.

Okay, then, without further ado (although I'm rather fond of ado), here's how my book begins.

***

Have you ever wondered why your daddy likes beer so much? Have you wondered, before you fall asleep at night, why he sometimes acts kind of "funny" after he's been drinking beer? Maybe you've even wondered where beer comes from, because you're pretty sure it isn't from a cow. Well, Gracie Perkle wondered those same things.

"Mommy," Gracie asked one afternoon, "what's that stuff Daddy drinks?"

"You mean coffee, sweetheart?"

"Not coffee. Ick! That other stuff that's yellow and looks like pee-pee."

"Gracie!"

"You say pee-pee."

"Well, when I'm talking about potty time I might. But I don't say it about somebody's beverage."

Gracie giggled. Her mother, who was busy at the ironing board, suggested without looking up, "I believe, dear, you're talking about beer."

"Oh!" squealed Gracie. "That's right. Beer. That stuff that's always on TV." She deepened her voice. " 'Better tasting!' 'Less filling!' "Better tasting!' 'Less filling!' " She giggled again. "Is it kinda like Pepsi for silly old men?"

Mrs. Perkle smiled, but it was such a weak, wimpy smile a kitten could have knocked it halfway to Milwaukee. She paused in her ironing to stare out of the laundry room window. The clouds themselves looked like a big pile of dirty laundry. That was not unusual because, you see, the Perkle family lived in Seattle.

Do you know about drizzle, that thin, soft rain that could be mistaken for a mean case of witch measles? Seattle is the world headquarters of drizzle, and in autumn it leaves a damp gray rash on everything, as though the city was a baby that had been left too long in a wet diaper and then rolled in newspaper. When there is also a biting wind, as there was this day, Seattle people sometimes feel like they're trapped in a bad Chinese restaurant; one of those drafty, cheaply lit places where the waiters are gruff, the noodles soggy, the walls a little too green, and although there's a mysterious poem inside every fortune cookie, tea is invariably spilt on your best sweater. Mrs. Perkle must have been feeling that way, for she sighed at the limp pork dumplings (or were they wadded Pampers?) in the sky and said to Gracie, "If you want to know about beer you should go ask your father."

Never mind that she was wearing fluffy fuzzy bunny slippers, Gracie still tiptoed into the den. Her daddy was watching football on their new flat plasma screen, and if the University of Washington was losing again, he'd be in a grumpy mood. Uh-oh. She overheard a naughty word. UW was losing. Gracie was relieved, however, when she noticed that Uncle Moe had dropped by to watch the game and, of course, to mooch a few beers from her dad.

Uncle Moe didn't take sports very seriously. He called himself a philosopher, if you know what that is. He'd graduated from about a dozen colleges, seldom ever seemed to work, and had traveled just about every place a person could go without getting his head chopped off. Mrs. Perkle said he was a "nut job," but Gracie liked him. It didn't bother her that he had a face like a sinkful of last night's dinner dishes or that his mustache resembled a dead sparrow.

Timidly, Gracie tapped Mr. Perkle on the elbow. Her voice was shy and squeaky when she asked, "Daddy, can I please taste your beer?"

"No way," her father snorted over his shoulder. His eyes never left the screen. "Beer's for grown-ups."

Gracie turned toward Uncle Moe, who grinned and beckoned her over, as she had suspected he might. Uncle Moe extended his can -- and just like that, behind her daddy's back, little Gracie Perkle took her first sip of beer.

"Ick!" She made a face. "It's bitter."

"The better to quench your thirst, my dear."

"What makes it bitter, Uncle Moe?"

"Well, it's made from hops."

Gracie made another face. "You mean them jumpy bugs that ...?"

"No, honeybun, beer isn't extracted from grasshoppers. Nor hop toads, either. A hop is some funky vegetable that even vegans won't eat. Farmers dry the flowers of this plant and call them 'hops.' I should mention that only the female hop plants are used in making beer, which may be why men are so attracted to it. It's a mating instinct."

"Moe!"

The uncle ignored Gracie's father. "In any event," he went on, "when brewers combine hops with yeast and grain and water, and allow the mixture to ferment -- to rot -- it magically produces an elixir so gassy with blue-collar cheer, so regal with glints of gold, so titillating with potential mischief, so triumphantly refreshing, that it seizes the soul and thrusts it toward that ethereal plateau where, to paraphrase Baudelaire, all human whimsies float and merge."

"Don't be talking that crap to her. She's five years old."

"Almost six," chimed Gracie.

"In Italy and France, a child Gracie's age could walk into an establishment, order a beer and be served."

"Yeah, well those people are crazy."

"Perhaps so -- but there's far fewer alcohol problems in their countries than in safe and sane America."

Mr. Perkle muttered something vague before focusing his frown on UW's latest booboo. Uncle Moe removed another beer from the cooler, holding it up for Gracie to admire. "Beer was invented by the ancient Egyptians," he said.

"The ones who made the mummies?"

"Exactly, although I don't believe there's any connection. At least I hope not. The point is, the Egyptians could have invented lemonade -- but they chose to invent beer instead."

While Gracie thought this over, Uncle Moe pulled the metal tab on the top of his beer can. There was a snap, followed by a spritzy hiss and a small discharge of foam. Uncle Moe took a long drink, wiped foam from his tragic mustache, and said, "Speaking of inventions, did you know that the tin can was invented in 1811, but can openers weren't invented until 1855? It's a fact. During the 44 years in between, hungry citizens had to access their pork 'n' beans with a hammer and chisel. They were pretty lucky, don't you think, that in those days beer didn't come in cans?"

At that moment there was a time out on the football field and Mr. Perkle got up to go to the bathroom. You yourself may have noticed that beer causes big strong men to piddle like puppies.

"Have you heard of Julia Child, the famous cook? When she moved to Paris in 1948, she brought along a case of American beer. Her French maid had never seen beer in cans before, and she tried to flush the empties down the toilet. Naturally, it overflowed. Took a plumber nearly three days to unclog the pipes."

Gracie laughed. She looked at the empty cans lying around the den, thinking that flushing them down the toilet might be a funny trick to play on her daddy. Or would it? She'd have to think about it some more.

Once again, Uncle Moe passed his beer to Gracie. She hesitated, but being an adventurous little girl, she eventually took another swallow. Although she didn't say "ick," it didn't taste any better than the first time.

"Your pediatrician isn't likely to mention this -- unless he's Irish, of course -- but beer does have some nutritional value. The Chinese word for beer means 'liquid bread.' " Uncle Moe paused to drink. "Even the most wretched macrobrew contains a six pack of vitamins: thiamine, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, biotin and ... oh yes, cyanocobalamin. Can you say cyanocobalamin?"

"Cyno ... cyho ... cyoballyman ... cy ..."

"Okay, close enough. Presumably, they're each a member of the vitamin B family but precisely what health benefits those little jawbreakers provide I haven't a clue."

Gracie didn't care what benefits they provided. As far as she was concerned, vitamins were even ickier than beer.

"I'll tell you what," said Uncle Moe, almost in a whisper. "On Monday, we'll inform your mother that I'm taking you to Woodland Park. Instead, we'll secretly ride the bus out to the Red Hook brewery. We'll go on their tour and you can see for yourself exactly how beer is made. Most educational, my dear, most educational. After the tour, I'll sneak you into the taproom and we'll watch the bartender water the monkeys. It's better than the zoo."

Practically burping with excitement (or was it the beer?), Gracie skipped out of the den. Now she had something to look forward to.

***

All right, that's as far as I've gotten. Over the next several weeks I'll continue to scribble, hopeful that when I'm finished I shall have furnished exhaustive, authoritative, entertaining, and even practical answers to our youngsters' often unspoken yet ceaseless puzzling over that lustrous liquid brush with which so many millions daily fresco their tonsils.

Beer, however, will not be my sole focus. As in my novels, I'll attempt to lay down an underlying stratum of serious philosophical speculation. The message I wish to impart to the children goes something like this:

The world is a wonderfully weird place, consensual reality is significantly flawed, no institution can be trusted, certainty is a mirage, security a delusion, and the tyranny of the dull mind forever threatens -- but our lives are not as limited as we think they are, all things are possible, laughter is holier than piety, freedom is sweeter than fame, and in the end it's love and love alone that really matters.

What about it? Do you think it will sell?

ACID TEST



"Quelques 40 ans après sa publication, le roman hallucinatoire de Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, sera adapté pour le cinéma et le réalisateur Gus Van Sant (Elephant, Paranoïd Park) devrait le diriger d'après un scénario de Lance Black."

Pas un scoop mais on l'attend de pied ferme. En espérant que l'adaptation sera meilleure que celle des cow girls. Croisons le pouce.

(Coup de Pouce, puisqu'on y est, à Milton Glaser, le graphiste responsable de la superbe couverture du Tom Wolfe. Et de l'affiche mythique de Dylan 67!)

mardi, juin 12, 2007

UNE PENSEE AMICALE


Co-Tangent Press. Vollmann, William T. Book of Candles. Sacramento, CA: Co-Tangent Press, 2006. $10,000

Artist’s book, one of 10 copies, each signed by the author / artist, William T. Vollmann on a page of the text as well as in the box housing the book. Page size: 19 inches x 16 inches; 75pp; (2pp. per folio sheet, 32 sheets in all + 2 unnumbered double-page spreads). The text is a suite of eight religious and blasphemous love-poems to prostitutes and was composed in the Philippines in 1995 and relief-printed on Rives de Lin paper by the author over a period of years (1997-2003). The text blocks were photo-etched magnesium plates as were some of the illustrations. Other illustrations were woodcuts done in Thailand and Cambodia on Chinese ulo wood. These were colored a la poupee and further hand colored with watercolors and acrylics. Housed in a sailcloth-covered basswood clamshell box which the artist / author has painted, collaged with hand-painted woodblock prints, and suitably adorned with gewgaws. The outside dimensions of the box are 31 inches high x 24 inches wide x 2.5 inches deep. The woodcut image on the underside of each box is different. Four Japanese “doughnut hold” coins have been screwed in to the underside of the box to comprise protective feet. Inside each box, a narrow channel, collaged with painted paper, runs around three edges, leaving the spine side open. Within this are set two wooden corner blocks mounted with selenium-splotched flower-engraved brass plates, a strip of painted walnut engraved with a print of a female nude, two engraved beeswax candles on engraved brass supports wrapped round with brass wire. Even the brass screws of these assemblies are engraved and rubbed with oil-based ink. On the inside of the spine are one engraved and inked aluminum plate and one engraved and inked brass plate which is signed and numbered. This is certainly the most labor-intensive project undertaken so far by William T. Vollmann’s Co-Tangent Press. (9851)

INDISCRETIONS


Paul Auster, Dans le scriptorium : 65 000 ex
Regis Jauffret, Microfictions : 32 000 ex
Cormac McCarthy : Non, ce pays n’est pas pour le vieil homme : 21 000 ex
Roberto Bolano, Les détectives sauvages : 9300 ex
Antoine Bello, Les falsificateurs : 9000 ex
Percival Everett, Blessés : 8700 ex
Martin Amis, Chien Jaune : 8500 ex
William Gass, Le Tunnel : 7200 ex
Celine Minard, Le dernier monde : 7200 ex
Olivier Cadiot, Un Nid pour quoi faire : 6000 ex
Enrique Vila-Matas, Docteur Pasavento : 5700 ex
J G Ballard, Que notre règne arrive : 4000 ex
Steven Milhauser, Le roi dans les arbres : 2050 ex
David Mitchell, Cartographie des nuages : 1200 ex
Brian Evenson, Contagion : 1200 ex
Gilbert Sorrentino, Salmigondis : 1000 ex
Dave Eggers, Pourquoi nous avons faim : 880 ex
Laird Hunt, Indiana Indiana : 700 ex

samedi, juin 09, 2007

MAIS QUE FOUTENT LES EDITEURS (Part 6)


THE LOONY, Christopher Wunderlee.
Albert Locner est astrophysicien. Albert Locner a des hommes à ses trousses. Albert Locner a des secrets. Albert Locner aurait-il aidé le gouvernement américain a simuler l'aterrisage sur la Lune d'Apollo? Serait-il responsable de l'assassinat de JFK? Pynchonien dans les idées, dans la structure, dans la langue même ce coup de chapeau à Gravity's Rainbow aurait pu être rien moins que sympathique sans la langue, remarquable, de Christopher Wunderlee, qui catapulte The Loony bien au-delà du simple hommage. Disons que Gravity's Rainbow est la première escale de cet Apollo, promis à de biens jolis voyages. Christopher Wunderlee est poète, The Loony (une centaine de pages) est son premier roman. Et Wikipedia est, cette fois, d'une justesse rare :
"In 2005, the Loony appeared, the story of an estranged scientist’s supposed role in faking the Project Apollo moon missions in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Again, the title of the book mirrors the subject matter, as the protagonist appears to be either suffering from ‘lunacy’ or he is the victim of an elaborate conspiracy to keep it secret that the Apollo missions were faked. The main characters are Albert Locner, an astrophysicist who becomes embroiled in the plot. An apparitional love interest named Harris who is allegedly a military spy who uses sex to blackmail prominent enemies of the state and/or another victim of the plot. And, “the Colonel”, who is either the military officer in charge of Lochner’s case or a psychiatrist. It has been suggested that they are postmodern counterparts to Dante, Beatrice and the Devil, or Don Quixote, Dulcinea, and the narrator. The story, using experimental narration, follows Albert Lochner’s life from conception to his downfall, when he joins the team to fake the lunar landings. After they accomplish their goal and fool the world, Lochner is blackmailed when Harris is supposedly abducted. In order to save her, he must agree to a number of unspecified demands, one of which is that he spends several years being driven randomly around the U.S. by two agents, why is never explained. He later escapes to find Harris, in attempt to discover whether she was truly a victim or an accomplice in the conspiracy. The plot is infused with unique devices, including the repetitive use of lines from David Bowie’s Space Oddity song, “out-of-room-voices” who chime in to offer commentary or break into song (it has been suggested that these ‘voices’ are actually patients at a psychiatric ward and that the entire or at least some part of the book takes place there) and “file footage”, or scenes from movies, television shows, propaganda films, and other media (again, potentially simply what is playing on the television at the hospital). These plot devices combine with the unique, loquacious prose style to mirror a state of lunacy, whether this is because the protagonist is indeed mentally ill or because of the situation he finds himself in is the big unanswered question of the novella. Because of its symbolic parallels, stylistic innovations, and distinctive narrative style, The Loony is considered a groundbreaking work of fiction. Comparisons of the novella were made to Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Joseph Heller, and Vladimir Nabokov."

vendredi, juin 08, 2007

JEU DE PISTE

Allez un simple indice : "Wendell Apogee" pour ceux qu'intéresserait ce premier roman qui sort en août et semble déjà faire grimper aux rideaux ses premiers lecteurs. On évoque un mix Pynchon Matt Ruff repeint par Dali. Waow. Creamy en diable?

SALUBRITE PUBLIQUE


IF WE ACCEPT THE NOTION THAT USING POWER AGAINST THE powerless is wrong, a clear enough set of corollaries begins to emerge. We become able to distinguish, as populations (thought not always their rulers) have usually been able to do, between outlaws and evil-doers, between outlawry and sin. Not much analysis is needed, because it is something we can sense in all its dead-serious immediacy. "But all they are are bandits," the rulers whine indignantly, "motivated only by greed." Sure. Except that, having long known the difference between theft and restoration, we understand the terms of the deal whereby outlaws, as agents of the poor, being more skilled and knowledgeable in the arts of karmic readjustment, may charge no worse that an agent's fee, small enough too be acceptable to their clients, ample enough to cover the risks they have to take, and we always end up loving these folks, we cheer for Rob Roy, Jesse James, John Dillinger, at a level of passion usually reserved for sports affiliation.
Stone Junction is an outlaw epic for our own late era of corrupted romance and defective honor, with its own set of sleazy usurpers and Jacobitoid persistences -- though the reader who's expecting eighties nostalgia or, have mercy, some even earlier-type romp through the pleasures of drugs, sex and rock and roll, should be warned that lurking herein, representing the bleaker interests of that consensus ever throbbing along despite and apart from all the fun and pleased to call itself "Reality," are to be found some mighty evil contract personnel, who produce some disagreeably mortal plot developments. One of the book's manifold graces is its author's choice never to dance away into wishful gobbledygook, remaining, rather, conscientiously grounded in our world as given, where, as Pam Tilli, in a slightly different context, reminds us, Destiny turns on a dime.
The other day in the street I heard a policeman in a police car, requesting over his loudspeaker that a civilian car blocking his way move aside and let him past, all the while addressing the drive of the car personally, by name. I was amazed at this, though people I tried to share it with only shrugged, assuming that of course the driver's name (along with height, weight and date of birth) had been obtained from the Motor Vehicle Department via satellite, as soon as the offending car's license number had been tapped into the terminal -- so what?
Stone Junction was first published in 1989, toward the end of an era still innocent, in its way, of the cyberworld just ahead about to exponentially explode upon it. To be sure, there were already plenty of computers around then, but they were not quite so connected together as they were shortly to become. Data available these days to anybody were accessible then only to the Authorized, who didn't always know what they had or what to do with it. There was still room to wiggle -- the Web was primitive country, inhabited only by a few rugged pioneers, half loco and wise to the smallest details of their terrain. Honor prevailed, laws were unwritten, outlaws, as yet undefinable, were few. The question had only begun to arise of how to avoid, or, preferably, escape altogether, the threat, indeed promise, of control without mercy that lay in wait down the comely vistas of freedom that computer-folk were imagining then -- a question we are still asking. Where can you jump in the rig and head for any more -- who's out there to grant us asylum? If we stay put, what is left to us that is not in some way tainted, coopted, and colonized, by the forces of Control, usually digital in nature? Does anybody know the way to William Gibson's "Republic of Desire?" Would they tell if they knew? So forth.
You will notice in Stone Junction, along with its gifts of prophecy, a consistent celebration of those areas of life that tend to remain cash-propelled and thus mostly beyond the reach of the digital. It may be nearly the only example of a consciously analog Novel. Writers since have been obliged to acknowledge and deal with the ubiquitous cyber-realities that come more and more to set, and at quite a finely chopped-up scale too, the terms of our lives, not to mention calling into question the very traditions of a single author and a story that proceeds one piece after another -- a situation Jim Dodge back then must have seen coming down the freeway, because the novel, ever contrarian, keeps its faith in the persistence of at least a niche market -- who knows, maybe even a deep human need -- for modalities of life whose value lies in their having resisted and gone the other was, against the digital storm -- that are likely, therefore, to include pursuits more honorable that otherwise.
One popular method of resistance was always just to keep moving -- seeking, not a place to hide out, secure and fixed, but a state of dynamic ambiguity about where one might be any given moment, along the lines of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Modern digital machines, however, managed quickly enough to focus the blurred ellipsoid of human freedom even more narrowly than Planck's Constant allows.
Equally difficult for those who might wish to proceed through life anonymously and without trace has been the continuing assault against the once-reliable refuge of the cash or non-plastic economy. There was a time not so long ago you could stroll down any major American avenue, collecting anonymous bank checks, get on some post office line, and send amounts in the range "hefty to whopping" anywhere, even overseas, no problem. Now it's down to $750 a pop, and shrinking. All to catch those Drug Dealers of course, nothing to do with the grim, simplex desire for more information, more control, lying at the heart of most exertions of power, whatever governmental or corporate (if that's a distinction you believe in).
You look at Windows 95 blooming on to the screen, and you think, Magic. But those who understand the system down to molecular level, nothing magical remains -- all is revealed as simple repetitive drudgery, what we might even denounce as a squandering of precious operating time, were it not for Technology's discovery of how to tap into velocity situation prevailing down at the smaller scales -- Nnggyyyyow-w-w! like the Interstate down there! -- and leave all the kazillions of brainless petty chores to their speedy new little devices.
Stone Junction's allegiance, however, is to the other kind of magic, the real stuff -- long-practiced, all-out, contrary-to-fact, capital M Magic, not as adventitious spectacle, but as a pursued enterprise, in this very world we're stuck with, continuing to give off readings -- analog indications -- of being abroad and at work, somewhere out in it.
The fatal temptation for a fiction writer who must accept the presence, often a necessity, of magic in his own work, is to solve difficulties of plot, character and -- more often than is generally suspected -- taste, by conveniently flourishing some prop, some ad hoc amulet or drug, that will just take care of each problem as it arises. Fortunately for us here, Jim Dodge, by the terms of his calling, cannot indulge in that particular luxury. Magic is in fact hard and honorable work, and cannot be deployed at whim, not without consequences. A good deal of Daniel Pearce's character growth comes by way of learning the business and earning the powers -- making Stone Junction a sort of magician's Bildungsroman -- in which teachers, more or less unorthodox in their methods, appear to Daniel one by one, each with particular skills to pass along, all linked in an organization known as AMO, the Alliance of Magicians and Outlaws, a proto-Web that tends to connect more by way of pay phones, mail drops and ESP than linked terminals, over overseen by the enigmatic, not quite all-powerful Volta.
Through all this meanwhile runs a second plotline -- a whodunit, in which Daniel must solve the uncompromisingly earthly question of who murdered his mother, Annalee Pearce, in an alleyway in Livermore, California when he was fourteen, complete with multiple suspects, false trails, the identity of the killer not revealed till the final pages. The story traverses a map of some moral intricacy, sure-footed as Chandler, providing twists as elegant as Agatha Christie, as all the while Daniel's education proceeds.
Will Bill Weber teaches meditation, fishing, waiting. Mott Stocker teaches Dope, its production and enjoyment. Ace safecracker Willie Clinton (yep) instructs the boy in how to get past all kinds of locks and alarms, rendering him thus semipermeable to certain protected parts of the world, setting him on his path to total dematerialization. For a while Daniel teams up with poker wizard Bad Bobby Sloane, roving the American highways in search of opportunities to risk capital in ways that cannot be officially controlled, climaxing in a legendary Lo-ball confrontation with the cheerfully louche Guido Caramba, in a literary poker passage as classic as it is funny, and in its appreciative devotion to a game where the moral stakes are so high, ranking up there with comparable parts of Kawabata's The Master of Go.
The shape-shifting genius Jean Bluer teaches Daniel the arts of disguise -- another illicit skill, given it's already forbidden to impersonate policemen, doctors, lawyers, financial advisors, and who knows what all besides, as if someday all varieties of disguise will be statutory offences, including Impersonating an Ordinary Citizen. At last Daniel comes circling back to Volta, by now also one of his prime suspects in Annalee's death, who teaches him the final secret of Invisibility. None of your secular Wellsian tricks with refractive indices and blood pigmentation here, but rather the well-known and time-honored arts of ceasing to be material.
At last Daniel is ready to set off on the metaphysical Quest all these teachers have been preparing him for, which now swiftly unfolds as an elaborate technocaper, with a mysterious and otherworldly six-pound Diamond as its target. Too early in those days for keyboard dramas, emergency downloads, and cyber-fugues to relentless countdowns at the corner of the screen, the technology Daniel goes up against is mostly of analog sort -- optical surveillance, strain-gauge sensor grids and thermostatic alarms -- his nondigital responses to which include nerve gas, plastique, and invisibility.
He takes the Diamond, and then the Diamond takes him. For it turns out to be a gateway to elsewhere, and Daniel's life's tale an account of the incarnation of a god, not the usual sort that ends up bringing aid and comfort to earthly powers, but that favorite of writers, the incorruptible wiseguy known to anthropologists as the Trickster, to working alchemists as Hermes, to card-players everywhere as the Joker. We don't learn this till the end of the story, by which point, knowing Daniel as we've come to, we are free to take it literally as a real transfiguration, or as a metaphor of spiritual enlightenment, or as a description of Daniel's unusually exalted state of mind as he prepares to cross, forever, the stone junction between Above and Below -- by this point, all of these possibilities have become equally true, for we have been along on one of those indispensable literary journeys, taken nearly as far as Daniel -- through it is for him to slip along across the last borderline, into what Wittgenstein once supposed cannot be spoken of, and upon which, as Eliphaz Levi advised us -- after "To know, to will, to dare" as the last and greatest of the rules of Magic -- we must keep silent.

Introduction to Jim Dodge's Stone Junction
-- By Thomas Pynchon, 1997

STEVE TOMASULA : BOOK OF PORTRAITURE




08:12:02:18:59
Pecker hopping. Bare chest and thighs shiny with sweat. Nothing they hadn’t seen before, thought I__, an Investigator for Family Pharmacy & Foods Inc., trying to make out the face looking at him through the glare of an apartment window across the courtyard, the someone watching him as he jumped rope naked.


He kept up the rhythm while the someone—a woman?—a man with hippie hair?—settled in, watching. As steadily as a camera.


1011 1101 0110 1111 1100 1101 0101 1100 1101 1....—a choreography of bytes....

It was like being in a movie….


Family Pharmacy. Standing before glossy models on the covers of magazines, Q__ felt eyes on her. Instinctively she stashed her meds in her army jacket and looked up—a bowled security mirror collaged her own bowed face with the reflections of a store manager, standing behind the cash register, pretending to work though she could tell he was actually scoping her out; he began diddling with his bowtie—the polka-dot bowtie all Family Pharmacy managers wore—companies as bad as the army about making everyone dress alike so they’d think alike—this stooge looking away as quickly as people always did when she caught them watching her. The Creep.


What kind of movie?



Odd, thought I__., skipping rope in his living room, that he, an Investigator for Family Pharmacy & Foods Inc., a person who knew how surveillance could turn anyone to glass, could be so untroubled....

My Neighbor’s Affair?

Name:_________________


The View Into Apartment 3-G?

It was like being visited by a shade, U__ thought, naked except for matched black panties and bra (Without-a-Trace™). Ghostly shades, she considered, that were everywhere and therefore nowhere even if night by night they made her a little more like them. She shifted her weight from one spiked heel (Armani) to the other, waiting for the photographer to finish adjusting the flood lights shining into her eyes. They would take her picture—she was sure it was her that they were photographing because her body was there—then one of them would come, make her a little more—a little more obscure—and by the time she saw her other self, the self that appeared in catalogs, on packaging, in brochures and the ads she modeled for, she was different: duskier skin, softer silhouette, anime eyes. Different her, yet her.
"Raise the key beam,” Photographer told his Assistant. Or at least she assumed it was Photographer. With the lights glaring in her eyes, the people beyond came to her as disembodied voices, fussing about whatever it was that they worried before they took her picture.
She shifted to the other foot. Odd, how something as tiny as a tired muscle or a paper cut could remind a person that the world was solid and too real all around though you yourself could seem so— What?— Not there? And this is how U__’s story began: wondering how the stone walls of the wine cellar she posed in could have such gravity while most of what made up who she was was lighter than the web of stories and negatives and pixels that modeled her career out of thin air. As Stylist put a wrap around U__’s shoulders to keep the cool, wine-cellar air from goose-pimpling her flesh, U__ took inventory: this morning, her bathroom scale said she weighed one hundred and seven pounds; mail addressed to her was delivered to the apartment she inhabited. And of course her driver’s license listed a name (Organ Donor?—NO!).
But in an age of interlocking subdivisions and identical restaurants, in a world that each year generated 100,000,000 Miracle Slacks™, each of which had to be filled—HELLO! MY NAME IS:_______________—in a country of actuary tables, of ZIP codes, of an endless supply of service manager uniforms (filled out by Service Managers), census forms (filled in by Citizens), personalized mail-order catalogs, identical parking garages and their tiers of look-a-like vans (Forest Green or Goldenrod) bearing vanity plates (2HOT4U) stamped out by some 51 prisons (a form of living to be sure), of Neilson ratings, and Frequent Flier Memberships—an age when the Japanese went through thirteen Prime Ministers in nine years without blinking, when every American City greeted tourists with local versions of the same Sports Heroes, News Teams and other types—Bag-lady, Alderman, Shopper, Cop—that is, for the purposes of a story of her time, did the particulars of name matter?
What was important was that the world at this time required Models, just as five hundred Fortune 500 companies required five hundred CEOs, just as airports required Airplanes, just as Hollywood always required about six Action Heroes, four Teenage Heart Throbs, and one, but no more than one, overweight Funny Guy. Just as most divorces still required at least one Jerk, Top 40 lists required forty Top Songs, best-seller lists required Best Sellers to be best sold and talk shows required Hosts to talk, Guests to talk to, and Viewers to call in; Teachers required Students, History required Revolutions, Economies, Wars and Peace to fill it—and Historians to make it mean. If you light up fluorescent lighting over an expanse of office cubicles, everyone knew, Accountants and Phone Solicitors, Web Designers and Xs and Ys and Zs would soon fill those cubicles, as surely as a crossword puzzle invited Letters or vending machines promised to dispense Product. Thus, if some Photographer set up floodlights, sooner rather than later, a Model would appear to stand in their glare as was U__, dressed in black Lycra, Without-A-Trace™ Panties and Bra (seamless shaping!), shifting limbs heavy with boredom while she waited for him to take his meter readings, adjust his light umbrellas and do whatever it was that photographic apparatus required a Photographer to do.



A movie others were making.



This is stupid, Q__ thought, the store’s Manager’s eyes weighing on her in that old exhausting way as she brought a magazine up to his register. Even though he probably thought she was shoplifting, she kept the meds she’d paid for back in pharmacy hidden in her army jacket because— Because she didn’t want every Tom, Dick & Harry knowing about her meds. Because she didn’t want him to think she was only buying a magazine because—
Because she hated having to ask.
X__ said his Family Pharmacy nametag, the rest of his name hidden by the lapel of his blazer. She placed the magazine—Look—on the counter, fished around in her purse—the Manager’s ratty, piss-holes-in-the-snow eyes unbuttoning her blouse?—

1011 1101 0110 1111 1100 1101 0101 1100 1101 1....—to and fro and up into the card reader of the cash register.

On the monitor below the counter, Queenie Qunt, and other info linked to the credit card X__ had just swiped appeared across a live video of her face. Most customers didn’t notice the decal on the door giving Family Pharmacy permission to videotape them, he knew, but so what? If they weren’t doing anything wrong they had nothing to hide.


APPROVED.

After paying, Q__ stared straight ahead as she asked, “Do you have a public restroom here?”

Store 046616



“Yes.”

...firm melons....

lundi, juin 04, 2007

TORSE ARCHAIQUE D'APOLLON


L'homme du jour, le mystérieux "hwygaustrey", sans nul doute.

Et une spéciale dédicace :

Nous n'aurons jamais vu sa tête légendaire
Aux yeux mûrs comme des fruits
Mais nous voyons son torse encore incandescent
Flamme vacillante pourtant, mais qui
Perdure et brille.

Sans elle d'où viendrait la lumière
Qui suit, éblouissante, la courbure des muscles?
Et comment le sourire issu du fin mouvement des reins
Coulerait-il jusqu'au sexe lourd, à la mi-temps du corps?

Sans elle ce roc se dresserait
Court et difforme à la chute diaphane des épaules;
Il ne scintillerait pas comme une peau de fauve.

Il ne jaillirait pas hors de ses limites
Comme font les étoiles: car il n'y pas de lieu
D'où l'on ne t'aperçoit. Tu dois changer ta vie!

R M Rilke.

La suite se fera ailleurs, autrement.