Dennis Cooper – Page 3 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 655

The Surrealist (1947) by Victor Brauner.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Terry Ratchett presents…18 needlessly obscured avant-garde films by Thomas White, Teinosuke Kinugasa, George Barry, Standish Lauder, Helge Schneider, Dusan Makavejev, Oliver Herrmann, Mauricio Kagel, Mamoru Oshii, Gian Carlo Menotti, Pat O’Neill, Vera Chytilová, Shozin Fukui, Willard Maas, Djouhra Abouda and Alain Bonnamy, Juraj Herz, and Jay Schlossberg-Cohen.

• “When I’m convinced that a certain type of book is completely beyond the capacities of my temperament and my technical skills, I sit down at my desk and start writing it.” Italo Calvino discussing his approach to writing in 1983. The essay, The Written World and the Unwritten World, gives its title to a collection of previously unavailable Calvino pieces translated by Ann Goldstein. John Self reviewed the book.

• New music: Komplett Kollaps (A Dedication To Jóhann Jóhannsson) by Rúnar Magnússon, and Composition 1 by Deathprod.

Brann’s new book sweeps across the vast range of things that hold her interest. It thus invites us to enjoy the life of the mind and to live from our highest selves. A thoughtful encounter with this book will make you, I swear, a better person. The book includes chapters on Thing-Love, the Aztecs, Athens, Jane Austen, Plato, Wisdom, the Idea of the Good. The first half provides an on-ramp to the chapter titled “On Being Interested,” which falls in the dead centre of the book. This central chapter serves as more than a cog in the wheel: it is an ars poetica. Addressing issues of attention, focus, and interest itself, as well as how and where to deploy these functions throughout our lives, “Being Interested” offers a solution for any seeker intrigued by the notion that happiness is not an accident but a vocation. Brann characterizes the pursuit of happiness as “ontological optimism […] to be maintained in the face of reality’s recalcitrance.”

Peggy Ellsberg reviewing The Habit of Interestedness by Eva Brann

• “God told me I should take more LSD.” Sari Soininen on her acid-induced photographs.

• At Public Domain Review: The Procession of the Months by Walter Crane.

• At Smithsonian Magazine: See the chilling beauty of winter on Mars.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Edie & Eddy Slab.

• RIP Michael Snow, film-maker and musician.

• Kollaps (1981) by Einstürzende Neubauten | Feed The Collapse (1992) by Main | Collapsing Inwards (2014) by Jóhann Jóhannsson

Weekend links 654

Drawing for a New Year’s Card (c. 1900) by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

• “Almanacs appealed to the perennial lust for wonder and weirdness in the world. They were the fantastic literature of the day.” Mark Valentine on English Almanacs 1500–1800. Reading this had me wondering whether Old Moore’s Almanac is still being published. Yes, it is.

• “Meet the designer of the fanciful subway entrances to the Paris Métro.” Susannah Gardiner on the architecture, design and anarchist philosophy of Hector Guimard.

• “Apocalypse is not alien to HR Giger,” says Steven Heller, reviewing Atomkinder, a book of the artist’s early cartoons for which he also provided an introduction.

• “Nabokov loved film, hopelessly.” Luke Parker on a short poem, The Cinema (1928), from Vladimir Nabokov’s Berlin years.

• From Loki to Behemoth: waves of the English coastline photographed by Rachael Talibart.

• Mix of the week: Winter Solstice 4: “In C” by ambientblog.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Grace Zabriskie Day.

• Atom Sounds (1978) by Jackie Mittoo | Atom Blaster (1985) by Vangelis | Atomic Buddha (1998) by Techno Animal

Weekend links 652

Landscape with Antiquities (1955) By Ithell Colquhoun.

• “The ontological horror at the core of these stories is that the stone–which represents the natural world and the uses we carve out for it–is unknowable. It’s been here, affecting the land, whether erected as a monument or laid as bricks, for longer than we can fathom, and its inaccessible past has some frightening bearing on the present.” Sean McGeady on 50 years of stone-tape theory, from Nigel Kneale to Ben Wheatley. Also a reminder that Christmas ghosts on TV could be more than another adaptation of MR James.

• “Midnight is the time when one can recall, with ribald delight, the names of all the Great Works which every gentleman ought to have read but which some of us have not. For there is almost as much clotted nonsense written about literature as there is about theology.” At Wormwoodiana: That Black-Edged Light: A Note on HM Tomlinson.

• “Anxious but stubborn herself, she was a lucid observer of social awkwardness, her subject matter in her books being primarily worry: at disasters real and imagined (comet-fall, floods, unplanned chaos), but also at small-scale domestic panics (such as how to mollify unwanted guests).” Mark Sinker reviewing Tove Jansson, a new biography by Paul Gravett.

• Dennis Cooper’s favourite fiction, poetry, non-fiction, film, art, and internet of 2022. Thanks again for the link here!

• “A is for Alphabet and Architecture.” Public Domain Review now has an index. Rather slight but still useful.

• Ju-on: The Curse and four other Y2K J-Horror movies you may have missed: a list by James Balmont.

• At Smithsonian Magazine: Listen to the sound of a dust devil swirling around on Mars.

• Unquiet Things offers the latest accumulation of Intermittent Eyeball Fodder.

• Stone God (1957) by Martin Denny | Sanctuary Stone (1973) by Midwinter | Children Of Stone (2006) by Espers

Weekend links 648

The Twittering Machine (1922) by Paul Klee.

• “Thinking of ‘writer Twitter’ as more important than writers themselves is an insult to the profession. People have been trading words for money for thousands of years. They will continue to do so after the death of a platform built on manufactured outrage, social hierarchy, unfunny jokes, stale memes, pornography, and spam. I mention this Atlantic essay only because it echoes what so many people are saying in the ether right now, not to pick on its author. The piece reads like a parody of how writers overestimate the importance of Twitter to their work and careers. It’s frankly a little embarrassing. Your work is the product you sell! Not the shitty jokes you tell with people you want to impress.” Freddie deBoer on the kerfuffle du jour. For “writer” see also “artist” or anyone else working at the intersection between commerce and creativity. From what I’ve read this week about potential technical problems at the pestilential birdcage I’d be less sanguine about its immediate survival. Since I retreated from the place as an active user two-and-a-half years ago all I get from it is the inflated subscriber number you see on the right-hand side of this page, a combination of Twitter followers plus email subscribers. The latter currently stand at some 270 individuals so if you’re among that number you can consider yourself part of a more exclusive group. And thanks for subscribing!

• “…the books of the past, besides adding to our understanding, offer something we also need: repose, refreshment and renewal. They help us keep going through dark times, they lift our spirits, they comfort us. Which means that I also strongly agree with the poet John Ashbery, who once wrote, ‘I am aware of the pejorative associations of the word “escapist,” but I insist that we need all the escapism we can get and even that isn’t going to be enough.'” Michael Dirda makes a case for reading classic, unusual and neglected books. Kudos for the mention of Anthony Skene‘s Monsieur Zenith, a character few of Dirda’s readers will have heard of.

• “While Haeckel’s paintings turn the floating phantoms into baroque spectacles of colour and flowing form, Mayer’s medusae are more sober, their tentacles subdued, their umbellate bells transparent.” Kevin Dann on the jellyfish and other “floating phantoms” described in AG Mayer’s Medusae of the World (1910).

• “The passing of time has added potency to the images, giving this interpretation of the Dracula story the feel of a distant fairy tale, a myth emerging from the mists of time, erupting across the world of cinema, its shadow reaching everywhere.” Martyn Bamber on 100 years of Murnau’s Nosferatu.

• At AnOther: Camille Vivier talks about shooting nude models in the treasure-filled home of HR Giger.

• New music: In Concert & In Residence by Sarah Davachi, and Anglo-Saxon Androids by Moon Wiring Club.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Kimono portraits were popular souvenirs for sailors visiting Japan in the 1800s.

• Mix of the week: Saturnalia: Deep Jazz for Long Nights, 1969–1980 at Aquarium Drunkard.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Clouds.

• Dark Clouds With Silver Linings (1961) by Sun Ra | Obscured By Clouds (1972) by Pink Floyd | Firmament (Cloudscape) (1995) by Main

Weekend links 643

Freundschaftsfoto (1964) by Jürgen Wittdorf.

• “It’s truly astonishing how Laswell collided with vastly divergent musicians and genres while somehow still representing complementary musical spheres.” Yes, indeed. Mixes of the week: Bill Laswell Research Institute: Vol I & II, two 90-minute collections at Aquarium Drunkard dedicated to the career of the indefatigable musician/producer/catalyst.

• “These pieces are created using custom developed software and laser specialised machines resulting in highly detailed laser cut works on layered paper with some works comprising over a thousand individual parts.” Works in paper at Studio Ibbini.

• “The visual history of polyhedra is littered with false starts, poignant failures, and allegories unable to convey the weight of their subject matter.” Noam Andrews explores the history of rendering polyhedral objects in art.

• “When it came to homosexuality, the east was as bourgeois as the west.” Homoerotic art from the communist era by Jürgen Wittdorf (1932–2018) receives a reappraisal.

• More MR James: All of James’ ghost stories in a single volume at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts.

• More mixes: A mix for The Wire by NikNak, and XLR8R Podcast 769 by The Sun Ra Arkestra.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Tracing the history of railways in Japan through art.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Marie Menken Day.

• Angeline Morrison‘s favourite albums.

• Ghost Train (1961) by Virgil Holmes | Ghost Train (1961) by Electro-Tones | Ghost Train (1962) by The Partners