Empire Creep Joint

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December brings a new chapbook story from Supervert: Empire Creep Joint, a tale of the Empire State Building being transformed into “102 Floors of Sodom”. Or so the citizens of New York believe… Rather a Ballardian idea, if there’s any currency left in that over-used label.

To find out more you’ll need to acquire a copy of the publication which is only available via Supervert’s annual December book giveaway. All that’s required is to submit your email address here then cross your fingers. In the past there was a choice of titles but two of these are now sold out thanks to the work of Clayton Cubitt and the divine Ms Stoya. There’s a lesson there for publishers.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Reverbstorm at Supervert
Witkinesque
Hysterical Literature

Gare d’Orsay to Musée d’Orsay

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Gare d’Orsay, coupe transversale (1898). Plan de Victor Laloux.

The Google Art Project is currently featuring a slideshow history of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, showing the museum’s evolution from the world’s first all-electric rail terminal to its current status as a major repository of 19th-century art. The Gare d’Orsay was built to bring visitors to the Exposition Universelle of 1900, an event regular readers should be familiar with by now, a connection which only compounds the interest I have in the place. (See this recent post and the links below it for more on the subject.)

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Projet A.C.T. Architecture (Renaud Bardon, Pierre Colboc, Jean-Paul Philippon). Coupe perspective générale, Octobre 1979.

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The Trial.

In addition to the building being one of the few structures remaining from the exposition, its dishevelled splendour provided Orson Welles with a fantastically evocative (and cheap!) set for his 1962 film of The Trial. It’s surprising to read that people objected to this, believing the spaces to be too large. The disjunction of space in Welles’ film is one of its great strengths, as is the confusion of architectural styles and detail. Much of this was improvisation imposed by necessity—money not being available for the sets that were planned—but it makes the film all the more labyrinthine and disorienting.

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Eduardo Paolozzi at New Worlds

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I was working on this book throughout the autumn, and it could hardly be more different to some of the visual extravagance that came before and after. Eduardo Paolozzi at New Worlds is published by Savoy Books this month. Predominantly an examination by David Brittain (no relation to David Britton) of the connections between artists such as Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton with New Worlds magazine in the 1960s, the book is also a rare study of the science fiction magazine when it was making its greatest impact in the late 60s and early 70s.

Brittain highlights many examples of Paolozzi’s sf-influenced art of the period, and examines the development of the magazine under Michael Moorcock’s editorship during which time New Worlds evolved from being a slightly moribund sf title in the early 60s to what JG Ballard later called “one of the most exciting magazines of any kind in this country”. An appendix features interviews with some of the key creators and contributors: editor Moorcock, designer Charles Platt, art editor Christopher Finch, contributor Michael Butterworth, and critic John Clute. Writer and illustrator Pamela Zoline created some original artwork for the endpapers. The introduction is by Rick Poynor.

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Despite being pressured for time I was very pleased to be designing this book. I’d liked Paolozzi’s work since I first encountered it in the Tate Gallery in the 1970s; a couple of years later I was buying up anthologies featuring New Worlds stories (I was too young for the 60s magazine), so discovering that Moorcock had made Paolozzi the magazine’s “Aeronautics Advisor” made perfect sense. In the past I’ve said that New Worlds ruined my taste for hard sf but that’s not really true since I never really liked the stuff beyond a few Arthur C. Clarke books. Too much bad writing, too many cardboard characters shuffling around between chunks of explanation about made-up technology. The discovery of New Worlds merely demonstrated that there were other ways of approaching sf, and you didn’t have to put up with the rubbish.

I also enjoyed the magazine’s bolshy attitude, a quality shared by Harlan Ellison in his Dangerous Visions anthologies. Moorcock says in Brittain’s interview that NW sympathised with the Underground of the late 60s but also tried to be more disciplined in its approach, especially where the design was concerned. You couldn’t have treated fiction to the semi-legible printing that Oz and Frendz often deployed. But the radical attitudes of the Underground can be discerned in the stance NW adopted. Some of the reviews and polemical articles by Moorcock (often under his “James Colvin” pseudonym), M. John Harrison and John Clute are bracingly vitriolic to a degree which if delivered today would probably see them ostracised for life.

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With the design the main intention was to present the information clearly and let the visuals speak for themselves. The book is heavily illustrated throughout, with many examples of Paolozzi’s marvellous prints. The layout nods obliquely to the period; before getting started I spent some time looking at the work of Erik Nitsche. I like the way Nitsche laid out the books he designed in the 1960s, and there’s also a connection in his work as a designer for the General Dynamics corporation: one of Paolozzi’s print series of the period is entitled General Dynamics F.U.N.

Being full-colour throughout, the print run for this book is smaller than usual so anyone interested is advised to move swiftly. Official publication is December 16th but it’s on sale now at Savoy and at Amazon.

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Bad Behaviour Boys 2014 calendar

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Marco Blaze.

Who knew there were hot guys in the Black Lodge? Not another calendar of mine (I don’t know anyone this attractive) but a new calendar from Ross Brownsdon and Travis de Jonk at Bad Behaviour Publishing who notified me about this yesterday. See François Sagat as a drawing, Chi Chi LaRue as herself, and much more here (but only if you’re not alarmed by penises). The calendar is on sale here.

Previously on { feuilleton}
Bad Behaviour

Steampunk Calendar

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This one arrives two months late, the months of October and November being overly preoccupied with other work. I chose a steampunk theme for this year since this has been a productive area recently. The idea was one of those simple notions—rework some book covers into calendar pages—that in practice ended up taking much longer than anticipated. Larger copies of the pages may be seen here while the CafePress purchase page is here. My thanks to everyone who’s been buying things recently.

For those who dislike over-decorated 19th-century science fiction but may still want a Coulthart calendar there’s the Cthulhu Calendar (still a popular item), the Psychedelic Wonderland calendar, and the Through the Psychedelic Looking-Glass calendar. Note: Calendars at CafePress can now be purchased throughout the year so make sure that you select January as the starting month if you want the months to run for a single year only.

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