T&H: At the Sign of the Dolphin

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James Joyce and his World (1978).

dolphins.jpgDespite my earlier statement about not being much of a collector, today’s book purchase (above) was enough to confirm some well-established patterns (obsessions, even) that should make me reconsider any hasty pronouncements. Not so much for the subject in this case—I already have enough books by and about James Joyce—the significant thing here is the three magic words on the cover: Thames and Hudson. The sight of Joyce’s name on the spine above the old T&H dolphin logo (signifying the two rivers that comprise the company’s name; or maybe a discourse between London and New York via the Atlantic) was enough to demand further investigation. I realised I’d been hoping to eventually find this book after seeing it listed in the back of its companion title, Beardsley and his World by Brigid Brophy. Both books form part of a series that T&H produced in the Seventies, a collection of heavily illustrated mini-biographies of writers, with the odd artist among them. Very worthwhile they are too, with lots of photographs, paintings or drawings of the people and places relevant to their subjects’ lives.

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A wake for Arthur

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That which you will miss: Arthur #1–25.

“And till Arthur comes againus and sen peatrick’s he’s reformed we’ll pose him together a piece, a pace.” Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

Awake, A Wake!

Come celebrate the happy, all-too-brief life of Arthur Magazine with free giveaways and a reading featuring Molly Frances, Oliver Hall, and Peter Relic.

Thursday, March 1, 7:30pm

arthur_flier_small.jpgFamily Bookstore, 436 N. Fairfax Avenue (across the street from Canter’s Deli), Los Angeles, 90036.

Arthur‘s “New Herbalist” columnist Molly Frances incited a revolution nationwide by informing readers of the true powers of almonds, sprigs of mint, and Lord Byron’s secret potion (a.k.a. apple cider vinegar). Molly’s eerily prescient horoscopes have been known to strike the melodic funny-bone of even the most determined non-believer. Tonight Molly will be giving astrological readings as well tripling any double entendre at hand.

Oliver Hall penned Arthur‘s cover story on Kim Gordon and memorably profiled folk radicals Faun Fables. He is the statuesque guitarist with L.A.’s newest psych-rock sensation E.S.P.S., and is seldom seen without his trusty Patsy Cline t-shirt. Tonight Hall will be dispensing priceless aphorisms as well as deconstructing the pungent, multi-faceted phrase “no money, no honey.”

Peter Relic eulogized Jam Master Jay and went on the road with the Black Keys and Sleater-Kinney for Arthur. Relic’s profile of the Geto Boys, reprinted in Da Capo’s Best American Music Writing 2006, was deemed by Seattle’s The Stranger to be “easily one of the most surreal, violent, and ludicrous artists encounters ever documented.” Tonight Relic will be reading from his storehouse of pantoums, an unjustly obscure Malaysian poetic form.

We look forward to seeing you there—dressing in black not a requirement!

Update: Village Voice post-mortem.

Robert Anton Wilson, 1932–2007

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There are few people who really change your life but Robert Anton Wilson—who died earlier today—certainly changed mine. Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy (written with Robert Shea) was my cult book when I was at school in the 1970s, a rambling, science fiction-inflected conspiracy thriller that opened the doors in my teenaged brain to (among other things) psychedelic drugs, HP Lovecraft, James Joyce, William Burroughs and Aleister Crowley as well as being a crash-course in enlightened anarchism. I’ve had people criticise the books to me since for their ransacking of popular culture but this was partly the point, they were collage works, and they worked as a perfect introduction for a young audience to worlds outside the usual circumscribed genres.

The philosophical side of Wilson’s work was probably the most important at the time (and remains so now), his “transcendental agnosticism” made me start to question the adults around me who were trying to force my life to go in a direction I wasn’t interested in at all. I’m sure I would have resisted that kind of pressure anyway but the value of RAW’s writings in Illuminatus! and the later Cosmic Trigger came with being given an intelligent rationale for those decisions; I couldn’t necessarily articulate why I was “throwing my life away” by wanting to drop out of the whole education system but Wilson’s work had convinced me it was the right thing to do. I still mark the true beginning of my life as May 1979, the month I left school for good.

He wouldn’t want us to be maudlin, I’m sure. It’s typical for a writer who spent so much of his life writing about drugs and coincidences that he managed to die on Albert Hofmann’s birthday. So I’ll just say thank you Robert, for changing my life. And Hail Eris!

Previously on { feuilleton }
The Absolute Elsewhere

Happy Bloomsday

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Sylvia Beach and James Joyce, 1920.

Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing Imperthnthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.
Horrid! And gold flushed more.
A husky fifenote blew.
Blew. Blue bloom is on the.
Goldpinnacled hair.
A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile.
Trilling, trilling: Idolores.
Peep! Who’s in the … peepofgold?
Tink cried to bronze in pity.
And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.
Decoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping answer.
O rose! Castile. The morn is breaking.
Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.
Coin rang. Clock clacked.
Avowal. SONNEZ. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. LA CLOCHE! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye!
Jingle. Bloo.
Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum.
A sail! A veil awave upon the waves.
Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now.
Horn. Hawhorn.
When first he saw. Alas!
Full tup. Full throb.
Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring.
Martha! Come!
Clapclap. Clipclap. Clappyclap.
Goodgod henev erheard inall.
Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up.
A moonlit nightcall: far, far.
I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming.
Listen!
The spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the? Each, and for other, plash and silent roar.
Pearls: when she. Liszt’s rhapsodies. Hissss.
You don’t?
Did not: no, no: believe: Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra.
Black. Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do.
Wait while you wait. Hee hee. Wait while you hee.
But wait!
Low in dark middle earth. Embedded ore.
Naminedamine. Preacher is he:
All gone. All fallen.
Tiny, her tremulous fernfoils of maidenhair.
Amen! He gnashed in fury.
Fro. To, fro. A baton cool protruding.
Bronzelydia by Minagold.
By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow. Bloom. Old Bloom.
One rapped, one tapped, with a carra, with a cock.
Pray for him! Pray, good people!
His gouty fingers nakkering.
Big Benaben. Big Benben.
Last rose Castile of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone.
Pwee! Little wind piped wee.
True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay. Like you men. Will lift your tschink with tschunk.
Fff! Oo!
Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs?
Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl.
Then not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt.
Done.
Begin!

James Joyce from Ulysses, 1922.

Here Comes Everybody

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The Guardian‘s archive feature today has their original review of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

Who, it may be asked, was Finnegan?

Friday May 12, 1939

Mr Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, (Faber, 25s), parts of which have been published as “Work in Progress” does not admit of review. In twenty years’ time, with sufficient study and with the aid of the commentary that will doubtless arise, one might be ready for an attempt to appraise it.

The work is not written in English, or in any other language, as language is commonly known. I can detect words made up out of some eight or nine languages, but this must be only a part of the equipment employed. This polyglot element is only a minor difficulty, for Mr Joyce is using language in a new way: “Margaritomancy! Hyacinthous pervinciveness! Flowers. A cloud. But Bruto and Cassio are ware only of trifid tongues the whispered wilfulness (’tis demonal!) and shadows shadows multiplicating.”

The easiest way to deal with the book would be to become “clever” and satirical or to write off Mr Joyce’s latest volume as the work of a charlatan. But the author of Dubliners, A Portrait of an Artist and Ulysses is obviously not a charlatan, but an artist of very considerable proportions. I prefer to suspend judgement. What he is attempting, I imagine, is to employ language as a new medium, breaking down all grammatical usages, all time space values, all ordinary conceptions of context. Compared with this, Ulysses is a first-form primer.

What, it may be asked, is the book about? That, I imagine, is a question which Mr Joyce would not admit. This book is nothing apart from its form, and one might as easily describe in words the theme of a Beethoven symphony.

The clearest object in time in the book is the Liffey, Anna Livia, Dublin’s legendary stream, and the most continuous character is HC Earwicker, “Here Comes Everybody”: the Liffey as the moment in time and space, and everything, everybody, all time as the terms of reference, back to Adam or Humpty Dumpty, but never away from Dublin.

This seems the suggestion of the musical half-sentence with which the work begins: “Riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

Who, it may be asked, was Finnegan? But I gather that there is an Irish story of a contractor who fell and was stretched out for dead. When his friends toasted him he rose at the word “whiskey” and drank with them. In a book where all is considered, this legend, too, has its relevance.

B Ifor Evans