Vladimir Nabokov – Page 6

Weekend links 232

Forget Me Not (no date) by Caitlin Hackett.

• Halloween brings out the articles about weird fiction: “No one would now write of [HP Lovecraft] as the critic Edmund Wilson did, in the New Yorker in 1945: ‘The only real horror in most of these fictions is the horror of bad taste and bad art.’ The true horror was in fact that of judging Lovecraft by the standards of a defunct literary culture,” says John Gray. At The Atlantic there’s Jeff VanderMeer on the uncanny power of weird fiction, while Matt Seidel at The Millions explores the mysteries and attractions of Robert Aickman’s “strange stories”.

• The Witching Hour is a video essay by Pam Grossman “examining the many different faces of witches in film”. Pam’s video opens with a scene from Suspiria; over at FACT, Goblin’s Claudio Simonetti talks about the creation of Suspiria‘s peerless soundtrack.

• David Rudkin and Alan Clarke’s uncanny television film, Penda’s Fen, is given a 40th anniversary screening later this month at the Horse Hospital, London. For those who can’t attend (and those who haven’t already read it) there’s my post from 2010.

Nabokov sees each day’s weather as a palette: “The weather this morning was soso: dullish, but warm, a boiled milk sky, with skin – but if you pushed it aside with a teaspoon, the sun was really nice, so I wore my white trousers”. He listens carefully to the sound of the rain, which his letters brilliantly orchestrate. He provides fantastic descriptions of puddles, some of which contain shifts in perspective reminiscent of the nearly cinematic transitions found in the novel he would write shortly afterwards, King, Queen, Knave:

“I looked out of the window and saw: a red-haired housepainter caught a mouse in his wheelbarrow and killed it with the stroke of a brush, then he tossed it in a puddle. The puddle reflected the dark-blue sky, quick black upsilons (reflections of swallows flying high) and the knees of a squatting child, who was attentively studying the little grey round corpse.”

Eric Naiman on Vladimir Nabokov’s Letters to Véra

• Occult rock: Peter Bebergal talks to Expanding Minds about his new book, Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll. There’s an hour-long film of Black Sabbath saving rock and roll in Paris, 1970, here.

• Mixes of the week: Burning The Existence, “a three-hour sonic exploration of the outer fringes of Goth”, and a horror soundtrack mix by Death Waltz.

• “‘Capital loathes the old,’ [Gareth] Evans said, ‘for anchoring us in the reality of the lived.'” Iain Sinclair on London’s lost cinemas.

• Desirina Boskovich, co-editor of the Steampunk Users Manual, offers “7 Reasons Why Steampunk Is Totally ‘Now'”.

• Penguin has new collage covers by Julian House for The Cut-Up Trilogy by William Burroughs.

• Hear a homemade synthesizer turn weather into music.

• Grotesque doodles by William Makepeace Thackeray.

• full fathom five is Thom’s new blog.

• Weird Dream (1976) by Harmonia 76 | Weird Caravan (1980) by Klaus Schulze | Weird Gear (1991) by Ultramarine

The Nose, a film by Alexandre Alexeieff & Claire Parker

The last time I wrote about the animated films of Alexandre Alexeieff & Claire Parker the only copies available were low-grade things on YouTube which have long-since vanished (one of many reasons I don’t embed YT players in these posts). Happily a new copy of The Nose (1963) has appeared that’s not only better quality but isn’t split into two as was the case earlier.

The Nose is based on the Gogol story of the same name, a tale of a St Petersburg official who wakes to find his nose has left his face and is masquerading as a civil servant. I’ve not read Gogol’s story but I do have Nabokov’s book about Gogol which dwells not only on the prominent nose of the author, but also his traumatic death which was hastened in part by a quack physician who treated Gogol by applying leeches to his nose. Neither story or film contain anything as horrific. The film version is a wordless animation made using the pinscreen technique which Alexeieff & Parker developed in order to create greyscale animated films without recourse to smudgy materials like pencil, pastel, charcoal, etc. As I’ve mentioned before, the most notable application of this technique is the prologue the pair created for Orson Welles’ film of The Trial (1962). What’s striking about the Alexeieff & Parker use of the pinscreen is how skilfully they use it to manipulate light and shade. Where other animators like Jacques Drouin used the technique more impressionistically, Alexeieff & Parker’s films at times give the impression of watching an animated engraving. The Nose is one of their finest pieces. (Thanks to Gabe for the tip!)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker

Weekend links 213

No Tears for the Creatures of the Night (2005) by Will Munro.

• Steve Barker’s On The Wire show on BBC Radio Lancashire is one of the longest-running music shows on British radio but it’s not broadcast in London so you seldom hear it mentioned at all. (It’s also the only radio show I’ve appeared on, oddly enough.) Some of Barker’s shows, which predominantly feature dub and reggae artists, can now be heard at Mixcloud.

• “As protagonist after protagonist is undone by temptation and lust, one can’t help but divine a sinister double entendre in the book’s title – something nocturnal and obscene.” James Lovegrove on the reissue of Robert Aickman’s 1964 collection of “strange stories”, Dark Entries.

• Coil vs. Kenny Loggins sounds like no contest, and so it proved in 1988 at the Mike Tyson/Michael Spinks fight. There’s another surprising connection between Tyson and Industrial culture with the poster that Neville Brody designed for the boxer’s Tokyo bout.

• Ventriloquism: Unheimlich manoeuvres: Sarah Angliss (who performs as Spacedog) on the history of ventriloquist dummies. With a bonus appearance from the great Ray Alan and Lord Charles. Related: the Vent Haven Museum.

• I’ve been wanting to read Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu for years but always hesitate over which translation to choose. As Leland de la Durantaye shows, the arguments about translating Proust into English are still unresolved.

• Music For A Good Home 3: a collection of 31 rare or unique tracks by a variety of artists including Belbury Poly, Pye Corner Audio, and Grumbling Fur. All proceeds go to Shelter.

• David Cronenberg – The Exhibition is running throughout the summer at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam showing props and other materials from the director’s films.

• “’I’m in pictures,’ John Wayne explained when Nabokov cordially inquired about his line of work.” Blake Bailey on Vladimir Nabokov’s unpublished Lolita screenplay notes.

• Original artwork for the Linweave Tarot (1967) at Sweet Jane’s Pop Boutique. As noted before, the full set of cards is probably the grooviest ever created.

• Mixes of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 118 by Ensemble Economique, and a Wyrd Daze Solstice mix from The Ephemeral Man.

• At One With Chaos & Abandonment: The Irrepressibles’ Jamie McDermott talks to Joseph Burnett about his music.

• From the Zodiacal Light, a new track from Earth with vocals by Rabia Shaheen Qazi.

• The Ultimate Chinatown Filming Location Map of Los Angeles.

• Tuxedomoon at Pinterest.

• Dark Companion (1980) by Tuxedomoon | Dark River (1990) by Coil | Dark Turn Of Mind (2011) by Gillian Welch

Weekend links 211

Secret Bloom (2014) by Natalie Shau.

Bloomsday approachs. “Reading Ulysses changed everything I thought about language, and everything I understood about what a book could do,” says Eimear McBride whose debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, recently won the first Bailey’s women’s prize for fiction. McBride was interviewed by Susanna Rustin last month, shortly before the award was announced, and her novel has now become one of those minor causes célèbres for being rejected so often it was eventually published by a new imprint set up by a bookseller. “If the publishing industry doesn’t take a risk then who will?” asks Henry Layte, the bookseller in question.

Speaking of risk, David Hebblethwaite coincidentally wrote a post earlier this week asking where the formal challenge has gone in science-fiction writing. (He mentions McBride in passing.) Nina Allen followed up with a post of her own. I suspect the books are still being written but they’re no longer being accepted by editors and publishers who want even more adventure stories, “sympathetic” characters, and easy reads. Novels that only aspire to be written equivalents of action films or computer games are doomed to be less exciting than their more kinetic competitors. The struggle between the values of art and the values of entertainment is an old one but it shouldn’t be an either/or proposition. “Difficulty is subjective,” says Eimear McBride, “the demands a writer makes on a reader can be perceived as a compliment.”

Related: the following from Geoffrey Hill on “difficulty”:

We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We’re difficult to ourselves, we’re difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most “intellectual” piece of work.

• The Quietus pulled out all the stops this week, interviewing Annette Peacock, Iain Sinclair (again), Alan Moore (again), and asking Peter Strickland, the director of Berberian Sound Studio, for a list of his favourite albums. Given the above, it’s worth noting that all those people have produced challenging work of their own in different media.

• “The Satyrs Motorcycle Club was founded in 1954 with seven members, but little did anyone know it would become the oldest running LGBT organization (and oldest gay motorcycle club) in the world.”

• Trunk TV posted another great selection of television title sequences. The previous selection has been taken down for the usual tiresome copyright reasons so watch this one while you can.

• “Detroit techno and black metal have so much in common,” say Wolves In The Throne Room whose new album, Celestite, is predominantly a product of synthesizer technology.

• “Houghton Library’s copy of Arsène Houssaye’s Des destinées de l’ame (FC8.H8177.879dc) is without a doubt bound in human skin.”

• The secret of Nabokov’s sexual style: David Lodge reviews Nabokov’s Eros and the Poetics of Desire by Maurice Couturier.

• How long can you hold your breath? 2 models, 7 divers in an underwater shipwreck by photographer Von Wong.

• At Dangerous Minds: Paul Gallagher on The fantastic world of Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre.

• Wizards of the Coast: Benjamin Breen on John Dee and the occult in California.

• More photography: Peter Guenzel captures strange lights in forests.

• Mix of the week: Bleep podcast 121 presented by Margot Didsbury.

• I’m The One (1972) by Annette Peacock | Eros Arriving (1982) by Bill Nelson | The Dire And Ever Circling Wolves (2005) by Earth

Weekend links 199

Follow the Leader (London, 2011) by Isaac Cordal.

• “Brutalism is the decor of dystopian films, literature and comics, just as gothic is for horror.” Jonathan Meades‘ A-Z of brutalism.

• Vitaly Shevchenko on the urban explorers of the ex-USSR. Related: Photos by Vitaliy Raskalov from the top of the Shanghai Tower.

• Joe Banks reviews the throbbing, hissing, minatory pulses of the Black Mill Tapes 1–4 by Pye Corner Audio.

Walter Benjamin is the only one among the commentators who attempts to pin down the anonymous, evanescent quality of Walser’s characters. They come, he says, “from insanity and nowhere else. They are figures who have left madness behind them, and this is why they are marked by such a consistently heartrending, inhuman superficiality. If we were to attempt to sum up in a single phrase the delightful yet also uncanny element in them, we would have to say: they have all been healed.” Nabokov surely had something similar in mind when he said of the fickle souls who roam Nikolai Gogol’s books that here we have to do with a tribe of harmless madmen, who will not be prevented by anything in the world from plowing their own eccentric furrow.

Le Promeneur Solitaire: WG Sebald on Robert Walser

• Drink The New Wine, an album by Kris Force, Anni Hogan, Jarboe, Zoe Keating and Meredith Yayanos.

• At 50 Watts: Illustrations by Fortuné Méaulle for Alphabet des Insectes by Leon Becker.

• Lawrence Gordon Clark, Master of Ghostly Horror. An interview by John D’Amico.

• Chapel Perilous: Notes From The New York Occult Revival by Don Jolly.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 107 by Ernestas Sadau.

• An Occult History of the Television Set by Geoff Manaugh.

• Was Ist Das? The Krautrock Album Database.

• First dérive of the year by Christina Scholz.

• John Waters’ Youth Manifesto.

• Gardens of Earthly Delights

• Psychedelic Folkloristic

• Water Music I / Here Comes The Flood / Water Music II (1979) by Robert Fripp & Peter Gabriel | After The Flood (1991) by Talk Talk | Flood (1997) by Jocelyn Pook