Directory of Lost Causes

The work of Mark Samuels reminds me in some way of the work of Nagai Kafu, though I've never really defined this similarity beyond thinking that both are shibui, and that often there are characters, events and descriptions that are at once, somehow, pleasingly understated and pleasingly overstated.

The work of Arthur Machen also reminds me of that of Nagai Kafu, and this is interesting, because Arthur Machen is a significant influence in the work of Mark Samuels. Neither Machen nor Samuels, to my knowlege, have been influenced by Kafu.



So, how does Machen remind me of Kafu, and is this also what Kafu shares with Samuels?

Again, I haven't defined the similarity very closely. I was thinking about it recently, as I went for a walk in the rain, and it seemed to me that both Kafu and Machen are able to write about not very much and make it majestically substantial by a kind of marshalling of the powers of lyricism. Interestingly, I don't think this is the factor that Samuels and Machen have in common, since Samuels' prose is generally a little more terse in style.

Kafu's Tales of France (Furansu Monogatari) is a work that I've been dipping in and out of for years, and recently, inspired by an unexpected Kafu-related gift, I picked it up again, remembering how much richer the experience of reading Kafu has been than almost anything else I've read. I started reading the story 'The Snake-Charmer' ('Hebi Tsukai'). It's a long short story divided into four chapters. In the first of these the narrator simply describes what one sees if one follows the route of his habitual walk in the environs of Lyon. In the second, he describes an evening he went on just such a walk, got drunk at some little hamlet, and was told that some travelling players had arrived. In the third chapter, he actually approaches the festivities to take a look. He doesn't go past the gate, but watches the performances that are put on outside to attract customers. At one point, a woman suddenly leaps up on the wooden outside stage, removes her cloak, takes five or six snakes from a box, and allows them to wrap themselves around her. She stands like that for a while, then puts the snakes back, nudges a fellow traveller with her foot, gets a cigarette from him, and sits down for a smoke. In the fourth and final chapter, the narrator complains of summer's passing, and how, with autumn, his work in a bank in Lyon has become unbearable. One day, instead of going into the office, on the spur of the moment, he goes off on a walk. He comes across some caravans that might belong to the travelling company he saw. He thinks how much better it would be to lead the Gypsy life, and walks quietly between the caravans. Outside one of them, he happens to see a tired and poverty stricken-looking woman doing needlework. Two small and filthy children are playing nearby. One of them falls and cries, and she picks it up, kisses it, combs its hair and so on. He recognises the woman as the snake charmer. He peeks, unobserved, into the open door of their caravan. There seems to be no one inside. He surmises there is no father. He has a sad feeling. He corrects himself - a somehow "dingy and damp feeling", and decides to go home without looking further.



Talking with someone about this, I tried to explain how Kafu could hold my attention even by just describing the route of a walk for an entire chapter. The story, I said, was actually in the description itself. There was a message conveyed, like an actual event, in his description of the snake-charmer: "Her expressionless and thoroughly icy eyes seemed to contain no reflection even of the gathering crowd of the customers, and, as the smoke issued from her lips and drifted away in threads, those eyes gazed purposelessly out, far, far, into the evening sky."

This line, which ends the third chapter, somehow seems to carry in it the whole weight of the story. It is not an event, or a twist in the tale, or any such thing - only a look observed in someone's eyes.



Also recently (today), I have started reading Far Off Things by Arthur Machen. There is a great deal, even within a few pages, on which I could comment, for its significance to me as a reader. I identify quite closely, for instance, with what Machen says about his childhood growing up in the countryside of Gwent. At one point he mentions the view from Llanddewi Rectory:

Through a cleft one might see now and again a bright yellow glint of the Severn Sea, and the cliffs of Somerset beyond.

In my childhood, I was on the other side of that sea (though not in Somerset), gazing in the opposite direction.

I don't have time to linger over all such touches that have so far resonated with me (which include a reference to my favourite passage of De Quincey). Instead, I would like to quote that passage that convinces me I was right in linking Kafu and Machen in my mind. It is a passage in which Machen describes his scheme for a magnum opus he has long intended to write "some day":

This, then, was my process: to invent a story which would recreate those vague impressions of wonder and awe and mystery that I myself had received from the form and shape of the land of my boyhood and youth; and as I thought over this and meditated on the futility -- or comparative futility -- of the plot, however ingenious, which did not exist to express emotions of one kind or another, it struck me that it might be possible to reverse the process. Could one describe hills and valleys, woods and rivers, sunrise and sunset, buried temples and mouldering Roman walls so that a story should be suggested to the reader? Not, of course, a story in the ordinary sense of the term, but an interior tale of the soul and its emotions; could such a tale be suggested in the way I have indicated? Such is to be the plan of the "great" book which is not yet written.

Yes! Yes! Yes! But this is exactly what Kafu does, though perhaps to convey something less mystic than that which Machen is speaking of, and not, either, in a magnum opus, but, instead, repeatedly in short tales, novellas and so on. Kafu tells his tales through descriptions of the seasons, of seedy rented rooms, of decaying backstreets, of the faces of those who have lived in shadows.

I could talk a little here of flaneurism, psychogeography and so on, but I only really wanted to write a quick post to note this observation, this connection, that pleases me so much. Of course, I too, aspire to tell stories through this kind of description.

I've just happened to catch a little of Front Row or something on Radio 4, and it seems to be about celebrity memoirs. I've just decided that anyone who releases a celebrity memoir should die. That's all.

Oh, particularly Richard Madeley, who dared to suggest that he had had a "literary lunch" with his publisher. Richard Madeley has never had a "literary lunch" with anyone in his life. What he meant was a "lucrative lunch". He should die now.

PS. I've just heard Paul O'Grady laugh in self-satisfaction when asked whether he would do more than two volumes of his memoirs. "Well, the publishers would probably want me to go on forever."

I should obviously just slit my wrists now. Or somebody's wrists, anyway.

How many times do I have to say it?

Every now and then I think I have to remind myself that I know nothing.



For instance, there's a spoken (sampled?) line repeated in the Bowie song, Ricochet, that runs, "And who can bear to be forgotten?"

I attributed the line to Bowie in a blog post I wrote some time ago, I seem to recall. Now I realise that this must be a quote slightly adapted from Auden's 'Night Mail' (incidentally, a poem which, for many years, unaccountably, I believed to be by John Betjeman).

The actual line, from the poem, is:

For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

It's a fascinatingly ominous line with which to end what otherwise seems an advert for the Royal Mail.

(Note that the line in the Bowie song is not gender-specific, and is therefore more PC.)



Anyway, I'll go and flog myself now for such an egregious misconception (or, anyway, such ignorance in my attribution), though I suppose I must have known it was a quote from elsewhere, if only because of the 'sampled' quality of the words. Also... maybe I'm wrong about some of the above, too. For instance, maybe the poem was intended unambiguously as an advert, and there's no 'seems' about it (we did actually have to read this poem at school, and my recollection is that we were taught it was a kind of advert). And maybe Auden is quoting someone else.

Memory and knowledge are slippery things.

Before I go and flog myself to sleep, I'll tell you a very little about my day.

I went into Swansea and visited the Dylan Thomas Centre (incidentally, I failed to spot the Dylan Thomas reference in the title of Momus's album Ocky Milk when it came out). There I had an egg mayonnaise sandwich, a pot of tea, a chocolate brownie thing, and some salt and vinegar flavoured crisps. I noticed, on the bookshelves, a number of books about which I have recently been reading, including Piers Plowman, and, intrigued, I began to search through the shelves for any interesting finds. There were, in fact, a great many interesting books. I ended up, rather extravagantly, I'm afraid to say, buying four whole books. They were as follows:

The Mabinogion (Penguin paperback, new)
Greek Pastoral Poetry (Penguin paperback, second-hand)
The Turn of the Screw and other short novels, by Henry James (Signet Classic paperback, second-hand)
Far-Off Things, by Arthur Machen (The New Adelphi Library, second-hand)

One or two people reading this may know that I wrote a story called 'Far-Off Things'. At the time I wrote it, I was actually ignorant of the fact that Machen had written anything under the same title (I have this problem with titles). I wanted to call my story 'Unhappy Far-Off Things', but Lord Dunsany had already used that title. As far as I was concerned, the title was a quote from Wordsworth's poem 'The Solitary Reaper'. I suppose Dunsany was quoting Wordsworth, too. I'm guessing that Machen was also quoting Wordsworth for his title, but 'Far-Off Things' is a brief enough phrase that it might not necessarily be an allusion to the poem. Still, I suppose it is. And maybe Machen had the same problem as me, and had meant to use 'Unhappy Far-Off Things', but was thwarted by Lord Dunsany getting there first.

Please excuse my excessive concern with things that don't matter. I want you to know that I know they don't matter. It concerns me.

I've said this before, but sometimes it's actually a relief to think that I'll be forgotten.

I Could Have Made the World Slightly More Beautiful

I could have made the world slightly more beautiful,
And it’s not as if I chose to do so little,
But here I am, hanging from a cliff
Feeling my fingers slip, bit by bit
Toward to the edge, losing my grip.

For many things now it’s too late.
I fret with regret.
For many things now it’s too late.
But I’m not dead yet.

I could have made the world slightly more beautiful.
Now that I realise, I feel myself grow dutiful,
But what can I do with both hands occupied
In trying to slow down my grim slide
Toward the rocks, toward the tide?

For many things now it’s too late.
I fret with regret.
For many things now it’s too late.
But I’m not dead yet.

I could have made the world slightly more beautiful.
I must admit, I chose to do very little.

I could have made the world ever-so-slightly less ugly.

It’s not too late.
It’s not too late.

To freely bloom - that is my definition of success.

-Gerry Spence, lawyer

In old age Jean often said that, could the choice be offered her, she would have preferred a life of only average happiness to the greatest literary triumphs.

-Francis Wyndham, on Jean Rhys.

Ahead of him, directly in front of his face and shoulders, there was a circle of dark firm earth. Behind him was the tunnel he had dug so far, but Seryozha never looked back and never counted how many feet he had come. He knew that other insects, ants for instance, were happy with a fairly short burrow and could carry out their life's work in a few hours using the serrated edges of their legs. But he never dwelt on such comparisons, aware that once he stopped and began to compare himself with others, it would begin to seem he had already achieved a great deal, and he would lose the sense of resentment toward life that was essential to his struggle.

-From The Life of Insects by Victor Pelevin

I wish I was Briana Evigan

-Quentin S. Crisp

The cunted cunting cunts!

That's a question I hope to ask, though there is little hope of an answer, in this blog post.

It seems to me that those growing up in the 'developed world' now will never have any notion of what life was like before the Internet, of how it felt simply to be an analogue being walking around in the literal - and not the virtual - world, in three dimensions, with no electronic extensions to one's nerve endings, and not to have any sense that one needed to check one's e-mail/Facebook messages/ever-diminishing spiral of cyber-navel. This disturbs me.

One thing I've sometimes thought about in this connection is how much more momentous it was to make personal discoveries of the music, art or literature kind in pre-Internet days.

I remember, with distinctness, the stages that led to my discovery of Celtic Frost. First there was the review in Kerrang!, accompanied by a photograph of Tom G. Warrior looking decidedly esoteric. The review was for the album To Mega Therion, and the reviewer had given it something ridiculously precise, like 3 and 3/4 stars out of 5. Going on stars alone, there was no reason at all why I should take a risk on this band without having heard any of their music - and at that time, when I was twelve or thirteen, there was no hope I would ever hear the music if I did not actually buy it myself - but there was something about the description of the album that intrigued me. I remember phrases such as "a choir of marching zombies", which piqued my interest. There was also the leader to the review: "Are you ready for art metal?" I do not doubt that there were many thirteen-year-old headbangers who read that leader and said, "No. I'm not ready. Leave me alone." I, however, was ready.



Things were so difficult to get hold of in those days, that To Mega Therion did not even comprise my first Celtic Frost purchase. I did, however, manage to find an advert for a specialist shop that was stocking the picture-disc version of the exquisitely titled EP Tragic Serenades. I sent off for it, and, some days later, in a 12-inch square, rather thin cardboard package, there arrived the first of many discs that I was to buy from that particular specialist shop.

The first time I put Tragic Serenades on the turntable, I was very disappointed. It was just heavy metal, after all. I had been expecting the 'art' part of the equation to be much, much higher. I can't really hope to convey how deep my disappointment was, since that first review of To Mega Therion had worked up my imagination in such a way that the dream of Celtic Frost had become to me an infinitely mysterious, infinitely precious kind of aether, promising in whispers to take me to strange, ancient worlds wholly other than the world that till now had been mine.



Having invested so much in it, I could not give up on the disc, however, and, as if potholing into its grim, chthonic depths, began to discover all kinds of delights that even I had not imagined. It was a key artistic discovery for me. Celtic Frost introduced me to Flaubert and Baudelaire, as well as being a significant discovery in themselves. Such were the rewards of my Celtic Frost adventure, that it encouraged me to forage even further afield for more discoveries in music and in literature.

I don't think I am alone, by any means, in my search for more and more exquisitely obscure, or obscurely exquisite, music. Such a quest is well-known in the indie music scene. But what of books?

Indie books - books from independent publishers - certainly exist, but do indie readers? I'm one of them, and I have met others, but, truth be told, indie readers are a very rare breed indeed, even proportionately to the global number of readers, which must be less than that of music-listeners. Let's put it this way, even people who like mainstream music know full well what indie music is. People who read - I won't say 'like', because I think they're just largely ignorant of what's available - mainstream literature, for the most part haven't even got a cunting clue that indie literature exists. How often have I had this experience? Someone introduces me to someone and mentions that I write books. The person to whom I am introduced, rather pleasantly, says something like, "Oh, what's your book called? I'll look it up next time I'm in Waterstones." "It won't be in Waterstones," I am forced to say, "unless the Piccadilly branch of Waterstones still has that one copy of Morbid Tales they stocked. My books have all come out through independent publishers."

At this juncture I'm usually given a quizzical, uncomprehending look. I almost expect them - seem to remember instances, even - to say, "Do 4AD do books, as well?"



It seems to me that, in contrast to music-lovers, so-called book-lovers seldom go off the beaten track and into the hinterlands in search of the rare and the exquisite.

Why?

I used the word 'discerning' in the title of this blog post. Discernment consists, I think, of two things - the desire to explore and to broaden one's horizons, and then, from the perspective of those broadened horizons, the ability to eliminate all that is inferior, unoriginal, second-rate and basically a waste of time. Life, as we all know, is very short. There are far too many books to read. At the age of 37 I am finding myself depressed to realise exactly how limited are the places on my to-read list - because of considerations of time - for what remains of my life, especially as I feel I have hardly scratched the surface of literature, really.

I am not a fast reader. I am also a reader who finds it painful not to finish a book once started. This latter fact has led to difficulties in my reading in recent years. It seems to me that I have, in some ways, shifted from the mode of broadening my horizons to the mode of eliminating what is a waste of time. (I say, in some ways - I used to be able to read and enjoy just about anything, whereas now I am finding that if something is just not good enough, I think, "The years are flying by, and I could be reading something a thousand times better than this.") In 2006, I picked up, in a second-hand shop in Arkansas, a dog-eared copy of Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac. I'd been meaning to read Balzac for some time. However, this book took me months, and because I was determined to finish it, it meant that in those months I read practically nothing else. Balzac is not a bad writer, but the book, ultimately, was dull and pointless, and, in terms of reading, it ruined those months of my life. I've had a number of similar experiences since then.



One of my most recent purchases has been The Yellow Wallpaper and selected writings by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Because the title story is a favourite of mine, I bought this book to discover more about a writer I had neglected in that I only knew the one story. However, after reading seven of the stories within, out of about twenty, my will to read further has shrivelled. There is another piece, two or three pages long, that I found to be worth reading. It was called 'An Extinct Angel', and was not so much a story as a parable - an extended metaphor about the historical oppression of women. For the rest, I suppose I've read worse, and they have their moments, but I find them to be facile and insubstantial. They remind me, in fact, of the little I have read - and despised - by that master of the trite, O. Henry.

I don't really know what to do about this cunting Yellow Wallpaper book. I really do hate not finishing books, but I might have to develop that ability. Life is short. I'm even finding the Ambrose Bierce collection I bought (The Spook House), after a promising start, to be duller and duller with each story.

But if I'm damning writers as diverse and colourful as Balzac, Bierce and Gilman as dull (and they're hardly the height of mainstream, I suppose), then who on Earth do I find worth reading? There is a list - not so very long - of writers who are definitely, for me, worth it. These include names I have mentioned many times before, such as J-K Huysmans, Nagai Kafu, Mishima Yukio, Thomas Ligotti, Robert Aickman, Justin Isis, Higuchi Ichiyou, Andre Gide, Arthur Machen, Mark Samuels, Bruno Schulz, Carson McCullers etc.

Sick to the teeth of starting dull books, and having them destroy my reading for months on end, I've taken the step of drawing up a list of books/authors I want to read. I've only started it recently, and it is open to revision. Because I still wish to expand my horizons - very much so, in fact - this consists largely, but not entirely, of authors I have not read before. I need to be careful, though, and make sure, as best I can, that I'm not selecting dull, waste-of-time authors and books. There's always the chance that I will, however, in which case I really shall have to cultivate the habit of abandoning books I've started.

Anyway, here's the list as I have it so far:

The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James
Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn
Inferno, by August Strindberg
The Cathedral, by J-K Huysmans
Hangover Square, by Patrick Hamilton
Fanny Hill, by John Cleland
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne
Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, by William Godwin
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg
Flann O’Brien
The Assistant, by Robert Walser
The Word of God, by Thomas Disch
Doris Lessing
Truman Capote
Flannery O’Connor
Raymond Queneau
Cordwainer Smith
Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl
Walter De La Mare
Our Town, by Thornton Wilder
Germinal, by Emile Zola.
Boethius
Reflections in a Golden Eye, by Carson McCullers
The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño

I mentioned, on the telephone to a friend of mine, who recently gave me my current reading matter,The Life of Insects by Victor Pelevin, and who has been trying out some Philip K. Dick, partially at my recommendation (he loved The Man in the High Castle, but was not so sure about Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said), the trouble I have been having with dull books, and how it has led me to the measure of drawing up a reading list.

"Don't you think that readers are less discerning than music lovers?" I asked.

He knew what I was talking about immediately. I'm afraid I can't remember his response verbatim, so the following will have to be taken as a paraphrase:

"Yeah. It's like, just turn on cunting Radio One and leave it at full blast from morning till the cunt of the night. That's the equivalent. I get people recommending me books, like, 'Hey, there's this great book that won the Booker Prize--', and I have to say, 'Stop right there, you cunt. I already know I'm going to hate it. Why are you recommending me cunt like that? You cunted cunting cunt.'"



I have pondered this strange phenomenon, but haven't come, as yet, to any deep or detailed conclusions. I'd be interested in any readers' opinions on the matter. I wonder, however, if there is not a whole tribe of people who think, when they pick up a prize-winning piece of pap straight off the biggest display table in Waterstones and take it home: "Hey, I'm reading a book. Books are indie! I'm indie!" It almost seems as if it doesn't matter what the hell they read. Except that it does. They think they are being discerning, perhaps, in reading respected, serious literature, and would probably turn their noses up at anything genre-related. However, people who read Booker Prize-winning books and so on are, I would hazard a guess, far, far less discerning than those who read, say, exclusively science fiction novels. At least the latter have taken the time to find out what they really like, to some extent, rather than just let some flatulent git on a panel of judges dictate their tastes to them, day after dull, middle-class, humanistic cunting day, until they die.

I thought I had more to say, but perhaps I'll stop there.

Oh yeah, I read the first page of Vernon God Little that everyone was raving about at the time - it was shit. I didn't read the rest.

Was sent this, recently, for which many thanks.

The Parable of the English Businessmen and the Japanese Emperor

I heard this story from a friend.
At an event he was asked to attend
Certain Japanese dignitaries,
Including his majesty, the Emperor,
Were to be the guests of honour.

Much in evidence at this event,
Were the kind of English businessmen
Who know nothing of Japan, as culture
Or as nation. They picked at canapés
Till the Emperor made his entrance.

Suddenly these same businessmen
Rushed forward in a feeding frenzy,
Vying with each other for the Emperor’s eye
Or a touch of his hand, as he walked by.

Elbowed aside, my friend withdrew,
Sat on a chair at the edge of the room,
Watching as the men in suits fought out the front line,
And lit his cigarette under a no-smoking sign.