It is not for nothing that in weird times, one might turn to French farce to make sense of it all. if you love the films of Tati, then the translation of The Belgian novelist Jean-Philippe Toussaint's comic novel "Camera" is right up your alley

Not much happens in “Camera.” The hero takes driving lessons, falls in love, goes on a desultory journey. Who, then, is the opponent, the examiner, the rule-­setter? Why, reality itself. In the first of several almost perfectly paced passages in which he ­waxes philosophical, the hero muses that “in my struggle with reality, I could exhaust any opponent with whom I was grappling, like one can wear out an olive, for example, before successfully stabbing it with a fork.”

This will become a film, mark me words. Tom McCarthy reviews the novel for the NYTS.

There is something weird indeed about how we handle serious illnesses, our own and others. In the case of the former, we tend to blame ourselves. "If I had only not played with that yellowcake for so long!" or "I knew smoking and or drinking would finally catch up to me." Sometimes this is true but more often than not, our bodies turn against us for no reason except DNA or..mere chance.

Now when other folks get sick, a chill runs through us - "What about me??"- and then a kind of exciting, morbid fasination takes over as we watch our friends and family suffer. Here is an excerpt from the memoir A Journey Round My Skull by Frigyes Karinthy which in addition to being a life-affirming tale of trial and tribulation, is a damn fine piece of writing and often very funny.

Sympathy, which is the most sensational faculty of man, was holding an exhibition of its positive and negative manifestations. Orgies of sympathy were going on around my room, in the arm-chairs, on the divan and on the edge of my sick-bed. Two extremes were noticeable amongst these sympathetic friends. There was the noisy, exuberant, jocular type, who affected to treat the whole matter as a mere bagatelle, and, by making light of it, sought to hide the panic which steals over every one in presence of the great Enigma that awaits us all. Then there were the quiet, serious ones, braver than the first, who had examined their own hearts and knew that there can be no sympathy without egoism. It is the elder sister of sympathy, our own fear of death, which introduces us to it when the first danger threatens us in childhood. . . . There was also a third type—utterly frank, straightforward, and without false scruples. I received a letter from a relative of mine who said he had heard that I was about to “leave them.” In view of his serious situation, he hoped I would not forget him. I was to be sure and arrange for him to receive 300 dollars on the day I “went away.”

“One good, simple, modern story would go like this: ‘A lovely, talented personality fell victim to a severe chemical imbalance in his brain. There was the person of Dave, and then there was the disease, and the disease killed the man as surely as cancer might have.’ This story is at once sort of true and totally inadequate. If you’re satisfied with this story, you don’t need the stories that Dave wrote—particularly not those many, many stories in which the duality, the separateness, of person and disease is problematized or outright mocked. One obvious paradox, of course, is that Dave himself, at the end, did become, in a sense, satisfied with this simple story and stopped connecting with any of those more interesting stories he’d written in the past and might have written in the future. His suicidality got the upper hand and made everything in the world of the living irrelevant.

Jonathan Franzen remebering his friend Wallace at a memoriial at NYU along with other very famous authors.

“ all i know is that he left and for a long time i didn’t see him. it certainly wasn’t my intent. i try to hold onto my friends. i try to be pleasant and sociable. i try not to rush the passage from comedy to tragedy. life does a fine job on its own.

While I am recouperating from the scapel, I thought I would leave you with one of the last peoms Ted Berrigan ever wrote

Last Poem

by Ted Berrigan

Before I began life this time
I took a crash course in Counter-Intelligence
Once here I signed in, see name below, and added
Some words remembered from an earlier time,
“The intention of the organism is to survive.”
My earliest, & happiest, memories pre-date WW II
They involve a glass slipper & a helpless blue rose
In a slender blue single-rose vase: Mine
Was a story without a plot. The days of my years
Folded into one another, an easy fit, in which
I made money & spent it, learned to dance & forgot, gave
Blood, regained my poise, & verbalized myself a place
In Society. 101 St. Mark’s Place, apt. 12A, NYC 10009
New York. Friends appeared & disappeared, or wigged out,
Or stayed; inspiring strangers sadly died; everyone
I ever knew aged tremendously, except me. I remained
Somewhere between 2 and 9 years old. But frequent
Reification of my own experiences delivered to me
Several new vocabularies, I loved that almost most of all.
I once had the honor of meeting Beckett & I dug him.
The pills kept me going, until now. Love, & work,
Were my great happinesses, that other people die the source
Of my great, terrible, & inarticulate one grief. In my time
I grew tall & huge of frame, obviously possessed
Of a disconnected head, I had a perfect heart. The end
Came quickly & completely without pain, one quiet night as I
Was sitting, writing, next to you in bed, words chosen randomly
From a tired brain, it like them, suitable, & fitting.
Let none regret my end who called me friend.

Here are some choice quotes from English critic/novelist  Adam Mars-Jones'   new novel Pilcrow which James Woods reviews for the LRB.

‘The privilege of my situation, in which boredom lay so close to over-excitement that there was hardly any space between, was that snot qualified as a toy.’

'Hugs, for instance, ‘were emergency measures, not for every day. I wasn’t used to them. I’d hardly experienced them . . . Hugs might just as well have been kept in the medicine cupboard, so as not to lose their effectiveness by over-use.’

'Being suburban was much worse than being working-class, because suburban people had their roots in the working classes, and were denying their own people just as St Peter did to Jesus.’

The first thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was assume an attitude -- melancholy sadness -- toward it. This attitude is not correct. Fortunately your letter came, at that instant. "Dear Rupert, I love you every day. You are the world, which is life. I love you I adore you I am crazy about you. Love, Marta." Reading between the lines, I understood your critique of my attitude toward capitalism. Always mindful that the critic must "studiare da un punto di vista formalistico e semiologico il rapporto fra lingua di un testo e codificazione di un -- " But here a big thumb smudges the text -- the thumb of capitalism, which we are all under. Darkness falls. My neighbor continues to commit suicide, once a fortnight. I have this suicides geared into my schedule because my role is to save him; once I was late and he spent two days unconscious on the floor. But now that I have understood that I have not understood capitalism, perhaps a less equivocal position toward it can be "hammered out." My daughter demands more Mr. Bubble for her bath. The shrimp boats lower their nets. A book called Humorists of the 18th Century is published.

- from Donald Barthleme's The Rise of Capitalism.

The individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effectively or frame his laws without words, and the solidity and validity of these words is in the care of the damned and despised litterati …when their very medium, the very essence of their work, the application of word to thing goes rotten, i.e. becomes slushy and inexact, or excessive or bloated, the whole machinery of social and of individual thought and order goes to pot.

- Ezra Pound

No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in. His inspiration is deflected at the source. If it is a world of truth, beauty and magic that he desires to create, why does he put millions of words between himself and the reality of the world? Why does he defer to action-unless it be that, like other men, what he really desires is power, fame, success.

The trully great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain.

Henry Miller, Sexus.

Miranda July is a talented 'artist' no doubt, especially in her film and performance efforts but gee, how did she win the $35,000 Frank O'Connor award for short story writing Nobody Belongs Here More than You" her first time out..?? The Vancouver Voice drives home the old cliche "It's Who You Know"

One could be forgiven for thinking that Ms. July is a cunning self-marketer. But, then, it’s part of the family business. Her parents, Lindy Hough and Richard Grosinger, ran North Atlantic Book, a New Age publishing company. Now, as reported in the Guardian, Ms. July is the happy recipient of the 2007 Frank O’Connor award for achievement in short story writing. The prize comes with a cash award of $35, 000 dollars. Pat Cotter, the jury chairman, is described as having “defended” the shortlist (which also included Israeli writer Etgar Keret and New Zealand scribe Charlotte Grimshaw, reduced from a list that also originally included Alice Munro and David Malouf ) as a demonstration of the judges’ independence. The judges included American novelist Rick Moody, who happens to be her mentor and a family friend.

I am reminded of William Burrough's old adage "Wouldn't You?"

What did David Cronenberg read and watch before making his hit movie Eastern Promises? Here is his list and oh boy, are there some great works on it. Imperium, Demons, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.. I'm glad Amazon asked him and he consented to share his research. Damn fine idea. How many have you read or watched?

Yesterday, toward the end of a long, rambling, disjointed talk, he put it in different words, not nearly as poetic but no less moving for that reason:

"A writer like me," he said, "must have an utter confidence, an utter faith in his star. It's an almost mystical feeling, a feeling of nothing can- happen-to-me, nothing-can-harm-me, nothing-can-touch-me.

"Thomas Wolfe has it. Ernest Hemingway has it. I once had it. But through a series of blows, many of them my own fault, something happened to that sense of immunity and I lost my grip."

Fitzgerald near the end of his days speaking with Michel Mok of The New York Post in September 1936.

I do not envy writers who tries to capture the city of LA in their work.  Will Beal adds his name to the list in his novel LA REX and he talks about the difficulty at The Elegant Variation:

So Reggie the alligator already has escaped once from his cell at the Los Angeles Zoo. Mark my words: No prison will hold him. He will escape again and steal a Ferrari Enzo.

This is what makes writing wild fiction about Los Angeles so hard. L.A. just won't be outdone. This city feeds on phantasmagoria. It mocks magic-realism and one-ups even the most florid fabulation. This city conjures car chases, for instance, that send Jerry Bruckheimer quivering to his stunt coordinator in despair. It's as though L.A. is a hoary old vaudevillian who refuses to be upstaged.

"..hoary old vaudevillian.." I love that.

A woman pulled some strange potbellied man towards her and opened her legs.

"Ahhh, cried the woman. "oh baby baby baby..!"

"Ummm.." said Alex, and flexed the muscles of his right arm in preperation. A squeeze, a fist, movement.

In eight minutes it was all over. The second after the ecstacy came the transformation. It was just one hairless animal stabbing another repeatedly through an open wound. Then it was gone, as if it had never been. Tissues in the trashbin, cat reinstated on desk, cigarette lit.

Back to business.

One of the best novels about literature, which is to say about people who live in and through literature, I have read in a long time. Billy is our resident poet but this work by Roberto Bolano risies above genres and anyone, anyone who produces anything will find a deep connection in this Work. As one of his characters says: "Poetry is people, right?"

Here is a quote to entice you to read the novel:

         For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the work, then criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short. Then the readers die one by one and the Work continues on alone, although a new Criticism and new Readers gradually fall into step with it along its path. Then Criticism dies again and the Readers die again and the Work passes over a trail of bones on its journey toward solitude. To come near the work, to sail in her wake, is a sign of certain death, but new Criticism and new Readers approach her tirelessly and are devoured by time and speed. Finally the work journeys irremediably alone in the Vastness. And one day the Work dies, as all things must die and come to an end.

My first article at HollywoodIsTalking.com was titled, No Room For Poets At The Hollywood Inn? and was a tongue 'n cheek rant about poets being shut out of the film industry. HIT's aspiring screenwriter, LaughCalvin, e-mailed me today as it appears someone else has been thinking along the same lines as myself. Reviewer Simon Augustine writes:

"Could writers working prior to the 20th century have imagined their creations and characters being expressed in films, with all the dramatic innovations that moving pictures afford? With the advent of film, the literary arts, ancient by comparison, were instantaneously afforded a new interpretative dimension, as occurs when any new art form appears and is able to comment and expand upon another. In this process, the old art form and the new one are changed forever. Placed alongside the fresh aesthetic abilities of cinema, the frame of the written page acquires an adjunct frame, that of the screen, and a conversation ensues between the two frames that provides a new conceptual space, not to mention limitless new fodder for critical thought." Writers and Poets on Film

I've yet to be hired by any Hollywood movie studios but I'd say a movie about Sylvia Plath is a step in the right direction.

One of Japan's best novelist Haruki Murakami has just published After Dark and you can read the first chapter here. Fantastic writing like this awaits you:

Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature—or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city’s moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.

It's an age-old question that most of us ponder for a few minutes if we run into abject poverty, feel bad, and quickly move on. Laura Miller reviews William Vollman's latest in which he went around the globe asking this very question: This isn't an easy question to answer even when you have the luxury to think about such matters, and as the author points out, "communication being, like other skills, a skill of the rich, the poor people in this book sometimes failed to tell me what I longed to know. Dates did not add up, and their memories, like mine, were inconsistent -- one reason why this book cannot be simply a collection of oral histories."

Hmmm..only the rich can communicate..?? Maybe we just just don't speak the same language..??

One of the first writers I started collecting obsessively passed away while I was on a short holiday. Not bad for a fellow who "has been politely committing suicide for years by smoking." God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.

I was lucky enough to catch writer Ben Marcus last night at the Hammer Museum’s ‘New American Writing Series.’ For those of you not familiar with Marcus’ work, I highly recommend you check him out. I have posted a few samples of his work before on this site. His work has been described as  “surreal, but not dada; fantastic, but not fantasy or sf; mysterious, but not a mystery; fiction, but not exactly.”  Marcus himself wrote in his introduction to The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories that “Stories keep mattering by reimagining their own methods, manners, and techniques. A writer has to believe, and prove, that there are, if not new stories, then new ways of telling old ones.” Robert Coover wrote, “Ben Marcus has been accused of redesigning the ordinary sentence, of emptying words of their meaning and injecting them with new, and of blowing away traditional narrative structures with a diabolical wind.” 

Ben read from a work in progress about a family who has a lodger and the sinister things that happened during his stay in the family home. The son of this family is the narrator and as the story progresses, the reader (or listener as it were) wonders if this peculiar narrator can be trusted. Ben has a low voice that hypnotizes the listener, and coupled with the subtle yet jarring use of language, I was drawn into the story before it dawned on me the Son-narrator might just be downright dangerous.

During the Q & A Ben said that he was inspired by the stories of James Purdy and how his narrators seem completely believable and ‘comfortable’ in the beginning but progressively become creepier as the story progresses. I asked him about his collaboration with artist Michael Ritchie on the book “The Father Costume” and he said it came out of his and Ritchie’s affinity for the same themes (“killing people with cloth, science, and God”) He was supposed to collaborate with artist Matthew Barney but he, Barney, was booked up for 5 years(!)

Well-known Bookworm host Michael Silverblatt asked him if experimental fiction can eek out a place in today’s cultural landscape (referencing Barthleme and Hawkes) and what affect it has on the experimental writer. Ben said yes, it challenging but that’s when the best work comes out. (Paraphrased)

No pics cause I was a bit shy and nervous. Maybe next time though. Very fun and inspiring!