SHOULD PROBABLY HAVE MY HEAD EXAMINED
oh wait it already is. Call for submissions for Prism Thread Books. Vasicek/Ferguson review, another Genet review, job prospects, more underground 90s rap
Today on twitter/x I did a foolish thing. I put out a call for book ideas to try to do the next crazy thing at Prism Thread Books. I had a flare up of inspirational delusion and just got thinking about possibilities for publishing someone else’s book besides my own. Partially this was brought on by reading 404 Error / Memoir of a Nobody by RG Vašiček and Zak Ferguson (review below). It just got me thinking of how relatively easy it might be to just DIY and turn out something punk and grimy but still retaining certain qualities I want to hold up. So accordingly, I couldn’t avoid bringing this up to all of you. Do you have any book ideas or finished projects you wanted to throw into the meat grinder? If you have seen a copy of The Tattletales in the flesh you may get some idea of the kind of physical object I am prepared to produce. I still have a long way to go to figure out book design like the “big dogs” do it. I’m not John Trefry or Mike Corrao, probably never will be.
As I’ve said elsewhere, my interest is in finding solid book projects and trying to shepherd them towards printing and existence. It’s a spiritual thing. There is no money to be made by my model. My production flowchart does not seem to include an exit ramp to dollar sign heaven. I’m trying to work this out as I go. The Tattletales was me seeing if I could do it and using my own book as the sacrificial lamb. It worked out pretty well, I thought. I like how the book looks and reads and feels in the hands. Now I want to see what kinds of wild ideas other people have. Do you have some book idea that you want to try?
I have it in mind to produce a novel. It doesn’t need to be long. 100-150 pages maybe. 30,000 to 45,000 words is a loose guideline. Or something non fiction could be cool too. For some reason I’m thinking of RE/Search Books although that’s a tall order. I’m also thinking of the ferment of journals that popped up in the 20s and 30s in France for example, the surrealist publications that published lots of oddball works of literature, manifestos, theory. I would be into trying to do an anthology if it was the right stuff.
I’m trying to think of where to point people who might want to cook up some book ideas. There may be nobody out there that wants to do this. If not, I may just try to publish another book of mine because I have lots of ideas and half completed projects. But I want to see what else is out there too. If you’ve subscribed here for a while and have been dutifully reading my newsletters you can get some idea of the kinds of things I value as writing. If not please look through the archive. Last time around I asked if somebody would want to submit shorter things to be published here. I haven’t heard anything about that so maybe this is a futile venture all around. That’s fine. I’m just trying to get a ball rolling. Could be a boulder which will squash my feet into thin pancakes. Whatever. Anyway I’m open to listening to ideas if someone wants to do something small potatoes that is truly striving for artistic quality. It’s supposed to be like high school and college aged people forming a band in a garage. I’m trying to recreate a youth I didn’t really have. I’m also on some level aping my friends at Last Estate who for a while got things happening and published some wicked shit.
Review of 404 Error. RG Vasicek & Zak Ferguson. Equus Press, 2022. 96 pages.
There’s something resembling punk about this book. It has the DNA of a zine cooked up in someone’s garage. That’s a good thing. The bonkers sci-fi energy of 404 Error has to be met where it lives: all the CGI is in the mind’s eye as it vacuums up the often stream of consciousness text.
The book is a document of freedom since its writing seemed so free: unpredictable, sexy, surreal, clumsy, “lo-fi,” telegraphic. Average sentence length in some sections is three or four words. The book was written in a kind of stuttering code.
Darius(z) is the main figure in the foreground contending with glitching programs and geographic dislocations and a rich sex life: “I like ass. I mean, a lot.” There isn’t really a plot, unless you consider Vasicek and Ferguson trading chunks of text back and forth in various fonts to apparently thwart each other in a compositional tennis match as plot. It yields some funny turns and wild sci-fi excursions. The book is a roughly fashioned imagination machine. NYC Prague illbient matrices.
The question has always been: how do you replicate the digital age, with all of its rapid eye movement, personality warping, depersonalization, brain zaps and info overload, on the page? How do you write out, in script, what the computer has done to us? It’s a challenge that this book valiantly attempts. I for one love the lo-fi zine energy and the feeling that people are making personal, scaled-down visions of technological tomorrow with the objects they found in their immediate vicinity.
Funeral Rites. Jean Genet. Grove Press, 1953. 256 pages.
Genet brings it raw. This is one of the most out of control books I’ve read in a while. I burned through it in a day. Sinister evil gay pornography about World War Two that manages to be elevated and lyrical. It’s hard to describe all the wild episodes that are meant to apparently be fantasies for Genet to wank off to. Let’s be honest, living in France during the war and being in prison you probably got exposed to some crazy times. I have only read Our Lady of the Flowers which I think I liked more than this, but this was good. I’m halfway through Edmund White’s bio of Genet but it’s difficult because I’m trying to dodge spoilers. It’s clear that Genet was writing fiction with a strong autobiographical vein running through it. He knew the people he was writing about, including the Resistance fighter Jean D. whose funeral begins the novel and about whom he writes so movingly and tenderly, the death struck him very hard. Read the novel just for that alone and you’ll be reading something of a high caliber. Then you blend in Genet’s pornographic fantasies about gay sex with both French soldiers and Nazis, including all the way up to Hitler himself — and well, it’s explosive and outrageous. This is not safe for work, and would be instantaneously cancelled if published today, you get the impression. Genet more than once takes up a literary position where he is inhabiting characters of evil, POVs that would be intolerable elsewhere. Quote: “Out of a sort of sadistic refinement I would have liked the men of the underground to fight for evil.” It’s a provocative, heady situation.
Why is this so likeable? I can’t say. It’s well-written and it’s a fierce document of the horrors of that time period. The interrelationships between the characters is complex and narratively it sometimes jumps between characters without warning the reader so if you’re the kind of reader that can’t stand that kind of disorientation then this book isn’t for you. There’s an aesthetic value for mixing characters and resisting perfect clarity that, if you don’t share it with Genet you might hate him. I didn’t mind that aspect and I saw it as a valid artistic choice. The gay sex scenes might make you queasy but, again, a choice that represented his particular experiences of desire around all those fighting men who I’m sure, some of them he did have “live fire” encounters with. Sexual fantasy is the supreme mode though. Was it about love as well as sex? Arguably it was. Was it an overall happy view of human life, no it wasn’t, but, like, war is hell, man. So is imprisonment, and so is the moral corruption of being a collaborator with the Nazis.
Imagine a war novel about the liberation of Paris sprayed down with a thick layer of gay sexuality and cruising. Not as good as Our Lady of the Flowers I thought, which was more beautifully written and relatable on a humane level in some ways. Next I’m going to read Miracle of the Rose.
Oh, and if you’re squeamish about problematic age gaps between sexual partners in fiction, steer well clear of Genet. There’s really rough road ahead and major detours available and recommended.
***
I might be applying for another job at a college library in a couple days. I’m burnt out to a large degree in writing for the newspaper and need a change. I’ve been doing that for around seven years. It’s exhausting and part of me wants to make moves to maybe go back to school in some way. This isn’t going to school but it is working in an academic environment. I thought about trying to get an MFA but that seems like a really stupid empty set of maneuvers somehow. Plus if I was going to do it right it would require going to a bigger city university nearby. A place with a reputable program. There’s probably all kinds of ways to do it. I haven’t really researched it fully. I’m a disorganized person too much of the time. But I like to get into the writing mode when I can and if I could turn in assignments and get grades I would love that. If I could make it amount to something. A Master’s degree might open up other job opportunities for me. It’s depressing to think of how old I am trying to make bigger moves I may not have the energy or focus for. Writing creatively is a dead end and yet that dead end may be an illusion, a trompe l’oeil escape room that can be unlocked if you can push the right spiritual buttons hidden away amongst all the mundane crap. It’s about art. It’s this intangible ectoplasm that you can’t build structures upon but might nevertheless allow you to ascend. The impulse to try to publish books, written by myself and others, is partially to capture that creative energy and move toward a goal. I admit I want to do something that impresses some people and makes them say “wow, Jesse has some intriguing ideas and can make them into a reality.” I also want to see if I can forge something with other artists and build a community of like-minded artists and writers. It’s probably a pipe dream but I have nothing else going on right now. Nothing romantic or constructive in my day to day life. It’s lonely and difficult to come up with a solid purpose. Again, if I don’t hear from people with good ideas I’ll probably just publish another book of my own and be that guy with a press that just does his own shit. That’s okay. Many have done it before.
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“messing with Fudge, why try? / the main purpose of my radar is to detect wise guys / God forbid if you run into one of my lines / you’ll get played like a bassoon and receive multiple rap wounds”
Interesting turns you're taking here. I love your writing, but we're in different spheres otherwise I would definitely upon you in what is bound to be an exciting adventure.