Edwardian Pram

I do not know why they called it an Edwardian Pram; it seemed quite timeless to me, more 1950s than anything. But then someone suggested to me that it might have belonged to someone called Edward, with that being the era of the so-called Teddy Boys in Britain - guys in lounge suits, winklepickers and quiffs named after a King Edward who gave the word Edwardian its derivation...or have I got my history completely wrong? Not that Edward owned the pram as such, if that was the name of the baby who was originally pushed around in the pram. That particular jurisdiction of ownership was down to Edward's parents who hopefully bought the pram from a posh shop pre-dating Mothercare...

If I could travel back in time to the 1950s, you'd probably call me the Doctor. Well, I am a doctor, but not that time-travelling sort. A Doctor of Philosophy. Not philosophical philosophy as such, because, frankly, I don't know my Kant from my Descartes. No, my Social History degree is in the customs and artefacts of twentieth century Britain...which brings me back to that pram. That Edwardian Pram. And, yes, you've guessed it. It was the pram itself that was the time-traveller. Or is.

The clever question to then ask, I suggest, a question worthy of a Doctor of Philosophy like me, is that, if the Edwardian Pram can travel through time, does that necessarily mean that any occupant of that Edwardian Pram will go with it to wherever or whenever it is going? We do take certain ideas for granted, but my research meanwhile is intended to question them. When we see those Edwardian gents board an HG Wells type contraption like the one he called a Time Machine, we always assume that it will take those gents with it and one day they may become Teddy Boys in the 1950s or modern people with nothing but computers and iPhones today. But my strong factual belief is that only inanimate things like a pram or other contraptions can travel through time - but the human passengers of those contraptions will simply be left behind. That is why all those stories about the Tardis carrying passengers through time is so far-fetched.

You may feel that I am exceeding the brief of my Social History Doctorate in studying matters like who or what can time travel. But why I am here today, in front of you all on the stage in this lecture hall, is to demonstrate that such things are vitally entwined with the very fibre of our social interaction from the Twentieth Century onward, a period of our history when most of us here were born. You see, you were hand-picked to be invited to this lecture. This is really an experiment, rather than a lecture, but it's probably both. Ah, I see you are shuffling awkwardly in your seats. You obviously think I am mad. But be patient. All shall become clear ...eventually. But do feel free to leave if you wish. Good. I see that only one person has left. More or less as I expected.

Well, before I reveal the Edwardian Pram itself - indeed it has not yet arrived - let me tell you one further thing about yourselves, assuming, that is, that all the small talk among you before I arrived on the stage has not already revealed a certain specific common factor true to everyone here, even to that person who has just left the hall.

You may think some of you look slightly older than others, and therefore some look slightly younger than others, too. But you must have at least realised that you are all likely to be from the same generation. But let me tell you that there is one particular year in your era of birth, a year that all statistics and subsequent research has shown, with the give and take of some good fortune and some bad fortune in what has been made available by successive British governments since that year, yes, that year, when all of you, yes each and every one of you, was born, yes, that year, your year, was the luckiest of all years to have been born, when taking everything into account. Yes, I now see you all looking at each other and smiling as realisation dawns. Each of you already knows in which year you yourself was born, and now you know in which year everyone else around you here now looking at you with a knowingness in that look was born. Yes, that year can no longer be a secret, that year was 1948.

But I know it wasn't all good to have been born in that year. Some of you have had hard lives, harder than some others here. I think you can tell which of you have had the hardest lives simply by looking at each other, searching the eyes of your near neighbour in the audience. That's the way of life. But generally speaking, when taking the rough with the smooth, by the law of averages which is more than an average law, it is definitely true that 1948 was the best year to have been born in the Britain of recent generations. So congratulations to you all.

I just heard someone call out that some people born in 1948 are already dead. Yes, you will all die in all probability relatively soon, especially as you are today nearer 70 than 60 years of age. How lucky is that, I hear you ask.

But that takes no account of the Edwardian Pram.

Don't look mystified. There is no mystery about the Edwardian Pram. It just is. It just was. And it always will be. Moving from generation to generation, or even leapfrogging generations. Itself created in a lucky or unlucky year of manufacture like your good selves.

I'll let you meditate for a few moments...

Don't look round: it is trundling down the central aisle from the back where the entrance to the hall is. Some of you at the back have already seen it pass by your row of chairs, and those of you at the front will see it soon. Don't look round, I said! It is unlucky to look round and see it before you were intended to see it. Its wheels are squeaking, groaning even. Well, after all, it's older than you are. What do you expect?

But now it's gone. It has moved to another year, another generation, perhaps even to the end of time itself. It can't collect passengers as passengers cannot travel in time; only things can do that. That's my genuine factual belief. Even if it could take passengers, it would have to be a baby, because only a baby would fit. Or two babies at a push.

But did you see someone pushing it just now? I see some of you at the back nodding. Forgive me, but you at the back look happier now than those in the front. It's as if you at the back have realised what life is all about, what my experiment here today for my doctorate is all about, too. Proving something against the grain of one's original factual belief. You at the front should feel happy too. So long as you didn't look back.

Ah, I see what has now happened. But I didn't see it when it happened. It just is. Perhaps it always has been. Emptiness often creeps up.

You were the luckiest, after all. Not just some of you, but all of you. Gone wherever forever.

Anyway, just think about it. If a large hall of empty chairs can think about anything at all. You were definitely the luckiest year's generation. Still are. Always will be. I envy you. But at least I have the satisfaction of a successful counter-factual experiment and my doctorate assured. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad job. The best of a bad year to be born in.

You see I was once a Teddy boy. Born in 1935.

By the way, I know I am now lecturing to nobody at all, only to those rows of empty chairs, but I can at least tell you chairs that the pram you saw or at least heard was the pram my dear late lamented Mother pushed me around in, a pram that was then secondhand and still in use from the Edwardian times of HG Wells. And she was still pushing it today in 2014, from what I could see of her from up here on the stage.

Anyone got a tissue for me? Perhaps you who left early would be so kind.

The Galaxy Club by Brendan Connell

"And that stick might work against fish or dragons or plaster virgins, but it won't do much good against the Galaxy Club." This is a book's book. One that I deem will be found necessary to be carried around in the pocket at all times - not as a good luck charm or a lofted cross to ward off or comfort some Brer Fox or goat crucified by the nearest tree - but potentially as an unmapped beaten road bible, or a dream-catcher, one that you can wryly resort to when the electricity is turned off and Kindles get too damp to ignite words. Permanently re-readable. Dog-eared is best. "A long time ago it was my father who boarded up the Devil."

Extract from my review here: http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/the-galaxy-club-brendan-connell/

The meaning of FINNEGANS WAKE 'captured' for the first time...

...in the real-time review by DF Lewis HERE



 Riparian and Repairian by Real Absence.

The Real Absence

Posted on Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - 04:11 pm:

---

 I've just read and reviewed most of FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce who, like me, suffered from recurrent iritis. 
Why have I only read and reviewed most of it? Well, you'll have to read my review to get to the point of Real Absence...
http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/finnegans-wake-james-joyce/

Capsflap

CAPSFLAP n. An alternative name for the eye condition commonly known as iritis or uveitis.
 Derivation: Finnegans Wake: James Joyce (1939)

The Backwards Aladdin

Excerpt from my real-time review here of FLASH IN THE PANTHEON (Gloomy Seahorse Press 2014) by Rhys Hughes:-

The Backwards Aladdin
"You can't wish to be something you already are."
Absurdity gives birth to wise truths, often simply with a single ricochet from an infinite niddala of mutual rubbings by souls that possess things to be rubbed and with which to rub.
To be woken to each day by these Hughes' fictions is to wake indeed. Each a fastbreak flash to ignite my brain.
An aging brain, though. There's the rub.

Gary Budgen - Souvenirs from Sanctuary Street

Extract from today's real-time review of BFS JOURNAL #10 HERE:

Souvenirs from Sanctuary Street by Gary Budgen "...Captain Tomorrow whooshing over wartime London with its blimps and searchlights." Another new day in this review. On my regular morning constitutional today, I happened to take the above photo (on the seaside pier near where I live) before I had read this story, and it seems ideally suited to accompany it. I have come across this author's fiction before, I'm sure. Reviewed it, too. Once you have read this story, I'm sure you will agree it is an important one, important in itself and also important as part of the gestalt of this Journal's fiction and poetry. Although its genius loci represents more of an industrial town, one with an abandoned film studio and a bereft housing estate, the types of shops, a Punch & Judy show, a travelling salesman selling bathroom stuff etc. also make it feel like a seaside resort ambiance. It is indeed intensely atmospheric, telling of a well-characterised policeman, one who tries to avoid 'fusses'. And the story has another soaring image like the book's cover ... Soaring towards dreams, as many people do, especially the people here, soaring toward dreams, too, from an old-fashioned paper comic - along with a cyborg-like comic character, also tellingly along with the policeman's later poignant change of costume. All has a remarkably haunting deadpan, even dead-end, splendour, if that is not a contradiction in terms. I wonder if these characters, policeman, costume shop proprietor and wildly intent children will ever reach Sim's earlier version of God's Heaven and be similarly judged... (Loved the touch of the 'half of Mackeson'.)

Jamjoyance

I arguably coined these words and expressions: ‘zeroism, egnisomicon, egnisism’ in conjunction with PF Jeffery (1967), ‘whofage’ in conjunction with PF Jeffery (1973), ‘agra aska’ (1983), ‘weirdmonger’ (1988), use of ‘brainwright’ in modern times (1990), Salustrade (1992) use of ‘yesterfang’ in modern times (1997), ‘wordhunger’ (1999), ‘nemonymous, ‘nemonymity’, late-labelling, veils-&-piques’ (2001), ‘denemonise’ (2002), ‘megazanthus’, ‘weirdonymous’, ‘chasing the noumenon’ (2003), ‘wordonymous’, ‘wordominous’, ‘the-ominous-imagination’, revelling in vulnerability (2004), ‘a woven fire-wall of words’, ‘the synchronised shards of random truth and fiction’, ‘nemoguity’, ‘vexed texture of text’, ‘fictipathy’, ‘nemotion’, ‘the hawler’, ‘the angel megazanthus’, ‘klaxon city’, ‘horrorism’ when used as a word for the philosophy of horror fiction (2005), ‘publication-on-reading’, ‘antipodal angst’, ‘the tenacity of feathers’, ‘a writer’s mandala’, ‘wordy weird’, ‘nemophilia / nemophobia’, ‘magic fiction’ as the obverse of the more common expression ‘magic realism’, ‘weirdtongue’ as the ‘name’ of a language, ‘Glistenberry’ as an alternative name for ‘Glastonbury’, ‘tonguage’ as a ‘conscious’ language, ‘yester-eggs’ as a term for Proustian ‘selves’, ‘the parthenogenesis of reality from artifice’, ‘all is for the pest in the pest of all worlds’, ‘Baffles’ as fables with muffled morals (2006), ‘fanblade fable’, ‘abutting the if’, ‘word clones / word clowns’, ‘bumps for books’, ‘rite of review’, ‘cone zero’, ‘a basket of coinages’ (2007), ‘small press cover ark(ive), the baser pulps’ ‘orrorfaces’, ‘the wheel culture’, ‘netogenic’, the first fiction about a ‘drogulus’, ‘Innerskull’, ‘meganthus‘ (2008), ‘CERN Zoo’ in literature, ‘Real-Time Reviewing‘, ‘ligottum‘, ‘the pit and the pessimum‘, ‘ligottus‘, ‘fubbcuckle’, ‘extraneity creep’, ‘pillowghost’, ‘intowards’, ‘powderghost’, ‘nightmare’s moat’ (2009), ‘THE TENSES’, ‘scream munch’ as another word for ‘captcha’, ‘skight’ – threepenny bit, ‘invitations from within’, ‘novellatory’, ’Ress’, ‘Venn Dreams’, ‘Tearsheet Doll’, scanbuncle, A Götterdämmerung of Guts , Holistic Horror (2010), SFtopia, Salustraders / Overspacers, Novellarette, Inquel, Gaddafery, Jungian autonymity, sudracide, an impesto novel, trendbaffler, our planet as reliquary, fictionatronics, Lovecraftianisation, “To know the worst is also to know the best“, vignellarette, “Nothing is controlled by logic other than logic itself.”, nightgators, Horror Genreators, dicksplay, roman littoral, ghostalt, poltergeistalt, horrasy, Horrasy: The Horrastic and the Heuristic, srednibution, srednidipity, Lovecraftian indescriptivities, bememorise, alephantiasis, reva-menders, metapomorphic, rarifiction, neoloquism, Was the God Particle born instable? (2011), angelivalent, literal-meaning dreaming, the ‘Higgs boson’ of Horror, The Weirdonomicon, Aickmania, shortcomings harnessed are stronger than strengths unused, privacy-trawler, disarming strangeness in connection with Robert Aickman, Fiction is like currency: belief is everything, oblique concomitant / oblique contaminant, age at the edge, A writer should make clouds shine even if the world’s sun has gone, The Call of the Silly, pastilential, eschairtology, e-born, read-tangler, ghorror, the authorial cloud, grosmance, quixotiose, most placating is playacting, ‘friendly fire’ fiction, dilemmachination, absurface, aeontonomous, HobbYiSt / Hobbit, aeontonomy, Horror Without Victims, fuckerlode, Earkth, Pronoun Horror, The Ives of November, PreMonday-ition, NoV – No Victims, an amid-life crisis, God created Ground in His own image by adding ‘run’ to His name, Old boots are always better than no boots, truth is never brash, End tring, Tendring is Trending, HorNET Nest, The empty future expects our arrival soon, if you fit, wear yourself, The Worldwide Cliff (2012), quantitative kamikaze, The Ohm Resistor of Literature, Only real books can be left anonymously on chairs, The Sibling Thing (as monster), lachrymonics, Cold Sororist, Gangster Gongsters, Cathrian, Cathrianity, Cathrechism, the optimum delusion, dogstone as a form of ‘found sculpture’, iDEATH as a form of internet implosion of self, Judge me on my works, not on my request thus to judge me, dyschronous recurrence, Belarhombus, the Palimp’s Zest, abseil-surdity, paradoxilogically, Devolved Fiction, fratrinity, bock-hide, the Ligottian lurch, denouement or deligottiment, Does a Seraph suffer from Harpes?, AickMANN, RTRcausal, irrealoscopic, a Myth Pitch, Versionary SF, pallianthology, Historation Comedy, Holy Grailtrack, Born Ancient, Bringing the Dead to Book, urbographical, genius tempus, sabbaticess, the life-insider, the God in the Goblet, tsunami of humani (2013), broodband, jamjoyance (2014).

It was such a blowick day.

Extract today from my real-time review HERE of FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce.

Page 243
"...it was such a blowick day."
The wildest possible day for our island nations. Meanwhile, I have thought of yet one more of the captured 'captives' of FW, a group of pre- and retro-influences on FW, a group led by Professor Stanley Unwin (who I watched often on 1950s and 1960s b&w British TV) and this extra captive is the eccentric early goth-bangled Dame Edith Sitwell, who like Anthony Burgess (who in his own right was a composer of much opera and other classical music as well as writing Clockwork Orange, Earthly Powers etcicero), appeared on BBC TV Chat shows (she mainly in the 1950s) and she wrote much poetry, including for Walton's Facade, poetry that resonates strongly with the FW prose. I am now beginning to see JJ in FW as a 'captive' or 'captcha' himself, squeezed and flattened within an old-fashioned TV screen morphing into a computer social media Internet screen ... as he narrates from the narrative hospital some coded Jackanory stories for a sort of breed of Children of Midwich. If you are one such child, child-like rather than childish, you will be building for yourself an audit trail of a plot so much easier than anyone else, a plot that cannot be itemised or set out categorically, but a plot you surely are following by a brand of readerly instinct not commonly used, if at all, except in response to reading FW.

Here Comes Everybody!

HERE COMES EVERYBODY from 'Finnegans Wake' by James Joyce may become the motto of the Internet…..? MY review here
A book of captchas and FINISH BEGAN.

*

Gestalt Real-Time Reviews of Older Books

Rameau’s Nephew by Denis Diderot

Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot

The Inmates by John Cowper Powys

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

The Villa Désirée and Other Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair

War With The Newts by Karel Capek

Facial Justice by LP Hartley

PLUS links to my material upon:

A collection of my favourite passages from ‘The Glastonbury Romance’ by John Cowper Powys

My favourite passages from ‘Hidden Faces’: a novel by Salvador Dali

My website for Elizabeth Bowen, including my favourite passages from all her novel chapters and stories

The world’s first detailed review of all the published fiction works of Frances Oliver

Green Dolphin Country by Elizabeth Goudge – Links

The Book I Would Like To Be Buried With… Proust’s In Search of Lost Time

FINNEGANS WAKE – James Joyce

First Published 1939 – This edition 1975

As I am awaiting for a few books to arrive, having pre-ordered them, I thought I would give James Joyce’s FINNEGANS WAKE a revisit, for gestalt real-time review purposes, which would represent a follow-up to similar such reviews in recent months, eg Rameau’s Nephew and Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot, The Inmates by John Cowper Powys and The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. But FINNEGANS WAKE might be a challenge, too far! The passage below represents the first three paragraphs of this book, i.e. about two-thirds of a page, and there are 628 pages in total! But if I do continue with this public review it will appear in the comment stream below.
—————————————————–

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

 

1. nullimmortalis

   
   

   February 5, 2014 at 1:18 pm (Edit)

   
   

   In the above quote of the novel’s opening, I have decided to remove any line-
   breaking hyphens and thus, as an example, line-breaking above becomes linebreaking. This may not be Joyce’s intention, but seems sensible as one cannot know for certain if any line-breaking hyphen is a real hyphen or indeed a line-breaking hyphen.
   It seems to me that one needs to absorb this text as best as one is able, without worrying about what it is intended to mean. Then one can hope that gestation in the reading-mind will facilitate some sort of meaning gradually to emerge. In other words, taking not just a run but a riverun at the text’s panoply of assonance, graphology and implied syntax but without meticulously prowling or grubbing around in each known word and in each neologism for the desperate hope of uncovering connective entrails of meaningful semantics!

   Reply
2. nullimmortalis

   
   

   February 5, 2014 at 1:54 pm (Edit)

   
   

   Well, I’ve read the text in this fashion up to page 10, i.e. up to a a whole paragraph with just one word, this word: “Phew!”
   It’s like immersing oneself in Professor Stanley Unwin and Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Cowper Powys all crossed with a Joycean automatic writing of a very rarefied kind, yet one knows that there is a linear sense flow being injected somehow straight into the veins of your brain. From the Aristophanic “Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax!” to a passage that happens to contain the word ‘whorl’ that I used this morning on my main blog in a post entitled ‘Craquelure‘ without realising I would be encountering the same word here. ‘The Synchronised Shards of Random Truth and Fiction’ IN ACTION, I’d say!
3. That passage:
   “He’s stiff but he’s steady is Priam Olim! ’Twas he was the dacent gaylabouring youth. Sharpen his pillowscone, tap up his bier! E’erawhere in this whorl would ye hear sich a din again? With their deepbrow fundigs and the dusty fidelios. They laid him brawdawn alanglast bed. With a bockalips of finisky fore his feet. And a barrowload of guenesis hoer his head. Tee the tootal of the fluid hang the twoddle of the fuddled, O!”

   Reply
4. nullimmortalis

   
   

   February 5, 2014 at 2:45 pm (Edit)

   
   

   Page 16:
5. 
   “Jute. — Yutah!
   Mutt. — Mukk’s pleasurad.
   Jute. — Are you jeff?
   Mutt. — Somehards.
   Jute. — But you are not jeffmute?
   Mutt. — Noho. Only an utterer.
   Jute. — Whoa? Whoat is the mutter with you?
   Mutt. — I became a stun a stummer.
   Jute. — What a hauhauhauhaudibble thing, to be cause!”
6. 
   [I have a friend called Jeff, and he has long had a set joke, whereby if anyone says to him: 'Are you deaf?' he always replies: 'No, I'm Jeff!']

Those who intend to follow this 'Finnegans Wake' real-time review over the next few weeks, months, years ... may also be interested in these links: .

A collection of my favourite passages from 'The Glastonbury Romance' by John Cowper Powys .

My favourite passages from 'Hidden Faces': a novel by Salvador Dali .

My website for Elizabeth Bowen, including my favourite passages from all her novel chapters and stories .

My review of 'Valiant Razalia' by Michael Wyndham Thomas .



. TO BE CONTINUED HERE; http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/finnegans-wake-james-joyce/

An extract: [[There is a plot to this book that several have tried to adumbrate over the years, a special Joycean language that others have tried to nail down with a single word of description, characters that chop and change, themes and threads that also chop and change, all of which elements the critics have tried to plumb (see the book's Wikipedia if you must).....But I contest that any attempt to plumb these things will come back to choke you. So I won't. I just know there is an experience to be had here and I hope by the time I reach the end such an experience will have become the whole of me rather than a part of me that I try to examine from outside. Examining life from within the same life, the mind from within the same mind, all doomed to failure - but Finnegans Wake itself is the only 'death' we shall know retrocausally. Our own death experienced after it has happened? We shall see or, at least, I hope, I shall see: "For dear old grumpapar, he’s gone on the razzledar, through gazing and crazing and blazing at the stars." (Page 65) Now reached page 69.]]

Infinite Fall

February 2, 2014 · 1:09 pm

Perpetual Autumn

I posted a blog entitled FOREVER AUTUMN HERE in September 2012, conveying some of my philosophy of life and literature. And this morning just after 5.30 a.m., the BBC Radio 4 weather forecaster stated that our Winter went missing and it was replaced by what he called “perpetual Autumn” – referring to the serial strong Autumn storms that have been besieging our UK islands for most of the Winter so far and into the foreseeable future.

For me, it seems apt to mention, in this context, Thomas Ligotti’s recent mass audience recognition written by Michael Calia in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a recognition for Ligotti’s bleak philosophy. Death Anxiety plays a part in this – and probably in some of the Scandinavian fiction bleaknesses they often show on UK TV on Saturday nights – but here the WSJ article concerned something entitled TRUE DETECTIVE of which I have no experience (nor do I have any experience of the Scandinavian TV fictions, for that matter!)

Regarding his Fiction art in particular, Ligotti already had in my view a well-deserved mass audience recognition a few years ago with the Virgin paperback of his fiction entitled TEATRO GROTTESCO, a book that I saw in all manner of public places, at least in the UK.

And I am intrigued by this new recognition for his philosophical standing. Although believing such recognition to be well-deserved by Ligotti in respect of philosophy as well as fiction, I wonder whether — with his perceived tenets of such philosophy within ‘the Contrivance of Horror’ entitled THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE (CATHR) — the above heightened profile of personal recognition could be seen to be either counter-productive or irrational for his type of bleak anti-natalist philosophy: a dilemma I first raised HERE in 2007 before CATHR was published. (Ligotti replied at that time as shown on that link.)

I remain to this day open-minded about it and would welcome further input from Ligotti and others. If further thoughts of mine should arise on this matter, I shall include them in the comment stream below.
Meanwhile, I suggest that any writers who propound bleakly philosophical anti-natalism and so forth deserve name recognition for their writing where such recognition is deliberately sought rather than ideally or logically subsumed by the nihilistic subject-matter. Financial reward for such writers (as a symbol of such recognition or simply as a human pragmatic need) may also be a deserved consolation to appease their Death Anxiety that often remains otherwise unconsoled by the sublimated or distractive creativity of hard work employed in writing about such matters. Perpetual Autumn indeed, never Winter’s Death. Infinite Fall.

For the record, THIS was my real-time review of CATHR soon after it was first published as a book.

 

Tagged as CATHR, conspiracy against the human race, Michael Calia, Nic Pizzolatto, Thomas Ligotti, true detective, Wall Street journal

  

Wake Up, Phil

An excerpt from my review of INTERZONE #250 (TTA Press) here:



Wake Up, Phil by Georgina Bruce
“‘If only you knew,’ said Throom. ‘If only you knew how many chances you’ve had.’”
It seems unlikely that the author intended Throom to be a morph of Theramin, but it seems appropriate if she did so, especially in the context of the overall gestalt. The untouchable executive doctor in a corporation, a corporation that vies with another corporation, each seeking the slavish loyalties of its staff. This is on the face of it the clinching satire finale of Stufflebeam’s “I can’t escape my job” opening salvo. It is also a compelling and engaging absurdist narrative that sometimes approximates a painting by Picasso but is mainly a 1950s/1960s SF novel where townships work diligently at their own employments in the face of alien invasion or cerebral counter-clockworlds like Yoachim in reverse, and homely and housewifery things mixed in with the crazy fantasies or with a theramin music backing to various Forbidden Planets to where these wholesome nuclear families travelled to fraternise with robots or replicants or just playmates or puppy dogs,
There is a character in this last story – a writer called Phil – middle-aged and portly and wearing Hawaiian shirts. I hope this is not a spoiler but, for me, and perhaps for me alone, this is Philip K Dick. But there you go – the light bulb’s finally gone out. Good job I had two.
“Built-in obsolescence meant that Callihounds would die after seven years.”

DANDY, MANDY, ANDY & ELENOR

 

Elenor knew she had three dolls that she called Dandy, Mandy and Andy – because, well, she liked names like that, rhyming, flowing like a river. If she had more dolls she would have called them Handy, Shandy and Pandy – but then she remembered that Pandy was Andy’s surname in that old kids’ programme from Fifties TV called ‘Watch With Mother’, something Elenor was old enough to have experienced in real-time.

She was old enough, too, to have dolls to play with again, though she refused to acknowledge she was now entering her own second childhood. Picture Book on Mondays. Andy Pandy, Teddy and Looby Loo on Tuesdays. Bill and Ben and Little Weed and the House That Did or Didn’t Know All about It on Wednesdays. Rag, Tag and Bobtail on Thursdays. The Woodentops on Fridays. Nothing on Saturdays or Sundays. The rest of daytime hours had the Test Card or Welsh speaking programmes – and Elenor lived in England...

Dandy suddenly sat up and said: “Stop daydreaming about the past, Elenor.”

Elenor was startled. None of the dolls had spoken before. Perhaps she was a doll herself, one that didn’t rhyme or flow like a river. Dandy, Mandy, Andy and Elenor. Didn’t really go, did it?

She felt tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Mandy was now stirring. These were things that were happening that shouldn’t happen - a human being like Elenor being watched by dolls to see if she still moved.

“Are you OK, Elenor?” asked Mandy.

Andy had begun to crawl on all fours towards Elenor.

“Can I do anything for you, Elenor?” he asked. “You look as if you need a hand.”

Elenor strained her eyes to look down at herself. She couldn’t have seen her hands because they were hidden under a cushion as if they were ashamed of being hers. Her dress was down to her ankles and, of course, she couldn’t have seen her face, being behind the face itself – and the angle of the mirror over the fireplace couldn’t reflect her at all, it seemed.

Then Looby Loo suddenly came into the room. And all the dolls froze. They couldn’t be seen to be alive. Maybe the house knew something about it. Its mirror, too. But that was that.

Looby Loo dragged Teddy across the carpet by his ear. And placed him next to Elenor. Except Looby Loo never called her Elenor. She called her Bandy. And when Bandy was tilted in a certain direction, her eyes opened wider to cry but it all spilled instead from somewhere below the dress in whatever direction her legs went. A silent Woodentop with a  river of misplaced tears.

Mr Rinaldo's Bath

Mr Rinaldo enjoyed having a bath more than anything else he did. He lived in a large Victorian building, where the plumbing wasn't up to very much, full of draughts this time of the year coming through the sash windows and creaking floorboards, and the bath itself was a huge one on rusted claw feet of a larger-than-life mutancy of appearance, and he found it difficult to climb into and even more difficult to climb out of that bath. He often cringed at the brown running lines of yellow or brown that made its once white innards more like the skin of a diseased zebra than anything else.
The hot tap croaked upon turning but did allow in a good flow of scaldingly hot water at a generous, if stuttering, pace. Naturally, he had to ensure that his later turning on of the cold tap worked equally well as the hot one - otherwise he would become nothing better than a boiled lobster, if that's not too hackneyed a phrase to use. The trouble was that the cold tap was not very dependable and often gave up the ghost even before it had croaked. Then, he would be left with a good hour or so sitting on the edge of the bath in his stringy dressing-gown to allow the water to cool to a level hot enough but not too hot. But once in, he was in.
He loved his ducks, he loved the soap he collected in all manner of carved shapes, that would now be blurred by the lathering Mr Rinaldo loved smarming himself all over with. He loved his scrubbing brush, too, now a bit worse for wear, its bristles having become more like the bottom of a newly dredged quarry. But it did set his skin tingling and his teeth on edge simply to look at it and anticipate its first contact with his skin.
The water swished and swilled around him as he luxuriously allowed its warmth to take away any memory of the chill in the air. There was one mystery however that he had never solved. However much he loved creating waves with the gentle pumping up and down of his knees, the waves were never satisfying enough. But he knew a wave would not be a wave at all if it was strong enough to spill water over the edge of the bath. That would be a self-defeating wave. A wave to be a satisfying wave needed to be strong enough to lift up the loose bits of his body but not too strong so as to drain the bath of water. Tonight it was cooling anyway, and he would soon be forced to struggle out, torso turned and knees down to assist leverage.
No, the actual mystery was of a wave that occurred in his bathwater without him causing it. Often he would relax, sprawled out as far as he could, only the barest amount of face left above the water like a nosy island, resisting the onset of the bathroom's chill that the water was now absorbing, and he remained still for at least five minutes, stock still, until he felt the mysterious wave swirl gently over and above him till it splashed across the face with a cheeky slap. He never knew how that wave had generated itself. He often joked that the bath on its outlandish claw feet was actually a living creature itself. But that didn't hold water.

Celebrity Big Brother - January 2014

CONTINUED FROM HERE


THIS is where Marion starts her reports about CBB Jan 2014 on a Big Brother thread that has already garnered more than 575,000 views.

Some of my own on-going comments from that thread may be shown below:

7 Jan 14
Agree about even Lionel being infected now himself by sleaze. Horror, too, at the thought that there is going to be another secret room scenario! How does Marion know these things?
There no longer seem to be straightforward loving Sapphics. The modern woman, judging by some of these women, seems to take it from where she can just for fun or as Luisa says 'for a good time' that was spoilt by Dappy's blatant self-fumblings in the bath with them.
This is one of many social lessons to garner from BB, my only excuse for watching this year's increasing sleaze, other than enjoying Marion's reports more, by having watched the programme she is commenting on!
Liz, meanwhile, is an interesting Beatrix Potter character.

8 Jan 14

Marion wrote:

The other HMs mght as well pack up and go home right now. We are in for three weeks of anguished inner turmoil of lee and Jasmine.
Thing is, though, we have one hope. I don't think Jasmine is so much damaged as disturbed. Lee may have bitten off more than he can chew.
Evander was the one small oasis of calm as he quietly read his Bible. I hope thay have supplied him with silver crosses and garlic too.

Brilliant report, Marion, but the programme itself is all rather dreary. But thankfully the sleaze has diminished or been hidden.

10 Jan 14

Marion wrote:

Nominations came next. Sam, Linda, Lionel, Ollie and Dappy were all spared being put up. Jim, Liz, Evander, Luisa, and Jasmine will face the public vote tomorrow. The most interesting nomination was Liz's - she nominated Evander because he doesn't believe animals have souls. Sh's an original!

I noticed Jim called Linda a 'dangerous woman' during his nominations.

11 Jan 14
I agree about Liz. And it is fascinating how she constantly hand plaits her hair when nervous or appears to be nervous, which is all the time. A great game player or someone who is genuinely nervous and paranoiac from experiences in the girls' school playground. She must have inner strengths, though, to be where she is.

12 Jan 14

The row last night between Dappy and Luisa was a classic BB combat and, whether contrived or genuine anger (and here I believe it was genuine), the nature of the row goes beyond the initial substance of its igniting and becomes something the participants can't let go. I suppose that is like not so much rows in real face-to-face life but more particularly those that develop in recent years on-line. The sense of being publicly watched (on BB or, more parochially perhaps, on-line) may have something to do with that modern phenomenon.

13 Jan 14

Marion wrote:

Casey has a face where feelings live, with eyes that empathise.

I actually decided last night that Casey is my favourite housemate and the one I currently hope will win. She has the makings of a wise woman with a wise woman's tones.
I think Lionel regretted his behaviour at the pole-dancing club. Joining in is one thing, but joining in with such filthy relish was quite another thing. I loved the playschool role-plying scene, meanwhile, which took place next door. Another factor that lent weight to my Casey choice.

14 Jan 14

Marion wrote:

Poor Liz walked into a minefield. She nominated Jasmine for being so beautiful that she made Liz feel suicidal. Later she said that she wanted to say something nice in her nomination. But Jasmine instantly turned a rather weak joke into a melodrama. Her father committed suicide, she said. she wept quite a lot in the toilet, declaring hatred for Liz. Later she spoke of carrying the guilt all her life, that somehow she felt responsible. And now Liz was threatening suicide because of her...
Even later, when Liz was making hamfisted apologies, she piled on more guilt trip. Interestingly, it was reference to her beauty which seemed to irk her more than her father's death. Why, it was just like racism to be nominated on the grounds of an appearance she could not help. Racism. Right, Jasmine. You'e a victim and a martyr.
poor Liz stammered and gulped and talked about her own self esteem issues. It transpires that she is anorexic. Not that that would trouble Jasmine while she crucified Liz.

Above is a remarkable example of the Big Brother interaction between two vulnerable people (aren't we all vulnerable?) telling us a lot about the human condition: sorrow and scorn, unsaid and said thoughts, true and untrue intentions - quite beyond the fauxmances and the silly games.
Meanwhile, I never liked Jim as a comedian. But I like him now.

15 Jan 14
I think Casey tries hard to ignore the Lee and Jas shenanigans, whether real or fabricated shenanigans. I have been interested by the word 'disrespect' especially when used as a verb, as many BB contestants have used it over the years, as Casey did about that couple 'disrespecting' her. It uniquely combines a common-as-muck and sophisticated tone.
I loved the 'annoying room' concept and congratulations to the BB backroom people for constructing it. However, the 'democracy' game itself was boring and silly.

16 Jan 14
The best thing Jasmine ever did. Lateral thinking at the last literal moment.

17 Jan 14

A significant show last night. I think Lee is claiming that Casey - off-air when they were quasi-evicted outside the building - scolded him for not playing the show-mance game. Well, it's one word against another, and Casey looked genuinely aggrieved at hearing what Lee had been saying and she seemed to feel genuinely combative about it while Lee looked desperate. The gap in her front teeth is, by the way, her biggest asset.
As to the late Frank Carson's dressing room - well, it will now go down in show business history as a sort of crossover point of all ley-lines. Its mere mention carried by Luisa from Jim to Linda, I guess, was dynamite for this whole show. We shall see.
It seems that Jasmine's Choice of the Saved (Casey and Linda) were two central pivots in Things to Come.
I expect Liz will go tonight. The Goth of Gossip will then return to her confessional columns in the real outside world and she will now have plenty to write about. Hopefully she will have input on what went on in Frank Carson's dressing-room or, at least, what it symbolises for Adam Weishaupt and the Illuminati.

18 Jan 14
Well, Jim apologised, as he should. Back in the running now.
Casey has been fauxmance-framed. Or Lee has? Lionel (who I was surprised to see go) thinks Lee is the injured party. But as far as I can see it is circumstantial evidence and perhaps we will never know. I certainly prefer Casey to Lee!
Dappy is dappy, after all. Luisa too clever by half.
Meanwhile, who is Sam?

19 Jan 14

A torrid, 'Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire' type of night last night. The only consolation is to read Marion about it all, outshining Liz Jones and Edward Gibbon in every way.

20 Jan 114

Marion wrote:

  Liz had to judge the house fashions and some of her comments were priceless - the bedroom is like an explosion at Primark. .

Liz actually said 'an explosion at a Primark factory' -- and also that Luisa's hair extensions meant there are 'now a lot of bald Indian women walking about' or words to that effect.
This could be seen to be highly offensive! And someone has already mentioned this:  https://twitter.com/TVpsychologist/status/425015296014172160

Luisa's nipple-lobe bling - well, I wondered why I was watching this tonight. Jim to win.
(I liked the acting by Ollie and Sam - the first time I've really noticed these two contestants).

21 Jan 14

Marion wrote:

But the Queen of the evening was much despised Liz. She was in the bath when Luisa approached her, tasked with making Lz laugh. But Liz would only talk of her dead cat, dead of fluid in the lungs and all her fault for neglecting him. Luisa was sympathetic at first but clealy thought it was all nonsense. Liz went on to discuss her anxieties - her Mum might die while she was in the house; she might drive into a tree if she had a car; her body dysmorphic disorder; her boyfriend probably off with another woman; she's full of tears; she might drown in the bath...all delivered in perfect deadpan. She was like an Alan Bennet Talking Head. Oh, Liz is much underestimated! That was the funniest scene of the series.
Luisa wanted to drown her in the end.
Luisa couldn't get a joke in edgeways and was caught of balance by the litany of woes. [...]
I wish so much that Liz could be saved on Wednesday. She is clearly an acquired taste and we are only just beginning to 'get' her. I am even wondering if that tale she told about being a virgin till she was 32 was true - the deadpan expression so evident tonight was present then.

Indeed. She made it known that she has 69 million readers!
I agree, too, that Liz's speech in the bath was the funniest thing in the series, if not in the whole of BB ever! (Luisa, bless her, was a brilliant stooge in this regard, whether she had already sussed the whole nature of the task or not).

22 Jan 14

Marion wrote:

Luisa had a moment of truth. On viewing the house, she came to realise that while she likes Linda, Linda comes across as a bitter moaner; and whie she doesn't like Jim, he is far funnier and entertaining.
Jim talked again about Yewtree and what it had cost him - Luisa saw that Linda just wasn't buying his tale ,confirming Jim's point that some people would always smell smoke as far as he was cocenred.

Interesting moments, but I found the whole Arctic task boring.
Meanwhile, I'm wondering if Liz's deadpan pronouncements have ever been serious since day one. She should win if she's got 69 million readers as she claims. They're all probably dogs, though.

23 Jan 14

Marion wrote:

Luisa and Dappy were pulled up for talking nominations and were sent to clean the bathroom fastened in together in a twinsie. It was remarkably unfunny although they tried to spice it up by accusing one another of imnappropriate touching. Been there, seen that, done that.

I don't think it was as simple as that. BB have turned a blind eye to nom talk until now. This was an excuse to get them into a twinsie because they sense Luisa is desperate not for love but for sex. And Luisa then became, on the face of it, a female sexual predator, because Dappy indicated he didn't like being touched 'there'. This was an experiment (intentional or not by BB) that might have shown that women predators can be worse than men ones, but women tend to get away with it, when neither should get away with it, of course. This was later borne out to some extent by the others talking about getting them both alone together in a room to quench Luisa's appetite for what they called "Dappy's D**k".
We weren't shown much about the twinsie incident however, and I may be wrong. A bit like the piecemeal, partial presentation of Hazel and Daley last year, except this was ostensibly a bit lighter-hearted than that...

The show reached a peak with Lz giving the litany of woes in the bath. We xhall not see the like again this seies. There is a definite Fall of Empire feeling abroad, a whiff of fin-de-siecle. Thje brightest part of the show was the re-run of the bath scene during liz's eviction.

Agreed.

24 Jan 14

I've never liked Ollie, from what I've seen of him. I do like Sam, although she hasn't tried hard enough to project herself over the whole show. Or perhaps that's a good thing? Yes, that's a good thing.
I like Jim, too, and Dappy.
Noticed Dappy nommed Luisa. A sadness has arrived in that relationship...
I've gone off Casey.
Never liked Linda or Lee. Yes, Marion, both to go tonight.

25 Jan 14
Not sure I really like any of them. Marginally, Jim as my favourite, but if I could have heard myself say that before I saw him on this BB show, I would have been astonished! (He is dead right about Linda.)
Sam as second favourite. She does have some style, but it's a style that's so sleek it slips through the bars of personality like an amorphous half-spectre.

26 Jan 14
Classic Marion reportage, thanks. It certainly helped keep me up to speed as I unavoidably missed last night's programme.

27 Jan 14

I thought at first Emma gave Lee a hard time in the interview, but by reviewing Marion's report of the facts, I sense that Emma probably didn't give him a hard enough time!
The frozen moments of the room's visitors moving and talking in a time-stream while the others became bound-by-a-moment-like-a-dead-monument-of-once-ancient-hope seemed very Dickian SF. Pity the frozen ones couldn't be more frozen and that they hadn't surreptitiously adjusted their bodies' comfort points after the clock struck.

28 Jan 14

Yes, generally this has been a fascinating, if sometimes worrying for society if these are celebrities, type CBB. Better than I expected and better than most previous series. One learns more from these things about fiction and truth than we do from much literature. Still, I prefer books, if leavened by such wonderfully eye-opening, eccentrically-'typoed', non-book excursions with Marion as guide. The awesome Alsiso of our times.
Two nights to go, and Jim to win.

29 Jan 14
A bunch of crab apples fallen off a tree that still think they're apples good enough for Tesco.

(later)

Jim's the winner, as he should be. An enjoyable, frustrating series. Thanks, Marion, as ever. The Alsiso Whizzo!

BB SUMMER 2014 CONTINUED HERE: http://weirdmonger.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/big-brother-summer-2014.html

The Broodband

I arguably coined these words and expressions: ‘zeroism, egnisomicon, egnisism’ in conjunction with PF Jeffery (1967), ‘whofage’ in conjunction with PF Jeffery (1973), ‘agra aska’ (1983), ‘weirdmonger’ (1988), use of ‘brainwright’ in modern times (1990), Salustrade (1992) use of ‘yesterfang’ in modern times (1997), ‘wordhunger’ (1999), ‘nemonymous, ‘nemonymity’, late-labelling, veils-&-piques’ (2001), ‘denemonise’ (2002), ‘megazanthus’, ‘weirdonymous’, ‘chasing the noumenon’ (2003), ‘wordonymous’, ‘wordominous’, ‘the-ominous-imagination’, revelling in vulnerability (2004), ‘a woven fire-wall of words’, ‘the synchronised shards of random truth and fiction’, ‘nemoguity’, ‘vexed texture of text’, ‘fictipathy’, ‘nemotion’, ‘the hawler’, ‘the angel megazanthus’, ‘klaxon city’, ‘horrorism’ when used as a word for the philosophy of horror fiction (2005), ‘publication-on-reading’, ‘antipodal angst’, ‘the tenacity of feathers’, ‘a writer’s mandala’, ‘wordy weird’, ‘nemophilia / nemophobia’, ‘magic fiction’ as the obverse of the more common expression ‘magic realism’, ‘weirdtongue’ as the ‘name’ of a language, ‘Glistenberry’ as an alternative name for ‘Glastonbury’, ‘tonguage’ as a ‘conscious’ language, ‘yester-eggs’ as a term for Proustian ‘selves’, ‘the parthenogenesis of reality from artifice’, ‘all is for the pest in the pest of all worlds’, ‘Baffles’ as fables with muffled morals (2006), ‘fanblade fable’, ‘abutting the if’, ‘word clones / word clowns’, ‘bumps for books’, ‘rite of review’, ‘cone zero’, ‘a basket of coinages’ (2007), ‘small press cover ark(ive), the baser pulps’ ‘orrorfaces’, ‘the wheel culture’, ‘netogenic’, the first fiction about a ‘drogulus’, ‘Innerskull’, ‘meganthus‘ (2008), ‘CERN Zoo’ in literature, ‘Real-Time Reviewing‘, ‘ligottum‘, ‘the pit and the pessimum‘, ‘ligottus‘, ‘fubbcuckle’, ‘extraneity creep’, ‘pillowghost’, ‘intowards’, ‘powderghost’, ‘nightmare’s moat’ (2009), ‘THE TENSES’, ‘scream munch’ as another word for ‘captcha’, ‘skight’ – threepenny bit, ‘invitations from within’, ‘novellatory’, ’Ress’, ‘Venn Dreams’, ‘Tearsheet Doll’, scanbuncle, A Götterdämmerung of Guts , Holistic Horror (2010), SFtopia, Salustraders / Overspacers, Novellarette, Inquel, Gaddafery, Jungian autonymity, sudracide, an impesto novel, trendbaffler, our planet as reliquary, fictionatronics, Lovecraftianisation, “To know the worst is also to know the best“, vignellarette, “Nothing is controlled by logic other than logic itself.”, nightgators, Horror Genreators, dicksplay, roman littoral, ghostalt, poltergeistalt, horrasy, Horrasy: The Horrastic and the Heuristic, srednibution, srednidipity, Lovecraftian indescriptivities, bememorise, alephantiasis, reva-menders, metapomorphic, rarifiction, neoloquism, Was the God Particle born instable? (2011), angelivalent, literal-meaning dreaming, the ‘Higgs boson’ of Horror, The Weirdonomicon, Aickmania, shortcomings harnessed are stronger than strengths unused, privacy-trawler, disarming strangeness in connection with Robert Aickman, Fiction is like currency: belief is everything, oblique concomitant / oblique contaminant, age at the edge, A writer should make clouds shine even if the world’s sun has gone, The Call of the Silly, pastilential, eschairtology, e-born, read-tangler, ghorror, the authorial cloud, grosmance, quixotiose, most placating is playacting, ‘friendly fire’ fiction, dilemmachination, absurface, aeontonomous, HobbYiSt / Hobbit, aeontonomy, Horror Without Victims, fuckerlode, Earkth, Pronoun Horror, The Ives of November, PreMonday-ition, NoV – No Victims, an amid-life crisis, God created Ground in His own image by adding ‘run’ to His name, Old boots are always better than no boots, truth is never brash, End tring, Tendring is Trending, HorNET Nest, The empty future expects our arrival soon, if you fit, wear yourself, The Worldwide Cliff (2012), quantitative kamikaze, The Ohm Resistor of Literature, Only real books can be left anonymously on chairs, The Sibling Thing (as monster), lachrymonics, Cold Sororist, Gangster Gongsters, Cathrian, Cathrianity, Cathrechism, the optimum delusion, dogstone as a form of ‘found sculpture’, iDEATH as a form of internet implosion of self, Judge me on my works, not on my request thus to judge me, dyschronous recurrence, Belarhombus, the Palimp’s Zest, abseil-surdity, paradoxilogically, Devolved Fiction, fratrinity, bock-hide, the Ligottian lurch, denouement or deligottiment, Does a Seraph suffer from Harpes?, AickMANN, RTRcausal, irrealoscopic, a Myth Pitch, Versionary SF, pallianthology, Historation Comedy, Holy Grailtrack, Born Ancient, Bringing the Dead to Book, urbographical, genius tempus, sabbaticess, the life-insider, the God in the Goblet, tsunami of humani (2013), broodband (2014).