| 1968:
A History in Verse
Ed Sanders, Black
Sparrow Press
Santa Rosa
CA.
Renaissance fugger
historian poet
novelist politico
Sanders has
laid out one long bardsong
in a lyrical tempest
of CHAOS Cong
Vietnam
assassination
celebrations
Joplining Hendrix
Hoffmaning stew
w/ Manson too
plus Pantherism, terrorism
& yippie hippy flwr chldrn!
tho most appealing in these pages:
the action-packed I-witnessings
of '68 Demo Convention
tear gas harmonium
skullsmash brew
starring Ginsberg Burroughs Jean Genet
then sadly Kerouacy
drunk on Buckley
Sanders translating it all into English
et al into English
as brutifully apt
as the bare breasts
of death.
Orpheus Emerged
Jack Kerouac
ibooks (Simon &
Schuster), NY
Nevermind that Jack
never wanted you to read
this instance of green youth
Pariah Sampas (self-proclaimed
"Protector of the Trust")
has just made another million bucks
"for his hundreds of Greek relatives"
Kerouac didn't want "to get
another bloody cent"
story okay
characters so-so
intriguing to see preboheme
kunstelromanella
egotaling
psychoanalytic
doppelism
includes a creepy Creeley intro
plus rehashed trash
on Beats & bio
stuff
not to mention
revisionist biblio
& timeline lacking
Jan & Joan
plus free CD, wow-wee!
see fancy graphiced
"interactive links"
working sporadic
w/ loads o'
misinfo
the whole deal
a damn
shame.
Fable for Another Time
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Translated by Mary Hudson
University of Nebraska Press
Lincoln.
11:58 pm, drunk:
Fable is a significant book in the Céline corpus, mostly
because it is one of the two remaining untranslated-into-English
novels (up till now). And for a good reason: it's competition: the
best of the fiction was Death on the Installment Plan because it
was the most cartoony. The second best was Journey to the End of
the Night because it was epically poetic. Most readers of popfroglit
think the latter's the best. It isn't. It's dark and depressing,
ends with suicide, war, the fucked-up state of history, ourselves.
Then there are all those war novels
like Castle to Castle, North, etcetera, BLAM BLAM VROOOMING away
for 3000 pages with endless endnotes on fascist happenings of the
40's via the manic/paranoid voice of someone on the lam (ie, an
anti-Semitic insomniac who just won't shut up).
This the category Fairytale falls
into.
It must've been a sickly tedious work
for Mary Hudson to grind this mofo out. She must've wanted to kill
herself at least a hundred times. That's what Bernard Frechtman
did, but only once. He was Genet's main translator, till he took
a shoddy shot at Céline. Ralph Manheim got the funny stuff
and handled it like the master he was, but I don't know about the
content Hudson had to work with. Or her handling of it.
Her intro mentioned every single Célinian
novel ever written, yet failed to recognize Dalkey Archives' London
Bridges. One wonders if she stopped to research the other books
while thoroughly and intensively studying something totally incoherent
(it must've taken ten years to decipher it). One also wonders what
sort of scholar can render such a text accessible while failing
to demonstrate a basic knowledge of the subject. A saint, perhaps.
Maybe a fool. Or perhaps someone with a decade to burn.
While her annotations are as impressive
as hell, her intro is full of sloppy typos that do not boost her
authority. Also, the cover of the book is cheaply done (it is dumb
and simple and embarrassingly artless), so does not lend itself
to the literary importance of such a highly awaited bellyflop. This
does not compute.
A hundred people know what I mean.
They too have suffered the mad rantings of Céline. I am tired
of his relentless yakking. He shot his wad in the first thirty pages,
which Spitzer and Green did with much more flair (see Cyber Corpse
5/6). After 118 pages of Hudson's clinical but accurate traduction,
I (representing you) could no longer stand the mad ramblings of
Céline. The book is a waste. There's not enough to laugh
at.
Andrei asked me to be nice, but I
can't recommend a book that makes me want to shoot myself in the
motherfucking head. Because seriously folks, this book is nothing
but a raving egomaniac rotting in some Danish prison, waiting for
his execution, so trying not to do himself in. Where's the Brautigan
at?
Happy Ending
chpbk by Mike Topp
Future Tense Books
www.futuretensebooks.com
Portland.
Citizens of Peoria
it's your privelege
so make a statement:
fill your shoes with applesauce
and pass through airport
security. |
