Transgressive
Charles Bukowski and the Path of Masculinity
by unnu on Monday, January 13, 2003 05:56 pmI was browsing the poetry section at Barnes & Noble's the other day when I ran into one hell of a ballsy title. What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), is a collection of poems by Charles Bukowski, published posthumously by his last wife who apparently thought that he walked through the fire quite well. It takes some cojones to pull off a proclamatory title like this without coming off as extremely pretentious, but in this case I think the implied compliment to the man is well deserved.
By bohemian standards anyways, Bukowski walked through many fires, walked them well and was justly proud of these achievements. For his lifestyle and for the incredible written product of his struggles he's earned himself a solid spot amongst the heroes of 20th century Bohemia.
It's hard to pin Bukowski down to a moral ideology, but it's certainly not a stretch to see him agreeing that life's first principle should be that what matters most really is how well you walk through the fire. For those of us who wish to follow in his footsteps -- the footsteps of the bohemian -- things aren't quite so clear. What is "the fire" and what does it mean to walk well through it? Why should we think that this is what matters most? And what does this principle say about living a bohemian life versus a mainstream one?
The poems are worthy of the spirit of the poet and of the uncompromisingly bohemian life he walked. But it's the title that grips me the most. The title is a (post-mortem) proclamation of real manhood and real living -- not their usual softer compromises. Its claims amount to the declaration that life's value is measured in terms of the currency of courage, strength and perseverance of its trials. These are traditionally masculine virtues and they call out a challenge to others to stand up and be men. Bukowski and Hemingway and Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac's idealization of Neil Cassady stand straight-backed as the heroes of the American bohemian alternative to the blind machismo of the soldier or the suburbanized fatherhood of the rest of modern society. They call out on us to have the courage to be ourselves, to stand up for who we are and to remain ourselves through life's tabulations. Bohemia's strongest masculine ideal is to remain uncompromisingly dedicated to being who we really are or dream of becoming. Tell it that what you ultimately and truly wish to be is a suburban middle-management tv-addict or a well-functioning cog of a mighty military machine and Bohemia will respond by pointing out your self-deception. These alternatives (and others) are nobody's ultimate ideals -- just comprises of living -- and unsavory ones at that. Bohemia strongly frowns on comprises and champions those who are willing to do without them.
I've never met anyone who really measured up, though then again maybe I haven't been looking hard enough, deep enough ... At some idealistic points in my own life I thought that perhaps I someday would (measure up), but that fantasy is slipping away from me as quick as indecisions and passed-up opportunities pile up behind me and define who I am.
I'm 29 and I've been waiting for that self-confidence to bubble and rise and flower into a self-fulfilled, self-rewarding bohemian manhood -- waiting long enough to begin wondering whether that ship has long departed when the seas began rocking with a little less black and white. Long enough to begin to question the directions they gave me to this pick-up point -- were they foolin'? Did I hear them wrong? Did they ever actually say anything at all? Did I put the words into the world and build mouths and unpronouncables around them?
The reality of it is that sometimes I do feel something personal and real and beautiful and free in some of the snapshots that make up my life. Last midnight, sitting on the second story walkway outside the door of my little Hollywood bungalow, drinking a beer, smoking a cigarette, reading street poetry in the hot summer night, scatting with Duke, enjoying a certain type of perfect moment, basking in the rare feeling of being the kind of man I'd like to be. Copies of my first book sit in a box inside and I feel good about this morning's writing and the Sunday morning walk alone that inspired it. Somehow, I'm a dreamer and a real man, though I was always told that that was the one thing a real man couldn't be. Then again, I'm under no illusions that it'll be this way tomorrow.
The sneaking, not-so-romantic suspicion that, ultimately, the defining graces of men are not so different after all does manage to creep in on me under the curtain of bohemian cool. Maybe it really is true that what matters most is how well you could and did and do walk through the fire. Maybe stylistic aspirations aside, virtually no man can ignore the call of his gender to prove himself worthy of his manhood. The problem is that it?s not at all clear what counts as proof these days -- not so much for society, which doesn't really seem to demand it, but for us as individuals needing to justify the worth of our manhood. Not only do I have serious doubt about my ability to walk through the fire, I can no longer even tell what the fire is.
My father and grandfather earned their certificates of manhood in basic training, and cemented them in combat. They faced danger, learned to understand it and acquired the courage to push on through. When it was over they knew that they had walked through the fire and that they had it in them to be men in the world. Americans today, and worse yet, would-be-bohemians, usually don't have that horrible luxury. War is too complicated today and god is on everybody's and nobody's side. Besides, resigning all of your freedoms -- and particularly your moral decisions to somebody else - going to war is the most anti-ethical thing a bohemian-inspired could do. The soldier's path is usually closed to us - and even when it isn't, we suspect the humanity of the army clones that seem to go through it. That trial of fire produces a general type of man today that many of us simply don't want to be.
Then again, it wasn't Bukowski's trial of fire either. His was the perseverance through a life of extreme poverty, homelessness and alcohol -- most of all it meant successfully dealing with the most trying plague of the poor -- each other. Bukowski's walk through the fire is that of living in a ghetto that's almost always aflame in some quiet desperate way. It amounts to the perseverance of yourself and your ideals despite the harassment of the flames that leap around you. He grew into a manhood defined by the ability to comfortably maneuver around the desolate (whores, bullies, addicts, bums, etc.) and to respect his own position in the world as a man walking his own path.
I won't pretend that I live any type of heroic life -- I don't. I feel like a softie these days, living off my graduate teachership, so comfortable with my place in the world and with the little luxuries that pervade my life -- maybe not enough to make me feel like a rich man, but enough to make me feel like a lucky one. I spend my weekdays and weekends alike in a flurry of writing, thinking, teaching, learning, editing ? but I have no clock to punch and can do it all at my own pace and by my own convenience. The little things in life mean a whole lot more. The small dinners with friends, the rare night out to see someone perform who you know on a personal level, really meaningful conversations that leave out the small talk, enjoying the tenderness of being in love.
And yet when I sit down with someone and we tell our stories, I always have some good ones that remind me that I've acted out my share of parts in this drama: Mescaline in the high desert, the acid-house in Budapest, the porn-house in Lima, the city of the dead in Cairo, visits to my father in prison camp, running away from an inhospitable home and getting kicked out of it, getting mugged trying to follow in Hemingway's footsteps in Pamplona, etc. etc. I've been around enough and walked through enough of my own fires to appreciate the outcome of the cooling winds on the other side. I have no intention of abandoning it all in favor of middle-class contentment, but I know that I probably won't repeat the lifestyle of my 20s. I respect, but have no aspirations to relive the life of Bukowski. I don't have the strength for its continual bashings, the addiction to force me to keep stumbling within it, or the lack of straight-world opportunities to escape it.
More importantly, while I don't doubt that it matters how well you walk through the fire and that, indeed, it is important that you do walk through the fire and challenge your integrity, savoir-faire, real-world survival skills, creative understanding, etc. ? I don't think that it really is what matters most. I?ve grown to admire the softness that comes with love and responsibility as possibly the deepest and most substantial form of being and have junked many of my artist-knows-best judgments. I?ve grown soft at "almost-30" and very happily so. And yet, soft complacency is the furthest thing from my mind. Fulfilling my creative needs and living my life with integrity requires me to keep challenging myself. There will always be fires to walk through and there will always be times when I?ll burn, burn, burn as the mad ones do ? but not to the ground as so many of them did. To me, what matters most is not how well you walk through the fire, but what kind of man you were before the flames engulfed you and what kind of man you become after wiping the ash off of your face.
By bohemian standards anyways, Bukowski walked through many fires, walked them well and was justly proud of these achievements. For his lifestyle and for the incredible written product of his struggles he's earned himself a solid spot amongst the heroes of 20th century Bohemia.
It's hard to pin Bukowski down to a moral ideology, but it's certainly not a stretch to see him agreeing that life's first principle should be that what matters most really is how well you walk through the fire. For those of us who wish to follow in his footsteps -- the footsteps of the bohemian -- things aren't quite so clear. What is "the fire" and what does it mean to walk well through it? Why should we think that this is what matters most? And what does this principle say about living a bohemian life versus a mainstream one?
The poems are worthy of the spirit of the poet and of the uncompromisingly bohemian life he walked. But it's the title that grips me the most. The title is a (post-mortem) proclamation of real manhood and real living -- not their usual softer compromises. Its claims amount to the declaration that life's value is measured in terms of the currency of courage, strength and perseverance of its trials. These are traditionally masculine virtues and they call out a challenge to others to stand up and be men. Bukowski and Hemingway and Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac's idealization of Neil Cassady stand straight-backed as the heroes of the American bohemian alternative to the blind machismo of the soldier or the suburbanized fatherhood of the rest of modern society. They call out on us to have the courage to be ourselves, to stand up for who we are and to remain ourselves through life's tabulations. Bohemia's strongest masculine ideal is to remain uncompromisingly dedicated to being who we really are or dream of becoming. Tell it that what you ultimately and truly wish to be is a suburban middle-management tv-addict or a well-functioning cog of a mighty military machine and Bohemia will respond by pointing out your self-deception. These alternatives (and others) are nobody's ultimate ideals -- just comprises of living -- and unsavory ones at that. Bohemia strongly frowns on comprises and champions those who are willing to do without them.
I've never met anyone who really measured up, though then again maybe I haven't been looking hard enough, deep enough ... At some idealistic points in my own life I thought that perhaps I someday would (measure up), but that fantasy is slipping away from me as quick as indecisions and passed-up opportunities pile up behind me and define who I am.
I'm 29 and I've been waiting for that self-confidence to bubble and rise and flower into a self-fulfilled, self-rewarding bohemian manhood -- waiting long enough to begin wondering whether that ship has long departed when the seas began rocking with a little less black and white. Long enough to begin to question the directions they gave me to this pick-up point -- were they foolin'? Did I hear them wrong? Did they ever actually say anything at all? Did I put the words into the world and build mouths and unpronouncables around them?
The reality of it is that sometimes I do feel something personal and real and beautiful and free in some of the snapshots that make up my life. Last midnight, sitting on the second story walkway outside the door of my little Hollywood bungalow, drinking a beer, smoking a cigarette, reading street poetry in the hot summer night, scatting with Duke, enjoying a certain type of perfect moment, basking in the rare feeling of being the kind of man I'd like to be. Copies of my first book sit in a box inside and I feel good about this morning's writing and the Sunday morning walk alone that inspired it. Somehow, I'm a dreamer and a real man, though I was always told that that was the one thing a real man couldn't be. Then again, I'm under no illusions that it'll be this way tomorrow.
The sneaking, not-so-romantic suspicion that, ultimately, the defining graces of men are not so different after all does manage to creep in on me under the curtain of bohemian cool. Maybe it really is true that what matters most is how well you could and did and do walk through the fire. Maybe stylistic aspirations aside, virtually no man can ignore the call of his gender to prove himself worthy of his manhood. The problem is that it?s not at all clear what counts as proof these days -- not so much for society, which doesn't really seem to demand it, but for us as individuals needing to justify the worth of our manhood. Not only do I have serious doubt about my ability to walk through the fire, I can no longer even tell what the fire is.
My father and grandfather earned their certificates of manhood in basic training, and cemented them in combat. They faced danger, learned to understand it and acquired the courage to push on through. When it was over they knew that they had walked through the fire and that they had it in them to be men in the world. Americans today, and worse yet, would-be-bohemians, usually don't have that horrible luxury. War is too complicated today and god is on everybody's and nobody's side. Besides, resigning all of your freedoms -- and particularly your moral decisions to somebody else - going to war is the most anti-ethical thing a bohemian-inspired could do. The soldier's path is usually closed to us - and even when it isn't, we suspect the humanity of the army clones that seem to go through it. That trial of fire produces a general type of man today that many of us simply don't want to be.
Then again, it wasn't Bukowski's trial of fire either. His was the perseverance through a life of extreme poverty, homelessness and alcohol -- most of all it meant successfully dealing with the most trying plague of the poor -- each other. Bukowski's walk through the fire is that of living in a ghetto that's almost always aflame in some quiet desperate way. It amounts to the perseverance of yourself and your ideals despite the harassment of the flames that leap around you. He grew into a manhood defined by the ability to comfortably maneuver around the desolate (whores, bullies, addicts, bums, etc.) and to respect his own position in the world as a man walking his own path.
I won't pretend that I live any type of heroic life -- I don't. I feel like a softie these days, living off my graduate teachership, so comfortable with my place in the world and with the little luxuries that pervade my life -- maybe not enough to make me feel like a rich man, but enough to make me feel like a lucky one. I spend my weekdays and weekends alike in a flurry of writing, thinking, teaching, learning, editing ? but I have no clock to punch and can do it all at my own pace and by my own convenience. The little things in life mean a whole lot more. The small dinners with friends, the rare night out to see someone perform who you know on a personal level, really meaningful conversations that leave out the small talk, enjoying the tenderness of being in love.
And yet when I sit down with someone and we tell our stories, I always have some good ones that remind me that I've acted out my share of parts in this drama: Mescaline in the high desert, the acid-house in Budapest, the porn-house in Lima, the city of the dead in Cairo, visits to my father in prison camp, running away from an inhospitable home and getting kicked out of it, getting mugged trying to follow in Hemingway's footsteps in Pamplona, etc. etc. I've been around enough and walked through enough of my own fires to appreciate the outcome of the cooling winds on the other side. I have no intention of abandoning it all in favor of middle-class contentment, but I know that I probably won't repeat the lifestyle of my 20s. I respect, but have no aspirations to relive the life of Bukowski. I don't have the strength for its continual bashings, the addiction to force me to keep stumbling within it, or the lack of straight-world opportunities to escape it.
More importantly, while I don't doubt that it matters how well you walk through the fire and that, indeed, it is important that you do walk through the fire and challenge your integrity, savoir-faire, real-world survival skills, creative understanding, etc. ? I don't think that it really is what matters most. I?ve grown to admire the softness that comes with love and responsibility as possibly the deepest and most substantial form of being and have junked many of my artist-knows-best judgments. I?ve grown soft at "almost-30" and very happily so. And yet, soft complacency is the furthest thing from my mind. Fulfilling my creative needs and living my life with integrity requires me to keep challenging myself. There will always be fires to walk through and there will always be times when I?ll burn, burn, burn as the mad ones do ? but not to the ground as so many of them did. To me, what matters most is not how well you walk through the fire, but what kind of man you were before the flames engulfed you and what kind of man you become after wiping the ash off of your face.
Linotte: Reflections on the Adolescent Diary of Anais Nin
by nocturne 17 on Thursday, November 7, 2002 11:37 amLinotte: The Early Diary of Anais Nin, 1914-1920 Translated from the French by Jean L. Sherman, with a preface by Joaquin Nin-Culmell. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, London, 1978.
January 11, 1915 "Today went by in the usual way. We went to school, I work as hard as I can but that doesn't interfere with my doing the things I like best. I am now writing a story, 'Poor Little Boy.' I only like things that are sad or funny. "I now hate school and everything American. Why, Maman asked me and my aunt too. Why? Here is the answer. Because I love only silence and here there is noise all the time. Everything here is dark, enclosed, severe, and I love sunny landscapes, I love to see the sky. I love to admire the beauties of nature in silence and here the buildings are so high, so high that one sees nothing, or if one sees a little something out of the window, it isn't a beautiful sky that is pale blue, pale pink or a calm white. No, that isn't what one sees here. One sees a dark sky, heavy, mournful, soiled and darkened by the vanity and pride of modern men and women. I say that because I don't like anything modern. I would like to live in the first century in ancient Rome, I would like to live in the time of grand castles and gracious ladies. I would like to live in the time of Charlotte Corday when every woman could become a heroine, and so on. The truth is I would like to save France from its afflictions, but we are no longer living in the era of Joan of Arc or Jeanne Hachette, and the best thing I can do is keep quiet and out of sight. Where was I when I asked why I don't like America and got into the period when I would like to live? I shall go on and I'm sure my diary has guessed the answer and I can give my imagination free rein. Oh, if I could rise up and annihilate all those ambitious countries that are the cause of Belgium's misfortune and France's tears. But once again I must bow my head and give way to older people who will come along later, perhaps, as I hope. I have to recognize that I am crazy, but since my diary is the diary of a madwoman, I can't write only reasonable things, and if I did they wouldn't be my own thoughts. So while I await the great woman who will save France, I shall go to bed." p. 42-43
This passage is classic early Linotte. Anais is at a period where she loathes school and terribly misses the manners and customs of the old country. She misses her bohemian life in France and Belgium, even her more difficult life in sunny Spain with her beloved granmere and sour granpere. Ofcourse most of all she misses her papa and the "better" life she deludes herself into thinking they had together. She is still in the stage of her early life where she believes in heroines and fables and suppliments her ardor for 'Christ' in mass each Sunday with her secret ardor for her father. Her heart is broken but her mind is also quite awake and active. She is reading books alphabetically in New York Public Library, making friends and spending time with her mother's spillover of expatriate Bohemian musician friends from Europe and South America, especially from her longtime home in Cuba. World War One is striking a heavy blow on France and on Anais, who reads about heroines Charlotte Corday and Jeanne d'Arc fervently into the night by candlelight and imagines herself a grown woman of invincible power, who can swoop down upon France, lead her nation of heroic men and "save France" from the 'German tyrants'. After her reveries she invariably sinks back into reality in her diaries by noting she is "only a girl" a small nothing of a girl who cannot save France. She is limited by her age, size, health and the historical times. For women of her time, most are to be wives and mothers, not heroines (or for the most part, writers and artists as sole occupations, either) and Anais senses this about her future. She examines her life in "dreary oppressive New York" as it progresses. More "womanly duties" are pressed upon her such as cooking, cleaning and above all else sewing, and she is scolded for staying indoors too often and "scribbling" in her "silly book", the Diary.
At the point where Anais is almost 15 years old she still pines for her Papa but has given up hope of him 'magically' appearing in New York for Christmas. They maintain a long correspondance (more fervently and regularly on Anais' part). Joaquin and Thorvald (her brothers) are growing quickly, but Anais still towers over them. They live in the city, in a large house now, renting out rooms to boarders. John O'Connell, a blue-eyed, gentle, well behaved younger boy from school, is Anais' first innocent 'romance'. Anais detests school...she does like the temporary public school right now, except for English Grammar classes and Math. She is learning how to sow, cook, clean and keep the house together. She is still fervent about France and the War but talks about it less. She dicusses the difference between dreaming and reality, and how there are two sides to her nature. Some days she chooses Life [Reality] and some days she chooses Dreaming. She writes stories...she reads Hugo, Eliot and other great authors. An artist wants her to sit for a portrait because of her Catalan features inherited from her father. Anais confides in her diary that she is secretly pleased by this. Rosa (her mother) tries to make life fun for the children while working very hard and she still manages to sing in operas sometimes. Anais writes poetry and dances in a Jeanne d'Arc d'onfrey play. She discovers the real goings-on of backstage life which both enchants and disillusions her. Anais has many little girlfriends now and a club of well wishers and do gooders...and edits a small magazine of poetry, stories and pictures. She prays France wil be saved from the Germans. She still hopes to see her father one day again. She still dreams of meeting her other half, her shadow, a man like the heroes in her books, a blue eyed stranger who will understand her.
Anais, at 16, is very introspective, very full of life, in her joy and in her despair, and she is really growing at this point in her life. She is also very innocent in many ways and very loving and gentle hearted. She is intelligent and writes a diary that is compelling and playful and serious and meaningful and intimate and humourous. She writes with a depth and gravity, even while dreaming of violinists and the French Academie. She writes about her interior life and her impressions above the daily grind.
Linotte is the essence of who Anais was in her early life, a fragment of her self she carried with her her entire life. Her thoughts, her dreams, her beliefs, her doubts, her regrets, her ideals, her problems, her questions. It is a journey of one writer's life as they evolve from child to young woman. Many readers unfamiliar with the breadth of her work picture Anais Nin as a bestselling erotic writer or famed Diary writer with a risque' and bohemian past. Some view her in relation to any number of her friendships with celebrated artists and writers. Some readers (and critics) cannot see past her sexual exploration later in her life, and view her as only writing in a certain vein. But Linotte is a portrait of an immigrant girl in the early part of the 20th century writing a love letter to her absent father which eventually becomes her life's masterpiece; the first chapter in her acclaimed series of Diaries.
January 11, 1915 "Today went by in the usual way. We went to school, I work as hard as I can but that doesn't interfere with my doing the things I like best. I am now writing a story, 'Poor Little Boy.' I only like things that are sad or funny. "I now hate school and everything American. Why, Maman asked me and my aunt too. Why? Here is the answer. Because I love only silence and here there is noise all the time. Everything here is dark, enclosed, severe, and I love sunny landscapes, I love to see the sky. I love to admire the beauties of nature in silence and here the buildings are so high, so high that one sees nothing, or if one sees a little something out of the window, it isn't a beautiful sky that is pale blue, pale pink or a calm white. No, that isn't what one sees here. One sees a dark sky, heavy, mournful, soiled and darkened by the vanity and pride of modern men and women. I say that because I don't like anything modern. I would like to live in the first century in ancient Rome, I would like to live in the time of grand castles and gracious ladies. I would like to live in the time of Charlotte Corday when every woman could become a heroine, and so on. The truth is I would like to save France from its afflictions, but we are no longer living in the era of Joan of Arc or Jeanne Hachette, and the best thing I can do is keep quiet and out of sight. Where was I when I asked why I don't like America and got into the period when I would like to live? I shall go on and I'm sure my diary has guessed the answer and I can give my imagination free rein. Oh, if I could rise up and annihilate all those ambitious countries that are the cause of Belgium's misfortune and France's tears. But once again I must bow my head and give way to older people who will come along later, perhaps, as I hope. I have to recognize that I am crazy, but since my diary is the diary of a madwoman, I can't write only reasonable things, and if I did they wouldn't be my own thoughts. So while I await the great woman who will save France, I shall go to bed." p. 42-43
This passage is classic early Linotte. Anais is at a period where she loathes school and terribly misses the manners and customs of the old country. She misses her bohemian life in France and Belgium, even her more difficult life in sunny Spain with her beloved granmere and sour granpere. Ofcourse most of all she misses her papa and the "better" life she deludes herself into thinking they had together. She is still in the stage of her early life where she believes in heroines and fables and suppliments her ardor for 'Christ' in mass each Sunday with her secret ardor for her father. Her heart is broken but her mind is also quite awake and active. She is reading books alphabetically in New York Public Library, making friends and spending time with her mother's spillover of expatriate Bohemian musician friends from Europe and South America, especially from her longtime home in Cuba. World War One is striking a heavy blow on France and on Anais, who reads about heroines Charlotte Corday and Jeanne d'Arc fervently into the night by candlelight and imagines herself a grown woman of invincible power, who can swoop down upon France, lead her nation of heroic men and "save France" from the 'German tyrants'. After her reveries she invariably sinks back into reality in her diaries by noting she is "only a girl" a small nothing of a girl who cannot save France. She is limited by her age, size, health and the historical times. For women of her time, most are to be wives and mothers, not heroines (or for the most part, writers and artists as sole occupations, either) and Anais senses this about her future. She examines her life in "dreary oppressive New York" as it progresses. More "womanly duties" are pressed upon her such as cooking, cleaning and above all else sewing, and she is scolded for staying indoors too often and "scribbling" in her "silly book", the Diary.
At the point where Anais is almost 15 years old she still pines for her Papa but has given up hope of him 'magically' appearing in New York for Christmas. They maintain a long correspondance (more fervently and regularly on Anais' part). Joaquin and Thorvald (her brothers) are growing quickly, but Anais still towers over them. They live in the city, in a large house now, renting out rooms to boarders. John O'Connell, a blue-eyed, gentle, well behaved younger boy from school, is Anais' first innocent 'romance'. Anais detests school...she does like the temporary public school right now, except for English Grammar classes and Math. She is learning how to sow, cook, clean and keep the house together. She is still fervent about France and the War but talks about it less. She dicusses the difference between dreaming and reality, and how there are two sides to her nature. Some days she chooses Life [Reality] and some days she chooses Dreaming. She writes stories...she reads Hugo, Eliot and other great authors. An artist wants her to sit for a portrait because of her Catalan features inherited from her father. Anais confides in her diary that she is secretly pleased by this. Rosa (her mother) tries to make life fun for the children while working very hard and she still manages to sing in operas sometimes. Anais writes poetry and dances in a Jeanne d'Arc d'onfrey play. She discovers the real goings-on of backstage life which both enchants and disillusions her. Anais has many little girlfriends now and a club of well wishers and do gooders...and edits a small magazine of poetry, stories and pictures. She prays France wil be saved from the Germans. She still hopes to see her father one day again. She still dreams of meeting her other half, her shadow, a man like the heroes in her books, a blue eyed stranger who will understand her.
Anais, at 16, is very introspective, very full of life, in her joy and in her despair, and she is really growing at this point in her life. She is also very innocent in many ways and very loving and gentle hearted. She is intelligent and writes a diary that is compelling and playful and serious and meaningful and intimate and humourous. She writes with a depth and gravity, even while dreaming of violinists and the French Academie. She writes about her interior life and her impressions above the daily grind.
Linotte is the essence of who Anais was in her early life, a fragment of her self she carried with her her entire life. Her thoughts, her dreams, her beliefs, her doubts, her regrets, her ideals, her problems, her questions. It is a journey of one writer's life as they evolve from child to young woman. Many readers unfamiliar with the breadth of her work picture Anais Nin as a bestselling erotic writer or famed Diary writer with a risque' and bohemian past. Some view her in relation to any number of her friendships with celebrated artists and writers. Some readers (and critics) cannot see past her sexual exploration later in her life, and view her as only writing in a certain vein. But Linotte is a portrait of an immigrant girl in the early part of the 20th century writing a love letter to her absent father which eventually becomes her life's masterpiece; the first chapter in her acclaimed series of Diaries.
Anais Nin
by nocturne 17 on Tuesday, November 5, 2002 12:07 amAnais Nin was born February 21, 1903 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, France and died January 14,1977 in Los Angeles, California. She moved to the United States in 1914 with her mother, singer Rosa Culmell and two brothers, Thorvald and Joaquin. Her father was Joaquin Nin, a Spanish pianist and composer, who abandoned the family after leaving his family at various intervals in his career to tour Europe and Cuba, when Nin was eleven. Shortly afterward, on the boat Monserrat, Nin began her childhood diary, "Linotte", written as an extended letter to her papa.
Anais wanted to be an artist from the very moment she could speak. She loved books, stories, artists, musicians, fine music, good food, and grew accustomed to being surrounded by the sounds of late night bohemian laughter from her parents dinner parties heard from the downstairs parlor before the two were separated. Anais was a model for her father's early photographs at this time and used to steal into his study when he was away and read all his books voraciously. She was seriously ill as a child and nearly died twice from various internal organ afflictions. If not for a kind Belgian couple and the care of three Belgian nurses, Ana's Nin might never have made the impact on literature and the feminist movement that she did later on in life, from her work spanning her Diaries written in the the tumultuous 30's to her eventual critical success in the socially aware 60's and 70's.
In New York, Ana's loved writing in her diary, dreaming, philosophizing, and recording her thoughts and reflections as she grew into a beautiful young woman with grand dreams and a host of insecurities. She wrote about her ideal "shadow", a muse, her "prince that will come one day", and about her many concieved shortcomings. She had an active imagination and preferred rainy days of reading curled up with a wonderful book or her diary at the little windowsill seat - and she loved to dance and had a connection to nature heavily influenced by poets like Byron, Blake and the New England Transcendentalists. Her Catholic faith wavered in and out due to philosophical doubts about the meaning of life and suffering, caused by her anguish over her beloved war torn France and the deep rift felt inside her since being uprooted. "I envy those who never leave their native land." she wrote in Linotte, "No one but God knows my bitter sorrow. My dreams are always about Papa. He comes back, I kiss him, he presses me to his heart. That moment is sweet, but afterward sadness comes again with the truth and my heart weeps and weeps again." Her father had let them all down, especially Anaos, and she felt abandoned and unloved in the most important of ways for a child. Gradually her idealized image of him began to fade, though she would have a lifelong fixation on him explored in her writing -and in her myriad of sexual and romantic unions. She was consumed by a tireless examination of her search for the ideal father figure in many of her lovers discussed in psychoanalysis.
After living in New York for nine years, at twenty Anais married Hugh Guiler (later known as engravist and filmaker of "Bells of Atlantis" and "Jazz of lights" Ian Hugo), a banker in the twenties and thirties, and moved back to Paris with him. Nin began writing short stories (later published as Waste of Timelessness) with publication in mind, but felt torn between her duties as a conservative banker's wife and her desire for artistic expression. Nevertheless, it was around this time that Nin published her first work, D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (1932), which was well-recieved.
Then she met self proclaimed gangster-poet Henry Miller, a struggling Brooklyn writer in Paris, through her lawyer. Miller and especially his wife, the mythic June Mansfield Miller, enchanted Anais by their 'hard' bohemian living and their associations with the creme de la creme of Paris' underbelly (including actor and creator of theatre de cruelte, Antonin Artaud). "Henry came to Louveciennes with June." she writes about her first meeting with June in the unexpurgated diary Henry and June, "As June walked towards me from the darkness of the garden into the light of the door, I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth. A startlingly white face, burning dark eyes, a face so alive I felt it would consume itself before my eyes. Years ago I tried to imagine a true beauty; I created in my mind an image of just such a woman. I had never seen her until last night. Yet I knew long ago the phosphorescent color of her skin, her huntress profile, the evenness of her teeth. She is bizarre, fantastic, nervous, like someone in a high fever. Her beauty drowned me. As I sat before her, I felt I would do anything she asked of me. Henry suddenly faded. She was color and brilliance and strangeness."
Anais felt that becoming aquainted with members of Montparnasse's underworld of prostitutes, thieves and drug addicts was going to liberate not only her writing but her sexuality and her mind. Nin began examining her 'suburban' existence more closely and felt she had to reconcile her life as an artist with her bouts of depression and feelings of isolation tucked away in the beautiful prison house of Louveciennes. To resolve her inner turmoil between her married 'proper' life and her burgeoning bohemian tastes, her cousin Eduardo recommended she enter therapy with the prominent Parisian psychoanalyst Rene Allendy. This later led to analyzation and tutorship with former Freud disciple, Otto Rank (Art and Artist). Eventually, Nin studied under Rank, working in his practice in New York City in the mid to late 1930s.
She also became deeply influenced by writers like Lawrence, Proust, and in particular Djuna Barnes' novel Nightwood. Nin channelled her evolving psycho-sexual impressions of the vicious circle/love triangle between her, Henry and June into the surrealistic prose-poem House of Incest and in her Diaries. She also worked along her compatriates on a dollar a page erotica, later the poetic, emotive bestselling Delta of Venus and Little Birds.
In the mid-to-late 1930s, Nin, Miller, Lawrence Durell and other writers in the Villa Seurat circle who experienced difficulty finding publishers founded Siana Editions (Anais spelled backwards!) to publish their own works. Nin in particular could find no one to publish House of Incest (1936) or Winter of Artifice. In 1939 these books were well-received in Europe. However, when Anais eventually moved back to New York City in 1939 with her husband, she found American publishers and the average reading public closed off to her work. Miller achieved critical and commercial success decades before Nin, despite her initial efforts to edit, support and publish him along with her own work. After several years of trying to place her works with American publishers, Nin bought a second-hand printing press with a loan from Bookseller and founder of New York's famed Gotham Book Mart and with the help of Anais' latest paramour, Peruvian political activist Gonzalo More, she began to typeset and print her own books. Nin's work eventually caught the attention of critic Edmund Wilson, who praised her writing and helped her on the road to obtaining an American publisher.
It was Nin's Diary, however, that brought her the greatest success and critical acceptance that she was to recieve. Nin never intended the two hundred manuscript volumes for publication, and many, including Miller, Rank, Alfred Perles, Durrel and Allendy, tried to convince Anais that her obsessive diary writing was destroying her chance at writing the great American novel. However Nin decided she had to "go her own way, the woman's way" and continue her li felong odyssey of self exploration and reflection through the Diaries. To reconcile fiction and fact Nin eventually began rewriting diary entries into her fiction and vice versa, protecting those who wanted to maintain their privacy (usually lovers) while still writing in her preferred medium.
Nin was involved in the some of the most interesting literary and artistic movements of the 20th century including the outskirts of Paris' 1920's Lost Generation, the psychoanalytic and surrealist movements of the 30s and 40s, the Beat movement of the 50's in Greenwich Village, the avant garde crowd in 60's California and the women's movement of the 70's. She maintained relationships (and kept two bi-coastal "husbands" in the later part of her life) with many vital artists and writers over her lifespan and was in great demand as a lecturer at universities across the United States until she died of cancer in 1977.
Anais wanted to be an artist from the very moment she could speak. She loved books, stories, artists, musicians, fine music, good food, and grew accustomed to being surrounded by the sounds of late night bohemian laughter from her parents dinner parties heard from the downstairs parlor before the two were separated. Anais was a model for her father's early photographs at this time and used to steal into his study when he was away and read all his books voraciously. She was seriously ill as a child and nearly died twice from various internal organ afflictions. If not for a kind Belgian couple and the care of three Belgian nurses, Ana's Nin might never have made the impact on literature and the feminist movement that she did later on in life, from her work spanning her Diaries written in the the tumultuous 30's to her eventual critical success in the socially aware 60's and 70's.
In New York, Ana's loved writing in her diary, dreaming, philosophizing, and recording her thoughts and reflections as she grew into a beautiful young woman with grand dreams and a host of insecurities. She wrote about her ideal "shadow", a muse, her "prince that will come one day", and about her many concieved shortcomings. She had an active imagination and preferred rainy days of reading curled up with a wonderful book or her diary at the little windowsill seat - and she loved to dance and had a connection to nature heavily influenced by poets like Byron, Blake and the New England Transcendentalists. Her Catholic faith wavered in and out due to philosophical doubts about the meaning of life and suffering, caused by her anguish over her beloved war torn France and the deep rift felt inside her since being uprooted. "I envy those who never leave their native land." she wrote in Linotte, "No one but God knows my bitter sorrow. My dreams are always about Papa. He comes back, I kiss him, he presses me to his heart. That moment is sweet, but afterward sadness comes again with the truth and my heart weeps and weeps again." Her father had let them all down, especially Anaos, and she felt abandoned and unloved in the most important of ways for a child. Gradually her idealized image of him began to fade, though she would have a lifelong fixation on him explored in her writing -and in her myriad of sexual and romantic unions. She was consumed by a tireless examination of her search for the ideal father figure in many of her lovers discussed in psychoanalysis.
After living in New York for nine years, at twenty Anais married Hugh Guiler (later known as engravist and filmaker of "Bells of Atlantis" and "Jazz of lights" Ian Hugo), a banker in the twenties and thirties, and moved back to Paris with him. Nin began writing short stories (later published as Waste of Timelessness) with publication in mind, but felt torn between her duties as a conservative banker's wife and her desire for artistic expression. Nevertheless, it was around this time that Nin published her first work, D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (1932), which was well-recieved.
Then she met self proclaimed gangster-poet Henry Miller, a struggling Brooklyn writer in Paris, through her lawyer. Miller and especially his wife, the mythic June Mansfield Miller, enchanted Anais by their 'hard' bohemian living and their associations with the creme de la creme of Paris' underbelly (including actor and creator of theatre de cruelte, Antonin Artaud). "Henry came to Louveciennes with June." she writes about her first meeting with June in the unexpurgated diary Henry and June, "As June walked towards me from the darkness of the garden into the light of the door, I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth. A startlingly white face, burning dark eyes, a face so alive I felt it would consume itself before my eyes. Years ago I tried to imagine a true beauty; I created in my mind an image of just such a woman. I had never seen her until last night. Yet I knew long ago the phosphorescent color of her skin, her huntress profile, the evenness of her teeth. She is bizarre, fantastic, nervous, like someone in a high fever. Her beauty drowned me. As I sat before her, I felt I would do anything she asked of me. Henry suddenly faded. She was color and brilliance and strangeness."
Anais felt that becoming aquainted with members of Montparnasse's underworld of prostitutes, thieves and drug addicts was going to liberate not only her writing but her sexuality and her mind. Nin began examining her 'suburban' existence more closely and felt she had to reconcile her life as an artist with her bouts of depression and feelings of isolation tucked away in the beautiful prison house of Louveciennes. To resolve her inner turmoil between her married 'proper' life and her burgeoning bohemian tastes, her cousin Eduardo recommended she enter therapy with the prominent Parisian psychoanalyst Rene Allendy. This later led to analyzation and tutorship with former Freud disciple, Otto Rank (Art and Artist). Eventually, Nin studied under Rank, working in his practice in New York City in the mid to late 1930s.
She also became deeply influenced by writers like Lawrence, Proust, and in particular Djuna Barnes' novel Nightwood. Nin channelled her evolving psycho-sexual impressions of the vicious circle/love triangle between her, Henry and June into the surrealistic prose-poem House of Incest and in her Diaries. She also worked along her compatriates on a dollar a page erotica, later the poetic, emotive bestselling Delta of Venus and Little Birds.
In the mid-to-late 1930s, Nin, Miller, Lawrence Durell and other writers in the Villa Seurat circle who experienced difficulty finding publishers founded Siana Editions (Anais spelled backwards!) to publish their own works. Nin in particular could find no one to publish House of Incest (1936) or Winter of Artifice. In 1939 these books were well-received in Europe. However, when Anais eventually moved back to New York City in 1939 with her husband, she found American publishers and the average reading public closed off to her work. Miller achieved critical and commercial success decades before Nin, despite her initial efforts to edit, support and publish him along with her own work. After several years of trying to place her works with American publishers, Nin bought a second-hand printing press with a loan from Bookseller and founder of New York's famed Gotham Book Mart and with the help of Anais' latest paramour, Peruvian political activist Gonzalo More, she began to typeset and print her own books. Nin's work eventually caught the attention of critic Edmund Wilson, who praised her writing and helped her on the road to obtaining an American publisher.
It was Nin's Diary, however, that brought her the greatest success and critical acceptance that she was to recieve. Nin never intended the two hundred manuscript volumes for publication, and many, including Miller, Rank, Alfred Perles, Durrel and Allendy, tried to convince Anais that her obsessive diary writing was destroying her chance at writing the great American novel. However Nin decided she had to "go her own way, the woman's way" and continue her li felong odyssey of self exploration and reflection through the Diaries. To reconcile fiction and fact Nin eventually began rewriting diary entries into her fiction and vice versa, protecting those who wanted to maintain their privacy (usually lovers) while still writing in her preferred medium.
Nin was involved in the some of the most interesting literary and artistic movements of the 20th century including the outskirts of Paris' 1920's Lost Generation, the psychoanalytic and surrealist movements of the 30s and 40s, the Beat movement of the 50's in Greenwich Village, the avant garde crowd in 60's California and the women's movement of the 70's. She maintained relationships (and kept two bi-coastal "husbands" in the later part of her life) with many vital artists and writers over her lifespan and was in great demand as a lecturer at universities across the United States until she died of cancer in 1977.
Nick McDonell’s Twelve
by Liz Stein on Monday, October 21, 2002 07:40 pm
It takes incredible skill and determination to write a novel, especially one as defining and creative as Nick McDonell's debut, Twelve. This book would be great on it's own. However, given the fact that the author was only seventeen years old at the time of its conception, it borders on exceptional. Indeed, McDonell captures the spirit of modern adolescence flawlessly.
Hunter S. Thompson, established author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a novel which defined the 1970's, wrote: "I am afraid that he will do for his generation what I did for mine." Though he might sound like an egotist, and likely is, he may be on the right track. My generation has been in need of a serious literary voice and McDonell fills the void nicely. Filled with pop-culture references to everything from FUBU to Sublime, the novel certainly has teen appeal. However, it is a profoundly "grown-up" novel, rich with subtle themes, innuendo and enough sex and violence to fill a Quentin Tarrantino movie.
Though McDonell's dialogue is occasionally cliche, it is filled with memorable quotes and is remarkably true to modern "teen speak" without trying to be cool. "Parents suck, even though, like I tell my mom everything, but not everything everything, you know?" He writes, flawlessly capturing the way most teen-age girls discuss things. This guy is remarkably insightful about girls for a seventeen year old.
White Mike, McDonell's unlikely hero, is a prep school graduate taking a year off between high school and college presumably to help his dad out in his restaurant business. However, like many of the privileged characters portrayed in the novel, White Mike's dad is conspicuously absent and Mike is given free reign of his life and time. Mike's cousin, Charlie, gets him involved in drug dealing. Ironically, White Mike has never so much as smoked a cigarette or a had a sip of beer.
McDonell, a "rich" kid himself, exposes the dark underbelly of privilege. This book feels so real that one can't help wondering what part of it was taken from the author's own experience. That, or he's simply one of the most talented young writers to have come around in a long while.
Critics have compared Twelve to J.D. Salinger's classic "coming of age" tale of adolescent cynicism and angst, The Catcher in the Rye. Both feature a disillusioned "protagonist," fed up with their respective lives of privilege in New York City. Salinger's Holden Caulfield and McDonnel's White Mike are enigmatic; their intentions and desires never fully revealed, despite the candor of the novels in which they reside. However, that's where the similarities end. McDonell's writing style is much more akin to Jim Carroll's Basketball Diaries. It's raw, honest and dangerous.
The book is written in an interesting format and McDonell ignores many literary conventions. Some of the 97-odd chapters in this 256 page novel are merely paragraphs long, conveying a sense of urgency and thus pulling the reader into the tangled web McDonell weaves. He also jumps around from character to character; one minute we're dealing drugs with White Mike in Central Park and the next we're watching a "good girl" snort coke in her bedroom.
At once thoughtful and entertaining, Twelve is a rare find. Grab a cup of coffee, sprawl out on the couch and read Twelve. Be prepared: you won't be able to put it down.
Irvine Welsh
by Niblo Crosby on Tuesday, October 15, 2002 05:01 pmIrvine Welsh emerged from the council projects of Edinburgh, Scotland. Soaking in the popular pastimes of his down-and-out neighborhood, he became fond of the Hibernian Football club, and later became even fonder of the hard drug scene around his town. Heroin was easy to find, almost impossible to avoid.
The curious young man had a variety of skills and interests, and worked variously as a TV repairman, a punk guitarist and a housing officer. Between speed and heroin binges and arrests at football riots, he even managed to earn a Master's degree in business. Like the main character in his most famous book, "Trainspotting," he liked to slip in and out of the straight world.
Welsh might never have become a renowned writer if he had not met a fellow Scot wandering spirit, Duncan McLean, who was working as a janitor while occasionally typing up stories and sending them to friends as "The Clocktower Booklets". McLean invited Welsh to contribute, and the stories Welsh came up with became the basis of "Trainspotting".
Irvine Welsh seems to have a lot in common with the California novelist Charles Bukowski. Bukowski also worked as a civil servant (a mailman) in his formative years, while sharpening his skills at the degenerate life of wretched excess. Both writers manage to turn the slovenly, tragic life of the substance abuser into charming material for popular stories. And neither seemed to have ever tried very hard to become writers, both only stumbling into it after their friends asked them to contribute to their magazines.
Welsh became extremely popular after "Trainspotting" was made into a movie. He seems to want to write at least one novel about every drug he's ever enjoyed, from "The Acid House" to "Ecstacy". All his writings feature some of the best slang since Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange", as well as a lot of humor, a few touches of warmth and sadness, and occasionally even a moment of philosophical wisdom, in between the long periods of vile behavior and wretched excess.
The curious young man had a variety of skills and interests, and worked variously as a TV repairman, a punk guitarist and a housing officer. Between speed and heroin binges and arrests at football riots, he even managed to earn a Master's degree in business. Like the main character in his most famous book, "Trainspotting," he liked to slip in and out of the straight world.
Welsh might never have become a renowned writer if he had not met a fellow Scot wandering spirit, Duncan McLean, who was working as a janitor while occasionally typing up stories and sending them to friends as "The Clocktower Booklets". McLean invited Welsh to contribute, and the stories Welsh came up with became the basis of "Trainspotting".
Irvine Welsh seems to have a lot in common with the California novelist Charles Bukowski. Bukowski also worked as a civil servant (a mailman) in his formative years, while sharpening his skills at the degenerate life of wretched excess. Both writers manage to turn the slovenly, tragic life of the substance abuser into charming material for popular stories. And neither seemed to have ever tried very hard to become writers, both only stumbling into it after their friends asked them to contribute to their magazines.
Welsh became extremely popular after "Trainspotting" was made into a movie. He seems to want to write at least one novel about every drug he's ever enjoyed, from "The Acid House" to "Ecstacy". All his writings feature some of the best slang since Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange", as well as a lot of humor, a few touches of warmth and sadness, and occasionally even a moment of philosophical wisdom, in between the long periods of vile behavior and wretched excess.
Chuck Palahniuk
by Niblo Crosby on Saturday, September 28, 2002 09:27 pmChuck Palahniuk was born on February 21, 1961, and grew up in Burbank, Washington. He studied journalism at the University of Oregon and briefly worked for the Oregonian, a Portland, Oregon newspaper. He then gave this up to try a career as a train mechanic.
According to Palahniuk, he had a life-changing experience one day when he moved to a small house on a hill in Portland where, to his horror, he found himself out of reach of local TV antennas. He feared he would go crazy without the noise of a television to distract him, and only saved himself by starting to read books. Soon he started trying to write books as well, but his first attempted novels were rejected. He finally sold his first story to a literary journal, "Modern Short Stories", and in 1996 his first novel, "Fight Club", was published.
Palahniuk has an unusual writing style. He molds his poor characters into sad caricatures of proper citizens, like the narrator of "Fight Club" who vainly tries to comfort himself with Ikea furniture and cancer support groups (even though he does not have cancer). He often talks directly to his readers, sometimes confronting them with mean-spirited, insulting jabs (he opens "Choke", his fourth novel, by begging the reader to put down the book and run away to safety). He carries situations to disturbing extremes where love and fear co-mingle, such as in "Lullaby", his fifth novel, wherein a sweet children's song causes repeated cases of crib death.
Armed with an ironic smile, Chuck Palahniuk seems to never let his rising fame get in the way of his vision. He is sometimes compared to Kurt Vonnegut, another roller-coaster satirist who liked to interrupt his narratives to speak directly to his readers, but in actuality Palahniuk's dark vision of humanity cannot be reconciled with Vonnegut's hippie-era idealism, borrowing more from the stark, unrelenting minimalist bleakness of Denis Johnson or Bret Easton Ellis.
Palahniuk, whose last name is of Ukranian lineage, would probably be even more famous today if people knew how to either spell or pronounce this name. Interestingly, this does not seem to bother him very much.
According to Palahniuk, he had a life-changing experience one day when he moved to a small house on a hill in Portland where, to his horror, he found himself out of reach of local TV antennas. He feared he would go crazy without the noise of a television to distract him, and only saved himself by starting to read books. Soon he started trying to write books as well, but his first attempted novels were rejected. He finally sold his first story to a literary journal, "Modern Short Stories", and in 1996 his first novel, "Fight Club", was published.
Palahniuk has an unusual writing style. He molds his poor characters into sad caricatures of proper citizens, like the narrator of "Fight Club" who vainly tries to comfort himself with Ikea furniture and cancer support groups (even though he does not have cancer). He often talks directly to his readers, sometimes confronting them with mean-spirited, insulting jabs (he opens "Choke", his fourth novel, by begging the reader to put down the book and run away to safety). He carries situations to disturbing extremes where love and fear co-mingle, such as in "Lullaby", his fifth novel, wherein a sweet children's song causes repeated cases of crib death.
Armed with an ironic smile, Chuck Palahniuk seems to never let his rising fame get in the way of his vision. He is sometimes compared to Kurt Vonnegut, another roller-coaster satirist who liked to interrupt his narratives to speak directly to his readers, but in actuality Palahniuk's dark vision of humanity cannot be reconciled with Vonnegut's hippie-era idealism, borrowing more from the stark, unrelenting minimalist bleakness of Denis Johnson or Bret Easton Ellis.
Palahniuk, whose last name is of Ukranian lineage, would probably be even more famous today if people knew how to either spell or pronounce this name. Interestingly, this does not seem to bother him very much.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
by Levi Asher on Saturday, September 28, 2002 10:18 amFyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in Moscow on Oct 30, 1821. His father was a doctor who aspired to improve his family's modest standings in Russian society. Young Fyodor (the name is the Russian equivalent of "Theodore") was brought up to be a religious and hard-working young man, and began training to be a military engineer at a school in St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg was the most intellectual and "European" city in Russia, and the intense, shy young man felt strong attractions to the literary societies that were beginning to flourish during these years. Fascinated by the unconventional writings of the satirist Nikolai Gogol, he wrote a poignant story of thwarted love between humble peasants, "Poor Folk". Unexpectedly, the manuscript was passed around from friend to friend and suddenly discovered by the poet Alexey Nekrasov and the highly respected critic Vissarion Belinsky, who declared the amateur writer a genius and "the next Gogol".
In his mid-twenties, the young novelist suddenly became a celebrity of immense proportions. Unfortunately he was not emotionally ready for this change in his lifestyle. The shy, awkward former military engineer was not up to the task of socializing in the vigorous, highly competitive intellectual "clique" of 1840's St. Petersburg. Thrown into the center of numerous upscale dinner parties and proto-revolutionary gatherings, he quickly became the laughing-stock of his more socially secure peers, who found him insufferably serious and parochial. Among the young intellectuals who tormented him were Nekrasov and another rising literary star, Ivan Turgenev. The dream of sudden fame and wealth combined with the nightmare of social ostracism would later inspire one of his most original novels, "Notes From Underground", which depicts an idealistic but arrogant St. Petersburg revolutionary who becomes an object of horrible ridicule at a dinner party.
Dostoevsky's early literary career foundered, and he became increasingly involved in the anti-Tsarist circles that were trying to modernize feudal Russian society and overthrow the government. His luck was bad -- in 1849 he was arrested with several other suspected members of the radical "Petrashevsky Circle" and sentenced to death. Along with several other prisoners, he was led out to face public execution by firing squad. A hood was placed over his head, and he heard the charges against him dictated to the crowd: "Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky ... condemnded to capital punishment by shooting."
At this moment he was 28 years old. His writing talents had been squandered, his early friends lost, and it is said that he now stood bravely to face his final scene. Astonishingly, he and his fellow prisoners were then informed that the execution would not take place. They had been put through this ordeal simply to set a public example. At least one of his fellow prisoners was said to have gone permanently insane after this experience. Their sentences were commuted to imprisonment in Siberia.
It was during his imprisoment at Siberia that a miraculous depth began to emerge in Dostoevsky's soul. He began to question the well-meaning but glib political convictions that had nearly cost him his life. He also felt immense stirrings to fully embrace the religion of his people, the Russian Orthodox Church. When he returned to St. Petersburg in 1859 he found the city in a prosperous, fashionably liberal mood. Former rivals like Ivan Turgenev were thriving, and Dostoevsky registered his disgust with the complacent society that surrounded him with "Notes From Underground", the first of a series of great novels that he would now write.
He followed "Notes" with an amazing run of future classics, including "The Idiot", "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov". Unlike later "neo-conservatives" of other cultures, Dostoevsky never lost his unique ability to capture both sides of a political, moral and philosophical argument in his writings. His writings present no easy answers. For the remainder of his life he was a steadfast Christian and proudly upheld "traditional Russian" values, but in his writings he allowed these ideals to exist alongside a profound awareness of the pyschology of radical, anti-Tsarist politics and moral nihilism. The conflict between these two world views -- both of which Dostoevsky had fervently allied himself with at different times in his life -- is at the center of his best novels. Instead of dismissing or simplifying either points of view, he allows the conflict to create dimension, energize his plots and illuminate his characters.
In his later years, Dostoevsky continued to struggle with the particulars of everyday life. He founded newspapers (including one called "Epokha", which means "Time", a name an American publisher named Henry Luce would later have more success with), fell in love, married, had children, suffered bitter marital crises, remarried, became a compulsive gambler, lost all his money, wrote a successful novel about a gambler who lost all his money, continued to argue virulently with Turgenev and other peers, and, finally, reached as happy an ending as was possible for such an existential soul. By the 1880's he was widely beloved as one of Russia's best writers. He was lovingly applauded at a tribute for the earlier Russian novelist Pushkin, his last major public appearance, and died at home, with his family present, on January 28, 1881.
Dostoevsky wrote about the swirling, uncontrollable contradictions of the human soul and the Russian people. But even he could not possibly have foreseen the trials such Dostoevskean characters as Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin would put his country through in the century that would follow his death.
St. Petersburg was the most intellectual and "European" city in Russia, and the intense, shy young man felt strong attractions to the literary societies that were beginning to flourish during these years. Fascinated by the unconventional writings of the satirist Nikolai Gogol, he wrote a poignant story of thwarted love between humble peasants, "Poor Folk". Unexpectedly, the manuscript was passed around from friend to friend and suddenly discovered by the poet Alexey Nekrasov and the highly respected critic Vissarion Belinsky, who declared the amateur writer a genius and "the next Gogol".
In his mid-twenties, the young novelist suddenly became a celebrity of immense proportions. Unfortunately he was not emotionally ready for this change in his lifestyle. The shy, awkward former military engineer was not up to the task of socializing in the vigorous, highly competitive intellectual "clique" of 1840's St. Petersburg. Thrown into the center of numerous upscale dinner parties and proto-revolutionary gatherings, he quickly became the laughing-stock of his more socially secure peers, who found him insufferably serious and parochial. Among the young intellectuals who tormented him were Nekrasov and another rising literary star, Ivan Turgenev. The dream of sudden fame and wealth combined with the nightmare of social ostracism would later inspire one of his most original novels, "Notes From Underground", which depicts an idealistic but arrogant St. Petersburg revolutionary who becomes an object of horrible ridicule at a dinner party.
Dostoevsky's early literary career foundered, and he became increasingly involved in the anti-Tsarist circles that were trying to modernize feudal Russian society and overthrow the government. His luck was bad -- in 1849 he was arrested with several other suspected members of the radical "Petrashevsky Circle" and sentenced to death. Along with several other prisoners, he was led out to face public execution by firing squad. A hood was placed over his head, and he heard the charges against him dictated to the crowd: "Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky ... condemnded to capital punishment by shooting."
At this moment he was 28 years old. His writing talents had been squandered, his early friends lost, and it is said that he now stood bravely to face his final scene. Astonishingly, he and his fellow prisoners were then informed that the execution would not take place. They had been put through this ordeal simply to set a public example. At least one of his fellow prisoners was said to have gone permanently insane after this experience. Their sentences were commuted to imprisonment in Siberia.
It was during his imprisoment at Siberia that a miraculous depth began to emerge in Dostoevsky's soul. He began to question the well-meaning but glib political convictions that had nearly cost him his life. He also felt immense stirrings to fully embrace the religion of his people, the Russian Orthodox Church. When he returned to St. Petersburg in 1859 he found the city in a prosperous, fashionably liberal mood. Former rivals like Ivan Turgenev were thriving, and Dostoevsky registered his disgust with the complacent society that surrounded him with "Notes From Underground", the first of a series of great novels that he would now write.
He followed "Notes" with an amazing run of future classics, including "The Idiot", "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov". Unlike later "neo-conservatives" of other cultures, Dostoevsky never lost his unique ability to capture both sides of a political, moral and philosophical argument in his writings. His writings present no easy answers. For the remainder of his life he was a steadfast Christian and proudly upheld "traditional Russian" values, but in his writings he allowed these ideals to exist alongside a profound awareness of the pyschology of radical, anti-Tsarist politics and moral nihilism. The conflict between these two world views -- both of which Dostoevsky had fervently allied himself with at different times in his life -- is at the center of his best novels. Instead of dismissing or simplifying either points of view, he allows the conflict to create dimension, energize his plots and illuminate his characters.
In his later years, Dostoevsky continued to struggle with the particulars of everyday life. He founded newspapers (including one called "Epokha", which means "Time", a name an American publisher named Henry Luce would later have more success with), fell in love, married, had children, suffered bitter marital crises, remarried, became a compulsive gambler, lost all his money, wrote a successful novel about a gambler who lost all his money, continued to argue virulently with Turgenev and other peers, and, finally, reached as happy an ending as was possible for such an existential soul. By the 1880's he was widely beloved as one of Russia's best writers. He was lovingly applauded at a tribute for the earlier Russian novelist Pushkin, his last major public appearance, and died at home, with his family present, on January 28, 1881.
Dostoevsky wrote about the swirling, uncontrollable contradictions of the human soul and the Russian people. But even he could not possibly have foreseen the trials such Dostoevskean characters as Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin would put his country through in the century that would follow his death.
Edgar Allan Poe
by slurpy on Friday, July 12, 2002 04:17 amIn terms of years, William Blake was the first bohemian. However, without Edgar Allan Poe the bohemian movement quite simply would not have flourished.
The original decadent was born January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. The family was anything but happy, and in Edgar's second year his father deserted the family and his mother died. Edgar was adopted by a sea merchant of modest upbringing, John Allen, from whom Poe adopted his new middle name.
Poe attended the University of Virginia for a short time, but became estranged from the University, as he had also become from his adopted father. He moved back to Boston and self-published his first book of poetry, "Tamerlane", when he was eighteen years old.
He married his 13 year old cousin and pursued a career as a writer and editor. He lived a mobile urban life, moving from one city after another to seek writing or editing assignments. He was editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, then of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in Philadelphia, and he also lived in New York City and Baltimore. He seemed at home in all East Coast American cities, but never seemed to find a home in any of them.
He began to publish odd, macabre tales of torture, horror, mystery and obsession, which obviously became his specialty. Among these are "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Tell Tale Heart". His poem "The Raven" is known not only for its gothic resonance but also for it's amazingly lush lines of verse, with phrases like "the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain".
His writings were published or self-published in various journals, and did receive acclaim and interest from a broad American audience. But there was no sense that he would ever be able to make a living from these odd stories and poems, and Poe struggled until his last years to find full-time employment with magazines or journals or newspapers.
Unfortunately his alcoholism and womanizing began to catch up with him, and his social image soon went from bad to worse. He had always been a fastidious dresser, almost a "dandy", but he was unable to keep up his appearance and was often seen in a disheveled, unclean or confused state. This did not help his ability to hold down jobs at respectable publishing companies.
He died in a state of desolation and poverty on October 7, 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland, the city that would claim his final scene. His reputation floundered after his death until it was discovered by the equally disheveled French poet Baudelaire, who fortunately had learned English from a relative. Baudelaire became Poe's champion, and to this date Poe is more highly regarded in France and in the rest of Europe than in his native America.
The original decadent was born January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. The family was anything but happy, and in Edgar's second year his father deserted the family and his mother died. Edgar was adopted by a sea merchant of modest upbringing, John Allen, from whom Poe adopted his new middle name.
Poe attended the University of Virginia for a short time, but became estranged from the University, as he had also become from his adopted father. He moved back to Boston and self-published his first book of poetry, "Tamerlane", when he was eighteen years old.
He married his 13 year old cousin and pursued a career as a writer and editor. He lived a mobile urban life, moving from one city after another to seek writing or editing assignments. He was editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, then of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in Philadelphia, and he also lived in New York City and Baltimore. He seemed at home in all East Coast American cities, but never seemed to find a home in any of them.
He began to publish odd, macabre tales of torture, horror, mystery and obsession, which obviously became his specialty. Among these are "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Tell Tale Heart". His poem "The Raven" is known not only for its gothic resonance but also for it's amazingly lush lines of verse, with phrases like "the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain".
His writings were published or self-published in various journals, and did receive acclaim and interest from a broad American audience. But there was no sense that he would ever be able to make a living from these odd stories and poems, and Poe struggled until his last years to find full-time employment with magazines or journals or newspapers.
Unfortunately his alcoholism and womanizing began to catch up with him, and his social image soon went from bad to worse. He had always been a fastidious dresser, almost a "dandy", but he was unable to keep up his appearance and was often seen in a disheveled, unclean or confused state. This did not help his ability to hold down jobs at respectable publishing companies.
He died in a state of desolation and poverty on October 7, 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland, the city that would claim his final scene. His reputation floundered after his death until it was discovered by the equally disheveled French poet Baudelaire, who fortunately had learned English from a relative. Baudelaire became Poe's champion, and to this date Poe is more highly regarded in France and in the rest of Europe than in his native America.
Bret Easton Ellis
by Carly Kocurek on Saturday, June 29, 2002 11:07 pm
"People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles." -- Less Than Zero
Bret Easton Ellis published his first novel, "Less Than Zero" in 1985 at the age of 21, while still a student at Bennington College. The novel follows a college freshman, Clay, on his first trip home to L.A. from college at Camden, back East. The book made best-seller lists in spite of loud criticism, and so did his next book, "The Rules of Attraction."
If "Less Than Zero"'s descriptions of casual drug use, indiscriminate sex and seemingly commonplace violence gave leverage to complaints that Ellis's writing was morally ambiguous and glorified moral flatness, "American Psycho" gave his critics an armory.
"American Psycho" was published in 1991 by Vintage Books after Simon and Schuster refused to publish the book and cancelled Ellis's $300,000 contract. The gory and graphic tale of New York City yuppie/sociopath Patrick Bateman, propelled by controversy, wound up in movie theatres in 2000 as a major production.
In the wake of "American Psycho," Ellis wrote only one book of short stories, "The Informers," before finally publishing another novel, "Glamorama" in 2000.
Early in his career, Ellis was lumped with Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney, and the three were dismissively labelled as the "brat pack," young writers who supposedly had too much success and too little talent. Ellis's early work was lampooned as nothing but thinly-veiled autobiography. Although Ellis did grow up in L.A., go to school in New England, and live in New York City, he has denied his work is autobiographical.
Although critics compared "Less Than Zero" to J.D. Salinger's most famous work, calling it "The Catcher in the Rye for the MTV generation," such comparisons failed to address Ellis's terse writing and intentionally minimal character development. Replacing what would in classical literature have been references to historical events or established literary works, references to numerous pop songs and performers, brand names, restaurants and clubs litter the pages of Ellis's first novel, beginning with the title, which is lifted from the title of an Elvis Costello song.
Ellis's subsequent works maintained the fascination with pop culture, and the author has proven an eerie ability to manipulate the bread and butter products of popular culture (Whitney Houston and Elvis Costello albums, Ray Ban sunglasses, MTV and Levi's Jeans) into biting satire, creating scenarios that careen wildly between funny and frightening. Ellis created intelligent pop fiction that used elements of pulp writing and managed to create relevance for a young audience: an audience of disaffected Gen Xers who had grown up with MTV and video games in the wake of the sexual revolution.
Jean Genet
by Niblo Crosby on Friday, August 31, 2001 12:24 amJean Genet was born on December 19, 1910 in Paris, France and soon afterwards abandoned by his unmarried mother. Raised by a family of peasants, he began stealing, and getting caught, at a young age. He became accustomed to harsh reform schools as a child and easily made the transition to prison as an adult.
The seedy life of the professional small-time criminal became his theme, and he described this life with unprecedented realism. His concept of degradation as a aesthetic life-choice anticipated Herbert Huncke and William S. Burroughs, while his raw, lushly scatalogical images of common life present another window into the visions of Henry Miller.
He did not begin writing until 1942, when he wrote 'Our Lady of the Flowers' while in prison. After producing many works of brutalist prose, he began a new phase of conceptual Absurdist drama. In 1968 he made an unusual trip to America to protest the Vietnam War alongside Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Terry Southern at the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago.
Genet died on April 15, 1986 in the city of his birth, Paris.
Online excerpts from his writings can be experienced at the Jean Genet Page.
The seedy life of the professional small-time criminal became his theme, and he described this life with unprecedented realism. His concept of degradation as a aesthetic life-choice anticipated Herbert Huncke and William S. Burroughs, while his raw, lushly scatalogical images of common life present another window into the visions of Henry Miller.
He did not begin writing until 1942, when he wrote 'Our Lady of the Flowers' while in prison. After producing many works of brutalist prose, he began a new phase of conceptual Absurdist drama. In 1968 he made an unusual trip to America to protest the Vietnam War alongside Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Terry Southern at the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago.
Genet died on April 15, 1986 in the city of his birth, Paris.
Online excerpts from his writings can be experienced at the Jean Genet Page.
