AUTHORS INCLUDED (alphabetical listing)
Kathy Acker (USA)
"Grandmother to the Brat Pack" (on Acker's Literal Madness and Florida), by Douglas Messerli
James Agee (USA)
"The Silent Stars Go By" (on James Agee's A Death in the Family), by Douglas Messerli
"Invention Serves Remembrance" (on Agee's A Death in the Family: A Restoration of the Author's Text), by Douglas Messerli
César Aira (Argentina)
"The Last Innocent Moment" (on Aira's An Episode in the Live of a Landscape Painter), by Douglas Messerli
"Attending the Dead" (on Aira's Ghosts), by Douglas Messerli
"A Gap in the Wall" (on Aira's How I Became a Nun), by Douglas Messerli
"The Elements of Fiction" (on Aira's The Seamstress and the Wind), by Douglas Messerli
Eliseo Alberto (Cuba/USA)
"Responsible Parties" (on Alberto's Caracol Beach), by Douglas Messerli
Tereza Albues (Brazil/lived USA)
"A Bouquet of Tongues"
João Almino (Brazil)
from The Five Seasons of Love
Jorge Amado (Brazil)
"Julio Jurentio and Ilya Ehrenburg"
Eleanor Antin (USA)
from Conversations with Stalin
Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba)
Review of Reinaldo Arenas' The Color of Summer, or, The New Garden of Earthly Delights), by Lee Siegel
Ascher/Straus (USA)
from Hank Forest's Party
John Ashbery and James Schuyler (USA)
John Ashbery and his Schuyler's A Nest of Ninnies
Margaret Atwood (Canada)
Review of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin by Merle Rubin
Paul Auster (USA)
"Beyond" (on Auster's Oracle Night), by Douglas Messerli
Gerbrand Bakker (Netherlands)
"Being Alone" (on Bakker's The Twin), by Douglas Messerli
Russell Banks (USA)
Review of Russell Banks' The Angel on the Roof by Paul Binding
Djuna Barnes (USA)
"Abandonment, Involvement, and Surrender" (on Djuna Barnes' Ryder), by Douglas Messerli
Dennis Barone (USA)
"Precise Imprecision" (on Barone's Precise Machine), by Douglas Messerli
Frederick Barthleme (USA)
Review of Frederick Barthelme's The Law of Averages: New and Selected Stories by Will Blythe
Charles Baxter (USA)
Review of Charles Baxter's The Feast of Love by Joseph Clark
Marcel Béalu (France)
"Walls"
Jurek Becker (Germany)
Review of Becker's Die Boxer, by Klaus Phillips
Mario Benedetti (Uruguay)
"Holding In, Holding On" (on Benedetti's The Truce), by Douglas Messerli
Mohammed El-Bisatie (Egypt)
"The Voice in the Chest" (on El-Bisatie's Clamor of the Lake), by Douglas Messerli
Bjarni Bjarnason (Iceland)
Review of Bjarnason's Borgin bak við orðin, by Kirsten Wolf
Jens Bjørneboe (Norway)
"Between Fire and Ice" (on Bjørneboe's Powderhouse)
Adolfo Bioy Casares (Argentina)
"On Adolfo Bioy Casares" by Suzanne Jill Levine
Juan Bonilla (Spain)
"The Shrew Mice"
Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)
"Borges Walker Wessells" (Wendy Walker and Henry Wessells in conversation on Borges)
Elizabeth Bowen (England)
"Caught in the Whirl" (on Bowen's Eva Trout, by Douglas Messerli)
Lee Breuer (USA)
"Porco Morto"
"Barnyard Philosophers" (on Breuer's Pataphysics Penyeach: Summa Dramatica and Porco Morto), by Douglas Messerli
Christine Brooke-Rose (England)
Review of Broke-Rose's Next, by Brian McHale
Laynie Browe (USA)
from The Ivory Tower
Jeremy P. Busnell (USA)
"Bird Talk"
Olivier Cadiot (France)
"The Perfect Servant" (on Cadiot's Colonel Zoo), by Douglas Messerli
Italo Calvino (Italy)
Bibliography of Fiction
Review of Calvino's The Path to the Spider's Nests by David Ian Paddy
Veza Canetti (Germany)
Review of Veza Canneti's Yellow Street, by Harry Zohn
Finn Carling (Norway)
Review of Finn Carling's Gepardene by Tanya Thresher
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (France)
Review of Céline's Fable for Another Time, by Brian Evenson
Inger Christensen (Denmark)
"Pictures Resembling Creatures" (on Christensen's Azorno), by Douglas Messerli
Hugo Claus (Belgium/writes in Dutch)
"Rickabone's Fault" (on Claus' Desire and The Swordfish), by Douglas Messerli
"The Scream" (on Claus' Wonder), by Douglas Messerli
Ivy Compton-Burnett (England)
"The Man Who Would Not Die" (on Compton-Burnett's Manservant and Maidservant) by Douglas Messerli
Short Review of Compton-Burnett's The Present and the Past by Douglas Messerli
Gabrielle Contardi (Italy)
Review of Contardi's Navi di carta, by Francesco Guardiani
Robert Coover (USA)
Review of Robert Coover's Gerald's Party by Geoffrey Green
Julio Cortázar (Argentina)
Review of Julio Cortázar's Final Exam, by Gregory Howard
Domício Coutinho (Brazil/lives USA)
from Duke, the Dog Priest
"To the Dogs" (on Coutinho's Duke, the Dog Priest), by Douglas Messerli
Alexis Curvers (Belgium/writes in French)
Short Review of Alexis Curvers' Tempo di Roma by Douglas Messerli
Guy Davenport (USA)
"Writers from the Diaspora of Truth" (on Davenport's The Jules Verne Steam Balloon, by Douglas Messerli
Denyse Delcourt (Canada/writes in French)
Gabrielle of the Spirits (on Delcourt's Gabrielle and the Long Sleep into Mourning), by Douglas Messerli
Miguel Delibes (Spain)
from The Holy Innocents
Don DeLillo (USA)
"Hiding Out" (on DeLillo's The Body Artist), by Douglas Messerli
Nigel Dennis (England)
"Transformations" (on Nigel Dennis' Cards of Identity), by Douglas Messerli
Review of Dennis' Cards of identity, by Jessica Winter
Mohammed Dib (Algeria/France)
"A Quiet Man in the Vast and Chattering Desert" (on several books by Dib), by Douglas Messerli
Isak Dinesen (Denmark)
"Lies in a World of Lies" (on Dinesen's Ehrengard), by Douglas Messerli
Michael Disend (USA)
"Rider of the Jade Horse"
Heimito von Doderer (Austria)
"The Walls Come Tumbling Down" (on von Doderer's Divertimenti and Variations), by Douglas Messerli
Jean Echenoz (France)
Review of Jean Echenoz' Big Blonds, by Susan Ireland
Ken Edwards (England)
"Us and Them"
Herbert Eisenreich (Austria)
Review of Eisenreich's Die blaue Disel der Romantik, by Thomas H. Falk
Sam Eisenstein (USA)
Review of Sam Eisenstein's Cosmic Cow and Nudibranchia by Joseph Dewey
Willem Elsschot (Belgium/writes in Dutch)
"Cartoon in the Mirror" (on Elsschot's Will-o'-the-Wisp), by Douglas Messerli
Per Olav Enquist (Sweden)
"The Black Flame: Truth in a World of Lies" (on The Royal Physician's Visit), by Douglas Messerli
Jenny Erpenbeck (b. East Germany/Germany)
"Hunger and Thirst" (on Erpenbeck's The Old Child and Other Stories), by Douglas Messerli
Review of Erpenbeck's Visitation, by Christian House
Brian Evenson (USA)
"The Torn Curtain" (on Evenson's The Open Curtain), by Douglas Messerli
William Faulkner (USA)
"Rereading Faulkner" (on Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury), by Douglas Messerli
"The Dreadful Hollow" (on Faulkner's As I Lay Dying), by Douglas Messerli
Raymond Federman (b. France/USA)
"Reflections on Ways to Improve Death"
Review of Federman's Take It or Leave It and The Twofold Vibration by Matthew Roberson
Returning to the Closet (on Federman's Smiles on Washington Square and The Twofold Vibration), by Douglas Messerli
Ronald Firbank (England)
"Firbank as Poet" (on Firbank's Valmouth), by Douglas Messerli
Daniela Fischerová (Czech Republic)
"The Emperor Is an Emperor Is an Emperor" (on Fischerová Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else), by Douglas Messerli
Jean Frémon (France)
from The Botanical Garden
Fremon's Island of the Dead
Serge Gainsbourg (France)
Review of Gainsbourg's Evguénie Sokolov, by Perry Friedman
Gao Xingjian (China)
Review of Gao's Soul Mountain by Jonathan Levi
Liliane Giraudon (France)
Review of Liliane Giraudon's Fur by Carolyn Kuebler
Witold Gombrowicz (Poland)
"The Serving Class" (on Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke, Bacacay, and Cosmos), by Douglas Messerli
Juan Goytisolo (b. Spain/lives Morocco)
"Truth-telling in a World of Lies" (on Goytisolo's The Garden of Secrets), by Douglas Messerli
Julien Gracq (France)
Review of Julien Gracq's La forme d'une ville by John Taylor
"The Intrusion" (on Gracq's The Castle of Argol) by Douglas Messerli
"Circling Forward" (on Gracq's The Peninsula) by Douglas Messerli
"How Things Are" (on Gracq's King Cophetua), by Douglas Messerli
Günter Grass (Germany)
Review of Günter Grass' Two Far Afield by Thomas McGonigle
Henry Green (England)
"So and So" (on Green's Party Going), by Douglas Messerli
Mohsin Hamid (Pakistan)
Review of Mohsin Hamid's Moth Smoke by Umber Khairi
Knut Hamsun (Norway)
"Testing His Creations" (on Hamsun's The Women at the Pump), by Douglas Messerli
Jeff Harrison (USA)
"Two Tales"
Marianne Hauser (b. Germany[Alsace]/USA)
"A War Against Death" (on the works of Marianne Hauser), by Douglas Messerli
[works discussed include Dark Dominion, The Choir Invisible, Prince Ishmael, A Lesson in Music, The Talking Room, The Memoirs of the Late Mr. Ashley, Me & My Mom, Shootout with Father, and The Collected Short Fiction]
John Hawkes (USA)
"Life Force" (on Hawkes' The Beetle Leg), by Douglas Messerli
Franz Hellens (Belgium/writes in French)
"Leaving Elsinore" (on Hellens' Memoirs of Elsinore), by Douglas Messerli
Gustaw Herling (Poland)
"Against Common Sense" (on Herling's The Noonday Cemetery), by Douglas Messerli
Sigurd Hoel (Norway)
"The Idiot"
Yoel Hoffmann (b. Romania / Israel)
Review of Yoel Hoffmann's Bernhard, by Allen Hibbard
"The Thing Itself and Not" (on Hoffmann's The Heart Is Katmandu), by Douglas Messerli
Review of Hoffmann's The Shunra and the Schmetterling, by Leslie Cohen
Spencer Holst (USA)
Review of Holst's Brilliant Sentences by Karen Donovan
Alois Hotschnig (Austria)
"Not at Home" (on Alois Hotschnig's Die Kinder beruhigte das nicht), by Douglas Messerli
Roy Jacobsen (Norway)
"The New Window"
Arthur Japin (Netherlands)
Review of Japin's The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi by Michael Pye
James Joyce (Ireland)
Joyce reading from Finnegans Wake
Ismail Kadare (Albania)
Review of Kadare's Elegy for Kosovo by Maria Margaronis
Review of Kadaré's Clair de lune by Robert Elsie
Richard Kalich (USA)
Review of Kalich's Penthouse F by Christopher Leise
Daniel Kehlmann (Germany)
"The Last Innocent Moment" (on Kehlmann's Measuring the World) by Douglas Messerli
Karl O. Knausgaard (Norway)
"Extinguishing the Fire" (on Knausgaard's A Time for Everything), by Douglas Messerli
Tadeusz Konwicki (Poland)
Review of Konwicki's Bohin Manor, by Brooke K. Horvath
Laszlo Krasnahorkai (Hungary)
"The Frightened Rabbit Flattens Against the Grass" (on Krasnahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance), by Douglas Messerli
"To Begin Is to Never End" (on Krasnahorkai's War & War), by Douglas Messerli
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (USSR)
"Forgetting to Notice" (on Krzhizhanovsky's Memories of the Future), by Douglas Messerli
Milan Kundera (Czech Republic)
Review of Milan Kundera's The Farewell Waltz by Paul Maliszewski
Tom La Farge (USA)
"On The noulipian Analects"
"Language Writhing Machines" (on La Farge's 13 Writhing Machines, vols. 1 and 2), by
Douglas Messerli
"Sir Echo" (on La Farge's 13 Writhing Machines, vol. 3), by Douglas Messerli
Carment Laforet (Spain)
"Nothing Left Behind" (on Laforet's Nada), by Douglas Messerli
Stansław Lem (Poland)
Review of Lem's The Investigation, by Tom J. Lewis
Alexander Lernet-Holenia (Austria)
Commentary on Lernet-Holenia's Beide Sizilien, by Robert von Dassanowsky
Stacey Levine (USA)
"The Water"
"Frictions of Desperate Serverity" (on Levine's The Girl with Brown Fur), by Douglas Messerli
Wyndham Lewis (England)
"Murdering to Create" (on Lewis' The Roaring Queen), by Douglas Messerli
Halldór Laxness (Iceland)
The Voice of a Country (on Laxness' The Fish Can Sing), by Douglas Messerli
José Lezama Lima (Cuba)
Review of José Lezama Lima's Paradiso by David Auerbach
Jonas Lie (Norway)
"How to Destroy Your Children" (On Lie's Niobe), by Douglas Messerli
Eugene Lim (USA)
from Strange Twins
Osman Lins (Brazil)
"Pastoral"
Osman Lin's book Nine, Novena
Øystein Lønn (Norway)
"The Calf in the Sea"
Maria Machado de Assis (Portugal)
"To the Dogs" (on Machado de Assis' Philosopher or Dog?), by Douglas Messerli
Amin Maalouf (Lebanon)
Review of Amin Maalouf's The Gardens of Light by Jamal En-nehas
Thomas Mann (Germany)
"The Will to Happiness"
Javier Marías (Spain)
"A Kind of Strange Music" (on Javier Marías's When I Was Mortal), by Douglas Messerli
F. T. Marinetti (Italy)
"Metaphorphosis" (on Marinetti's The Untameables), by Douglas Messerli
Carmen Martín Gaite (Spain)
Review of Martín Gaite's Behind the Curtains, by Brooke K. Horvath
Xavier de Maistre (France)
"Parenthetical Digression"
Harry Mathews (USA/lives France)
"Our Wonderful Lives" (on Mathews' My Life in CIA and The Journalist, by Douglas Messerli
David Matlin (USA)
"Moths Will Suck First"
Friederike Mayröcker (Austria)
Review of Friederike Mayröcker's Fast ein Frühling des Markus by M. Goth
Review of Mayröcker's Brütt oder Die seufzenden Gärten, by Susan Cocalis
Cormac McCarthy (USA)
Review of McCarthy's Cities of the Plain by Brian Evenson
"The Ultimate Road Trip" (on Cormac McCarthy's The Road), by Douglas Messerli
Douglas Messerli (USA)
Introductory Statement
from Twelve Tyrants Between Acts: Eighty Tiny Tales
Ivo Michiels (Belgium)
"The Cry" (on Michiels' Book Alpha and Orchis Militaris)
Ivo Michiels Book Alfa and Orchis Militaris, Vol. 1 of The Alpha Cycle $5.00
Christopher Middleton (England/lives USA)
"The Weathervane Oiler"
Christopher Middleton's book and ON NET editon of Deptictions of Blaff
Mo Yan (China)
Review of Mo Yan's The Republic of Wine by Jeffrey C. Kinkley
Félix Morisseau-Leroy (Haiti/writes in Creole)
"Eminans, a story for singing"
Kajii Motojirō (Japan)
"Underneath the Cherry Trees"
Harry Mulisch (Netherlands)
"Voices from the Dead" (on Mulisch's Siegfried), by Douglas Messerli
Murakami Haruki (Japan)
Review of Murakami Haruki's Norwegian Wood by Kim Hjelmgaard
"The Lone Wolf" by Ben Naperstek
Péter Nádas (Hungary)
Review of Nádas' A Book of Memories, by Irving Malin
Martin Nakell (USA)
"Five Works from Stories from the City Beneath the City"
"Everything But Life Itself" (on Nakell's Settlement), by Douglas Messerli
Richard Bruce Nugent (USA)
"Between Heaven and Hell" (on Nugent's Gentleman Jigger), by Douglas Messerli
Joyce Carol Oates (USA)
Review of Joyce Carol Oates' Blonde by Mary Gaitskill
Flannery O'Connor (USA)
"Strange Bird" (on Brad Gooch's Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor and
O'Connor's fictions), by Douglas Messerli
Oë Kenzaburo (Japan)
Community of Thought (on Oë Kenzaburo's A Personal Matter), by Douglas Messerli
Toby Olson (USA)
"Possibilities of Coincidence" (on Olson's Write Letter to Billy and Dorrit in Lesbos), by Douglas Messerli
"Lockup""The Poetics of In and Out" (on Olson's The Bitter Half), by Douglas Messerli
"Talking to the Dead" (on Olson's Tampico), by Douglas Messerli
Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
"The Smell of Death" (on Pamuk's My Name Is Red), by Douglas Messerli
Viktor Pelevin (USSR/Russia)
Review of Pelevin's Buddha's Little Finger by Keith Gessen
Benjamin Péret (France)
"The Four Elements"
Christina Peri Rossi (Uruguay)
"The Calvacade"
Fernando Pessoa (Portugal)
Review of Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, by Phillip Landon
Dennis Phillips (USA)
from Hope
Antonio José Ponte (Cuba)
"Leaving the Door Open" on Antonio José Ponte's In the Cold of the Malecón and Other Stories), by Douglas Messerli
Jacques Poulin (Canada/writes in French)
"Transport of Love" (on Poulin's Translation Is a Love Affair), by Douglas Messerli
Anthony Powell (England)
"International Relationships" (on Powell's Venusberg, by Douglas Messerli
Richard Powers (USA)
Review of Richard Powers' Plowing the Dark by Charles B. Harris
Reynolds Price (USA)
"An Attack of the Heart" (on Price's The Tongues of Angels), by Douglas Messerli
José Manuel Prieto Gonzalez (Cuba)
Review of Prieto Gonzalez' Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire, by Nicholas Birns
Soledad Puértolas (Spain)
Review of Puértolas' Bordeaux, by Kay Pritchett
James Purdy (USA)
Review of James Purdy's Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue by Brian Evenson
Marie Redonnet (France)
"Ist and Irt"
Ishmael Reed (USA)
Brief Commentary on Ishmael Reed's The Free-Lance Pallbearers by Elizabeth MacKienan
Brief Commentary and Selections on and from Reed's Mumbo Jumbo by Dennis Cooper
Review of Reed's Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon by Michael Boccia
Kathrin Röggla (Austria)
"Attic"
Peter Rosei (Austria)
"The Blur" (on Rosei's Metropolis Vienna), by Douglas Messerli
Joseph Roth (Austria)
"Secret Lives" (on Collected Shorter Fiction of Joseph Roth, by Douglas Messerli
Philip Roth (USA)
Review of Philip Roth's The Human Stain by Igor Webb
Helga Ruebsamen (Netherlands)
Review of Helga Ruebsamen's The Song and the Truth by Claire Messud
Aksel Sandemose (Norway)
"The Melancholiacs and the Missing Bucket" (on Sandemose's The Werewolf), by Douglas Messerli
José Saramago (Portugal)
Bibliography of Fictions
Review of Saramago's Blindness, by Philip Landon
"A Vision of Uncertainty" (on Saramago's The Cave), by Douglas Messerli
Review of Saramago's The History of the Siege of Lisbon, by Mary Sarko
Review of Saramago's All the Names by Richard Eder
"Trying to Pass" (on Saramago's The Elephant's Journey), by Douglas Messerli
Alberto Savinio (Italy)
"Attila"
Hans Scherfig (Denmark)
Review of Scherfig's Stolen Spring, by Brooke K. Horvath
Cathleen Schine (USA)
"Doggone" (on Schine's The New Yorkers), by Douglas Messerli
Ingo Schulze (b. DDR/Germany)
Review of Ingo Schulze's Simple Stories by Peter Rollberg
W. C. Sebald (Germany/lived England)
Review of W. G. Sebald's Vertigo by Joyce Hackett
"At Odds" (on Sebald's Vertigo), by Douglas Messerli
Ana Maria Shua (Argentina)
"Four Microfictions"
Josef Skvorecky (Czechloslavakia / now Czech Republic)
Review of Skvonecky's The End of Lieutenant Bouvksa, by Brooke Horvath
Gilbert Sorrentino (USA)
"Writers from the Diaspora of Truth" (on Sorrentino's Rose Theatre), by Douglas Messerli
"The Novel Against Itself" (on Sorrentino's Aberration of Starlight and Mulligan Stew), by Douglas Messerli
"Seeing Red" (on Sorrentino's Red the Fiend), by Douglas Messerli
"Runaway Moon, or The Duchess of Flight" (on Sorrentino's The Moon in Its Flight), by Douglas Messerli
Saša Stanišić (b. Bosnia-Herzegovina/Germany)
"When You Can't Cut Fog" (on Stanišić How the Soldier Repairs the Gramaphone) by Douglas Messerli
Gertrude Stein (USA)
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Stone" (on Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice), by Douglas Messerli
"Distribution and Equilibration in Stein's Three Lives" by Douglas Messerli
"Tender Buttons as Narrative Fiction" by Douglas Messerli
"Out of Order" (on Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas), by Douglas Messerli
Robert Steiner (USA)
Review of Steiner's Bathers, by Jack Charters
Panos Spiliotopoulos (Greece)
"The Castaway"
August Strindberg (Sweden)
"Selling Out" (on Strindberg's The Red Room), by Douglas Messerli
Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
Review of Antonio Tabucchi's The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro by Thomas Hove
Inagaki Taruho (Japan)
from One Thousand One-Second Stories
Nivaria Tejera (b. Cuba/Canary Islands)
"Looking Down" (on Tejera's The Ravine), by Douglas Messerli
Jáchym Topol (Czech Republic)
Review of Jáchym Topol's City Sister Silver by Jaroslaw Anders
Esther Tusquets (Spain)
Review of Tusquets' Never to Return, by Brian Evenson
Jane Unrue (USA)
"A New Way of Seeing" (on Unrue's The House)
John Updike (USA)
"Before the Curtain Rises" (on Updike's Gertrude and Claudius), by Douglas Messerli
Urmuz (Romania)
"Ismail and Turnavitu"
"Algazy and Grummer"
Miklós Vámos (Hungary)
"Fallen Stars" (on Vámos' The Book of the Fathers), by Douglas Messerli
William T. Vollmann (USA)
Review of Vollmann's Butterfly Stories, by Steven Moore
Antoine Volodine (France)
Review of Volodine's Naming the Jungle, by Jack Byrne
Wendy Walker (USA)
from The City under the Bed
"Sexual Stealing" (on the Gothic Novel)
"Borges Walker Wessells" (Wendy Walker and Henry Wessells in coversation of Jorge Luis
Borges)
"The Forgotten Dream" (on Walker's The Secret Service), by Douglas Messerli
"Burning Blue" (on Walker's Blue Fire), by Douglas Messerli
Robert Walser (Switzerland)
Review of Robert Walser's The Robber by Stephen Clair
Mac Wellman (USA)
from Linda Perdido
Eudora Welty (USA)
A Solid Wall of Too Much Love (on Welty's Delta Wedding), by Douglas Messerli
"The Encounter between History and Myth in Welty's The Golden Apples," by Douglas Messerli
"A Battle with Both Sides Using the Same Tactics" (on Welty's Losing Battles), by Douglas Messerli
Nathanael West (USA)
"Looking for Love" (on West's Miss Lonelyhearts), by Douglas Messerli
Dallas Wiebe (USA)
Brief Commentary on Dallas Wiebe's Going to the Mountains by Elizabeth MacKiernan
Oscar Wilde (USA)
"The Hidden Self" (on Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray), by Douglas Messerli
Virginia Woolf (England)
Woolf's recorded voice
Unica Zürn (Germany)
"A Real Doll" (on Unica Zürn's Dark Spring), by Douglas Messerli
EXPLORINGfictions
This online magazine publishes fiction (new and old), essays, reviews, interviews, and commentaries on both international and US fiction writers. New manuscripts can be sent to Douglas Messerli, editor, Green Integer 6022 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 202C, Los Angeles, CA 90036 or by email to douglasmesserli@gmail.com
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
ON NET Titles available
Green Integer
On......Net......
"Go In" and visit our new on-line book publishing venture. Beginning in August 2011, Green Integer is publishing several new, older, and out-of-stock Sun & Moon, Green Integer, and other archived titles on line.
Most of these will appear for free through our various blogs, which can be accessed on the Green Integer Web sites through direct links. Some of these titles, new books and others, will be priced at affordably low prices for our "on net" customers.
Ordering through PayPal, customers will be provided with a PDF link within 24 hours of payment so that they can either read the books on the computer or download them to print to other media.
The first of these titles have now been posted to our On Net site on the Green Integer Web and through the various blogs devoted to specific literary genres: The PIPPoetry site (poetry), the USTheater site (theater), EXPLORINGfictions (fiction), International Cinema Review (film), and the Green Integer Blog (devoted to other cultural events).
We believe that this service will help make titles available for general readers, classroom students, and scholars.
FICTION AND PROSE TITLES ON NET:
Christopher Middleton Depictions of Blaff $5.00
Ivo Michiels Book Alfa and Orchis Militaris, Vol. 1 of The Alpha Cycle $5.00
Arthur Schnitzler Dream Story $5.00
Julien Gracq The Peninsula $5.00
Jules Michelet The Sea $5.00
Domício Coutinho Duke, the Dog Priest $5.00
On......Net......
"Go In" and visit our new on-line book publishing venture. Beginning in August 2011, Green Integer is publishing several new, older, and out-of-stock Sun & Moon, Green Integer, and other archived titles on line.
Most of these will appear for free through our various blogs, which can be accessed on the Green Integer Web sites through direct links. Some of these titles, new books and others, will be priced at affordably low prices for our "on net" customers.
Ordering through PayPal, customers will be provided with a PDF link within 24 hours of payment so that they can either read the books on the computer or download them to print to other media.
The first of these titles have now been posted to our On Net site on the Green Integer Web and through the various blogs devoted to specific literary genres: The PIPPoetry site (poetry), the USTheater site (theater), EXPLORINGfictions (fiction), International Cinema Review (film), and the Green Integer Blog (devoted to other cultural events).
We believe that this service will help make titles available for general readers, classroom students, and scholars.
FICTION AND PROSE TITLES ON NET:
Christopher Middleton Depictions of Blaff $5.00
Ivo Michiels Book Alfa and Orchis Militaris, Vol. 1 of The Alpha Cycle $5.00
Arthur Schnitzler Dream Story $5.00
Julien Gracq The Peninsula $5.00
Jules Michelet The Sea $5.00
Domício Coutinho Duke, the Dog Priest $5.00
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Douglas Messerli "Prophets of the Ordinary" (on Jane Bowles' Two Serious Ladies)
prophets of the ordinary
by Douglas Messerli
Jane Bowles Two Serious Ladies in My Sister's Hand in Mine: An Expanded Edition of the Collected Works of Jane Bowles (New York: The Ecco Press, 1978)
The two serious ladies of Jane Bowles' title, are, in many ways, as different as they could be; and, although they know one another slightly, they are not good friends. Bowles presents us with a brief history of Christina Goering, daughter of a wealthy American industrialist. Even as a child Christina was not appealing, most children refusing to play with her because of in the puritanical religious games she demanded along with a bizarre series of punishments, in one case involving being packed in mud before swimming in a small stream.
Yet, as with almost all Bowles' women, she is strong-minded, opinionated, and feels no regret for speaking forthrightly. She is, in some senses, an absolute monster. Yet, throughout her life, she attracts people to her, or at least they are attracted to her because of her money. Lucy Gamelon, despite having any real connection to Miss Goering, visits her one day, only to move in with her the next day. At a party, Miss Goering meets a sweating, overweight man, Arnold, who soon also moves in with her and Miss Gamelon.
Los Angeles, November 29, 2011
by Douglas Messerli
But hardly has this tale begun, with its completely unexpected results, before Bowles interrupts it to tell another story, about Mrs. Copperfield. The two meet momentarily at the party, but other than that, there seems to be little connection, and one can only wonder at the structural logic of Bowles' fiction.
For all that, we do, however, sense a link between the two other than the authorial declaration of them both being "serious" ladies. Mrs. Copperfield is far more hesitant in doing new things than is Miss Goering, yet it is she who actually travels, with her husband, to Panama. And once she is ensconced into the run-down hotel in the middle of town to which he has taken her—determined to forgo the expense of the more popular tourist hotel—she appears far more adventuresome than anyone else in the fiction.
Certainly her first foray into Colón street life is characterized as a Kafka-like nightmare:
They were walking through the streets arm in arm. Mrs. Copperfield's
forehead was burning hot and her hands were cold. She felt something
trembling in the pit of her stomach. When she looked ahead of her the
very end of the street seemed to bend and then straighten out again...
Above their heads the children were jumping up and down on the wooden
porches and making the houses shake. Someone bumped against Mrs.
Copperfield's shoulder and she was almost knocked over. At the same
time she was aware of the strong and fragrant odor of rose perfume. The
person who had collided with her was a Negress in a pink silk evening dress.
..."Listen," said the Negress, "go down the next street and you'll like it
better. I've got to meet my beau over at that bar." She pointed it out to them.
"That's a beautiful barroom. Everyone goes in there," she said. She moved up
closer and addressed herself solely to Mrs. Copperfield. "You come along
with me, darling, and you'' have the happiest time you've ever had before.
I'll be your type. Come on."
....The Negress caressed Mrs. Copperfield's face with the palm of her hand. "Is
that what you want to do darling, or do you want to come along with me."
....:Wasn't that the strangest thing you've ever seen?" said Mrs. Copperfield
breathlessly.
It is precisely scenes like this, or even more normal-seeming meetings wherein the characters say totally unpredictable things that entice us into Bowles' story and helps us to comprehend Mrs. Copperfield's actions. For no sooner has she encountered this strange world than she is truly sucked up into it, joining, ultimately, the prostitute Pacifica, who encourages her to move into the Hotel de las Palmas where she lives.
Giving up her husband's hotel, and, finally, even her husband himself, the timid and frightened Mrs. Copperfield discovers the friendship and love of the local prostitutes and shares time with them drinking in bars. By the end of her story, we recognize that she, like Miss Goering, is a woman on a mission to challenge herself, to alter her life, and survive in conditions she might never have imagined. Similar to Miss Goering, this serious woman is rushing into the unknown as a kind of punishment and test for her own fears. As Mr. Copperfield writes, in his goodbye letter to his wife:
Like most people, you are not able to face more than one fear during your
lifetime. You also spend your life fleeing from your first fear towards
your first hope. Be careful that you do not, through your own wiliness,
end up in the same position in which you began.
In short, as we are about to discover, Mrs. Copperfield—although a much more charming and, at times, disarmingly sensual woman, is of the same breed as Miss Goering, both of them being strong strictly-raised women of great eccentricity testing themselves over and over again to challenge the patterns of their lives.
When we return to the story of Miss Goering, accordingly, we read her increasingly bizarre shifts in reality with the knowledge that, as in the case of Mrs. Copperfield, it can result in significant sensual changes.
Yet, as we have been told, Miss Goering's seriousness is more of the religious type than Mrs. Copperfield's inconsistencies. She is determined to challenge almost all her fears. She sells her lovely house, despite the outcry of the parasitic Miss Gamelon and challenges of the t dependent Arnold, moving to an industrial island near Staten Island into a house with little charm and hardly any heat.
When a third man, Arnold's father, determines to join their strange little community, Christina begins traveling to the larger island, visiting a local derelict bar and accepting the offers of its male customers to join them in bed.
After her first adventure, she reports that she intends to return, admitting that she may not come immediately come back. One by one, the remaining trio who have lived with and off of her fortune, abandon the house, Arnold having discovered a new love, Miss Gamelon having moved into another house, and Arnold's father returning to his wife. In the end Miss Goering, who has gone off with a ugly man who believes she is a prostitute, must face a future even more undetermined than Mrs. Copperfield, who has returned to New York with Pacifica in tow—although it does appear that Pacifica may not soon bolt.
Even Miss Goering, although believing that the challenges she has set before her, has made her "nearer to becoming a saint," wonders if she hasn't been piling "sin upon sin as fast as Mrs. Copperfield." For these strong women have both become dependent upon the flesh.
The marvel of Bowels' strange tale is its complete originality. Although, the events she tells are often strange, even a bit surreal, they are played out in a seemingly logical way that they seem the more incredible for their occurring. Most important, the central figures speak in the linguistic pattern, mixing a kind of nineteenth century rhetoric with a language which might be at home on the street. In a very odd way, Bowles' language is as outlandish as is Damon Runyon's—except that although these characters, like Runyon's, are not particularly educated, their talking is a process of thought instead of simple communication. And in that sense, they are always participating in a dialogue—socially or interiorized—with everyone around them, with the entire world.
At times, in fact, it seems that the whole world might potentially be pulled into Bowles' tale as the two serious ladies travel about, gathering up friends and lovers as they go. Both are heavy drinkers, who prefer to sit at the bar and seem able to attract anyone to them with whom they speak. Critics have mentioned the pattern of twos and threes that accumulate around Mrs. Copperfield and Miss Goering, but I would argue that while the two do tend to alternate between duos and trios, like magnets they might equally attract dozens of willing partners, men and women. And, in that sense, these highly wrought women are a bit like latter-day prophets, missionaries who in preaching to the natives, willingly take on the attributes and behavior of those whom they might seek to save, transforming themselves, in the end, into absolutely ordinary human beings. Yet both, strangely, have become something larger simply through their abilities to change their lives.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Douglas Messerli | "Life in Duluth" (on John Ashbery's and James Schuyler's Nest of Ninnies)
life in duluth
by Douglas MesserliJohn Ashbery and James Schuyler Nest of Ninnies (Calais, Vermont: Z Press, 1975)
Alice seems bored, languid at the very least, disinterested in the leftovers that Marshall has pulled from the refrigerator for their supper. Poutingly, she refuses to eat, wanting to go to the city. Marshall himself is described as sulking, seeking a missing bread basket in which serve hot bread. Indeed, pouting, sulking, wounding seems to the major activity of these two, until they are interrupted by a woman, Fabia, from next door, at which point Marshall seems to come alive while Alice retreats to the basement to shake their furnace into action. Before long a fuse has blown and a snowstorm has begun, the three heading off to a hardware store and to a nearby Howard Johnson's for a drink.
Throughout Nest of Ninnies, in fact, storms—both meteorologically and emotionally—are abrew. None of the characters might be described as emotionally stable, and the weather, no matter where these figures go, is generally filled with rain, snow, ice, and wailing winds. And many of them are perpetually drink.
In this first chapter, moreover, we quickly discover that whatever one might think are the facts have nothing to do with reality—if there is reality in their world to be found. Language, in particular makes no true connections. In the first few pages I've described above the characters speak more by association than through any attempt to truly communicate:
"We of course made no attempt to alter this old place when we took
it over, beyond a few slight repairs," Marshall seemed aware of the
young woman for the first time. "I wanted to have the fireplace bricked
up because it cools the house, but so many people commented on it
we decided to leave it."
"You don't seem to see so many people."
"Look, snow is coming down it now."
An especially loud clang from the basement caused them both to
start. "You sit down and I'll get you a cup of coffee. I'll put on the lights
and call Alice," Marshall announced.
Alice's dim form appeared in the door. "I think I've just blown a
fuse. Hello, Fabia."
"That's very funny. The fuses at our house blew out too. It must be
general."
As we move forward into this strangely charted territory, we gradually begin to meet other characters, Fabia's brother Victor, who has just dropped out of college, her parents, The Bridgewaters, while we discover that the quarreling couple of the first scene are not husband and wife, but sister and brother, Marshall being somewhat attracted to Fabia, while Alice is interested in the wayward Victor.
Just as we grow used to the small cast of figures he has presented us, they quickly begin to gather others around them as they move forward in space, first to Florida, then to Paris, Italy, back to New York, and away again, floating in an out of their original home while adding more and more figures as they go.
One might argue that, after the first few scenes, Ashbery and Schuyler pick up on Henry Green's marvelous Party Going just where it ended, with a large party of figures finally ready to move on. That group of ninnies is perhaps more British than is this American grouping, but there are enough French acquaintances, Italian pickups, Pen Pals (does anyone remember when young men and women had Pen Pals?), school girls, and numerous others to create a hilarious international "nest" into which and out of which the figures come and go, just as in Green's fiction.
If the language these characters use is absurdly associative and self-centric, so too are their actions. Time and again characters meet and accidently reencounter each other as if the whole of Europe and the US were just as small as the suburban New York community in which the work begins and ends.
Just as absurdly, in the latter part of the book, the figures pair off in odd combinations we might never have expected, Alice marrying an Italian pick-up, Giorgio, who together open a restaurant; Irving Kelso, a mama's boy and Marshall's co-worker, marrying a French woman the group has met in Florida, Claire; while Claire's sister pairs up with Victor.
Victor's Pen Pal, Paul, meanwhile, arrives at novel's end with Marshall, the two having evidently traveled to Duluth and South Bend! As all the other figures move off in the various directions their lunatic behavior leads them, Marshall announces that he may move to Duluth; Duluth, he reveals, is big in plastics, and his company (evidently producing or using plastics) wants to open up a new branch in that Northern Minnesota City.
I have eyes only for Duluth. That's a place where they really
know how to relax and get the most out of life. I could even
live there myself. You never saw such steaks.
Paul announces, in turn, that he likes the US and may not return to his home in France. Both speak of the delights of South Bend.
Meanwhile Fabia was saying to Paul, "What was there in South
Bend, anyway?" "You won't believe this," Paul said, "but it's true: a Pam-Pam's!"
"Oh," Fabia allowed.
The cryptic reference to the international bar and restaurant chain suggests far more that it appears, perhaps even hinting how to read through the characters' scatter-brained references.
Bar Pam-Pam's was a kind of early bar and coffee house scene somewhat in the manner of Starbucks today, except that several of the Bar Pam-Pam's operations played cool jazz and catered to special audiences.* Cartoonist Joe Ollmann writes in The Paris Review about a local Pam-Pam's in New York which he describes as an "old man bar," suggesting to me that its clientele are elderly gays. What Ashbery and Schuyler seem to suggest, accordingly, is that suddenly Marshall and Paul are an couple who perhaps may be the first to escape the loony nest into which the dozens of characters have fast settled.
After having just feasted on Giorgio's special courses, Victor suggests in the final lines of the book, perhaps hinting at the new relationship between the two men:
"I'm so hungry I could eat a wolf. Why don't we go over the Gay
Chico and have some refried beans?"
And so these "cliff dwellers" bid their goodnights, moving off toward the parking lots and shopping plazas of their empty lives. Life in Duluth might be just the tonic.
Los Angeles, November 8, 2011
*Steve Fletcher describes a Bar Pam-Pam in England on the internet:
The refectory in the college had about as much atmosphere as a cemetery with lights, so a girl student with whom I was highly smitten, Diane, suggested we go to the Pam Pam. A coffee bar.
It was just across Oxford Circus at the junction with Hanover Street and Hanover Square and the exterior had a South East Asian look about it which was continued on the inside with low lighting, bamboo and palm trees in jungle browns and greens.
The Pam Pam was quite small; it had about half a dozen very low tables and behind the counter was the first coffee machine I had ever seen. (There was a small upstairs section too over the counter with no more that three tables).
Scandinavian open sandwiches were the house speciality (and the only ones on offer) consisting of a piece of rye bread topped with a piece of lettuce, a tomato and a hard boiled egg or a sardine - very exotic.
A bit pricey too, I seem to remember. But the owner, a Spaniard, was never in a hurry to get rid of poor students. He also played music: jazz. Not on a juke box but on a Dansette 78 r.p.m. record player behind the counter.
He had great taste and I was always asking him what the records were, his favourites being the boogie inspired piano pieces by Oscar Peterson. Cool sounds in a cool place.
The Pam Pam was different and quite unlike the other coffee house I was now also frequenting - the infamous French coffee/newspaper shop near the corner of Old Compton and Charing Cross Road, and the Gyre & Gimbleat at Charing Cross.
There one could rub shoulders with hookers, villains and dealers - plus the likes of Victor Passmore, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and demi-monde characters like Quentin Crisp and Ironfoot Jack.
Because it was just outside Soho and on the edges of Mayfair, which was relatively quiet at night, the Pam Pam seemed a bit exclusive to the art students of RSP. I hung out there for about a year and became an ardent modern jazz fan.
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