Month: September 2022 (Page 2 of 13)

* (Halloween countdown post #6)

 

‘You probably have at least one friend who is completely obsessed with the art of Marnie Weber. Her approach to creating the “total work of art” — which includes but is not limited to painting, sculpture, music, myth-making, live performance, film, video, photography, collage, set design, installation, costume, extreme makeup, excellent wigs, prosthetics, puppets, and witchcraft — has beguiled and piqued audiences for decades. Her dark, punk-infused humor, fearless embrace of eccentric feminine power archetypes from ghostly cowgirls to sorceresses of alchemy, and willingness to go, as they say, all the way there, combine in tropes of avant-garde theater and tableaux with gut-punch viscerality and a strange beauty that is anything but pretty.’ — LA Weekly

‘Marnie Weber’s centralizing embrace of the societal fringe mimics our globalized reassessment of the dominant point of view, debunking the old norm for a new model where the previously peripheral moves to center stage. Her world of freaky side-show circus characters, runaway waifs and mobile home denizens are counter-culture oddities recast as empowered models of defiantly capable heroes, or at least battered survivors. Unabashedly narrative in nature, these works maneuver like familiar storybook legends and fairy tale lore, insinuating themselves into our subconscious soup of primal fears and childhood nightmares. At first seeming to be eccentric cast-offs, these damaged personages soon reveal themselves to be stand-ins for us, fragile yet resilient, emotionally vulnerable human beings of merit and worth in search of acceptance and security. Through these surrogate misfits, we find compassion for ourselves.’ — PCC

‘Artist Marnie Weber was raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut, moving to Taiwan at age 10 after travelling through east Asia with her family. Eventually relocating to southern California, there Weber studied art at University of Southern California, later receiving a B.A. at University of California, Los Angeles, where she worked with the performance and installation artist Chris Burden, assemblage sculptor George Herms, and collagist Alexis Smith. Her multidisciplinary approach to art making is defined by the rich, mythological ideology she has created throughout a practice that encompasses performance, film, video, sculpture, collage, installation, costuming, and music.

‘Weber began as a musician, emerging into the heady punk music milieu of 1980s Los Angeles; she evolved into a solo performance artist. Driven by an interest in theatrical experimentation, her performances are amplified by a complex narrative structure and extravagant costuming that coalesces around a pastiche of memory and the subconscious, with related film work reflecting a technological restraint and visual candor.

‘Aspects of Weber’s performative work and film extend to her collage and sculpture practice, both of which are informed by the character development, symbolism, and dramatic content held within each tale. Conjuring elaborate allegories drawn from personal and cultural histories, fantasy, folklore, ritual, and a deeply eccentric sense of the spiritual, the stories remain liquid as they morph into various hybrids. Half-animal/half-human figures, dolls, clowns, and monsters recur in surreal fictions that touch on death, transformation, and catharsis. Her collage and sculptural works embrace a baroque sense of artifice, yielding only to the fantastical creatures and logic-defying sympathy, humor, and uneasiness they evoke.’ — The Artist Profile

 

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Further

Marnie Weber Site
MW @ Simon Lee Gallery
MW @ Instagram
Marnie Weber and Justin John Greene
MEET GESAMKUNSTWERK ARTIST MARNIE WEBER
INTERVIEW WITH MARNIE WEBER
Marnie Weber: The Nature of Time
Twisted Refrain: The Work of Marnie Weber
Marnie Weber-Girls Gone Wild
Oral history interview with Marnie Weber, 2016 February 10
Eyes Without a Face: Gillian Wearing and Marnie Weber
Marnie Weber on The Sea of Silence
Marnie Weber – The Night of Forevermore
Inside the L.A. Studio of Artist Marnie Weber
Marnie Weber brings whimsical world to Busan
BEGIN AGAIN: THE FILMS OF MARNIE WEBER
Artist Marnie Weber Deploys a Multitude of Media To Create Dreamlike Realms
Marnie Weber: Send in the Clowns
Marnie Weber on Fairy Tales, Performance Art and Edward Kienholz
DARK FAIRYTALE WORLD OF MARNIE WEBER
Caryn Coleman interviews artist Marnie Weber

 

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Videos

Destiny and Blow Up Friends

A-Western-Song

The Sea of Silence

The Day of Forevermore (Trailer)

 

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Interview

 

THE WHITE REVIEW — You once said using a handheld camera lends your work an awkwardness, a stumbling quality. Why do you use this technique? What are the aesthetic issues?

MARNIE WEBER — I intentionally try to have a humble, homemade look to my films; it feels more genuine to me. The camera works in combination with the characters’ movements, at times reflecting the consciousness of the character in vision, at times reflecting my consciousness, and at times the consciousness of the camera operator. Sometimes, if we are lucky, the camera works by finding the mystical union of all involved. Since I act in the films rather than hold the camera myself, I have to rely on the magical moments of everything working in unison.

I also think that this approach allows the viewer to enter emotionally into my work. For example, I can address life’s heavier issues, such as death, tragedy, birth without being so depressing. The film stock, the hand-held camera, the way of walking, the costumes, all of this combined with subtle humor, balances the dark and light. I like it when people say they don’t know if they should laugh or cry when they see my films. Charlie Chaplin was a genius at this. He was making films in a very dark time in human history but gave people an escape while at the same time broaching issues such as poverty, loneliness, abandonment and loss with a sense of humor. He was also exploring movement in unison with the camera as if it were a dancing partner. On a different level, when the film is finished I think the homemade quality is a way of hopefully inspiring other people to make creative work in a way slick productions cannot. The work becomes a labour of love rather than a product of a huge production team.

THE WHITE REVIEW — Spiritualism is important to your work. Where did your interest in it come from?

MARNIE WEBER — Spiritualism was an interesting development in American history. It was the first time people considered the possibility that God was within themselves, rather than a controlling being from above. It also grew during the same time, and in the same region of New York, as the women’s movement. It was the first time women were on stage and ‘given a voice’, so to speak, and the voices that came out were those of channeled spirits. Spiritualism was an empowering movement.

I’m very much interested in the parallel between spiritualism and entertainment, which may have come from my many years as a performance artist. The Spirit Girls is a work of fiction, a conceptual art piece of my own creation. The narrative is this: a group of girls have died tragically in their youth and then come back to earth as spirits to perform in a band and to communicate through music. We wear costumes, masks, wigs and have props, projections and other characters who join in to create a musical experience that is consciously visual. It started as a theatrical rock show inspired by the progressive rock shows of the Seventies, which I loved in my youth. I went to see bands like early Genesis, King Crimson, Yes, Bowie and the Spiders and I thought to myself, ‘Where are the women?’ So the Spirit Girls were a way to go back and fill that niche for me. I am the initiator and director but when we are playing the music, it develops into more of a collaboration.

THE WHITE REVIEW — Throughout your work, animals are portrayed as cohabiting with dolls/humans. Is this intended to be utopian in any way?

MARNIE WEBER — The animals act as alter egos, sometimes as spirit guides and also carry symbolism. Each animal represents something for me. For example, the bear is representative of power but also spirituality. In American Indian folklore, the bear is a symbol of spirituality and represents a delving into one’s unconscious because the bear hibernates all winter as if involved in introspection. The bunny is an interesting character because it is not only a victim figure, but also a symbol of birth and fertility.

THE WHITE REVIEW — Fairytales, circus themes and freak shows are a common feature of your work. What’s the attraction?

MARNIE WEBER — I see the characters that inhabit those worlds as challenging themselves through the exploration of the darkest realms of their subconscious. That is very heroic to me. It is a place of transformation rather than placid existence.

THE WHITE REVIEW — You once compared your work to an exercise in acting class in which you put on a mask to express a true emotion, saying that through costumes and artifice, you are able to reach far greater depths of emotion in your art than can be reached showing everyday reality. How does this tie in to your use of masks?

MARNIE WEBER — The current Spirit Girls masks are frightening because they don’t have any expression. You can’t read any emotions or what they are feeling. That way the audience has to create its own reading of the faces from within themselves, hopefully serving as a mirror. Humans need facial expression to feel comfortable and the faces seem strange and disturbing. You get used to it though.

THE WHITE REVIEW — And what about your use of clowns? Where did the interest start?

MARNIE WEBER — When I was a kid, I loved The Red Skelton Show. He performed as a poor downtrodden clown with a sad face. He would pull out his empty pockets and pretend to cry. This would in turn make me cry and say ‘Poor him!’ My mother would ask if she should turn it off but I would cry to have it stay on. It is this idea of simultaneous attraction and repulsion, but also the depth of emotion that clowns carry that appeals to me. Happy and sad clowns are like extensions of us. It is a cathartic release of our own pain to watch the humiliation of a clown. In my piece Giggle of Clowns, the group of clowns surrounds a flower-laden corpse, an effigy of the lead Spirit Girl. It is as if they lost their leader and were stuck in an existential quagmire of being cheerful. To be happy is a very dark journey.

THE WHITE REVIEW — You once said ‘I’m not afraid of cute’. What was it you meant by this exactly?

MARNIE WEBER — Cute, soppy, sentimental; they can all be extended, can make the work even darker in my opinion. It is as if one is saying ‘everything is alright’ while knowing it is not.

THE WHITE REVIEW — And what about camp? Is camp important to you?

MARNIE WEBER — Yes, I don’t really fear going overboard or having people feel that it is too much. I think there is a place for simple beautiful formal work but since my interest lies in what is theatrical, the work tends to be layer upon layer of information and backstory combined, which creates more of a baroque quality. It can be misinterpreted as naivety but it doesn’t bother me. At the core I know what is best for me and for my work.

THE WHITE REVIEW — Do you feel connected to the collage tradition?

MARNIE WEBER — Yes I do. I study other artists’ collages and I try to push the boundaries of what has been done in collage before. Art history is very important to me.

THE WHITE REVIEW — Barbara Kruger describes her work as ‘more about pleasure, desire only exists where there is absence’ and says that she is ‘not interested in the desire of the image… but in suggesting that we needn’t destroy difference.’ Do you feel similarly about your own work?

MARNIE WEBER — There is great power in longing. To raise questions with collage, create uncanny scenes that draw the viewer in, to make them wonder what is going on is much more powerful than to create an image that is complete, finalized or in essence ‘dead’. The act of contemplation when viewing of an artwork is a beautiful moment.

THE WHITE REVIEW — Are your collages ‘metaphors of fraternity‘ as Jean-Luc Godard puts it? Would you say they were metaphors of dependence, or a love encounter?

MARNIE WEBER — I would say they are closer to a love encounter. A labour of love.

THE WHITE REVIEW — Are your collages assonant or dissonant, do they have similar or antinomian associations?

MARNIE WEBER — Visually they have assonance and can be pleasing to look at but they are dissonant in that there feels like there is something not right. An uncanny strangeness. Antinomian.

THE WHITE REVIEW — Are your collages synecdoche?

MARNIE WEBER — Yes, they refer to a larger overall narrative.

THE WHITE REVIEW — Let’s move on to your use of the podium. What does it allow you to achieve, and what aesthetic forms are at stake when using such a form, such space?

MARNIE WEBER — I never use a simple white podium, it seems trivial and carries a false importance. It is ok if used ironically. If a work needs height I create my own base that works conceptually with the piece. For instance, the podiums for the large pull animals are meant to look like toys. The podium creates an artificial importance to the work, but it is also a practical tool.

THE WHITE REVIEW — The plinth, the pedestal, and the podium are areas of power, competition, emphasis and authority. Why do you use this typology? Can we move away from these principles?

MARNIE WEBER — I prefer to think of an installation as a theatrical set and a podium just becomes another prop thereby diminishing its power. It gives definition, but it is a false power.

THE WHITE REVIEW — How do you avoid fetishism and still work with the podium? Is it possible?

MARNIE WEBER — I think the way to avoid the fetishism is to not use square white cubes as a podiums but to consider different ways to present the work and make it all part of the piece.

 

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Sculptures, installations & collages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Oh, no, I’m so sorry to hear that about Anita and the job. It must not have been worthy of her. Damn, love really slacked off yesterday. He’s lucky he’s love, otherwise we might need to replace him with … uh … lust? Needless to say, if love manages to get his Poké Ball town design off the page and on the ground, my bags will be quickly packed. Love offering Anita the job of replacing Harry Styles in a One Direction reunion, G. ** Steve Erickson, ‘Saint Omer’ sounds super intriguing. On my radar, for sure. Boy, I sure hope the new Albert Serra is a lot better than his awful quasi-Sadeian last film. How was it? I feel like a lot of people I know are asexual these days. In certain communities it’s even very trendy from what I can see. So stand tall, I say. I’ve always thought sex is more productive in the mind, albeit with a few exceptions. I’m pretty sure McKay Manor is long since defunct. They were kicked out of San Diego some years ago then tried to make a go of it somewhere in the South, but I think they gave up entirely a year or two before Covid would have killed them off naturally. I think I need to search out that WalMart clerk. News to me. Huh. ** Jamie, Hi. Yes, Christopher was news to me until Andrew/11:11 hooked me up with his work. Excellent stuff. Ha ha, nincompoop, good word indeed. My mom to use that term casually in conversation when I was wee. It’d be nice if it made a comeback, but it’s hard to imagine influencers wielding it of their own volition. Oh, I’ll find the 2019 ‘Haunt’. Diametric opposition is almost always a goal in life perhaps. Or that sounds right in my head. Dude, last section of your novella! Awesome, congrats or else looming congrats depending on how you feel. Yes, 30,000 words is more than enough, for goodness sake. Granted I’m a weirdo, but the food googling and sex writing combo is only intriguing to me. Sex is only what we make it? Or … something? Probably shouldn’t ask me. Zac and I fucked up and the fete foraine art thing was closed when we got there, but the popup book store was sublime. I bought a semi-vintage ‘Wizard of Oz’ popup book that’s totally nuts. And our film-related meeting was excellent. Good day, iow. I agree that allowing Pollard on their stage briefly does not remove Pearl Jam from the pile of dreadfulness wherein they reside. I was just looking for the haystack in a needle. I hope your Wednesday makes every theoretical sad thought you could have play hooky. xo, moi. ** T, Hey! I’m of the firm opinion that submerging the ‘I’ is always a frontline experiment. Great, let’s do it: coffee + collab. Shoot me your freedom coordinates. What I wouldn’t give to be on acid maybe with an on/off switch today and maybe everyday, thank you! I hope your Wednesday is a holographic blast furnace. xo, D. ** Tea, I agree with you entirely. My last novel was nothing but that, or an attempt to make something that was nothing but that, at least. I also totally get the ‘owing’ thing. I mean, here I am a zillion years later still writing tributes to a long dead friend. Non-shabby Tuesday, excellent, I hope the rest of the day followed suit. I just want to eat one really good pastry today, and since I’m in Paris, that’s easy-peasy, so I think I’ll survive. May a really good pastry equivalent raise its lovely head in your Wednesday. ** Okay. I thought maybe a gallery show of Marnie Weber’s stuff might make a pleasant next step in the blog’s Halloween roll-out. See what you think, and see you tomorrow.

 

Introduction by Chuck Palahniuk

Peter Christopher popped my cherry. Reading-wise.
—Until Peter, I’d tell you that so-and-so was good reading. You know, the writer with his own shelf at Blockbuster Video. The third-person patch on what H. P. Lovecraft used to do. That billion-selling, second-rate Hemingway. What did I know?
—I say Blockbuster because this was 1991? 92? Peter had gone to Columbia to study under Gordon Lish with writers such as Amy Hempel and Mark Richard and Tom Spanbauer. Tom had moved to Portland and taught the style of Minimalism in a workshop he called “Dangerous Writing.” Tom invited Peter to come west, and what Peter came to teach us, he called “submerging the I.” His theory being that fiction told in the first-person – I walked… I read… – held the most power and authority because a personality seemed present and accountable for the how-and-why the story was being told. The context.
—That’s something that third-person omniscient “voice of God” narration can’t do. As per Peter, the modern reader is smart enough to know that the storyteller – even a fictitious storyteller, especially a fictitious storyteller – has her motives and slant on the truth. So if a story took place in that old-fashioned, third-person, once upon a time it was bullshit.
—The catch was, Peter Christopher warned us that readers hate a story riddled with the first-person pronoun “I.” That “I” reminded the reader that she was only a witness. The story was happening to someone else. The solution? Peter called it “submerging the I.” Simply put, you told the story in first-person but used the first-person pronoun seldom if ever. Doing so you sidestepped the thudding I…I…I… sound of a self-obsessed bore. What’s more you’re forced to point the camera at everything else. Submerging the I breaks your work open.
—Take Cory-Anne. For months she’d brought the same story into Tom’s workshop. It was always about her nephew dying, and she’d cry when she read it aloud. In short, it was about Cory-Anne. Her writing wasn’t getting any better, and she cried harder each week so it didn’t seem that Cory-Anne was getting any better, either. Peter came west at Tom’s invitation and asked us to submerge the I. He urged Cory-Anne to write something new.
—Within a month she broke out. It was by submerging the I, or reading the work of Amy Hempel and Mark Richard. Or it was reading Peter’s work, the stories in this book. But Cory-Anne wrote us a story that left Tom’s workshop in silent awe for a moment.
—At that Peter knelt on the floor and began to kowtow at her feet. He led the writers in a chant of her name as he continued to bow before her. And this time Cory-Anne didn’t cry. She glowed. She’d written an astounding short story. She’d taken herself almost entirely out of the drama and given us a story in which we felt like characters.
—It’s a glorious moment, when a student writer breaks out their own voice. One day they’re writing mawkish, tedious stuff. And the next week they’re being cheered. And that moment wouldn’t have happened without the advice and the patience of Peter Christopher.
—Me, I once sublet a huge loft at14th and Hudson in Manhattan with Peter. At the time it was a district of meat packers, where pigeons ate the raw fat and waded through the beef blood in the gutters. Nights, the area teemed with trans-gender sex workers. A half-block west of our door, the old West Side Elevated Line ran as a ruined no man’s land as far uptown as 35th Street. It was a fast way to walk uptown, but so dangerous no one ever used it. It’s now the ritzy New York High Line. Years later, the New Yorker magazine hosted a party for me at a lux nightclub named Apartment, and I attended, shocked to find that the space was the same one Peter and I had rented.
—During our shared sublet it was winter, and I drank coffee all day so I could go out all night. Every evening the Italian restaurant below our place held a different bachelor party, but you could set your watch by it. Promptly at 9:30, the stripper would begin to dance to Madonna’s Material Girl. The song list never varied and as long as the party lasted, the male crowds cheered up through the floors. Even once the night’s party died down, I could blink awake after midnight to see sex workers on the roof, staring down at me through the skylights.
—Peter told me how he’d once worked for Big Golden Books, a children’s imprint at Penguin Random House. It was strange to think of Peter working on books like The Poky Little Puppy and The Little Red Hen. He’d already lost an eye to cancer and always worried the cancer might come back. Tom told me that Peter had always clung to university teaching jobs because he wanted the health insurance – in case the cancer came back. That’s why Peter had published so little of his own fiction.
—Peter brought so many people fully into the world. First by writing and thus showing us what excellent storytelling could be. And second, by teaching. Me and Cory-Anne, we’re better writers due to him. And we’re better readers thanks to Peter Christopher.
—For twenty years I’ve pushed people to find and read his collection Campfires of the Dead. It was out of print for so long that getting a copy was near impossible. And now, here it is. In your hands. And here I am writing to repay an old, old debt to the man who taught us all.
—May this book make you a better reader. If you write, may it make you a better writer.

 

 

Campfires of the Dead and the Living is a collection of short fiction by Peter Christopher. This volume contains The Living – an unpublished collection of stories written between 1990 and 2004 – and Campfires of the Dead – Christopher’s first collection, out of print for more than three decades and originally published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1989.

Peter Christopher taught at Georgia Southern University for many years and was a recipient of a 1991 National Endowment of the Arts fellowship in creative writing. Though only Campfires of the Dead was published during his lifetime, through his teaching, mentorship, and friendships, Christopher had a lasting impact on writers Harry Crews, Gordon Lish, and Chuck Palahniuk among others.

Buy ‘Campfires of the Dead and the Living’

 

 

HERE IS A VISION AND VOICE THAT YOUR HEART AND BLOOD WILL NEVER FORGET. IT IS ABOUT THE FORGOTTEN, THE HURT, AND THE HELPLESS, BUT PETER CHRISTOPHER’S MAGIC MAKES THESE PEOPLE WHOLE AGAIN. I AM GRATEFUL FOR FINDING THIS BOOK. — HARRY CREWS

PETER CHRISTOPHER? A CASE WHEREIN IT’S THE MAN, NOT THE LITTÉRATEUR, THAT DEMANDS REMARK—TO WIT, NEVER KNEW, WILL NEVER KNOW, AN INSTANCE OF BETTER, DEARER, SWEETER. THAT WAS PETER, NONE GREATER, NOT JUST A MENSCH BUT A MENSCH AND A HALF. –- GORDON LISH

PETER CHRISTOPHER WAS A DEEP-HEARTED AND CLEAR-EYED BEHOLDER OF EVERY RANK LOVELINESS OF THE HUMAN ESTATE. HE WAS A MASTER OF THE SLANG-SHOT SENTENCE OF MANIC DOWNTRODDENDOM, A GENIUS OF THE NERVE-STRETCHING VIOLENT QUIETS OF THE FAILING AND THE FAILED. HERE IN ONE ABOUNDING VOLUME ARE THE LONG-OVERDUE DÉBUT OF ONE COLLECTION OF SOUL-BOILING FICTIONS AND A RETURN TO CIRCULATION OF ANOTHER–THE LEGACY OF AN EXTRAORDINARY WRITER REWORKING THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY WITH FULL, DETERMINING FORCE. –— GARIELLE LUTZ

FOR YEARS I’VE BEEN XEROXING PETER CHRISTOPHER’S STORIES FOR MY WRITING STUDENTS. FINALLY, HERE ARE CHRISTOPHER’S COLLECTED STORIES, A BOOK SO FULL OF GRIT AND HEART, COMPASSION AND RAGE, THAT I CHALLENGE YOU TO READ HIS STORIES WITHOUT BEING CHANGED AS A PERSON WALKING THE EARTH. CAMPFIRES OF THE DEAD AND THE LIVING IS A REMARKABLE, MUSCULAR BOOK BY A BRILLIANT AND FEARLESS WRITER. –- VICTORIA REDEL

HERE’S A BULLETIN FROM THE OTHER AMERICA, THE DOWN AND OUT, THE DAMAGED, THE UNLUCKY, THE DISENFRANCHISED. . . SEARING STORIES TOLD IN ROUGH AND POETIC LANGUAGE. UNFORGETTABLE AND NECESSARY. —- LEE SMITH

I READ PETER CHRISTOPHER’S CAMPFIRES OF THE DEAD AND THE LIVING IN FRONT OF A SPACE HEATER (AN INDOOR CAMPFIRE) IN CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE WHERE THE RACCOONS HAVE COME OUT FROM THE DARK TO PLAY WITH THE CHIPMUNKS. GENTLY AND UNAPOLOGETICALLY SURGED WITH DOMESTIC WILD ANIMAL LIFE AND EVERYDAY TEDIUM, CHRISTOPHER’S EVER UNRESTRAINABLE, SHIFTING STORIES DARE US TO CARE. HIS STORIES ARE LEISURELY COMPASSIONATE, SPERMATICALLY ORIGINAL, AND DEFTLY DEFIANT OF ALL CAUSTIC ARROGANCE BY FAITHFULLY RECORDING THE COMIC DISCORD AND CONSONANCE IN OUR HUMANITY. THE TITLES TO HIS STORIES ARE A RIOT! HE IS FUNNY. HE IS WILD. HE IS UNEXPECTED. HE DOES NOT PONTIFICATE. HE DOES NOT FLICKER NOR FLINCH NOR WHINGE LIKE A FRIGHTENED CAT, BUT BOLDLY TUGS AND PULLS AND TICKS AND FLIPS OUR IMAGINATION WITH AN EYE FOR CONVERSATION AND AN EYE FOR QUOTIDIAN DETAILS. HIS SUAVE, SIDESPLITTING STORIES WILL WARM YOUR BITTERED HEARTS UP LIKE A SHOT OF WHISKEY AGED OVER NIGHT BY THE DISTILLED MALTED GRAIN OF HIS WORK’S TRANSIENT TIMELESSLY AND KEEP THEM SOBER UNTIL YOUR HEART AND MIND BECOME HYSTERICAL WITH PETRIFIED FEVER FOR THE UNKNOWN. –- VI KHI NAO

 

 

Excerpt

FISHING, WITH WHAT I HAVE

My grandfather, the fisherman in our family, stood in his backyard of afternoon light. My grandfather waited for me in the light off whitewashed clapboards of fence and barn. From the back porch, I could see him the way I knew him best, wearing the soft clothes he wore, holding his hat. My grandfather Caron was the stander at the stove, the sweeper and card player those summer afternoons with Grandma Rose and the other women with their shoes slipped off in the grass under the card table in my grandfather’s backyard. Grandmother Caron, my mother too, all those other women, had something in them different from my grandfather and from me–they were different quiet with different secrets, but that is a different story. For this story, my Grandmother Caron was the one snapping the teeth of my suspenders into biting up my pants. She was the one who had my baseball cap on me.
—Out in the heat and light, my grandfather put on his hat. His hand held my hand. His strength and his tallness had us walking on the grass. Our walking shadow was a fisherman, who had pulled up a boy on the hook of the fisherman’s hand. Our shadow disappeared into the bigger shadow of my grandfather’s barn. His ladders and lawnmower, his Ford, seemed to me to wait for him from the deeper shadows. Climbing–with my grandfather helpingme, boosting up my backside–inside the Ford, the seat sank under me as if I was crawling, or swimming, in the belly of a giant fish that we were letting swallow us. From before, my grandfather’s Ford fish had swallowed his cob pipe and his fold of tobacco, a penny become underwater green I found between the seats, a pistachio nut. I stood myself against my grandfather starting the Ford. From that springy height, I could see into the back seat, see his fishing pole and reel, his blanket.
—Light came from everywhere onto and off the shiny metal and glass of his car while grandfather drove us. His Ford finned us through the deep water of familiar streets. The salty red from the shelled nut was sucked out. The shell too hard for me to crack was spit into my hand and wiped on my pants while I looked at my grandfather under his hat. He was my mother’s blue eyes and her nose on a man. His eyes and the rest of him steered us through a rattling of light, the tunneling of shadow from trees taller than he was. I rested my small arm over his suspenders, which were bit with tiny metal fish teeth wider than my suspenders. My small fingers felt the way over the hills of him until my hand was out the
window. Air blowing cooler, heavy as water, pushed at my hand. I felt where we were.
—At the bottom of the hill was MacSheen’s Store where Grandmother Caron bought me red sodas. The store was carried off behind us. The world itself was water sliding around us. The house where my mother was born went by. The place where grandfather got gas for his Ford came gliding up and by. I knew the Dairy Bar was coming up. With my hand, I could feel the wind as if from the Dairy Bar sweeping around the bend. The Dairy Bar had nearly floated by us when grandfather slowed the car, air whistling to a flutter in the window vent. He turned the steering wheel with his hands that tied knots for fishing. The car popped, pinged over gravel. We quieted to a stop. Through the glass of the windshield, through the sunlight on the Ford’s green hood, through the big windows of the Dairy Bar, I saw people sitting at the counter on swivel stools. I saw a man with too much potato in his mouth putting some potato back on his spoon.
—“When you eat pistachios,” my grandfather said to me, “try not to wipe your fingers on your pants.”
—I felt for the penny in my pocket. Grandfather held open the car door for me stepping down. The heat was like heat from an oven, as if Grandmother Caron’s stove was held open huge on the summer afternoon. Grandfather guided us between the sides of cars too hot to touch.
—Inside, in the cool of the Dairy Bar, I touched, pulled and let go the metal knobs of the cigarette machine holding my father’s Lucky Strikes. A woman sitting in a booth laughed a croaky laugh with cigarette smoke wisping out from between her teeth. Dirty dishes and cups, a spoon, clacked under the counter wiped clean for my grandfather and for me. Grandfather helped me up, lifted me to sitting at the counter. Grandfather sat, put his hat on the counter. He ran a hand on the gleam of his head. Light chopped from off the blades of the ceiling fan at the sweating metal of the milkers, at more knives and forks and spoons set out for us, at the coffee pot, at my grandfather’s head. The ceiling fan cooled the sweaty band of hair around my head where I had taken off my baseball cap.
—“Hello, Leo,” the woman wearing all blue on the other side of the counter said to my grandfather. “Hot enough for you?”
—“Hello, Adelle,” my grandfather said to the woman. “Hot enough to keep me and my boy sitting with you a while.”
—“Lucky for the brookies,” the woman said and smiled in such a way that her smile seemed to include all of us.
—My grandfather laughed and said, “Lucky for us.”
—When the woman asked my grandfather what we wanted to have, my grandfather told her, “My boy likes to fish for himself.”
—I told the woman what I wanted. My grandfather told her he wanted a slice of apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
—While waiting, I smelled cooking egg and coffee smells. I turned around and around on my swivel seat. I turned all the way around. I saw my grandfather in the light striking him again and again.
—The woman brought my grandfather’s pie and ice cream first. He waited for her to bring me mine before he would eat. His vanilla ice cream ran melting while he waited. My grandfather was the one who watched over me. He was the one who waited
for me to take the first bite.
—A man no longer the father he was drove us fast. A flock of birds in their little lives flew faster trying to keep ahead of us. From where I sat by the window, I saw that the man had my father’s face. His smoke and his Ballantine beer smells were my father’s smells. His hair, his glasses, his teeth had some secret I was afraid of, a secret I knew was different from the secrets of women or what was known between my grandfather and me. The man drove us in my father’s car by broken cornfields. My grandfather was in the same ground of another field. His fishing pole and reel were cobwebbed in the shadows of his barn. I looked at the man wearing my father’s face and hands. When he turned his head and saw me looking at him, I looked out the car window. Sunlight came through the clouds the same as in the painted picture of Jesus above my Grandma Roses’ bed. In that picture, Jesus was a fisherman held upon the water by the giant sunlit hands of his father.
—More little birds burst up over a cornfield. The birds headed for some woods. I looked at the man turning the steering wheel with the hand with the ring on the finger that showed he was married to my mother. I drew lines on the fogging window with one of my fingers.
—The window had fogged up again by the time the man stopped the car under trees by the side of the road. Outside the car, I stood in leaves lifting in the wind. The light coming through the leaves was such it seemed that I could look and not miss looking at any thing in the world. The man smoked a Lucky Strike while walking in the wet leaves up ahead. The leaves scuffed up dry from underneath smelled of summer afternoons. I looked back between branches blown clean of their leaves. Ahead, the man was walking by a pond with ghostly old stumps.
—Things came to this: leaves of red and gold on a pond. Between and on the leaves, on the water mirrored with light, a boy with his father’s eyes, his teeth, looked up at me looking down. Trees with a few leaves seemed to float upside down. Clouds crossed quietly as if in some other wind. Through and under this other world, mossy twigs and leaves rested rotting. The boy touched at the bones of his face.
—I looked up and saw the man weeping, touching at the water with a stick.
—Fish, tiny fish, sprayed from the water into the air.
—“Did you see that?” he said to me.
—I once saw my father naked, crawling on the floor, eating what was left in ashtrays, hitting his head on the wall over and over leaving hair and blood on the wallpaper until my mother called the doctor, who came and took him away for a long time.
—I sat in my dead father’s canoe out in the cold in a field. Shadows darkened the snow where the field ended, where the woods began. The hills and sky were losing light. What was colder, the sky or the snow? When I moved, the canoe my father never got to go fishing in creaked on snow so cold and hard the crust could cut me. The cold had crawled up from the metal of the canoe into my father’s boots that I wore, into the three pairs of socks.
—Wind and colder came with the going of the light. The few leaves left curling on branches chittered. My lips tried to warm my teeth. My coat sleeves were tubes where I tried to work warm air. I remember thinking that if I died then, out in the field or down by the river, maybe no one would find me until spring. Cattails with calling blackbirds would grow out of me, up through my soggy old coat. Someone would call my mother and she would have to come fetch what was left of me–a twig, some hair, a sock–from out of the cattail thicket. I heard branches skinned in ice clicking against other icy branches. A dog howled somewhere down the hill through the woods. Some old tracks, the hollowed of the canoe’s run again and again, crusted from the field and down through the hard snow in the woods. I poked at the crust with the poling stick. I chipped ice chunks while the cold held in the metal of the canoe burned at my backside through my grandfather’s rotting old blanket.
—The fire whistle set the dog to howling some more. The dog seemed to howl the news that it was time for my Grandma Rose and the others to get out of work. I could see down the hill through the woods to the road, to the roofs of row houses along the river frozen over, to the mill where Grandma Rose worked. Getting to work, shoving off, I pushpoled from on my knees. The canoe, taken, scraped faster along the crust. The windy cold in my mouth was a fishhook. The cold on my teeth was the sound of the push pole ticking on icy crust. I closed my mouth, warmed my teeth with my tongue, while the canoe scraped down through the woods closing in on me faster. I pushed, again, harder, dodging trees.
—At the bottom of the hill, it seemed as if something was waiting in the woods to get me. Something, it seemed, was getting ready to jump me taking aim at a hump of snow with my poling stick become a spear.
—I dragged the canoe behind a log by the side of the road. I crossed the road trying to stamp feeling into my feet. I clunked along on the ice blocks that had been my father’s boots, making my way behind the row houses and past a dog chained to a barrel. I was in the car wrecks river-banked before the dog let loose with a howl. On the other side of the river, the mill windowed down light. Women were walking through that light on the snow. I could see her coat, Grandma Rose in her coat with her own say-so and secrets walking with the other women and men to cars snow covered in the parking lots. The night’s coming on was helped, I believed, by the lights of the mill.
—With that coming-on feeling on my shoulders and on my neck, I started across the icy river. The colder was colder than before. The ice groaned, moved, under me. I kept going, slower, tapping at the splintering ice with my spear as I went. A bubble as big as I was moved under the ice under his boots. I did not call to my grandmother, who I could see so clearly. I did not yell to her or to the other women waiting while the men brushed snow from the cars. The boy I was, my father’s son–and not some drowned dog, not a fisherman caught in the long weeds in the cold dark under the ice–would not and did not call for help from those soon shouldered snug into cars heading for home.
—More than halfway across the broad slide of the river, in what little light was left from the sky, I saw a glint. Again, under the dark ice, there was a flash, a metal glint. The metal moved and I saw it was a fish.
—On my knees, I looked through the ice. I could see the eyes, the gills and fins, the tiny teeth of a fish. I tocked the ice with my stick. A bubble billowed long. I tocked again. The fish stayed caught.
—From where I sit writing this, I can see out the window. I can see the house across the street. The house is rotting clapboards and flaking paint in the afternoon light. A woman and a boy come out of the house, the boy shading his face with a hand while looking up at the woman. Holding hands, talking, the woman
and the boy go out the gate and along the sidewalk. I cannot see them any more.
—I look down at what I have written, and I know that I am caught. I know that I am not getting away from any of it.

 

 

‘This book is probably the best example of these unfairly forgotten books and of a great writer few knew and who is no longer with us to share his words and sentences.

‘Peter Christopher was a Lish student from the Columbia U days (along with Amy Hempel, Christopher Coe and Anderson Ferrell), whose collection, Campfires of the Dead (1989) is as fine a first volume of short stories as any of the best being released today via the Flannery O’Connor Award, the AWP Awards, Drue Heinz, Juniper, Dzanc, or the Iowa Short Fiction Award. The fifteen stories were developed in Lish’s class and published in either The Quarterly or a special issue of StoryQuarterly that Lish edited. We remember well, in 1989, finding this book in a Los Angeles store and getting giddy when reading it. Where did this whacky gfeat fun stuff come from? They are quirky stories about people in love and who hold out-of-the-ordinary jobs, such as the narrator of “The Careerist,” that opens:

Ever think what chicken-sexers think all day?

Well, this chicken-sexer thinks mostly him and me and Sweet Miss Stringbean. Make him Billy Bollitt, sometimes mill rat, most time drunk, my best friend. Make me Sarno, chicken-sexer. Make Miss String Bean Billy’s sweetheart.

I think mostly of Billy and me and Sweet Miss Stringbean and working as a chicken-sexer and all…make that as a chicken-sexer all night. I work the night shift (17).

‘The flap copy reads: “Peter Christopher produces sentences that you would have to be three strong men and jump from behind to try to paraphrase—and even then you still couldn’t do it.” Lee K. Abbott provides a blurb, stating: “Move over, Barry Hannah, and make room for a deskmate with his own bent horn to toot!”

‘Christopher has been linked with former Lish student Tom Spanbauer; the two would often co-teach the “Dangerous Writing” class together. I have come across several blog and bulletin board entries about these classes, all positive. Christopher seemed to have fallen off the publishing map after Campfires of the Dead, although he did win an NEA Fellowship and worked as a journalist. In 1998, he was hired by Georgia State University’s English Department. In 2002, a new collection, The Living, was announced as forthcoming from Sandhills Press; it seems the small press never issued the book, or went defunct, because we cannot find a listing for either the press or the volume. His obituary in the George Anne Daily mentions a second book, Lost Dogs and Other Stories, but we cannot find that listed anywhere, either (it could be a chapbook, a limited edition, or a private printing).

‘Christopher died in 2008 from complications of liver cancer, age 52.

‘If ever there was a Lish writer who should have a book reprinted today, Peter Christopher holds the poster. Or perhaps publishing what he left behind in the folders is due. Anyone out there got the gumption for this consumption, to re-ignite this campfire for the living?’ — Gordon Lish Edited This

 

 

lost and found
by Suzy Vitello

Here’s a good story.

About a year ago a writing acquaintance, Steve Arnt, called me up out of the blue to ask if I was missing a particular book from my shelf. I drew a blank, because I have several hundred books: some on shelves, some in boxes, some in tubs.

He’d been looking for an out-of-print book by a writer named Peter Christopher. The book was called Campfires of the Dead, put out by Knopf in 1989.

“Yes, yes,” I said. “I know that book. I have that book. I knew Peter.”

“You certainly did have that book,” he said. “It’s inscribed to a Suzy V. That has to be you.”

I was in Hawaii when I got the call, on a deeply-anticipated holiday, one my husband and I had planned for over a year. We didn’t know when we planned the trip that our house would be on the market, and, in particular, that our house would be on the market with a flooded basement, and that we would need to retroactively permit an addition put on illegally by my ex-husband years earlier.

Why all of this is important to the story is, about a month before our trip, during staging and dismembering hell, in the worst real estate market in two decades, my current husband and I hauled three truckloads of “yours, mine and ours” crap from the basement. Lots of it mildewed, moistened, stinky and ruined. But some of it merely heavy and cumbersome.

What I’m getting at is that Pete’s book, the one you see in the picture with the very personal, lovely inscription, was a casualty of the dysfunctional triage. Where did Steve Arnt find it? Goodwill.

Now, I’ve done a lot of stupid, irresponsible things in my life. Once, I left my four-year-old daughter locked in the car while I ran into a coffee shop for an espresso. A cop was at the car’s window when I returned, two seconds from hauling me to some sort of bad parenting jail. Back in college, I often swam naked in a local reservoir, and often there were drugs involved, or alcohol, or both. I was a poor swimmer and prone, at that time, to anxiety attacks. Drowning was a real possibility. And I won’t even go into all the usual post-adolescent hyjinks. But being careless with something as sacred as a rare book–a rare, personally inscribed book at that, is inexcusably egregious.

So anyway, what happened next was, I conveyed my embarrassment and thanked Steve, who had called me so he could return my book, finished my holiday, sold the house, moved into a new house, and failed to follow up with Steve about my Campfires of the Dead.

But last week, at Lidia Yuknavitch’s Powell’s reading, there, sitting full-faced across the room, was Steve. And guess what? He still, after a year, was eager to return the book to me. So, we met for coffee, and there, on the cafe table, was Pete’s book, not one bit mildewed, water-logged or otherwise ruined. And I’d forgotten how lovely the inscription was, and how it referred to a particularly glorious summer in 1993 when I’d met him on the Oregon Coast during a writing workshop given by Tom Spanbauer, and that I had continually dropped food on my feet while we shared writing and nuthorns and laughs.

 

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. Today’s a special day here on the blog as it/we/I get to use its facilities to help introduce a really remarkable book. You’ll understand why when you delve into the post, but, briefly, Peter Christopher was a superb writer who died way too young whereupon his work, which was published in a number of prominent venues in his time, was largely forgotten until Andrew Wilt at 11:11 discovered it, was blown away, and, long story short, sought out Christopher’s survivors leading to this book that returns Christopher’s work to print and hopefully prominence. I’ve read the book, and his stories truly are something. Anyway, do explore the evidence above, and be an early re-discoverer of a real talent. Thank you! And many thanks to Andrew and 11:11 Press for helping occasion this welcome mat. ** Tea, Hi. Happy he/his stuff piqued you. I need to read that BR Yeager. I haven’t yet. I’ve always loved how devising or dedicating a piece of writing to someone can be such a powerful and ideally rich form of tribute. More than with a film or even a song, I think, maybe because with writing the tributee (and others) can see and feel the writer’s care and effort and thought involved. Or else I’m just romantic about writing, but I think I’m right. As long as the unpredictable series of twists and turns of my week aren’t of the unpleasant sort — and with my current situation, they could be — I’ll happily accept a clone of your hopeful week. Take care. ** David Ehrenstein, Your link didn’t take, but ‘I Died’ sounds … promising? ** Dominik, Hi!!! Sure, power sharing is the ideal, and what better City Hall could there be, as you well know. Yes, I didn’t think my yesterday love was asking too much. There used to be one near me, but it closed due to lack of attendance, so maybe it was a big ask. I sure hope your yesterday love did his duty. Did Anita hear anything? Hopefully a very positive anything? Love making everything and everyone in the world inflatable via a blinking red shirt button, G. ** Jamie, Hey, Jamie. ‘AKA Serial Killer’ is a pretty good place to start, actually. Hm, I don’t know if he influenced Benning. It would surprise me, to be honest, but it could well be. Benning popped in here one day recently to my great honor, so maybe, if he’s still lurking, he can answer the question himself? I will now be all over ‘Hell Fest’ by as soon as tonight, we’ll see. Both for pleasure and research purposes (re: our film). And ‘Haunt’. It’s just called ‘Haunt’? Hold on. Is it the one from 2013? Monday was a headache because it was consumed by trying to reach an agreement with a certain someone with whom we work on a contract to set up a bank account that will fund our film and that we’ve been trying to get said someone to set up for many, many months. But I think it got accomplished while I was asleep, whew. Today I’m going to see a ‘fete foraine’-themed art exhibition and visiting a great store here dedicated exclusively to pop-up books and maybe Zooming with some LA film collaborators, so it should be an improvement on yesterday. And your Tuesday was … spectacular in what respect? Ha ha, anti-Pearl Jam love, thank you! Much appreciated! Although they do get a teeny weeny amount of positivity from me for once bringing Robert Pollard onstage to sing ‘Baba O’Riley’ with them as his backing band. Thusly. Continue to feel right as rain, man. Love, me. ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien! Well, luckily many haunts operate throughout the month of October, so you have a chance. There were actually a number of OC haunts in that post. ‘The 17th Door’ in Fullerton is one of the very best haunted houses in the world. Another post for your book, absolutely, yes, please! Know that the blog is pretty surely going to be on vacation for much of October, so it might have to happen before or after, depending on your timing. Peace and love and don’t forget horror! ** T, Yay (!) on snagging a fave of yours with that post. Yes, a friend in Japan told me the post lined up with the premiere of his new, quickie film. He said he will report back. You’re working near me? Dude, surely you’d be up for a coffee break coffee collab with me, or a before or after work thing? If you want. I’m around. Sucks extremely that said job is trying to eat everything great that you do. Don’t deprioritise! Or at least not mentally and psychically. Turn your moments of non-taxed brain power into a lab. My life needs some lip balm, how did you know? I hope Tuesday turns your coworkers into broken slot machines. xoxo, D. ** h now j, Hi! How lovely to see you! I’m mostly okay. Yes, that does sound like a lot to deal with. I’m so sorry. I wish I could break off the Eiffel Tower and point it at you and use it as a magic wand. Very, very best of luck and everything else with everything that’s taxing your great self. Take good care, and here and I are always here if you need us. ** Right. You know what do: check out Peter Christopher. Thank you very much, and see you tomorrow.