‘Brigid Brophy is nearly forgotten today, except by those who wish to claim her for a special-interest subliterature that it would have sickened her to be confined to. The author of seven novels written in what Peter Stothard calls a “sparkling and perfumed prose,” she was one of the 1960s’ most daring voices in her explorations of the varieties of sexuality. For instance, Brophy considered masturbation an invaluable spur to the imagination, pointing out that masturbation fantasy was the nearest most people got to the invention of narrative fiction. She was best known during her lifetime for her dashing and learned nonfiction books, especially Black Ship to Hell (1962), a wide-ranging study of human self-destructiveness.
‘Throughout the early 1960s, Brophy employed the comedy of manners as her favored mode for exploring social and sexual mores. From a cool, detached perspective, Flesh (1962) traces the development of a hedonist. In The Snow Ball (1963), she returns to Mozartean sources, examining the sexual psychology of the opera Don Giovanni in the context of a New Year’s Eve costume party in contemporary London. The Finishing Touch (1963), a tale of romantic misadventures in a lesbian-run girls school on the French Riviera, pays homage to the novels of Ronald Firbank, another of Brophy’s icons.
‘Her most ambitious work, In Transit (1969), is a free-associative narrative set in the international terminal of an airport. While the text explores through puns and allusions many of Brophy’s favorite themes (for example, opera, pornography, rationalism, varieties of sexuality), protagonist Patrick/Patricia loses knowledge of language, hence the linguistic means of differentiating sex and gender and, consequently, his/her own distinctive sex or gender.
‘Brophy was an outspoken feminist, atheist, socialist, and pacifist who expressed controversial opinions on marriage, the Vietnam War, religious education in schools, sex, and pornography. She was a vocal campaigner for animal rights and vegetarianism. A 1965 Sunday Times article by Brophy is credited by psychologist Richard D. Ryder with having triggered the formation of the animal rights movement in England. You crossed swords, or pens, with her at your peril.
‘Brophy died in 1995 at the age of 66 of multiple sclerosis, which she had been suffering from for many years. Even from her sickbed, she campaigned for the rights of women, of writers, of prisoners and of animals. She was a vice president of the National Anti-Vivisection Society, and no animal escaped her sympathy. Upon her death, her literary agent, Giles Gordon, described her as a “deeply shy, courteous woman” who wrote delightful thank-you letters and kept to rigorous standards in her work. “Woe betide the ‘editor’ who tried to rewrite her fastidious, logical, exact prose, change a colon to a semi-colon (or vice-versa), or try to spell ‘show’ other than ‘shew,’ slavish Shavian that Brophy was.’ — collaged
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Gallery
younger
mss. pages
middle-aged
Brophy’s home
only known photo of Brophy in her later years
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Further
Obituary: Brigid Brophy
Brigid Brophy @ goodreads
‘Desperately seeking Brigid Brophy’
‘Brigid Brophy & Michael Levey: Why Wed at All?’
Brigid Brophy @ Writers No One Reads
Brigid Brophy on censorship
Brigid Brophy on HG Wells
Brigid Brophy on Mozart
Re: Brigid Brophy on Ronald Firbank
Brigid Brophy on James Joyce
Brigid Brophy on Arts councillors
___________________
The Darwinist’s Dilemma
by Brigid Brophy
So far as I can tell, the original class distinction (original, that is, in each individual’s experience) is the tremendous gulf between Me and All the Rest of You; any difference I see between You and You is tiny compared with the enormous difference between Me and All Other, a difference I experience in the fact that if I bump you on the head, whether You are in this case animate or a lump of stone, I merely observe the result, whereas if I get bumped on the head the universe, my universe, is totally occupied by an actual, vivid and very unpleasant sensation.
Presently, however, there arises in most of us (perhaps not in psychopaths) a faculty of imagination (I can only label, not describe it), which informs Me that to you, You are a Me. It is this faculty, with its ability to inhabit the other side of the barrier, that knocks the class barrier down. It can never rid me of my egocentric vision. But it persuades me that if I want to make a just appraisal of reality (and I do want to; it’s not a virtue; I can’t help it) then I must perform a series of intellectual adjustments to discount the distorting effect of the particular point of view from which I am obliged to observe reality.
My pain in the head remains more vivid to me than your pain in the head, but if I adjust for this I have to perceive that your hitting me and my hitting you are acts in exactly the same class; I can’t deplore the one without deploring the other; I have weighed them in a balance as accurate as I can make it, found them equally bad, and have thereby set irreversibly out towards social justice.
To my mind, therefore, there was both a logical and a psychological inevitability in basing the claim for the other animals’ rights on social justice. I thought there was enough motive force to carry the claim in the fact that we do, for whatever reason, want to appreciate the real world correctly. That is a force that has led people, from time to time, to make considerable and often uncomfortable intellectual adjustments in order to correct for distortions in their own vision. Some humans used to assume that the planet from which we observe the universe must be the centre of the universe – a slight to the sun, which was no doubt well able to bear it, and the source of a distortion in our knowledge of reality which we have now, not without reluctance, corrected for.
To me, then, it all looked – and indeed it still looks – straightforward. Once my imagination has embarked me (and it has, and I can’t go back on it) on a course of thoughts making for social justice, it inevitably carries me crashing through the class barriers, including speciesism, which may be the last barrier to fall or at least one of the last. What the movement against speciesism asks, in the light of the theory of Evolution, is that the present high barrier between the human and the other animal species should be displaced and re-erected between the animal kingdom and the vegetable kingdom (though evolutionists will expect there to be a no-man’s-land at the border). A millennium from now, there may well be a symposium on the rights of plants. Humans may be working out techniques whereby we could, for instance, derive our food exclusively from fruits, which display as it were a biological acquiescence about falling off into the hands of grasping individuals like ourselves. Plants are individuals, they are sensitive, and they certainly demonstrate an instinctual will to live – that is, they assert in instinctual terms a right to live. But their sensibility and individuality are not carried on by means of a central nervous system, and at the moment that is a place where our knowledge stops and seems to be an intellectually respectable place for our imaginations (at least in practice) to stop.
When I make a central (or at least some sort of organised) nervous system the sticking point, I am not of course making pain the sole delimiting factor of an animal’s rights, including a human animal’s rights. I do not for an instant admit your right to kill me provided you do it by creeping up on me and contriving not to give me pain or fear. I think what I think is that, providing it isn’t threatening our life, we have no right to extinguish an individuality that has been formed by negotiating the world by the agency of a nervous system.
I should add, by the way, that if I have become permanently incapable of pursuing my individuality by the usual agencies you will do me (or what remains of me) a kindness if you extinguish me. Euthanasia is the sole instance in which we behave better to the other animals than to our own species.
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Extras
Rare footage of Brophy (w/ Diana Rigg, Cathy McGowan, …)
Anthony Burgess a.o. on the Brophy-devised show ‘Take It or Leave It’
On Brigid Brophy: Bidisha, Terry Castle and Eley Williams
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Interview
___
Book
Brigid Brophy In Transit
Dalkey Archive
‘Set in an airport (“one of the rare places where twentieth-century design is happy with its own style”), In Transit is a textual labyrinth centering on a contemporary traveler. Waiting for a flight, Evelyn Hillary O’Rooley suffers from uncertainty about his/her gender, provoking him/her to perform a series of unsuccessful, yet hilarious, philosophical and anatomical tests.
‘Brigid Brophy surrounds the kernel of this plot with an unrelenting stream of puns, word games, metafictional moments and surreal situations (like a lesbian revolution in the baggage claim area) that challenge the reader’s preconceptions about life and fiction and that remain endlessly entertaining.’ — Dalkey Archive
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Excerpt
Ce qui m’etonnait c’etatit qu’it was my French that disintegrated first.
Thus I expounded my affliction, an instant after I noticed its onset. My words went, of course, unvoiced. A comic-strippist would balloon them under the heading THINKS — a pretty convention, but a convention just the same. For instance, is the ‘THINKS’ part of the thought, imply the thinker is aware of thinking?
Moreover — and this is a much more important omission — comic strips don’t shew whom the thoughts are thought to.
Obviously, it wasn’t myself I was informing I had contracted linguistic leprosy. I’d already known for a good split second.
I was addressing the imaginary interlocutor who is entertained, I surmise, by all self-conscious beings — short of, possibly, the dumb, and probably, infants (in the radical sense of the word).
From the moment infant begins to trail round that rag doll, mop-head or battered bunny and can’t get off to sleep except in its company, you know he’s no longer infant but fant. Bunny is the first of the shadow siblings, a proto-life-partner. Mister and Missus Interlocutor: an incestuous and frequently homosexual marriage has been prearranged. Pity Bunny, that doomed childbride.
I have known myself label the interlocutor with the name and, if I can conjure it, the face of someone I am badly in love with or awe of. But these are forced loans. Cut short the love or awe, and the dialogue continues.
Only death, perhaps, breaks the connection. Perhaps it is Mister Interlocutor who dies first, turning away his head and heed.
The phantom faces of the interlocutor are less troubling than the question of where he is. I am beset by an insidious compulsion to locate him. When my languages gave their first dowser’s-twig twitch and I conceived they might be going to fall off, I still treated that matter less gravely than the problem of where I was addressing my account of it.
The problem was the more acute because I was alone in a concourse of people. After a moment I noticed that my situation had driven me to think my thoughts to the public-address system, which had, for the last hour, been addressing me — inter aliens — which commands (couched as requests), admonitions (a tumble of negative subjunctives) and simple brief loud-hails, not one of which I had elected to act on.
Whichever language it might be I should be left with a few words of when all the rest had dropped off, at least public address would be equipped to understand my halting thoughts. Comforted, I set myself again to enjoying the refuge I was deliberately taking.
Yet it’s imprecise of me to call the public-address system the location of my interlocutor. As a matter of fact, I had not managed to spot where the voice came out — only the three points where it could go whispered in (to a microphone like a hose), murmurings of a uniformed snake-charmer to her phallic love.
The voice did not seem to emerge anywhence. It was loosed upon and irradiated the vast lounge, the top nine tenths of which contained only air and light, the people being mere shifting silt at the base. From time to time public-address commanded. ‘Pass the silt, please.’
The voice was mechanical. Mechanical equals international.
*
I sprang out of the tweed-suited chair which, sloped backwards, was designed to let you rise from it only as a very slow Venus from the foamrubber, and began to stroll. I would have liked to brisk-march but, alone among strangers, you simply cannot, unless you are sure in the possession of a purpose which, if stopped and asked, you could declare as to the Customs. It makes no difference that you know no one ever would stop you and ask.
I strolled, as if not noticing where, towards the wall of glass through which you could look out on a la piste/die Startbhan/the apron, whereon it was forbidden to smoke/ rauchen/ fumer.
I had not succeeded in leaving the interlocution behind, trapped like drained nectar in the valley of the chair slope. Caught it without an answer at the ready, I merely repeated: Ce qui me’etonnait . . .
Hearing this for the second time round, the interlocutor demanded why it was already in the past tense.
I explained. I cruise, my jaws wide to snow-plough in the present tense, the plankton of experience. This I then excrete rehashed into a continuous narrative in past tense.
Naturally the process is imaged according to bodily functions. That is an old habit of fant’s (fant, the feu infant), so much of whose childtime is preoccupied with them. Even adult fant, book-learned enough to know about metabolism, doesn’t feel it happening. You eat; you excrete; but you never catch your cells in the act of creating themselves out of your food and never hear the pop of sugar-energy released into your service from your laden corpuscles.
No more can you detect your personality and its decisions in the course of being created by your experience. You know why that you ingest the present tense and excrete it as a narrative in the past.
History is in the shit tense. You have left it behind you. Fiction is piss: a stream of past events but not behind you, because they never really happened.
Hence the hold fictional narrative exerts on modern literate man. And hence the slightly shameful quality of its hold.
*
p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Precisely, about money. You nailed it. It’s raining here right now and I’m imagining it humming the theme song of ‘The Smurfs’ and, honestly, that’s pretty horrifying, ha ha. Love talking me out of eating an entire jar of peanut butter, G. ** T. J., That’s good. Ha ha, you’re right about ‘TW’ re: ‘ZP’ vs. ‘LS’. Good ear. Model Home, I don’t think I know them. I’m on it. Thanks, bud. ** Charalampos, Hi. Uh, I just don’t like sunniness, sunburns (which I get easily), and eye distress from looking at sunlight reflected on water. Nice memoir title. Simple, but sneaky. Wow, ‘The Present and the Past’ and ‘Edwin Mulhouse’ are two absolutely top of the line supreme novels. Avalanche of readerly greatness there. ** Mark, Lunch at the Tam, you got it. Cool. Anticipation central over here. I’ve only eaten at the Tam once, and that meal was occasioned by my mother requesting that, after her funeral (she’s buried at Forest Lawn), the attendees have a reception/meal at the Tam. It would be nice to replace that association. Oh, Frank! He used to be regular around here. Too late to tell him hi for me, but I’ll just tell him hi directly. Hope the Film for Fags shebang was all you hoped. No doubt? ** Misanthrope, Made it through. You and the blog seem to be in the clear. 1. Ouch! 2. Ouch!!! Dude, your body is a baddie. And your keyboard too. Wishing a hairpin 180 degree turn to your karma. ** _Black_Acrylic, I’m so happy you enjoyed your first voyage into James Benning. Yes, they’re made for projection/cinema and yet are so rarely visible there. You have to use your imagination a bit. Anyway, great, always thrilled to pass the Benning along. ** Cody Goodnight, Hi. I’m … let’s just say fine. Benning is a god to me, so if course I recommend you watch ‘Landscape Suicide’, yes. ‘Halber Mensch’ is my favorite of their stuff too. I don’t know ‘The Apple’. I’ll check it out. I think I’m going to see a movie today, but I have no idea what yet. I’ll let you know. May we both be visually wowed today and/or tonight. ** Steve Erickson, I can’t remember if I’ve heard the Armed or not. I think I’l try something older first if I haven’t, given the Moulder involvement. ** Darbz 🍄, I hear your confession, and you are absolved of your sins. My weekend sucked royally, but whatever, right? Well, it wasn’t impossible that you could have magically transported yourself to Paris and I could have crossed your path. Well, maybe it is impossible now that I put it that way. My trans friend Alex has very long hair. He recently grew a little moustache which he said has solved all of his long hair-related problems. You’re drawing a picture underwater! What can’t you do? ** Dee Kilroy, Hi. This film producer that we were unsuccessfully schmoozing for money made me watch a long, long video of him visiting Kiefer’s compound, and, okay, it’s pretty fucking impressive, I will admit. The compound, not the artistic furnishings. Awesome on the bf’s new gig. Party! I love architectural and city planning maps, but I sure would not want to draw one, not to mention that I couldn’t begin to. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist. But then I got this opportunity to work on an archeological site in Peru for a summer, and, boy, the tedium was unbelievable. I got over that dream. Not the same thing, but, speaking of Escher-style patience, I don’t recommend having to create and place French subtitles for a film which Zac and I are needing to do right now and ASAP for a French grant deadline. I even like doing structuralist gruntwork, but this is really, really no fun. Did you correctly curve the perspective? See, now that sounds kind of fun. I have to figure how to start my week. I really should figure that out this morning, shouldn’t I? ** Right. Today I have spotlit arguably the greatest novel by the always wonderful British novelist Brigid Brophy, which I obviously recommend to you. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
*
Dennis, Thanks. And my birthday is Thursday. I’m a try and make it until then. 😉 I’ll be 52. I’m taking off that day and Friday. Nothing special planned. Go out to dinner, then cake and ice cream.
I think the keyboard is fixed. Now to do something more with it than leave snarky comments on social media. Blurp.
mong her achoements. “Pyancing Novelist” — and in=depth study of Ronald Fitbank that’s longer than all of Firbanks works put together.
Brigid Brophy rings a memory bell, but not loudly. I will seek her book out! Thank you for this subject matter.
Hi gorgeous Dennis, how have you been? Miss you. I’ve been seeing Brigid Brophy here and there, but now I’m intrigued to read her!
Brigid Brophy is defo a name to conjure with. Interesting that she struggled with MS, a disease I have plenty of experience of myself.
Football was back this weekend and it did not disappoint. Japan continue to storm the Women’s World Cup, after beating Norway 3-1 to set up a quarter final against Sweden. Plus Leeds came back from 2-0 down to draw against Cardiff with a last minute equaliser. A very young, exciting team this season so there’s a lot to look forward to.
Hi!!
Thank you for this post. I haven’t read “In Transit” (or anything else by Brigid Brophy!); I’m intrigued.
Right after I’d sent you my weekend love, it started raining here too, and I thought, “Fuck, I really don’t want every single raindrop to sing; that’d be fucking maddening,” haha. So, yeah, okay, maybe love needs to check that one.
Peanut butter is dangerous. I don’t know if love stands a chance. Do you like it chunky or smooth? (How nasty.)
Love giving people what they need – but not necessarily what they want – and seeing whether the world becomes a better place, Od.
If you’re curious about baile funk, the Bruxaria Squad’s DJ Bosak has released a dozen singles this year. I haven’t listened to all of them, but some are exceptional. “Realidade Extradimensional” and “Automotivo Transcendencia” are ghostly and cavernous: bangers with all the danceable elements taken out. “Trepadeira de Iva Bar” has a steady beat, but it’s just as haunted.
Thank you, America, for the opportunity to follow up my doctor’s referral and learn that the doctor he recommended does not take my insurance and charges $500 for out of network patients!
I’m glad to see so many James Benning films up on YouTube, even if that’s far from the best way to see them. He seems to have clicked with many people who aren’t otherwise interested in avant-garde film for some reason.
Kind Dennis:
“….then I got this opportunity to work on an archeological site in Peru for a summer, and, boy, the tedium was unbelievable. I got over that dream.”
This is a rare moment, man. Normally I don’t covet anybody else’s life experiences– but I really wish I could’ve had that. Or its equivalent. I would’ve liked to have seen some sites built by the Maya a couple decades back, before life on this continent achieved its present state of uber-paranoid & shitty. But travel has never been much of an option, financial realities being what they are.
“But” hell. I’m glad you DID get to go, even if it wasn’t a glam experience.
Speaking of financial realities, I looked up Kiefer’s net worth. I could definitely learn to dislike his art if I had more visceral feelings about cash. His wealth is preposterous.
Dunno. Back when I had some significant psychological troubs, a decade ago– weird how a brush w/ mortality will clarify all kindsa stuff for ya –I used to go the the High Museum to sketch. It was just about the only public place I felt safe, that season. This is back when I was working in a pool hall five days a week; being close with other humans was anathema. Yet the High, specifically the modern art annex… Those 2,000 ft rooms made all the difference. I could unknot & actually draw in public.
Being in the studio is nice, but hell, I moved to cities to be around people, you know?
Anyway, point being, I discovered Kiefer’s work there. One work specifically, titled ‘Drache’. A huge night sky piece, a broad beach & curl of receding surf. All the stars had little numerical labels. Designations for the positions of stars, ascending & descending, in relation to our earthen p.o.v. A magnetic piece; drew me back every week, until I allowed my museum membership to lapse. Even tried to reproduce it myself in strict b&w, as a challenge. One of those near-to-nameless Compulsions that directs me from time to time.
When I finally visited Tulum in 2009, the night skies there were what I was getting out of that painting. The depth of field of infinity & the pointillism of existence. Maybe wasn’t necessarily what Kiefer had in mind with ‘Drache’– fuck, his unnamed assistants were surely as responsible for creating that painting as he was –but it left a mark on my mind. Even if I don’t possess the hubris to produce work on that scale, I dig art large enough it demands a room you can fit the sky in.
Enough of my overwriting. Back to the long slog.
Sincerely hope your funding comes thru soon-ish. Don’t envy you the courtship dance w/ potential patrons, nor the computations one must make when contemplating Finishing A Work of, like, years… The sums of wealth dangled over the arts are simply criminal. Especially b/c there’s nothing “simple” about ’em.
-D
Today is José’s birthday!!! We are celebrating with an intimate gathering to screen Rocky Horror, which, astonishingly, he has never seen. Forest Lawn Glendale is amazing! Disney is there and also Michael Jackson, etc, etc, etc… My great aunt and uncle are there. I also have family at Hollywood Forever, and my dad has reserved a niche for himself there too! Films for Fags weekend was fantastic! Last night for Rick Castro’s films we had, Kristian Hoffman, Ron Athey and many others including Frank. I might see him tonight and will pass along your regards. The DC zine is printed and we are delivering it to Joe at Lost & Found Wednesday for the Book Fair opening on Thursday!!! Sooo excited 🙂
Hi Dennis.
How are you? I’m ok. Thank you for this post on Brigid Brophy. It’s a shame she seems virtually unknown, as her work sounds incredible. I’ll be sure to check her work out soon. The Apple is an embarrassment of a film. It has awful singing and melodramatic goodness plastered throughout, and it’s just so much fun. It was directed, I believe, by one of the creators of Cannon Films if that could give you a visual. My day is going ok. Went to the dentist for a quick clean and my teeth are a bit sore. It poured down rain while I was making my way there, but I made it safely. I don’t enjoy driving in the rain. I tried a cookies n cream donut today. Very sugary. What’s your favorite donut flavor, Dennis? I listened to Klaus Nomi today. Adore him. Taken away far too soon. He’s quite unique and I don’t like it when people make fun of him. He can combine 50s hits with a kind of space age wisdom perfectly. He’s a real legend to me. Have you listened to Nomi? Going to rewatch The Last Unicorn today, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. In an animation mood today. Have a great day or night, Dennis!
If imagining Trent Reznor in bondage is a sin then I guess I’m the biggest sinner to exist.
Oh very sorry, maybe this week will be better!
https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Devil-on-Night-Chair-after-Hieronymus-Bosch/1745770/9780699/view
at least your not this guy, yes? Or maybe being swallowed sounds more appetizing.
I want a mustache so bad! I kind of have one cuz genetics but its still rather pathetic so I just shave it off. Funny thing is when I was deciding my name I thought of the name Alex but I already have a friend with that name so I went with Darby.
Are you a fan of clowns? Not just the American ones but the French ones? Marcel Marceau. He’s interesting! I like collecting little clowns from thrift stores. I have a little harlequin that’s spins and plays a tune and a battered Bozo one from the 70s.
Oh there’s so many things I cant do! for example, ride a unicycle, make balloon art, do a split
The list goes on!!
I just realized every time I send a link it takes u away from the page, thus having to open a new page so you don’t lose response progress. So sorry for that inconvenience!