Without René Crevel we would have lost one of the most beautiful pillars of surrealism. — André Breton
Crevel actually wrote only a single sentence: the long sentence of a feverish monologue from the pen of a Proust who dipped his biscuit laced with LSD into his tea, instead of the unctuous madeleine. — Angelo Rinaldi, L’Express
He will be read more and more as the wind carries away the ashes of the ‘great names’ that preceded him. — Ezra Pound
‘If you look at the photograph of leading Surrealist artists and writers, taken in 1932 at Tristan Tzara’s, you will find René Crevel in the back row, and that is where he long remained. The others, including Andre Breton, Salvador Dali, and Paul Eluard, all seem to know what to do with their hands, whereas René Crevel is leaning forward, one hand placed for support on the shoulder of Max Ernst, the other on that of Man Ray. Born in 1900, the golden boy of the Surrealist movement, Crevel is perhaps remembered more for having killed himself than for his writings, though even in death he is surpassed by other suicides, by the revolver-brandishing Jacques Vaché, for instance, whose myth was sedulously fostered by Andre Breton. Why, then, has David Rattray chosen to publish now a translation of Crevel’s autobiographical novel, La Mort difficile, sixty years after its first appearance in 1926? The answer to that question may well have as much to do with a certain climate of opinion that has flourished since the Sixties as with Crevel’s undoubted talent as a writer.
‘It was in 1947 that Jean-Paul Sartre accused the Surrealists, who deeply influenced him, of being young men of good social position who were hostile to daddy. Crevel senior, however, hanged himself in 1914, and his young son was left under the domination of a mother he loathed and who is caricatured as the odious and pretentious Mme. Dumont-Dufour in La Mort difficile. Still, unlike many of the budding Surrealists in the Twenties, Crevel was indeed well-to-do and well connected. He was a great friend of the Vicomte Charles de Noailles and his wife Marie-Laure, who financed the notorious film, L’Âge d’or, by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali; and it was he who introduced the inventor of limp watches to one of the earliest of that artist’s princely patrons.
‘Crevel appears indubitably handsome in the portrait photograph by Man Ray, and in fine line drawings of the period. His looks were of a type that should have given him a role in one of Cocteau’s later films, had he survived and if Breton and Cocteau had not been at daggers drawn. One of Crevel’s friends, the Surrealists’ ally, André Thirion, remarked in his memoirs on the engaging personality and polished charm of the author of La Mort difficile. André Breton’s portrait of his associate is more somber: it stresses the disquiet and the complexity of the young man’s character.
‘In his books Crevel made no secret of his homosexuality or bisexuality. As for Breton, he wrote paeans to heterosexual love, and like most of the Surrealists he viewed homosexuality with disfavor, although the colleagues tolerated what they regarded as an aberration in their friend. It is plain from Crevel’s highly personal narrative, Mon Corps et moi (“My Body and Me”), that the young author felt deeply divided about his sexual proclivities. Moreover, he had long suffered from ill health: tuberculosis took him at frequent intervals to boredom in Swiss sanatoria, and his sickness was complicated by alcohol and drugs (opium, cocaine). The theme of suicide haunted him. In his very first book, Détours (1924), he imagined the scenario of death by gas that he was to follow eleven years later in 1935. With Man Corps et moi, he betrays his doubts about the reality of his own existence.
‘The great event of Crevel’s life was his meeting with André Breton in 1921: a strong, aggressive character under whose aegis the Surrealist enterprise often appears as a succession of insults, cuffs to celebrated heads, and expulsions. Crevel made an important contribution to the movement and yet he also figures as its victim. Having been initiated into spiritualism by an aristocratic English lady, he introduced Breton to “hypnotic sleep,” which played so large a role in the development of Surrealism and its use of automatic writing or image-making. In a deep sleep, Crevel declaimed, sang, yet apparently he had no memory of what had passed. These experiments led the young writer to try to hang himself, and Breton put an end to them. In the famous “Inquiry into Suicide,” conducted by La Révolution surréaliste, Crevel eloquently justified suicide as a solution to his dissatisfaction with his life.
‘The risks involved in Surrealist practices, such as the debate on suicide and the rehabilitation and simulation of madness, are obvious. The extravagant declarations of Breton—that “living and not-living are imaginary solutions,” or that the distinction between true and false, good and evil, is “absurd”—must have had a harmful effect on one like Crevel, whose hold on life was so precarious. The whole objective of Surrealism was to undermine reason and logic. Crevel could write a book paradoxically entitled L’Esprit contre la raison (“Mind against Reason”), but he valued highly his own critical intelligence and, having worked on a thesis on Diderot while at the Sorbonne, he never lost interest in the eighteenth century as the age of enlightenment.
‘Meanwhile, profoundly loyal to André Breton, he was among those who “gave proof of ABSOLUTE SURREALISM,” as Breton’s first Manifesto has it. Only too well known is Breton’s concept of absolute Surrealist revolt: to go down into the street with a revolver and to fire haphazardly into the crowd. Time and experience have not been kind to such irresponsible language, and too much real blood has been shed in the streets for Breton’s words to be regarded as mere ink. One difference between words and paint is that words have meaning and, however “poetic,” cannot be totally divorced from reason and logic. Perhaps that is why some Surrealist art tends to make a greater impact than a good deal of strictly Surrealist literature. Certainly, the confusion in Crevel’s mind between unreason and reason must have been acute.
‘A way out of the impasse appeared to be at hand for intellectuals in revolt: adherence to the Revolution and membership in the Communist Party. Crevel discovered Marx and dialectical materialism, and he began to quote chunks from Engels and Lenin in his writings. He was among those who wrote for the periodical Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution, doubtless believing with Breton that to propagate the idea of revolution would hasten the advent of the great cataclysm. In 1927 the author of La Mort difficile joined the French Communist Party; he was expelled in 1933 and readmitted in 1934. None worked harder than he did to try to reconcile the mistrustful party hacks and the would-be revolutionary Surrealists or, as it was then put more grandly, “Communism and Culture.” His efforts to establish harmony during the preparations for the Communist-inspired First International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture in 1935 were thwarted by the exchange of insults and slaps between Ilya Ehrenburg and André Breton, which led to the author of the Surrealist Manifestos being denied permission to speak. This Congress proved to be one of the early successes of Stalinism in the international cultural sphere. There was in fact no way of reconciling such fundamentally opposing attitudes to free thought and free expression.
‘Crevel’s failure to secure agreement between Surrealists and Communists is thought to be one contributing cause of his suicide. Shortly before his death, the former Communist André Thirion had expounded privately—much to Crevel’s surprise—his own conviction that Stalin represented as much of a threat to culture as Hitler. When Crevel stayed with Dali at his home at Port-Lligat, the painter could not have been very helpful when employing his “paranoia-criticism” to provoke “the maximum number of hopeless antagonisms in every situation.” Meanwhile, Crevel was becoming more critical of Andre Breton, and was losing faith in Surrealism, as his letters to Tristan Tzara of 1934-35 reveal. An adverse medical report prompted the young novelist to write: “Please have my body cremated. Disgust,” and to take his own life.
‘There is a certain irony in prefacing Difficult Death with Dali’s memoir of 1954, as David Rattray has done. Crevel would have hated Dali’s support for General Franco: he himself was keenly opposed to fascism, having helped to create a committee of anti-fascist writers at the time when the French fascists almost overthrew the government in February 1934. It is equally ironic to find Ezra Pound’s essay on Crevel, with its laudatory reference to Mussolini and its refrain on usury, being used to preface a reprint of Crevel’s satirical novel, Les Pieds dans le plat (“Putting One’s Foot In It”). Crevel forcefully expressed his hatred of anti-Semitism and Hitler in that novel, and his detestation of Mussolini elsewhere.
‘With La Mort difficile, written in the year of his mother’s demise, Crevel probes the conflict within the mother-fixated Pierre. The protagonist is torn between his ambivalent regard for the self-sacrificing Diane and his passion for Arthur Bruggle, an equivocal American modeled on the painter Eugene MacCown, to whom the author was devoted. Dreamlike elements and a rather mannered insistence on repetition betray the work’s Surrealist connection. Black humor merges with self-pity. David Rattray’s translation is at times ingenious. However, Pierre’s mother admires slim legs as a token of breeding (signe de race), not of “race.” In her prejudiced vocabulary, “foreigner” is too anodyne a word for the pejorative métèque. A reference to the poet Lamartine, hero of the Second Republic, is eluded: Crevel liked to satirize the liberal “Lamartinian current,” otherwise graciously qualified as “the dustbins of liberalism.” To find an equivalent for the American’s amusingly painful misuse of French genders looks impossible. One realizes how skillful, witty, and idiosyncratic Crevel’s use of language can be. He had no small talent as a punster, satirist, and polemicist.
‘After the événements of May 1968 there was a revival of Crevel’s work in France in the Seventies, when several of his books were reprinted. One admirer went so far as to declare: “The explosion of May [1968] places the figure of Crevel, that dark archangel, in the forefront of those who refuse to live divided against themselves.” A curious observation, surely, since in Crevel’s case that refusal meant self-immolation. The rebellious author of Babylone could serve as model for a new generation of rebels. He, too, was opposed to religion, family, country (in whose name so many had perished in the 1914-18 War), and all existing institutions.
‘High among his pet hates were liberal parliamentary democracy, capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. His terminology sometimes recalls that of fashionable theorists of the Sixties and after. When he excoriates the privileged swine (salauds) or invokes “oceans of wrath” to drown the bourgeoisie and all its works, he sounds like a precursor of Sartre and his heirs. Crevel’s heady combination of revolt, homosexuality, and drug-taking doubtless remains in vogue in certain circles even today.’ — Renee Winegarten
____
Gallery
Portrait of René Crevel, by Dora Maar
Andre Breton (l) talks with Rene Crevel (second from right), while Salvador Dali (second from left) and Paul Eluard (r) look on.
by Man Ray
Tristan Tzara and René Crevel, 1928
by Gertrude Stein
Front row: Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Man Ray. Back row: Paul Eluard, Hans Arp, Yves Tanguy, Rene Crevel, 1933.
by unknown
René Crevel et Marie-Laure de Noailles, Paris, ca 1930
Yves Tanguy and René Crevel
by Christian Bérard
Jacqueline Chaumont (Mouth) and Rene Crevel (Eye) in dadaist play ‘Coeur
by unknown
_____
Further
Rene Crevel @ goodreads
René Crevel, dandy révolutionnaire
‘ALL ABOARD FOR RATAPOILOPOLIS’
Lettre de René Crevel à Gertrude Stein
Elle ne suffit pas l’éloquence, René Crevel
RENÉ CREVEL AU SOMMET DE SA MONTAGNE MAGIQUE
Book: ‘A Fantasia on Voice, History and Rene Crevel’, by Peter Dubé
RC’s ‘Babylon’ @ 50 Watts
“Si je ne réussis rien, je me tuerai”: René Crevel inédit
‘Notes en vue d’une psycho-dialectique’, by Rene Crevel
‘Freud de l’Alchimiste à l’Hygiéniste’, by Rene Crevel
Des nouvelles de Crevel
René Crevel: un po’ angelo, un po’ boxeur
René Crevel: Las hermanas Brontë hijas del viento
René Crevel, risposta all’inchiesta sul suicidio e frammento da “Il clavicembalo di Diderot”
Rene Crevel’s grave
Buy ‘My Body and I’
____
Extras
trailer for LA MORT DIFFICILE starring Brandon Slagle. From the book by RENE CREVEL
Cafe life in Paris, 1927 w/ Pola Negri, Man Ray, Eugene McCown, René Crevel, a.o.
René Crevel – L’Esprit contre la raison / Écrits sur l’art – Artracaille 02-10-2012
_______
Is Suicide a Solution?
by Rene Crevel
A solution? Yes.
People say one commit suicide out of love, fear, or venereal disease. Not so. Everyone is in love, or thinks they are. Everyone is frightened. Everyone is more or less syphilitic. Suicide is a means of conscious choice. Those who commit it are person unwilling to throw in the towel like almost everyone else and repress a certain psychic feeling of such intensity that everything tells you had better believe it is a truthful and immediate sense of reality. This sense is the one thing that allows a person to embrace a solution that is obviously the fairest and most definitive of them all, the solution of suicide.
There is no love of hate about which one can say that it is clearly justified and definitive. But the respect (which in spite of myself and not withstanding a tyrannical moral and religious upbringing) I have to have for anyone who did not timorously withhold or restrain that impulse, that mortal impulse, leads me to envy a bit more each day those persons who were hurting so intensely that a continuing acceptance of life’s little games became something they could no longer stomach. Human accomplishment is not worth its weight in horse mucus. When personal happiness leads to even a modicum of contentment, this is more often than not a negative things like a sedative against me. The death that tempted me several times was lovelier by far than this downright prosaic fear of death that i might also quite properly call a habit the habit of timidity. I wanted to open a certain door, and I got cold feet. I feel I was wrong not to open it. I not only feel, I believe, I want to feel, I want to believe it was a mistake not to, for asI have found no solution in life, notwithstanding a long and diligent search, I am not about to attempt to pull myself together to give life another try unsolaced by the thought of this definitive and ultimate act in which I feel that I have caught a glimpse at least of the solution.
______
Carpets
‘René Crevel, a youth amongst his artistic peers, was a handsome, tragic figure full of passion, creativity and nostalgia. Crevel exercised his diverse skills when he collaborated with Paul Follot to design modernist tapestries for the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Moderne in Paris. Tragically, Crevel took his own life just before his 35th birthday, and left behind only a small number of masterworks in the disciplines of tapestry design and the literary arts.’ — collaged
___
Book
René Crevel My Body and I
Archipelago Books
‘In My Body and I (Mon Corps et Moi, 1925), René Crevel attempts to trace with words the geography of a being. Exploring the tension between body and spirit, Crevel’s meditation is a vivid personal journey through illusion and disillusion, secret desire, memory, the possibility and impossibility of life, sensuality and sexuality, poetry, truth, and the wilderness of the imagination. The narrator’s Romantic mind moves from evocative tales to frank confessions, making the reader a confidant to this great soul trapped in an awkward-fitting body. A Surrealist Proust.’ — Archipelago Books
______
Excerpt
*
p.s. RIP Steve Albini. What a big shock. ** Dominik, Hi!!! This is your big chance to show Vienna why it’s insane that its citizens don’t bathe themselves in the glory of Halloween every year. You could change lives and life itself for the better. Of course I should do the same thing with Paris, but, like you, I would imagine, I have no idea how. We did talk to the producers, and, as usual, we got about 1/100th of the information and satisfaction the we sought. It’s a start? (It’s always just a start with them). The mouse is now making its new home wherever that is after accidentally wandering into our humane trap yesterday. But I’m positive that some chum of his or hers or theirs will be poking its head out of somewhere any minute now. Love convincing my friend Ange to go see the new ‘Planet of the Apes’ with me today, G. ** Jamie F, Hi, Jamie! Lovely to meet you, and thank you breaking the blog’s ice. Gosh, thank you so much for the very kind words about my work. That’s so cool. I’m especially happy you singled out ‘The Marbled Swarm’ because that’s my favorite of mine. Naivete is kind of beautiful, but if you’re glad yours is in your past, then I’m happy to have assisted you. Defence mechanisms, that’s actually a pretty good guess, I think. Huh. Can you say anything more about your writing and your aspirations as a writer? I’d be interested to know. It’s great to get to know and make friends with fellow writers. And, yes, it’d be nice to meet. Where do you live? Is Paris on your agenda per chance? Anyway, thank you again, Jamie. It’s a real pleasure to get to talk with you. ** GrabBag and Greeny? Why?! :/., Hi. Finishing is the best. We’re so, so, so close to finishing the film and being prevented from finishing it by powers beyond our control, and it’s driving us nuts, but we have to patient, I guess. The short fiction book will come out in, I think, July. Oh, I meant dangerously promising because of what your description of him seemed to portend. I guess it could be argued that every kiss is an experiment? ** _Black_Acrylic, Happy you dug what you saw of hers. I did read that about the Ballard inspiration, which seemed very surprising. Yes, RIP Albini. Really didn’t anticipate that. ** Jack Skelley, Hi. Oh, my little book is called ‘Flunker’, so you were sort of vaguely close. I think I’ll finally get my paws on Bob’s physical book tomorrow amidst dinner with Ms. Tarasoff herself. Obviously, now you have to explain to me what a ‘group-grope reading/travesty’ is or was. Flip is a good nickname for you. I’m going to start calling you that. Yours truly, Red Skelton. ** Misanthrope, Gosh, see, I like it when dads call their sons ‘buddy’. I’m touched by the manners in which heterosexual males express affection to each other. I find it tender in a rich and indefinable way. How did your presentation go? Did they say, ‘Thanks, buddy’ afterwards? There are the curious non-diverging tastes, it’s true. Like … I can’t think of any, ha ha, but I remember us having ‘high five’ moments over certain things. ** Steve, Thanks for the link. I’ll hope to use it. Everyone, Tip from Steve: ‘The Prismatic Ground festival is streaming shorts online here. They can be viewed anywhere in the world.’ How was ‘Chime’? I finally watched that documentary ‘The Wolf Pack’ last night. Such a fascinating situation and lovely group of kids. ** James Bennett, Hi. I’ve never liked Whitman. I can’t stand his stuff honestly. He just seems like a blowhard to me, or rather his thing is really not mine. I will extremely skip that immense Sartre book, Jesus. How strange of him. Yeah, Paris, for all of its size, really feels like a small town, at least when you live here. In a way that I love after spending most of my life in gigantic LA where walking is a compartmentalised activity by default. Anyway, cool you’re coming over. Hit me up for a coffee or a communal stroll if you like. I have ‘Fuccboi’ on my hunt list. Thanks again. I hope all is progressive with your writing and everything else too. ** Bill, Nice stuff, her stuff. Cool about the latest ritual. The only French ritual I know of is everyone leaving for the countryside at the lightest drop of the smallest hat. Yes, RIP Albini. Really sucks, still so young, fuck. ** Harper, Hi. The French are seriously into futbol too, and they can get pretty loud about it, but they don’t get angry and self-hating and explosive when their team loses, at least that I’ve been able to detect. When they lost the World Cup a couple of years ago, 3/4 of a million people gathered just down the street from me in Concorde to chant and wave hands and show their love for their losing team. Which was odd in its own way as well. I think ‘best dialogue writer of all time’ is a monicker that she almost certainly deserves, yes. I’m so glad you like her. I go on Kinks jags too. ‘Village Green’ is my favorite as well. ‘Something Else’ is great. I even like, in a hit and miss way, a lot of the later ‘Preservation’ -> ‘Schoolboys in Disgrace’ era songs. After that, I feel like the greatness kind of fully waned. But maybe you have late period tips? I kind of like the heavily Kinks-influenced Jam songs, even though they’re kind of stiff. Happy Thursday! ** Justin D, Hey, Justin. I hope it found a suitable home. I trust that its survival instincts and ingenuity re: spacial possibilities are strong. I like slow burn films, so I’ll put ‘La Chimera’ on the possible future agenda. Thanks. Loss gets to me too, so it should be good. Zac’s and my film has a ‘loss’-oriented ending that tears me up, at least. ** Brightpath, Okay, I’ll do #1 and then skip to #4 and then, if I’m still jonesing I’ll fill in the middle section. I don’t mind cheesy CGI. Well, depending. Good luck closing out the school term. Robbe-Grillet, nice! My fave is ‘Recollections of the Golden Triangle’, I think partly because I like the name so much for some reason. (Of course in the original French it probably has a completely different title). ** Uday, Knock on wood. Congrats on hitting the 50% mark on college. What does that mean, two more years or … ? I’m not a fan of Ginsberg’s stuff after ‘Howl’ and that early era, no. Ginsberg and I got along okay until one of his boyfriends dumped him for me, and then we didn’t get along after that. Well, I would think that giving him time to think would work in your favor, but, yeah, tightly crossed fingers. Has he decided yet? That’s a pretty off-putting ‘come on’ approach right there, yes. Yow. ** Right. Today’s post is devoted to the brilliant and doomed young French writer René Crevel. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
*
My comment yesterday didn’t post and I double posted but que sa ra whatever will be will be and I’m way more of a Veronica than a heather for sure but you can tell can’t ya. So yesterday I just drove around with this super hot straight guy his wife and his new baby pitching solar panels to people and MuseMenacing my way into a custom remote job instead of the door to door salesman thing they were trying to get me to do! Had alot of fun and truly enjoyed it more than I expected! Also Updated MuseMenaceTV and I’ll be using it as “my give me an artist residency proof of concept” and I think it’s gonna work for sure especially with more polish and psychobabble I’ll probably have more cool stuff up by the time you read this! Ah volume is the killer we’ve been here before oh and the cookies are Sweet Loren’s I hope you can get em there the low sugar chocolate chip ones are only 6 grams of sugar a cookie so I always eat double the amount cause at this point it’s healthy it’s great recommend those and the previously mentioned oatmeal cranberry absolutely delicious. Love the website list thanks a million. What’d you get up too? And I made homemade pasta bolognese and rice noodles for dinner after my job interview. So brb And TTYLXOX!
As far as I can tell my comments refuse to post and I don’t do no shows after a TTYLXOX so know if I’m not posting the internet is eating my words cause it wants them so bad!
I am reading this post cursed poet style. I am listening Alien Lanes by GbV today. Fave songs? Always crush me? I have hard soft spot for The ugly vision. I have to read Recollections of golden triangle. One of my latest findings was a golden triangle so I am wondering about what it has to recollect. It even has a blue line and red dot on each side differently drawn on each side but same. This shit is crazy. The closet with the findings is totally wow. I want to show you picture. If someone plays games with me I hope it’s good natured and good things come my way. Sigh. Last one was a folded pink paper butterfly I opened it and came to life. Love butterflies always. I had blue butterfly sighting recently. My fave book of yours is My loose thread. I thought yours was was God jr or My loose thread but you told The Marbled Swarm before. I wonder which one of the Cycle novels is your fave or the best experience writing it for you. I have hard soft spot for the last two but that means in my heart that I love the first three the same so… Love from dull Crete. Like the new book title! Bring it on!
https://youtu.be/Wl0KcVv_H20?si=yVYFI75fUtcsUaAg
So yesterday I sent this link and that didn’t go through so you missed a day of seal! Oh no poor you! 🙁
Oh well I’m going to start my day it’s busy and if I have to time maybe at the end I’ll share my most amazing greatest news to you !📰🗞️: D
https://youtu.be/7Frz3J25ZRw?si=N4v8AYgHX-dW4ZGn
Wrong 🦭 link this one is right ^^
Ok its later on the the day.
Idk if it sent or not because I cant reply to it but its another seal video. (update it did ssend)
guess what, dude! I’ve officially become a student at cape fear community, whoop!
Im thinking the plan is to work towards an associate art degree or at least since alot of the courses i want / will take earn credit towards that. But idk yet!’ Im taking psychology (was wanting social psychology) art appreciation and…GEOLOGY. I go crazy for ROCKS!
: D what courses did you take? You mentioned you
Frankie says hello say hi to her she has the catnip munchies. Also she is seven years old but doesn’t look a day over 2.
Im going to bed sorry am very much exhausted. How are you feeling?
Better Red Than Dead Dennis: 1. Thanx for the Crevel. 2. Flunker cover is a winner. 3. Stories “group-grope” tonite is launch event for another book on Far West press. I have recruited an ASL person to interpret my text alongside me and shall return w tales and pics. 4. Give Sabrina a hug pour moi. 5. Let’s watch the new Planet of the Apes for our Saturday group grope! Seest thou soon. Yours, Flip Vintage Clothing Store on Melrose
Loving today’s post, although My Body and I seems difficult to source from UK sellers. Surrealism being hard to come by = says a lot about this country’s problems, I feel.
Hi!!
That’d be a worthy life goal – making Halloween a thing in France and Austria, or at least Paris and Vienna.
Are all of your producers so… unpleasant? Including the one who came on board really late?
Ah, but you managed to catch the mouse! We’re still battling the ants, but it’s not too bad.
Did Ange agree to watch the new “Planet of the Apes” with you? If so, how was it? (I didn’t see any of them…)
Love making this friend of a friend understand that when we say we don’t feel like going for a beer right now, we actually mean we’ll never feel like it, Od.
Hey Dennis,
Yeah I’m starting to see that side to Whitman now. I think I’m going through some sort of aesthetic shift. The plates are moving. My devious little ego and its sad passions are going to have to get demoted!
Of course I’d love to have a coffee or take a walk in Paris! I’ll be there for a few days late June. I can remind you closer to the time and see if it works for you.
Writing has slowed up these last few weeks due to practical life stuff interfering, but I have been walking around east London marinating in ideas and feelings. And I’m looking forward to getting back at it on Monday.
“Flunker”!! How exciting! Can’t wait man.
Take care,
James
The one thing I forgot to say about the Hell House movies is that they are an actual haunted house too. Not too long ago they did a meet and greet with the director, which looked pretty fun. The movies totally feel like what you would get if you gave the operators of a haunted house a camera!
I have not read that one yet, but I will add it to my list. I was fortunate to get a stack of his books for free after a professor moved, but he didn’t have that one. I haven’t seen any of his films either, besides Last Year at Marienbad (and I have been meaning to get to the script version of that one as well).
Dennis, Hmm, yeah, I actually like that between fathers and sons but for some reason draw the line at “buddy,” haha. I think it’s because in my experience, it’s always rung fake and phony to me. I distinctly remember David’s stepdad calling him “buddy” (yeah, not actual father and son, I know) and I just knew how much he despised David. I’ve also heard lots of bad fathers say it. Maybe that’s it?
But genuine affection otherwise? I’m all for it.
Hahahahaha. See? I told you you’re funny. They didn’t say that, but I did get tons of kudos and thanks and compliments. Kinda touching really.
Well, “Enter the Void” is one where we see eye to eye. And then the love of tunnels, secret rooms, bunkers, dioramas, and all that. But yeah, Art too. I love all your Galerias and you put them up because you love them, so there’s that.
The diverging ones probably do make up a much longer list, hahaha, but that’s okay.
THE WOLFPACK director Cristal Moselle just announced a new film, THE BLACK SEA.
CHIME was a bit disappointing. Kurosawa conceived it as a return to form, much in the vein of CURE, but it’s scary in the exact same ways his late ’90s and early 2000s films were.
Next year’s Met Gala: celebrities have pervy sex and eventually kill each other in a party modeled after Ballard’s HIGH RISE. Don’t bring your dog.
I went through my first day of physical therapy for my dizziness today. I’m supposed to do exercises for my neck daily, then go back for weekly therapy appointments starting on the 20th.
Lots of good extras. But there’s a problem with an identification in the second-to-the-bottom photo. That’s Georges & Yvette Malkine kissing, not Crevel.
Hey, Dennis. ‘Flunker’ in July. Hooray! Suddenly it’s summer here. Supposed to be near 90 degrees tomorrow/this weekend. Thank fuck for A/C. I’m trying to convince my bf that we need to hire a gardener. He thinks we can handle it ourselves, but I have zero interest. I’d rather appreciate someone else’s work when it comes to landscaping. A loss-oriented ending to ‘RT’, you say? Can’t wait. Might just have to order a copy of ‘My Body and I’ as the excerpt above is so good. Thanks!
Hey Dennis. Yeah, after the mid-70s my Kinks knowledge is fairly non existent. I like ‘Arthur’ a lot, and I’m not one for a lot of those 70s concept albums and prog adjacent stuff. (In my early teens I loved Pink Floyd but I’m afraid to go back because I probably wouldn’t like it so much. That said I revisit the Syd Barrett era fairly frequently). I love Ray Davies’ writing, in equal parts quaint and horny. ‘Lola versus powerman’ I like, ‘Face to Face’ is also good. Yeah, I like a lot of the Jam quite a bit too. I like their David Watts cover but it doesn’t have the energy of the original. I think The Jam owe more to the early stuff by The Who.
I’ve heard vaguely of Crevel and this seems right up my street. Archipelago are doing the lord’s work bringing back obscure European and non-English speaking books in print for English speakers. I like their graphic design and covers as well, with the flaps. I was talking with some people about if book cover designs are a dying art. Maybe it doesn’t apply so much to small presses but I think even still, generic styles are adopted to sell something that’s along the lines of a certain trend. I hate the ‘corporate Memphis’ art style particularly. What do you think? I actually think the early orange penguin covers are aesthetically genius, and I like what Fitzcaraldo are doing now. I know it’s a taboo to even acknowledge what a book cover looks like around certain literary types in fear of being accused of judging a book by its cover or whatever.
Hello!!!!! You got a new book coming out in July???!!!! Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat! I want!!!! Like, how? Where? How can I get my thirsty hands and eyes on it? Please tell me more about this; I’m still obsessed with your writing… I’m glad to hear you’ve almost finished your film too. Hopefully any annoying obstacle will disappear out of your way soon, and you’ll have a smooth finale. It’s interesting you’re using the word “dangerous” in this context. My brother was just telling me the exact same thing; I really do need to be careful because I adore my partner, and we’ve built a decent life together. I don’t want to risk anything, and I don’t have the slightest desire to ever upset my partner, however, this duuuude is getting into my head, in a way that is kind of overwhelming and slightly insane. Like we just booked a bnb to share under the pretext of the event we’re doing together. We haven’t met in person yet, and we’re suddenly gonna spend a week together in the same house… I don’t know. I’ve always been cautious and practical in regard to my relations with men, but this time, I don’t know what’s gotten into me! Kind of embarrassed about it to be honest, of course I casually flirt and sleep with men quite a bit, but it is not like me at all to jump into something so intense so quickly. We were both like this is weird but good, and completely out of our control, we have to do this. He also left his wife last week, literally moved out of her house, and yesterday he told me in his cute English I’m an angel who’s been sent to him. My brother says my eyes have a wicked sparkle these days, and I look like I’m trying to hide something everytime I mention the dude, he says I’ve never been like this with any of the other guys… I don’t know what’s going on to be honest, but I’m excited and terrified, which is better than being bored, right? Everything is just an experiment, yes? I love the idea of treating my emotions as experiments, too. Also, tea! Did I just read Allen Ginsberg’s ex left AG for you? How poetic, indeed. Who can blame him for that? Though I admit some of Ginsberg poems have been fundamental to me, but obviously, you are way hotter in every way. I would choose you, too. I hope you don’t mind me saying this. And this is indeed a sign I should finish this letter right here.
Hey, so I’m in shock, Dennis 😀
I can’t believe when I first started reading your work years ago, thinking ‘This is so relatable and edgy and perfect’ and searching you online that you’d eventually look at something I wrote and reply and actually want to talk to me…!?! This is blowing my mind! I’m so grateful. I don’t mean to go on and I’m sorry if this makes you cringe but you are *iconic* in my eyes. Like, I sometimes transcribe my favourite parts in your books to see if I can glean insights, also because I want to know how it feels to write those words, haha.
The Marbled Swarm is so great, I saw the interview you did for the French Hole release and wished I’d got a copy because I was intrigued by the cannibal scene, but I definitely didn’t know of you in 2011 — and even if I had known of you, my mom would’ve slapped the emo fringe off me if she had found that book in my room circa 2011, haha — so I was way, way too late to that party.
I’m still kinda naive in my way, I’m just that sort of person, what I find heart-wrenching reading your work sometimes is the ‘callous’ narrators (for lack of a better word) that sort of remind me of some of my exes? (Yeah, I’ve slept with some -ahem- interesting guys, haha.) But that makes it fascinating to me, like I didn’t understand those guys fully at the time and now I get to read something from their perspective, almost… Maybe I’m clutching at straws with that take? hah… And your portrayal of gay sex can be so brutal and honest (from what I’ve read) and made me realise there is a violence behind gay sex that no one really acknowledges. A lot of hetero authors when they write gay characters lean in heavily on cutesy, tender, closet-angst stuff (which is fine and all, it sells) but the truth is there’s an inherent ‘horror’ to gay sex that you capture so well. Maybe you didn’t do that intentionally, but I like it.
Yes, defense mechanisms!! I was thinking how some of us, growing up, maintain low expectations of the people around us to avoid being hurt, but there exists an inverse of that — elusive perhaps to those of us who never expected kindness.
In terms of my writing… I’ve always had an interest in reading, and writing stories and stuff for fun, but recently — in the last couple of years — I got serious about being a writer. I write fiction (prose) mostly, and I’d like to make a career of it, as in write novels. It’s early days, so I suppose right now my aspiration is to get more exposure, as in more readers, or opportunities for exposure for my upcoming work. I have some of my fiction serialised on the site Medium (an app very bland and corporate, I know, but that’s where I ended up for some reason, I’d like to branch out) and I have followers and readers on there who seem to like my work and comment on my work and stuff, which is really great actually.
My latest is a sub-novella-length story, and to summarise it without giving away too much: it’s about this interesting fem guy and his father and a bizarre murder!… it’s all behind a paywall though. I can send it to you as a PDF, but only if you’re genuinely interested, I’m reluctant because I consider it ‘juvenilia’, and I know I can do better. (Dennis Cooper ought to see my best stuff only, haha.) So, if you do read it, just keep that in mind and judge it based more on its potential, I guess.
I’m writing a novella as my next project which I’m excited about, so if that turns out to be incredibly profound then I’ll probably beg you to read that, haha. Though I’d be terrified that you’d hate it. And I get that nobody reads novels anymore, so going in this direction may be naivety on my part, but this is just something I’m into and want to do.
Where I live is sort of all over at the moment. I’m between Australia and the UK for various reasons. I’m in Sydney currently (can’t recommend it) so the timezone when you post is bleh.
I have friends in Germany — Munich — and we discussed I visit this summer, potentially. If that happens, I would totally arrange an add-on trip to Paris! (I doubt I could convince anyone to come with me though, so it’d probably just be me visiting — I’d have to entertain myself I guess, I’ll have to think of fun things to do. I’m sure Paris has some wild art exhibitions, I like looking at weird stuff I barely understand, so there’s that, plus the olympics. Well, if I got to meet you the trip would be worth it! Lots of big IFs, so let me discuss and get back to you.)
I’ve visited Paris before, years ago, I did the whole cliched romantic weekend with a boyfriend (did I mention I was naive? hah) Anyway, I think I’m due another visit, and to do it right this time.
FYI, I’d be pretty nervous meeting you in person… I’d be scared you wouldn’t like me for whatever reason… which got me wondering… and I had a very ‘cheeky’ question to ask which I’m almost certain you’ll very artfully ignore… so I’m going to save it for now 😉
Rene Crevel is dreamy 🥰 who doesn’t love some mind-bending surrealism!?
Oh, this ended up super super long, I’m so sorry! Wishing you all the best Dennis, have a great day! And I’ll try to get up to speed with what everyone is doing here and learn to write shorter comments!!
Jamie F
Would Crevel be as known if not for the running theme of suicide? I don’t know if I would enjoy My Body and I as much if it were not placed within that life. This feels cruel to think. Yes, two more years unless I can pull off a miracle and move to a PhD next year without finishing my bachelors (which would be great). Down in the dumps right now, to be honest. The guy said that he wanted to, but the long distance gave him pause. That’s fair, and we’re still friends (I think we got a little closer because I felt myself relax around him afterwards) but I’m still oddly sad. I don’t usually get sad about things like this but I should be back to my chipper self by tomorrow. Maybe Stendhal was right about this whole love thing.
Hey! :3
Really enjoyed the last two posts — reading the Yvonne Rainer and René Creval posts made my morning coffee much more interesting than usual. Really wasn’t expecting the sudden ‘Rugs’ in today’s post, which was lovely.
Did you end up going to the cinema the other day? Last thing I’ve been to see was ‘Godzilla X Kong’ — which was actually surprisingly (?) alright (?) hahaha
It’s meant to be a lovely 22 degrees here today, so my day plans have shifted to buying an overpriced iced coffee, sitting in the park and reading most (or all!) of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ Sending you sunny reading vibes with the stipulation that the breeze is light enough not to be a pain.
(ps. for ps. I was being a little nosey and had a peek through some of the other comments — saw a few people have already asked about ‘Flunker’, so I won’t repeat all that, but just to say I’m on the sidelines cheerleading, pom-poms and all)