‘Weirdly, and to my considerable surprise, Eustace Chisholm & the Works reminded a lot of William Gaddis’ first novel The Recognitions – while it is shorter and less complex and lacks the vast amounts of erudition Gaddis splattered all across his work, both novels share something that I would like to describe (for lack of a better word) as their motion. Both Eustace Chisholm and The Recognitions are ensemble novels, they do not have a single protagonist whose unfolding story the reader would follow, not even a small group like a couple or a family, but a large cast of characters none of which would stand out as central; and their stories are not presented as continuous threads weaving a tapestry, but rather as isolated, small episodes which the reader has to actively perceive as a mosaic. Unlike the novels of, say, Dos Passos, however, who so far does something quite similar, The Recognitions and Eustace Chisholm do not replace the central character with a central perspective and ordering overview but, so to speak, stay at eye level with their characters and their fragmented worldview – while there is no single central perspective, each character forms the centre of his section of the narrative, resulting in a constant shift of focus throughout the novels, a stop-and-go, jerking, stuttering motion that can induce dizziness and indeed seems to have led to seasickness in many readers both of Purdy and Gaddis.
‘Eustace Chisholm & the Works, though, it has to be said, is considerable more accessible than The Recognitions. Where Gaddis often seems to be hellbent on frustrating the reader, Eustace Chisholm, while still a demanding read, appears to do its best to ease readers into its vertiginous structure – indeed, almost to lure them in, only to then shock and repel them with scenes of a harrowing violence that in their sheer, unmitigated brutality have an almost physical impact on the reader. The novel does have its humorous moments, does indeed have so many of them that it reads in part like a comedy, but in the end it is a tragedy that functions as its own satyr play.
‘And as it should in satyr play, sexuality plays a large part in Eustace Chisholm – more specifically male homosexuality to which the book has a remarkably relaxed and matter-of-course attitude that makes it unusual even today and that might very well have been just as shocking to readers at the time of it its first publishing as the scenes of violence. (And one might also note, to bring this comparison up for the last time, that homosexuality seems to play a structurally similar role in Eustace Chisholm as Catholicism does in The Recognitions.) But if the novel is accepting of homosexuality, its characters are not necessarily so, and in fact it is precisely this which finally gives rice to tragedy out of the farce – everyone in the novel is in some way or other refusing their innermost desires, not even acknowledging even – or possibly particularly – when they get a chance to fulfill them. Turning away their chance at fulfilment and happiness, they find that the denied desires will not be gainsaid but return to haunt them in invariably self-destructive ways.
‘Eustace Chisholm & the Works has apparently become something of a “gay modern classic” (at least that is what the cover of my edition claims) but it is worth reading not just because of its subject matter but because it attempts (and largely succeeds) to find a literary form for an altered way of life, the lack of a narrative centre or unified thread, the permanently shifting perspective capturing both the dissolution of social ties and the increase in individual freedom in 60s’ subcultures. In other words, this is excellent stuff and James Purdy is definitely a writer I want to read more of.’ — Heloise Merlin
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Further
James Purdy @ Wikipedia
Who is James Purdy? Edward Albee Tells
A Conversation with James Purdy
James Purdy: Memento Mori
James Purdy @ goodreads
The Strange, Unsettling Fiction of James Purdy
‘I’m not a gay writer, I’m a monster’: how James Purdy outraged America
The Mystery of James Purdy
An Interview
James Purdy Will Never Be Famous Again
James Purdy’s Chronicles of Outsiderdom
All of the Monsters (In Which I Accuse James Purdy of Throwing My Four-Year-Old Child Down Two Flights of Stairs Using His Powers of Telekinesis)
James Purdy (1914-2009)
Christmas with James Purdy
James Purdy’s Outrages Against the Establishment
James Purdy by Allen Frame
queerplaces – James Purdy
Seedy Equations: Dealing with James Purdy
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Extras
A Celebration of the Life and Work of James Purdy
James Purdy Radio Interview and poems with drawings
TLIO Episode 21: Eustace Chisholm and the Works — James Purdy
James Purdy Burial
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Interview
by Vince Aletti
James Purdy: You know the real fiction is life. It’s so complicated and we never understand it.
Aletti: Often in your books there are young men who are looking for fathers and find themselves taken up by older men who try to adopt them.
Purdy: Or older women. Or other young men, who are often unscrupulous.
Aletti: This seems to be an almost obsessive return to an idea.
Purdy: I think that’s one of the American themes, but it’s also in the Spanish novel. I lived in Spain and I got very fond of their literature, and they’re among of the first to deal with that subject of the lost children. Cervantes wrote a wonderful story called Rinconetti and Cortadillo about boys who are driven out by their families. They go to Seville and fall into the clutches of a gang of thieves…. But the Spanish earlv introduced the subject of, you might say, the lost boys. And it’s in Mark Twain and Herman Melville, very strong. But I think today, one of the most common things are these young boys and girls who get lost, who run off. You see them in New York and they really are lost. So it is one of the big American themes.
Aletti: But you rarely treat it in terms of kids in Times Square.
Purdy: I dealt with it in [Purdy’s early novella] 63: Dream Palace with the two boys from West Virginia who were destroyed, really. And in some of the short stories and the plays. But in the end, you’re stuck with yourself and what YOU know.
Aletti: What happened when vou went to Chicago?
Purdy: I was able to go to school. After a short time, the war broke out and I was in such bad shape I just joined the army. I couldn’t find work.
Aletti: How did you live in Chicago?
Purdy: I just lived in rooms. Sometimes I didn’t have a place to stay.
Aletti: Were you able to take care of yourself?
Purdy: Somehow, I don’t know how.
Aletti: Was it an adventure?
Purdy: Yeah! Yes, it was. I guess I didn’t know any better or I would have been frightened.
Aletti: What happened when you went into army?
Purdy: I was about the last person who should have ever been in the army. But I lasted four years, mostly in the South. That’s where I got the material for Eustace Chisholm and the Works (1967).
Aletti: That was one of the books that horrified the critics.
Purdy: They’re easy to horrify! Yes! I knew a lot of Indians in the army; they hated it.
Aletti: So you were stationed mostly in the South?
Purdy: Yes, Mississippi and so forth. I went to Cuba after the army, before Castro, and loved it. I taught English for a vear to 14- and 16-year-olds. Then I went to school in Mexico and taught in Spain. But I was always writing these stories and sending them out, and these magazines just detested them.
Aletti: At what age was this?
Purdy: I was approaching 30 when I was pouring out these stories. But I was writing stories in my twenties and then I lost some of them when I was moving around. But I had about 11 stories. Some of the unpublished stories were privately printed in England. Which was strange, because these stories that had been anathematized by New York publishers and magazines were suddenly extolled so highly that I thought I was crazy, or they were crazy. And they were translated almost immediately. The Italians bought them before the U.S. on the basis of the English reviews.
“Malcolm” was one of the stories I had that was just lying around. I hadn’t finished it though, because I didn’t know how to finish it. “Malcolm” was sort of put on the map by Dorothy Parker in Esquire. The publishers didn’t know quite what to do with it. They’re all so timid, you know, and money-conscious. But Farrar, Straus condescendingly took it. And I think they felt they had a wild animal in the house. They didn’t know what to make of me. I’m always given a funeral when my books are published, a pauper’s funeral. Because they only push what they think is going to bring in the coin. In America, you have to be sort of a dancing bear, an entertainer, a personality.
Aletti: Let’s backtrack a bit and go back to your early writing. What made it occur to you to be a writer?
Purdy: I used to write little things as soon as I could write and my mother would find them and she was quite disturbed. Actually, I think I was mimicking some of the things she said about people and when she saw it in black and white, she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe she said it and that it was being recorded by a . . . devil. [Early on, Purdy also kept notebooks, all lost now, the result of his “gypsy” life.] That’s why I’ve stuck here [in Brooklyn Heights] so long–to have one place to keep things. You can see it’s a mess, I don’t know how to keep order.
Aletti: You’ve said you don’t write with an audience in mind.
Purdy: No, not a big audience . . . I guess I have an audience but not a public. I think being a writer is like being in a war. You’re in battle all the time. Not just with the critics but with yourself. So it’s not a very pleasant life.
Aletti: Jeremy’s Version and The House of the Solitary Maggot were described as parts one and two of a trilogy.
Purdy: That was the publisher’s idea; there was no real trilogy. But they are what I would call continuous novels in that they have similar themes: Jeremy, The Maggot, Mourners Below, On Glory’s Course and now this one, In the Hollow of His Hand. They’re sort of a quintuple, just related novels.
Aletti: How would you describe the theme?
Purdy: It’s really the passionate connection of family members, I think. Their sense of identity comes through the family and, in a way, the town. The parents are really obsessed with their children and the children with their parents.
Aletti: In On Glory’s Course, the power of the town is particularly striking.
Purdy: It’s almost as though it were the main character, with all the narrowness of prejudice and ignorance. But you see all societies are crushing like that. There are no free societies. We all live under scrutiny. But in cities, you don’t have the same sense of that.
Aletti: No, that’s because you can hide. But yet when your characters are in cities, like in Eustace Chisolm, they seem to form these little or groups that have interactions as violent and disapproving as your small towns. When I think of some of the things that happen in your books, like the horrible events of In a Shallow Grave, how can it surprise you that the critics would be appalled?
Purdy: They are appalling, they appall me. I mean, they appall me first. Or I would be a monster. My grandmother told me the story of The Solitary Maggot when I was a little boy. It was a sleety day and she was walking me, so I wouldn’t slip, and just then a buggy came by with an old man with white hair. He had this whip and was whipping the horse. And she said, “That old man’s son was in the silent movies.” And that was the basis, or one of the bases, of that book. I’m supposed to be part Indian. My great-grandmother was part Indian, an eighth, I think, so I have very little left.
Aletti: Does your interest in Indians have any connection to an outsider status?
Purdy: Yes, I think so. I’m always interested in whoever doesn’t belong or conform. I’m considered anti-establishment. That isn’t really true; the establishment never wanted me, and you can’t be anti-something where you’re not even invited.
Aletti: Your new book, In the Hollow of His Hand–where does the title come from?
Purdy: It’s an expression I’d always heard as a child. It meant to me, in this life one is totally insecure, totally at the mercy of fate, circumstance.
Aletti: I’m curious about the book’s growing sense of unreality and dreaminess.
Purdy: Well, he’s left his home, you see, he’s left his roots. I know a lot of people say that’s a defect in the book. The first part is realistic, and the rest isn’t, but he left the realistic part. If you suddenly leave home as a child and are kidnapped by gypsies or hobos, as a child you have no key to this world. It’s all fantastic. And furthermore, it is a fantastic world; I think a child would see all that as unreal. Children see a lot, but they have no key to that. When very young children see sex or see someone being murdered, they step out of something that they know into something they have no understanding of.
Aletti: Chad the book’s lost boy, is taken on long car rides with an Indian named Decatur, leading to a series of odd scenes of confrontation, fascination and revulsion over the discovery that they both have webbed feet. These encounters seem so compulsive.
Purdy: They are. But I think people do that. You see most people never tell you about those things; they’re ashamed. What I do, I guess, is I show what people really do and never tell.M
Most novelists write about what people see and understand and I don’t believe in that reality, I don’t think it’s real. I think it’s fiction. Two of my favorite writers are Hawthorne and Melville because they’re always doing that–they’re showing what really is there, behind the facade. And in so much writing, the facade is the reality.
Aletti: I’m wondering about the compulsive nature of your writing and about your impulse to write.
Purdy: Yes, I think it comes from some deep unhappiness and confusion and terror.
Aletti: Why terror?
Purdy: I just felt I was surrounded by danger.
Aletti: Do you feel writing helped to dispel it?
Purdy: It didn’t dispel it, but it kept me from screaming in the streets.
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Book
James Purdy Eustace Chisholm and the Works
Liveright
‘No James Purdy novel has dazzled contemporary writers more than this haunting tale of unrequited love in an indifferent world. A seedy depression-era boarding house in Chicago plays host to “a game of emotional chairs” (The Guardian) in a novel initially condemned for its frank depiction of abortion, homosexuality, and life on the margins of American society. A cast of characters displaced by economic distress congeal around the embittered poet Eustace Chisholm, who acts as a something of a Greek chorus for the doomed and destructive relationship that is instigated when landlord Daniel Haws falls in love with young college student Amos Ratcliffe. Building to a shocking conclusion, Eustace Chisholm and the Works is a dark and gothic look at the strange and terrible power of love amid a “psychic American landscape of deluded innocence, sexual obsession, violence, and isolation” (William Grimes, New York Times).’ — Liveright
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Excerpt
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p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hey. Trip was good. ‘Story of the Eye’ turned me around too when I read it. It’s way up there. Honored that my stuff is helping to create really good dialogue. What more could the maker of anything want really. I’m still too jet lag-zonked to subject your reading to my state of mind, but sleep’s help is gradually on the way. Excited to. Thanks a lot, man. My fuzziness is be-warmed. Love back! ** Tyler Ookami, Oh my god, that’s horror. The broiling sky, I mean. Awesome that you were a scare actor. Some LA artist friends and I were seriously talking about doing a haunt together there next year, in which case I’ll get to fulfil that particular career goal. Seriously, do Efteling. I think you know it’s my favorite amusement park, and I think you would similarly bliss out there. They just opened a new spooky and, as usual for them, innovative ride, Danse Macabre, and I think Zac and I will use that as an excuse to head up there shortly. I had no idea Kate Bush located a special there, wow. I’ll greedily use that link a bit later. Huh. I think I have to watch that horrible Fuji-Q knock off film, or a bit of it. Too curious. I never get scared in haunted houses, but I got the closest in that attraction. Thanks, jay. Such a rich bunch of paragraphs. Hugs. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks, and ditto. I can’t wait to wake up fully enough to fully appreciate my homecoming. Not that I’m not. Trick-or-treaters in Vienna! Nice! I didn’t take photos of the haunts I hit up, but Zac did, and I’ll have to get him to dropbox them to me. So I can’t illustrate my favorites unless, well, I can find something online. No pix of Cats & Bats Haunt, but it was a fave. Very handmade, built on this kind of cliff in front of a person’s house. At one point you were forced inside a giant cardboard oven and ‘cooked’. Another fave was Backwoods Massacre. Hellizondo Haunt was really nice. Wildwood’s Ghost Town, ditto. On the pro ones, Reign of Terror was amazing. It had 350 rooms and took 45 minutes to walk through. Really incredible. So there’s some. We did about 25 haunts in all. Love making me not want to take a nap, G. ** Bill, Hi. I hope the gig went really well last night. How was it for you? Seven weeks?! Where in the world are you going? Being abroad does not help the election anxiety unfortunately. Yikes. ** Steve, Thanks. Much needed. I think what Zac and I want to do is make an actual haunt. We were talking with some LA artist friends about doing that next year. Maybe we would document doing that, if we do. I’m so sorry about the stuff with your parents. I feel that pain or imagine I can at least. Thank god for Internet Archive’s return. I haven’t heard the new Cure yet, but I’ve read it’s a gloomy one, which sounds promising to me for whom ‘Pornography’ is their highlight. ** _Black_Acrylic, The missing goes both ways, for sure. Great, Thursday, tick tick … The PT double header awaits me or my cogency, I mean. That Italo Disco vermouth looks pretty scary, dude. Be careful. ** Diego Luis Sanromán, Hi, Diego! No, that’s my old, defunct address, Write to me at [email protected]. Thanks. ** Uday, Hey, Uday! There you are! Reflective sounds good under the circumstances. I spent October doing more than being. But now I’m sitting at my desk again where thoughtfulness should be more conducive. Awesome to see you again! ** sam jenks at dif, Hi, sam, if I may call you that. It’s great to meet you, and I’m happy you found this place. Your project sounds really interesting. Connect … sure, how so? I’ll be seeing Thomas Moore any day now. Anyway, happy to help however I can. Everyone, sam jenks at dif has an exciting seeming new project called dif, described as ‘co-producing misfit gay lit and other queer shit’. Check it out. Thanks! ** Lucas, Hey, buddy. Thanks for staying up late to watch the thing. No, Zac took pix, and I have to get them from him. I was too busy studying them and taking mental notes. I’m still lagged annoyingly, but it seems a little less annoying and in-play every day, so hopefully I’ll be sharp any minute now. I can’t wait to see you here too! ** Justin D, Hey, J. Thanks, pal, and same to you. The trip was very good, productive and mind-blowing in the right balance. Oh, I wonder who took the photo. It’s so crisp and cold here in Paris as it never is in LA. I pulled my scarf out of the drawer and everything. I’ll look for ‘Evil Does Not Exist’. Criterion isn’t available in France, sadly, but surely there’s way. Thanks a lot for the tip. I spent my Halloween on a jet watching in-flight entertainment, and I don’t think anything I saw was remotely recommendable. I would say avoid ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ if it’s not too late. ** Cletus, Hey, hey, Cletus. C. McCarthy is pretty great, no? ‘Blood Meridien’ especially for me. Cher! Pix? Great about the readings. Can you say more about them? I read in NYC at the top of my trip, and it was weirdly great. My Halloween was spent flying from LA to Paris, so no costume for me. One of the flight attendants had a toy jet ‘stuck’ through her head and fake bloody lips. It made people around me uncomfortable, but it made me happy. ** HaRpEr, Hi, H! Oh, that is a cool Bowie costume. Suave and just right combo of understated but unmistakeable. Thanks. How do they get rid of mould? I feel like I should know that. Can they just scrape it off? Is it that simple? I couldn’t get through ‘Dhalgren’, not because I didn’t think it was really good. Length + sci-fi is a tough route for me. ** Jacob, Hey, Jacob. That sounds fun: the haunt. I don’t think I’ve been to a frat haunt. Huh. Like I was sort of saying up above, my favorite haunt moment was when this evil baker forced my friends and me into a giant, walk-in oven and then cooked us, with high heat and steam and the sounds of flesh roasting. Pretty nice. Your tote bag ‘mask’ sounds like a hit in my imagination, for sure. And, yes, Ossian Brown-ish to boot. My favorite costumes … maybe this kid who looked about 13 years old wearing a t-shirt that said, ‘Eat me, pedophiles’. I thought that was daring. I don’t get scared, unfortunately, or not by ‘scary stuff. The oven thing tried hard. One monster in one of the haunts made a friend of mine sit in a chair and then electrocuted her very realistically even though she said it didn’t hurt. That was, well, startling at least. ** Okay. Not long before I left on vacation, I was talking with someone here about the James Purdy novel up there, and I thought I would just go ahead and extend that, if you’re interested. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Hi!!
Ah, thank you so much for all the links! You had a really rich haunt tour – 25 haunts! Backwoods Massacre looks very impressive, and I’d definitely try Cats & Bats Haunt’s cooking experience, too. And Reign of Terror… 45 minutes?! That sounds crazy!
This year, people here seemed to have taken Halloween noticeably more seriously than last year. I mean, actual trick-or-treaters?! So who knows? Maybe, at some point, a haunt will pop up, too!
If love can’t make your jet lag disappear immediately, he’ll at least allow you to take a nap without losing any time, Od.
Yeah, I was totally infatuated with Story of the Eye, it felt like the parts of Sade I really liked (the clinical lists of sex acts), but inhabited for way longer, and picked apart way more. I also went totally crazy for the way the narrator was, like, basically entirely following the sexuality of Simone, with very little input of his own other than penetration and participation. I thought the choice of obsession being so banal was so smart, often these sexual fixation texts pick a totally absurd thing (like, Crash or Death in Venice, or something), but having to pick out these extreme feelings from seemingly simple symbols was so fascinating. I’m going to let it settle for a month or so first, then I’m definitely going to try more Bataille.
I think reading Bataille has actually made me so much more interested in, I guess, highly-mannered or hyper-specific pornography. There’s this one show that me and my flatmates have been watching (some japanimation, called Quintuplets or something like that), that’s all about one man dating 5 identical sisters, who all live in this huge penthouse apartment. It’s not really trying to do anything other than titillate, but it’s totally fascinating, it’s so deeply unerotic in an unintentional way. The show basically just revolves around these, like, terribly written conversations that attempt to flesh out the various love interests, that ultimately end up with all the women in a state of undress / unconsciousness / upset. There are like, hundreds of episodes too, and apparently very little happens, so I’m hugely looking forward to watching more.
Oh, also, zero pressure to listen to my reading, I’m pretty much only uploading it as a form of accountability to myself. P.S., I found this totally bizarre video about your “secret retreat in Georgia”. It must just be some algorithm that makes celebrity gossip videos, but I thought you’d get a kick out of it!
That’s amazing about the flight attendant lol. And I read at the KGB bar in NY and tattooed mom in Philly. Both very cool places. I read with my publisher and some other writers. It was a good line up. An editor from Hobart for example and some people with CLASH books and people published by my publisher, etc. It was my first time reading live and in-person so I thought it’d be nerve racking but it was just very fun. And then I sold some books afterward. My favorite part though was going to the Mutter museum in Philly. That was awesome. An important and super special place featuring medical “oddities.” You’d love it I feel. Blood meridian was also my favorite of Mccarthy I’ve read so far. I think The Road was my least favorite actually which is odd because it’s the most decorated. I heard that someone is doing an animated series based on blood meridian which if that’s still in the works I’m pumped for it. And I’d def include a picture of me as Cher if I knew how. Lemme see if I can figure it out. Happy Monday!
Hey Dennis, welcome back! I thought this absence would be super long but it felt so fast! It’s funny how time flies (when you’re having fun) as Janet says I am grown boy and still how time flies blows my mind and so not predictable always
I started gym and did my third full 1h session today. Goes great and can’t wait to see results My hunk era coming
Ok this book as I told you before is my favourite read of the year so far. Left me completely in love with it and excited to read more for him. Curious about his short stories
I have the other cover the pink one with the snake and the butterfly which is great but I like this one you did post even more.
It is very super good
the hand descending and moth
It makes me think of an intervention from the upper area, from the sky and a force coming from earth with power going up, the moth hovering over the ground Very funny that it could work also upside down makes me think and my mind going overdrive and think about stuff from the book too in other lights
I like very much to visualise hands coming from the sky arms and hands of “deities” coming for help and am obsessed with moths so I was all about that
Loved totally your reading I missed the live but saw later the video. It was amazing Loved my bestie Face eraser being read aloud I am glad you chose to read it in the end! Any news from your end I would like to know? Any updates? Nice vibes from Chania
The fee for the Flash Fiction course has just been refunded, so I figure that there must not be enough Dundee attendees to make it viable. Bah! Anyway, I had an idea the other day for a potential writing project. This would be equal parts depressing and hilarious, making it quite a commitment. Will keep you updated on its progress.
Please don’t fret about the Italo Disco vermouth. I reckon such drinks tend to sit on the kitchen shelf gathering dust for a good few years at a time.
I’d certainly trek down to LA to see a DC and Zac designed haunt. Keep us updated on developments.
The gig went pretty well, thanks. There’s a (probably good) recording, so we’ll see if I still think it went pretty well after I hear it.
That first excerpt from Eustace Chisholm is pretty irresistable. Purdy has been on my mind since the perverse Narrow Rooms; not sure if this is what I’d dive into on the road. I’ll mostly be in Hong Kong for family stuff, with maybe a couple weeks in Asia at the end before I return.
Bill
Would the haunt draw on the imagery of your novels?
My dad hasn’t been able to connect with the home health aid who called both my parents and myself Friday. I left a voice-mail message asking her to call both of us.
The Cure album is closest to DISINTEGRATION. The songs are relatively long, none are very poppy, and the mood is pretty dark. (If you have 3 hours to spare, there’s a newly recorded concert film up on YouTube, in which they play the whole album.)
I saw a couple major new films during the blog’s break: THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG, NO OTHER LAND, and QUEENDOM. The latter is a documentary about a drag queen in a small Russian town. Tonight, I’ll be seeing another Cannes entry, ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT.
I’m making my debut as a music critic for The Quietus next month, with a review of baile funk producer DJ Bosak’s upcoming ep.
The election tomorrow is a major source of stresss.
Hey, Dennis! I don’t know the photographer’s actual name but he goes by len-gua on tumblr. Here’s the photo — Pulling out the scarf: nice. I’m quite partial to a scarf as well. It’s a shame Criterion Channel isn’t available in France. They just added their restoration of ‘Totally Fucked Up’, which I watched yesterday and had totally forgotten you have a mention in that film. I think I remember you saying that at one point Gregg Araki wanted to adapt/direct ‘Frisk’—fun to imagine. Ah, ‘KotFM’: I did see that when it came out, and I didn’t hate it, but I can’t remember much of it all. Probably not something I’ll revisit. MUBI has a new series made by William Kentridge called ‘Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot’. I’ve only watched the first episode, but it’s quite interesting. TRAILER — Jet lag terminated yet?
I watched Shock Labyrinth over a decade ago; looking it up, I can’t really find anyone going to bat for it, seems pretty widely disliked. Shimizu as a rule is pretty good, though. I realize now that a film of his I’ve had on my list for a while, Tormented, is a somewhat tangential sequel and seems well-liked among fans of that sort of colorful live action manga strain of J-horror. I’ll watch it tonight and let you know if it does anything for me.
An artist-designed haunt sounds really cool, especially since it seems the LA scene has a lot of focus on large scale installation type of stuff.
Also, speaking of weird J-horror things, a long running special interest of mine, Gregory Horror Show, is being brought back from the dead after some twenty-odd years! There was a crowdfunding campaign for a new game and animated series that went through and, while there’s no word on new animations, there is a Steam page and release date for the new game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2191770/Gregory_Horror_Show_Soul_of_Roses/
Hey. The mould is gone! They just had to spray it a couple of times with something and it disintegrated. My radiator was also broken so that was making it worse. So the disease from my walls is gone, and I’m finally not freezing.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of sci-fi either. I don’t really ever think in terms of genre though, so if the style is interesting enough and there are some interesting things going on then I can look past it if it’s not really my thing. But yes, the mass market aliens and spaceships with bloated world building and predictable plot formulas, not for me.
This is one of my favourite books. ‘Malcolm’ is another favourite. ‘Eustace’ has some great caustic wit, I think Purdy was really great at that, everything funny can also be liable to make one burst out in tears. The ending is insane, I’ve been meaning to reread it for a while. I should really read ‘Narrow Rooms’, that’s been at the top of my list for ages.
Hi. It’d be cool if you could share those haunted house pics eventually, then. I have a bunch of photos from Berlin and Halloween that I’d love to show you but I feel weird about doing it publicly here so it’ll have to wait. Oh, something unexpected happened, like, a few weeks ago now, when I was in Cologne with a friend and we went into this big chain bookstore and I found the German translation of ‘the sluts’ right at the entrance of the shop in the queer books section. I thought it was kind of funny that it was in the queer section along, like, ‘Giovanni’s room’ but it was a happy surprise to see one of your books there. Something else that happened last month that I forgot to tell you was that I got on antidepressants, a really small dose, and honestly they’re working pretty well. I was worried that they’d kill my creativity but I don’t think I’m seeing signs of that yet. At least not that I’m aware of. And btw, since you brought it up in the ps somewhere else, are you still going to try to get tix to the xiu xiu show? I’m pretty sure they’re sold out for that night in Paris but obviously it’d be so great if you were there. Hope you have a great day and that your jet lag will quickly leave you!
Not sure if CloudFlare ate my comment, trying again. Sorry if this ends up being duplicated.
I liked the excerpt a lot, might actually read the book. I’ve started reading Marco Vassi ebooks and it’s OK. It’s just too slow annoying and inconsistent to order books from abroad.
I was traveling for almost all of the past month. Due to a flight cancellation I ended up spending more time in Europe and less in Japan than I’d originally planned. Krakow was pretty. I saw Temenos friends in Warsaw and shot my first 16mm experimental film on my friend’s good Bolex camera. I shot buildings in a depressed area of Warsaw that survived the Warsaw Uprising, covered in bullet holes. If I didn’t have friends in Warsaw I don’t think I’d enjoy it.
Berlin has lost its charm for me. A lot of cold posing. I heard some good electronic music and hung out with Beavers and a nomad artist friend (separately). A surprise highlight was mid 19th Century etchings of Paris by Charles Meryon. He was mentally ill and gave up on being a painter because he was colorblind, so he made super detailed landscape etchings of Paris. The water and clouds are particularly impressive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Meryon
I loved Prague. I’d been there before for a brief touristy trip. This time I wandered around more, met a friend of Beavers’ (diplomat, cultured gentleman who agreed with me that Paris > Berlin) and a friend of my nomad artist friend (good painter and t-shirt designer). I enjoyed how Prague doesn’t seem to be aspiring to anything. Things work well enough and it’s just chill. I heard better punk and electronic music there than in Berlin. The sleaziness of the gay bars enchanted me. I exchanged a quite limited amount of money and fluids with some hustlers, left the city wanting to live there someday for a stint as a digital nomad.
South Korea was a fun family trip. For me and my mom it was a journey. I was returning to a place where I’d had an intense experience as a young English teacher. She’s been obsessed with South Korea for a few years, watched K-dramas, read up on the culture, had expectations that were largely deflated. My sister and brother-in-law lightened the mood because they didn’t have any emotional baggage. The highlights for me were a meaningful non-verbal interaction with a Buddhist monk and seeing Bonsai trees for the first time (Bonsai trees could make a good blog post).
I packed a lot into 4 days in Tokyo. Mostly wandering around different neighborhoods. I was surprised by how different Japan is from South Korea. I’d read about the aging population, economic stagnation, and kind of British-like eccentricity, but was surprised by just how insular and strange it felt, how hard it was to get around in English. The biggest wish-Dennis-were-here moment from all of my travels was Halloween night in the Shinjuku Kabukicho red light district: totally Blade Runner. A punk rock show was excellent, Japanese bands and a Finnish band, strangely polite and static audience. I was lucky to catch a huge fantastic exhibition at the contemporary art museum. All of the work from one guy’s collection — lots of obsessively executed personal visions.
https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en/exhibitions/TRC/
I’d love to go back and see more of Japan, maybe even try some of the advanced toilet features.
My luck continued when I visited the Meiji Shinto shrine on its biggest day of the year. I saw an elaborate temple ceremony, traditional archery, horseback archery (!), Aikido, and other Japanese martial arts.
Now it’s back to routine, probably won’t take another trip until next Spring or Summer. I’m happy to be home, even with all of the war uncertainty. Trying to make progress on several projects outside of my day job without getting anal retentive about scheduling.
That’s so cool that you and Zac might create a home haunt of your own. I’ve never been to LA. That would definitely be an enticement to visit. What are you up to now? How is the film post production going?