* (restored/expanded)
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‘The term “acid Western” was first used by Pauline Kael in her 1971 review of El Topo. The film had just received its formal premiere after having played for some six months straight at a shabby theater in downtown New York named the Elgin, at which it received essentially no advertising and played exclusively at midnight. Nevertheless, the film did peculiarly strong business and became a curious fixation. El Topo was pulled from the Elgin and armed with a national distributor who aimed to replicate its success in other U.S. cities. Its belated premiere, at a theater in Times Square in November of 1971, is when Kael and other critics from the mainstream press would see the film for the first time, and it is here where they found themselves amid the film’s most integral component: its audience, perceptibly under the influence of some mind-altering substance.

‘For Kael the acid Western was a derogatory allusion to the pothead audience that extolled the film—an audience she admittedly did not belong to. In her review she expends many words in describing those in attendance with her, whom she observes unjudgementally but alertly, as one would animals at a zoo. J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum elaborate on the phenomenon in their 1980 book Midnight Movies, in which an entire chapter is devoted to El Topo:

Although hip film buffs objected to El Topo’s graceless amalgam of Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, and Jean-Luc Godard, the movie bypassed cinematic sophistication to address the counterculture directly.

‘Rosenbaum reprised the term in his review of Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film, Dead Man, and in conjunction with Kael’s writing delineated the rough parameters of the makeshift subgenre. For Rosenbaum the acid Western refers to Jarmusch’s film foremost, and retroactively to a slew of films from the late 60s and early 70s that share Jarmusch’s inversion of the Western formula. These films generally posit an individualist journey that ends not in triumph but often in suffering and death—a narrative trajectory Dead Man summates in its very title. Rosenbaum elaborated thusly:

What I partly mean by ‘acid Westerns’ are revisionist Westerns in which American history is reinterpreted to make room for peyote visions and related hallucinogenic experiences, LSD trips in particular. […] Both ‘acid Westerns’ and ‘pot Westerns’ depend on reevaluations of white and nonwhite experience that view certain countercultural habits and styles in relation to models derived from Westerns, but where they differ most, perhaps, is in their generational biases, which lead them respectively to overturn or ironically revise the relevant generic norms.

‘At the time of their conception, acid Westerns extended the already-incipient trend of Western revisionism that was underway in Hollywood, sometimes by the genre’s most popular and radical practitioners. The most abrasive of these would be Sam Peckinpah, whose 1969 The Wild Bunch itself appealed to the counterculture’s more politicized faction for its potency as an analogy of violence in Vietnam. “The Western is a universal frame,” Peckinpah remarked, “within which it’s possible to comment on today.” Traditionally, the Western was an index of America’s exceptionalism, a document of the U.S.’s imperialistic growth. Acid Westerns are a response to this tactic, in that they’re generally more concerned with the suppression and hostility enacted to facilitate that growth. The first and purist examples were made in the late 60s, in which the counter-culture asserted a brief yet emphatic hold on the Hollywood machine.

‘This audience engendered the success of films in which heroes were decidedly anti-authoritative (The Graduate) and their plights strewn in prejudiced opposition (Easy Rider). But unlike its mainstream counterparts, the acid Western caters more specifically to a bohemian audience befitted by the influence of a hallucinogenic substance of some sort, the same audience that would give birth to the ritual of the midnight movie in the 70s. It is in this regard that the acid Western is exemplified in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo. Kael describes the film’s phenomenon as such:

Jodorowsky has come up with something new: exploitation filmmaking joined to sentimentality—the sentimentality of the counter-culture. They mix frighteningly well: for the counter-culture violence is romantic and shock is beautiful, because extremes of feeling and lack of control are what one takes drugs for. What has has been happening, I think, is that the counter-culture has begun to look for the equivalent of a drug trip in its theatrical experiences. I think it still responds to non-head movies if there’s a possibility of direct identification with the characters, but increasingly movies appear to be valued only for their intensity.

‘This “intensity” is a response to the violence in Jodorowsky’s film, but in a general sense it describes the tone of a true acid Western: a film that amalgamates the violent with the absurd in such a way that the result, to a specific audience, achieves a certain profundity.’ — Rumsey Taylor, Not Coming

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Special Monte Hellman issue of ‘La furia umana’
The Mondo Esoterica Guide to: Sergio Corbucci
Andy Warhol Films
The Shrine to Don Knotts
Sam Peckinpah @ Senses of Cinema
Pagina Oficial de Alejandro Jodorowsky
‘Zachariah: The Quintessinal Hippie Movie’
Audio: Listen to Robert Altman discuss his career
‘Luc Moullet, a Bootleg Filmmaker’
The Films of Robert Downey Sr. @ Persistence of Vision
In Praise of Michael J. Pollard
Westworld Headed Back to the Screen
‘THE AVENGING CONSCIENCE: An analysis of philosophical themes in Clint Eastwood’s HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER
Lady of the Cake: A Mel Brooks Site
‘Rancho Deluxe’ @ The Internet Movie Database
Welcome to Arthur Penn Fansite

 

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Responding to some questions about “Acid Westerns”

 

We’re approaching the acid Western as if it could satisfy a chapter in your book, Midnight Movies. At the time of its writing, how might you and J. Hoberman have denominated the films that have retroactively become known as acid Westerns (The Shooting, Greaser’s Palace, The Last Movie, El Topo, et al.)?

Jonathan Rosenbaum: I can’t speak for Jim Hoberman. As nearly as I can remember, I simply coined the phrase in order to group together several countercultural westerns — which included, by the way, some of the novels of Rudy Wurlitzer as well as some movies.

The first instance I’ve found of the term “acid Western” occurs in Pauline Kael’s review of El Topo in 1971, and she employs it in derogatory fashion, alluding to the pothead audience that extolled the film — an audience she admittedly did not belong to. Being that your use of the term is more academic, do you think that the acid Western was meant to be viewed under the influence of hallucinogenic substances?

Jonathan Rosenbaum: Maybe Kael used the term before I did and I unconsciously borrowed it. I certainly was a pothead in that period, but I probably disliked El topo as much as she did. I don’t know what you mean by “more academic,” unless maybe you mean more thoughtful or accurate. But since Kael or I coined the term, I can’t see how one can ascribe intentionality to the Westerns she or I or both of us might have been talking about. “Meant to be”? I don’t get that. But yes, some of these movies–as well as other movies, of all kinds–were viewed under the influence of hallucinogens.

How do you feel the more acid-centric, drop-out faction of the counterculture aligns with the politically engaged, anti-capitalist, “make love not war” wing? Wouldn’t these factions have been largely opposed, or is the acid Western perhaps emblematic of their common aims?

Jonathan Rosenbaum: You’re speaking in journalistic and/or academic categories — clichés, actually — that correspond to advertising pitches, not people. Some people I knew took acid and/or “dropped out” and/or were politically engaged and/or were anticapitalist and/or countercultural (to varying degrees) and/or wanted to fuck rather than fight. To some extent, I belonged to all of these categories, and so did some of my friends and acquaintances, but I’d hate to reduce any of us to these slogans or demographics. You might belong to any one or two of these labels and still not like any of the “acid westerns,” or you might like one or two or all of them. Fortunately, there were several possibilities, because, rightly or wrong, we all tended to think we were free and not simply suckers in an advertising campaign.

One of your postulations about the acid Western is that it uses the Western genre as a framework in which to advance a critique of conventional models of capitalism. Wouldn’t this make the acid Western adjacent to some of Sergio Leone’s Westerns, specifically Once Upon a Time in the West, which is in a general sense a critique of Hollywood imperialism?

Jonathan Rosenbaum: Maybe it was that, but I didn’t take it as such at the time — I took it as a sadistic form of high opera that valorized macho violence as well as capitalism and was liked for pretentious and/or campy reasons. But my response probably wasn’t at all typical. I recall liking the Morricone theme song, but not much else.

Do you think that the acid Western has its most integral component in a 60s counterculture audience, and as such may no longer exist in its truest form? The poor commercial performance of Dead Man, for example, indicates that the film may have been orphaned from its proper context.

Jonathan Rosenbaum: It’s my own impression that Dead Man actually did quite well commercially, at least over time. (Somehow, I suspect that my Dead Man book wouldn’t have gone into a 2nd edition and been translated into French, Czech, and Persian if its subject had flopped commercially.) Don’t confuse the obtuseness of Harvey Weinstein at the time of the original release with the world market between then and now, or even necessarily with the American market. And what about the Native American market, which the film explicitly addresses? I think the film did and does address some countercultural currents in its audience, wherever and whenever these currents happen to be, which doesn’t make either it or any of its fans orphans. It never played for or to any 60s audiences, so it’s fruitless to speculate about that, but when it came out three decades later, it clearly wasn’t speaking to a void.

 

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22 films (1964 – 1976)

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Oldřich Lipský Lemonade Joe (1964)
‘Colorful parody that can be easily ranked among the comedy giants. Way before Mel Brooks ever thought of his concepts, Lemonade Joe came as an avant-garde blast that mocked American westerns and even hidden racial issues (again, just like Brooks did) but in a less subtle manner and with extraordinary camera tricks, innovative slapstick comedy, different tints to create scenarios, a parody on western violence, a mockery of the inhuman abilities of the typical western “hero”, and a furious editing. Who needs CGI these days?’ — Edgar Cochran

the entire film

 

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Monte Hellman The Shooting (1966)
‘Hellman’s masterpiece asserts that individual choice is often subverted by the moral objectivity of others. The film’s ending is a favorite among cinephilles and serves as a paradigm of Camus’s thinking—both stoic and humane, it champions the power of nature over violence. Rather than exaggerate the likeability of his characters, Hellman is more concerned with their very human flaws. We mourn their deaths because of this realism. Hellman fabulously fools around with western archetypes—here we have a faithful sidekick with a penchant for comedy, a scruffy yet likeable hero, an obnoxious yet empowered female, and a mysterious man in black. Hellman’s spatial dynamics are disorienting and his compositions remarkably political. In one shot, Hellman uses a tree trunk to split his frame in two: on one side stands the character played by Perkins, on the other stands Oates and Hutchins. Most startling, though, is Hellman’s refusal to give evil a definitive face.’ — Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

the entire film

 

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Monte Hellman Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)
‘Three cowhands, between jobs, have the bad dumb luck to pitch night camp in the same valley as a cabin full of guys who just robbed a stagecoach and killed the guard. Come morning, a posse arrives, forms up along the ridge, and takes for granted that everyone down below is guilty.’ — MUBI

the entire film

 

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Sergio Corbucci The Great Silence (1968)
‘The Great Silence (Il grande silenzio, 1968), or The Big Silence, is an Italian spaghetti western. It is widely considered by critics as the masterpiece of director Sergio Corbucci and is one of his better known movies, along with Django (1966). Unlike most conventional and spaghetti westerns, The Great Silence takes place in the snow-filled landscapes of Utah during the Great Blizzard of 1899. The movie features a score by Ennio Morricone and stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as Silence, a mute gunfighter with a grudge against bounty hunters, assisting a group of outlawed Mormons and a woman trying to avenge her husband (one of the outlaws). They are set against a group of ruthless bounty hunters, led by Loco (Klaus Kinski).’ — thespinningimage.com

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Andy Warhol Lonesome Cowboys (1968)
‘Lonesome Cowboys was shot at the end of January 1968 in Tucson Arizona – on location in Old Tucson and at the Rancho Linda Vista Dude ranch 20 miles outside the city where some John Wayne movies had been filmed. It was edited by Andy while he was recuperating from the gunshot wounds inflicted by Valerie Solanas on June 3, 1968 and won Best Film at the San Francisco Film Festival in November. Unable to find a major commercial exhibitor, Warhol rented the Garrick Theatre where it opened on May 5, 1969. According to Morrissey, the film grossed $35,000-40,000 during its first week, with only $9,000 spent on advertising. It was also booked at the 55th Street Playhouse at the same time where it broke the “single-day housemark”, taking in $3,837 at $3.00 per ticket. In the same day it made $2,780 at the Garrick. It also ran for twenty weeks at various art houses in Los Angeles, and 2 1/2 months in San Francisco under distribution by Sherpix.’ — Gary Comenas, Warholstars

Excerpt

Watch the film here

 

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Alan Rafkin The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968)
‘This is a Don Knotts movie—and that says it all. It says, for one thing, that the plot deals with a weak little worm who turns and triumphs, after ten reels of old-style pratfalls. It also says that Universal City Studios will almost surely make $3,000,000 on an investment of $1,200,000. For Don Knotts comedies are what the trade calls “regionals”—movies turned out for rural audiences. In New York City, Chicago .and Los Angeles, the film Shakiest Gun was buried as a second feature after a Japanese-made disaster called King Kong Escapes. But it will pack them in as a feature in other areas, where Don Knotts is known and loved for his grape-eyed, slack-jawed frailty in the face of just about anything life sends his way.’ — Time Magazine

Excerpt

the entire film

 

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Sam Peckinpah The Wild Bunch (1969)
‘The Wild Bunch (1969) is director/co-writer Sam Peckinpah’s provocative, brilliant yet controversial Western, shocking for its graphic and elevated portrayal of violence and savagely-explicit carnage, yet hailed for its truly realistic and reinterpreted vision of the dying West in the early 20th century. Peckinpah had earlier directed another classic western about the West’s passing, Ride the High Country (1962) and the epic western film Major Dundee (1965). Many of the film’s major stars, including William Holden, Edmond O’Brien, Robert Ryan and Ben Johnson, were veterans of westerns with a more romantic view of the West in the 40s and 50s. This hard-edged, landmark masterpiece of the Western film genre was beautifully shot in wide-screen by cinematographer Lucien Ballard. The film’s lasting influence has been seen in the imitative graphic violence of the films of Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, John Woo, and others.’ — Tim Dirks, filmsite

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Alejandro Jodorowsky El Topo (1970)
‘With its druggy wanderings and inscrutable reveries, El Topo would be part of the revolutionary, post-’60s movement if its private mythology didn’t belong so obviously to its maker’s acid subconscious. “I am God,” El Topo at one point intones, and Jodorowsky completely means it: Playing deity in front of and behind the camera, the director uses film as a direct pipe into his own mind, and the bursting valise of ideas, images, and sounds that results is a veritable blur of ridiculous and sublime (and ridiculous-sublime) moments that defy ordinary readings while inviting (demanding, really) audience involvement via active interpretation. Whether one takes it as a staggeringly visionary work or a sadistic circus procession making an opportunistic grab for every artistic base (Buñuel and Zen, Eisenstein and pantomime, Antonin Artaud and Russ Meyer), there is no denying the immersive being of the film.’ — Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine

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Excerpt

Excerpts

 

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George Englund Zachariah (1971)
‘Zachariah (1971) is a film starring John Rubinstein as Zachariah and Don Johnson as his best friend Matthew. The film is loosely based on Herman Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, surrealistically adapted as a musical Western by Joe Massot and two members of the Firesign Theatre comedy troupe. The band Country Joe and the Fish perform as an inept gang of robbers (more adept as musicians) called “the Crackers,” who are always “looking for people who like to draw.” In the same vein, Zachariah boasts: “I can think, I can wait, and I’m fast on the draw.” This is a parody of Siddhartha’s famous line: “I can think, I can wait, I can fast.” This film is defined as being part of the Acid Western genre. More precisely, in its own publicity releases, it was called, “The first electric western.” This was, in no small part, because this film featured several appearances and music supplied by successful rock bands from the era, including the James Gang and Country Joe and the Fish. The movie also features former John Coltrane sideman Elvin Jones as a gunslinging drummer named “Job Cain.”‘ — jclarkmedia.com

Excerpt: Elvin Jones in Zachariah

the entire film

 

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Robert Altman McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
‘If Robert Altman’s movies in the early Seventies –- M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye –- reveal the overall impact of dope on movie consciousness, representing a halfway house between the softer dope influence of the Sixties and the harder edge it would take on in the early Seventies –- this is because they reflect so many of the stylistic changes reflected above, at the same time that they frequently allude to drugs in their plots. The use of overlapping dialogue and offbeat musical accompaniments (such as the Leonard Cohen songs in McCabe, the bird lectures in McCloud, and the multiple versions of the title tune in The Long Goodbye) created a dense weave that made each spectator hear and understand a slightly different movie -– and, given that these were crowded, widescreen features, see a different movie as well.’ — Jonathan Rosenbaum

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Luc Moullet A Girl is a Gun (1971)
‘In 1971, Moullet made his first color film, Une aventure de Billy le Kid, also known by its English title, A Girl Is a Gun. A psychedelic Western starring French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud, the film was never released in France, but was instead shown abroad in an English-dubbed version. The dubbing, conceived by Moullet as a tribute to the “shabbiness” he always admired in American genre films, is intentionally bad, and the short, slight Leaud is given a mismatched deep voice. Despite most Cahiers du cinéma critics admired many western authors, when they themselves became filmmakers few dared to overtly revisit that genre. One year after Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El topo and as Sergio Leone premiered A Fistful of Dollars, Moullet charges full steam ahead with a wild western starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, taking this genre and one of its key characters to unexpected territory.’ — mubi

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Excerpt

 

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Jim McBride Glen and Randa (1971)
‘Post-apocalyptic movies were, apparently, quite popular in the late 60s and early 70s. Glen and Randa (GaR) is very different from ’71’s big post-apocalyptic film: The Omega Man. Yet, the indie production of GaR is as obscure as the big studio film OM is famous. There are no hoards of zombies to battle. Instead, the story focuses on the two title characters (more clueless than heroic) and their quest for a mythical city. The film, which has been described as a psychedelic post-Western, got an X rating for its full frontal nudity. GaR shares with OM, the use of Biblical imagery woven into this view of post-apocalyptic earth.’ — collaged

Trailer

Watch the film here

 

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Peter Fonda The Hired Hand (1971)
‘The following is said of Peter Fonda’s character in Steven Soderbergh’s 1999 film The Limey: “You’re not specific enough to be a person. You’re more like a vibe.” That sentiment also applies to Fonda’s trippy 1971 Western, The Hired Hand, which is the closest anyone will come to getting inside of Fonda’s head without going blind on ’shrooms and pharmaceuticals. Having delivered a huge hit for Universal with Easy Rider, the studio did what studios in the ’70s did: It gave full artistic control to a hippie visionary with no commercial instincts whatsoever. Not surprisingly, Fonda’s phantasmagoric Western bombed at the time, but it’s since been revived as a fascinating curio, one that thoroughly upends a genre built on action and machismo. It’s the most gentle of the post-Wild Bunch anti-Westerns, and one of the more gorgeously abstract.’ — The AV Club

the entire film

 

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Dennis Hopper The Last Movie (1971)
‘Production wraps on a Hollywood western in a Peruvian village but stuntman Kansas remains, attempting to find redemption in isolation and the arms of a former sex worker. Meanwhile, local Native Americans have taken over the abandoned set and are staging a ritualistic re-enactment of the film.’ — MUBI

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Robert Downey Sr. Greaser’s Palace (1972)
‘I am about to embark on the most pointless exercise known to man and I’m not talking about teaching a pig to fly. (Which actually works with a mildly sedated porker and a small trebuchet.) I’m going to try and explain Greaser’s Palace to a group of people who probably have not seen the movie. Heck, even if you have seen the movie it’s pointless. You are probably thinking to yourself, “It couldn’t be that outlandish. Could it?” The entire movie is an anecdotal allegory for religion, Christianity to be precise. If you want to start splitting hairs, I think Catholicism is the basis for everything that comes to pass. Greaser’s Palace is a huge saloon in some tumbleweed town out west; we can identify it as being “a church” since people come running to watch the show whenever bells begin ringing. Seaweedhead Greaser is the Catholic Church as represented by a gunslinger with itchy trigger fingers. Why in the world does he have a mariachi band and his mother locked in wooden cages?’ — Badmovies.org

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Stan Dragoti Dirty Little Billy (1972)
‘This is no typical, Tinseltown western. It’s more like The Making of a Sociopath, with Michael J. Pollard starring as displaced, 17-year-old Billy Bonney, in the days leading up to his evolution into the notorious Billy the Kid. Leaving New York City with his mom and (asshole) step-dad, the trio is first glimpsed arriving at a tiny Kansas cesspool named Coffyville; a DJANGO-like shanty town which keeps the entire cast continually ankle deep in dried mud, and with cinematographer Ralph Woolsey (THE MACK) bringing out the worst in the place. This is a true anti-western, without a character that you can totally warm up to, since they’re either inept, crazy, stupid or ruthless. Even the occasional moment of violence — like a barroom blowout — is quick, brutal and totally convincing. Unlike any western you’ve ever seen, this is McCABE AND MRS. MILLER’s evil brother.’ — Shock Cinema Magazine

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Michael Crichton Westworld (1973)
‘Welcome to Westworld, where nothing can go wrong…go wrong…go wrong….Writer/director Michael Crichton has concocted a futuristic “Disneyland for adults”, a remote resort island where, for a hefty fee, one can indulge in one’s wildest fantasies. Businessmen James Brolin and Richard Benjamin are just crazy about the old west, thus they head to the section of Westworld populated by robot desperadoes, robot lawmen, robot dance-hall gals, and the like. Benjamin’s first inkling that something is amiss occurs when, during a mock showdown with robot gunslinger Yul Brynner, Brolin is shot and killed for real. It seems that the “nerve center” of Westworld has developed several serious technical glitches: the human staff is dead, and the robots are running amok.’ — Hal Erickson, Rovi

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Clint Eastwood High Plains Drifter (1973)
‘Though occasionally amusing, in ways similar to A Fistful of Dollars and Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, in which tough protagonists also manipulate weaker townspeople to humorous effect, High Plains Drifter is a brooding, surprisingly artistic Western, accented by a haunting score. Vigilante justice and broad depictions of good and evil tend not to work as well in stories set in the present day, because we’re all too aware of the damage Dirty Harry-style justice can do to the social fabric of the contemporary world. But it does work in Westerns, where the only law is the law of the gun. It’s a genre made for severe parables of justice and retribution like High Plains Drifter. At the end, Mordecai remarks that he still doesn’t know the stranger’s name. The stranger simply responds, “Yes, you do.” Mordecai understands, as do we. We understand that there are several ways to answer the question of the stranger’s identity, all equally valid.’ — AboutFilm.com

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Sam Peckinpah Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)
‘A companion picture to The Wild Bunch, being set in a similar period, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid takes an entirely different approach. Here the focus is upon people rather than situations, with the title characters casting inky shadows over a memorable selection of ruffians. Completing Peckinpah’s complex and all-inclusive vision, John Coquillon’s photography remains striking. Filling the generous screen width with people and their trappings, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is beautiful in a downbeat way. The biggest weakness is the unstructured narrative, a major barrier to comprehending the story’s central third. Here the tale is difficult to follow, wandering aimlessly across the plain, intent on introducing a stream of bit parts. Interesting maybe, but also spotty and further clouded by the often-indistinct dialogue. In fact this last point is a real disappointment, given that the script is attractively dirty and direct — people say what they have too with little elaboration. So, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a terrific Western with rather too many studio battle scars. Oh for what might have been!’ — Damian Cannon, Movie Reviews UK

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Mel Brooks Blazing Saddles (1974)
‘Vulgar, crude, and occasionally scandalous in its racial humor, this hilarious bad-taste spoof of Westerns, co-written by Richard Pryor, features Cleavon Little as the first black sheriff of a stunned town scheduled for demolition by an encroaching railroad. Little and co-star Gene Wilder have great chemistry, and the delightful supporting cast includes Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, and Madeline Kahn as a chanteuse modelled on Marlene Dietrich. As in Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), and High Anxiety (1977), director/writer Mel Brooks gives a burlesque spin to a classic Hollywood movie genre; in his own manic, Borscht Belt way, Brooks was a central player in revising classic genres in light of Seventies values and attitudes, an effort most often associated with such directors as Robert Altman and Peter Bogdanovich.’ — Robert Firsching, Rovi

Trailer

Excerpt: ‘I’m Tired’

 

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Frank Perry Rancho Deluxe (1975)
‘Rancho Deluxe is a comedy western film that was directed by Frank Perry and released in 1975. Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston star as two cattle rustlers in modern-day Montana who plague a wealthy ranch owner, played by Clifton James. The film also stars Harry Dean Stanton, Richard Bright, Elizabeth Ashley and, as the aging detective Harry Beige hired to find the rustlers, Slim Pickens. The script was by novelist Thomas McGuane, who was married to Ashley. The film was described as a form of “parody Western” by critic Richard Eder in his Nov. 24, 1975 New York Times review. “It is so cool that it is barely alive,” he wrote of the film’s general tone. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave Rancho Deluxe only one-and-a-half out of four possible stars. He wrote: “I don’t know how this movie went so disastrously wrong, but it did.”‘ — imdb.com

Excerpt

 

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Arthur Penn The Missouri Breaks (1976)
‘On first release, Arthur Penn’s 1976 western found itself derided as an addled, self-indulgent folly. Today, its quieter passages resonate more satisfyingly, while its lunatic take on a decadent, dying frontier seems oddly appropriate. Most significantly, the film provides a showcase for a mesmerising turn from Marlon Brando as the regulator hired to wage war on Jack Nicholson’s reformed horse rustler. At the time of shooting, Nicholson was fresh from an Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, his star in the ascendancy. And yet he appears happy to cede centre stage to his one-time acting idol. Not that Brando needs much invitation. Improvising his lines from beneath a series of comedy hats, he embarks on a merry dance from burlesque to menace and back again, while the picture frantically plays catch-up behind him.’ — The Guardian

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Excerpt
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*

p.s. Hey. ** Nick Hudson, Hey! I saw your email, great, thanks, obviously looking greatly forward to the gifts. Got you on the relocation. I’m so happy I’m not living in the US at the current moment. I’ve got to check out Tbilisi and the environs one of these days, months, something. Thanks, Nick! ** Dominik, Hi!!! Pleasure. Warmth, yay, good things come in invisible packages. And you picked a real goodie on the shapely head squib. Love on two tabs of 60s style acid staring at your face and saying, ‘Wow’ over and over, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks, B, I agree. ** James Bennett, Hi, James! Hello to London too. Thanks a lot for the kind words. You’re writing your first novel! Amazing! Can you describe it in some way (hard, I know, trust me). I never set word count or work time goals for myself. My energies/inspiration are too kind of random and wildly differing in volume. If I can only eek out a handful offgood sentences in one day, I’m as fine with that as I am with pouring out a bunch of prose which in most cases is pretty destined for a ton of future revisions. I just stay in the excited/addicted to writing mental state and accept whatever makes it out of my head on any particular day. Does that make sense? Gladman’s great, I think. Big congrats on the publication, and 3:AM is an excellent location. I’ll go read that ASAP. Thanks a lot! Everyone, James Bennett, writer and visitor has a short fiction piece newly up and readable at the fine and dependable 3:AM Magazine site that I recommend you grace your eyes and etc. with. It’s here. Thanks again, and hope to see you again soon. ** Misanthrope, Glad things sound smoother on the Elio Jr. front. Hope the doc visit was de rigour. No, def. sounds like Little D is jetting in the right direction. Really nice and relieving to hear that. ** Steve Erickson, There you go! I’ll get my Taylor Swift knowledge enhancement in a little later today. I’m expecting very little. Not that I know of re: the new Radu film being shown here. I’ll check to make sure though. I am going to do a post on him, so I’ll get up to speed in that course. ** Nick., Hi. Oh, maybe it arrived too late, or I mean after I’d started writing the p.s. because I usually stop looking for new comments at that point. ‘Priscilla’ has the Nick. approval stamp. Noted. Eyes more peeled. That sentence starting with ‘Hum’ was a very nice sentence. Best luck with your work, and I will query the AR dudes. ** tomk, Hey, man. I do recommend reading all the Ravicka books. I really think she’s one of the best out there. I’m good, you too, I hope. ** Charalampos, I think it was a trilogy but then she decided to add another. Working on a book is one of the true pleasures. Right now there’s not enough out there to do a Vecchiali post, but I’ll keep checking. Slightly warmer vibes from barely warmer Paris. ** Bill, Hi. ‘Event Factory’ is maybe my favorite of hers, but all the Ravicka novels are great. Yes, I only realised that Bob Gluck’s new book was already out yesterday. Snuck right up. I need to find it somewhere. ** 🏃‍♂️DArby, Well, I assume they’re making a new ‘Crow’ movie for the same soulless, brainless, greedy reason that they’re making a new ‘Willy Wonka’ movie. Yes, yes, you can draw me something else and whatever you want and what you’re thinking of drawing sounds spectacular! ‘Til Monday then. Be with the time in-between characteristically and inexorably. ** Audrey, Hi, Audrey. I feel the uniqueness. The last Wiseman I saw in a theater was ‘Monrovia, Indiana’ which I completely loved. It might even be my favorite of his. Yes, I found enough Radu Jude stuff to make a post, and I’m going to make it this weekend. Mostly I’ll have to just use trailers to represent his films since there aren’t many excerpts, but that’s okay, I think. Yeah, as a huge lover of experimental film, it’s a hard life wanting to see that work, and it’s so hard to hope to see the films actually projected because so extremely few places are interested in screening them, and I wish more experimental filmmakers put their work online so we could all view them, but I also understand they want to protect their work and all of that. I’m expecting to get a better understanding of the Taylor Swift phenomenon. I’ve heard enough of her songs to know that I’m really not interested in her stuff. Well, yes, I think it’s safe to bet your life savings on a Swift vs. Dylan quality battle. Yes, so sad about Sophie. She was wonderful, it’s such a loss. I do like hyper-pop, and I wish I listened to it more often. Its effect is definitely a positive one, on me at least. Recommend things to dig into? Love, Dennis. ** Corey Heiferman, Hi. Kind of novel-meets-epic-poem hybrid kind of thing. Glad you’re feeling better. Can’t even begin to imagine the fatigue going around there. Here the related atmosphere is kind of simultaneously fatigued and very fired up. Um, my tastes in things have evolved, especially with music. I used to be very into, like, serial killers and that realm, and I’m not anymore. I think it’s more like a calming down than a lot of shifts. I guess I don’t think about it. Can you describe your shuffling? ** ellie, Hi. Fuck, well, at least your headache was productive, it sounds like. A novel! Wow, that’s really great news! Are you excited and obsessed? Very cool. I did do a post about Cornell’s films ages ago. I should restore it. I love them. And his IRL works too. Do you think that Cornell film you’re into is informing your novel in some way or, as they say, giving your novel permission? What a weird saying. Oh, the tribute album was called ‘Dennis’. It was a limited edition CD put out in 2006 with songs inspired by my stuff by Robert Pollard, Richard Hell, Xiu Xiu, Pavement, and a bunch of other cool artists. Sadly, it’s massively out of print. I’ve never even seen one for sale at insane prices or anything. Crowdfunding is an extremely last ditch possibility. It’s a huge amount of work, and neither Zac nor I having any self-promoting gifts, and there’s a million people asking for money for their projects, and it sort would only be in case of emergency, I think. I very much remember the slushy nightmare winters in NYC, yeah. Since it doesn’t snow in Paris anymore, it’s not as bad, and, you know, Paris is beautiful anyway, and they really do it up at Xmas. You gave the loveliest day too! And I’ll pass along your tips. Everyone, ellie passes along a real treasure trove in the form of a playlist of the amazing films of Joseph Cornell that you can watch simple by pressing down on these words. And on top of that, a couple of us here were talking about artists residencies, and ellie passes along a link to a site showing some of them if you’re interested. Here. ** Nuno, Hi, Nuno. Thank you for coming in. Lost texts … I’m not sure. I’d have to think and hunt. Maybe. It’s amazing of you to ask. You can email me here: [email protected] and we can talk more. Thanks, and good to meet you. ** Right. I went back into the deep archives and found and restored today’s post because I have a fondness for the genre that arose when filmmakers got the idea of combining westerns with drugginess. There are both good and terrible examples up there if you’re interested. See you tomorrow in any case.

 

‘Over the course of Renee Gladman’s trilogy — Event Factory, The Ravickians, and Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge — the narrative focus draws increasingly inwards. The narrator of Event Factory is a foreigner, and the book describes her stay in the city, and her struggles with the language and culture around her. At times, she seems thoroughly fluent in it; at others, her interactions with Ravickans are more fraught, with gaps in understanding, moments of political tension, and brief scenes of existential dread. The Ravickians takes as its central character Luswage Amini, a Ravickan novelist alluded to in Event Factory. Here, too, a familiar literary device — following her progress across the city — is juxtaposed with thoughts on translation’s inaccuracy, the problems that plague Ravicka, and Amini’s long and complex relationship with another writer, Ana Patova.

‘Patova is at the center of the trilogy’s final novel, Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge — a title that seems quotidian until one reads Event Factory and discovers that “crossing a bridge” is a phrase abounding with resonances in Ravic. Here’s the narrator of Event Factory as she views and translates a warning sign beside a bridge.

‘Digla implied that to successfully cross the bridge (or not cross the bridge, depending on the meaning of the remaining words) we had to grasp the content of the message and integrate that content into an act or gesture made toward the bridge.

‘Here, more of the city’s history is revealed, and its place in the wider world is made more clear; still, it too exists at a distance, as much of what we’re reading is, ostensibly, a book by Ana Patova called Enclosures. The book’s cover design, in which white space frames artwork similar to the much larger art gracing the covers of the previous volumes, effectively mirrors this structure.

‘Gladman’s trilogy avoids hitting certain conventional narrative beats, even as the novels’ structures fit within larger guidelines — once again, an echo of Ravicka’s geographic and physical elusiveness. The narrator of Event Factory leaves certain details out of her story which would otherwise represent significant beats in the narrative; towards novel’s end, she notes:

‘Obviously, I cannot say what happened once I reached the street. That is, I cannot say whether or not I remembered something that I was to look for, as if it were an event that is now complete.

‘The second and third volumes in the trilogy, ostensibly translated from Ravic to English, achieve a greater stability in their narratives, but other things remain unsaid. Every once in a while, a Ravickian will make a statement that reminds us that their culture is not simply a known one with a few changes in dress or cuisine tacked on. “Everyone is leaking structure,” one character notes in The Ravickians, and throughout the trilogy, a comparison is made between the physical spaces in Ravicka and the characters who live there. In a larger sense, the way that the narrative of these three novels eludes expectations, sometimes frustratingly, mirrors how the use of space in Ravicka can defy logic.

‘As in Morris and Miéville, some aspects of Ravickian society feel fundamentally knowable. Many of the characters’ names have an Eastern European feel to them, and a reference to “buildings wandering and knocking into each other” in Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge recalls Prague’s Frank Gehry-designed Tančící dům (or “Dancing House.”) Later in the trilogy, Patova’s talk of being offered refuge in Finland during a past period of civil unrest further situates Ravicka in the real world, suggesting that, for all its eccentricities, it can still be pointed to on a map.

‘It’s also worth noting that Gladman cites Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren in the acknowledgements of Event Factory. That novel, and the city at its center, provide another lens through which to view Ravicka — one in which, unlike the novels of Miéville and Morris, a greater degree of surrealism in the landscape is expected. (One might also cite fellow Delany acolyte Jonathan Lethem’s Amnesia Moon.) For all that the anxieties and anguish of the Ravickians becomes increasingly more tangible over the course of the trilogy, Gladman also poses certain questions about their culture that delve into a glorious illogic.

‘The Ravic language involves gestures — but to say that undercuts the extent to which performance is ingrained in not just the language but in the very concept of Ravickian identity. At one point early in Event Factory, the narrator notes that a friend of hers, Simon, has vanished. She takes over his role at a hotel in the city; later, she notes that “I stood there and performed Simon brilliantly.” And late in Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge, the narrator shares postcards she has received, ostensibly from expatriate friends, with a gathering of people that includes those same figures. “No one believed Tómas was in Delaware, but no one believed that he was in Ravicka either, as long as I was carrying around that postcard.”

‘You don’t go to the trouble of constructing a metaphorically rich fictional city without having some larger point to impart on your readers. In Gladman’s case, that seems to be about fear and anxiety and the way each of us splinter ourselves. As her narrative defies expectations, her use of space occasionally defies logic — which is every bit as disorienting as you might expect. There are no maps that can take you to the places Gladman and her colleagues describe, but that might be the point: their geography is already etched into our minds, and we travel there whenever we are reminded of our ever-present anxieties.’ — Tobias Carroll

 

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Further

Renee Gladman and the New Narrative
READING RAVICKA: TWO NOVELS IN A TRILOGY BY RENEE GLADMAN
RENEE GLADMAN’S RAVICKA NOVELS
The Company That Never Comes
‘Five Things’, by Renee Gladman
‘Proportion Surviving’, by Renee Gladman
‘Calamity’, by Renee Gladman
‘I Began the Day’, by Renee Gladman
An interview with Renee Gladman by Joshua Marie Wilkinson
A Voice of Leaving: Renee Gladman’s The Ravickians
Beginning the Day with Renee Gladman’s Calamities
Renee Gladman @ PennSound
Renee Gladman @ goodreads
Buy ‘Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge’

 

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Drawings

‘When I first attempted to describe Gladman’s drawings, I thought of the paleographic terms for describing ancient and medieval writing: letterform, overline, cross-stroke, descender, curl, et cetera. I thought of the names of the Western letterforms no longer in use: ash, eth, thorn, yogh. But this seemed futilely retrospective. A dead end. I thought of a line from Event Factory: “There were no residents here. Old Ravicka, the ancient city, was a museum.”

‘In Gladman’s drawings, her lines gather into tangled structures that resemble cityscapes, individual buildings, skylines, structures covered in scaffolding; they are architectural plans composed of written lines. In the introduction to Prose Architectures she asks, “How could I inhabit thought as architecture, as a space that could be seen or experienced bodily?”’ — John Vincler

 

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Extras

Renee Gladman at Georgetown University

Renee Gladman reads at Small Press Traffic

Renee Gladman reads at Eastern Michigan University

 

_____
Interview
from BOMB

Renee Gladman I want to begin by asking you about slowness. Very general, I know. But it’s something I think about when I read your narratives: the duration of a moment of perception. Or perhaps, the sense has more to do with a certain silence around perception, which I’m reading as speed, but which might have more to do with space. Where do words like “slowness” or “silence” land when you think about the nature of experience or subjectivity?

Amina Cain I do often see “duration” within perception as a kind of spaciousness (something I am always trying to find, both in my stories and in my life), but, interestingly, I just finished an essay on my relationship to writing and it’s called Slowness. In it, I talk about how drawn I am to films (like Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman) and books (like Clarice Lispector’s The Apple in the Dark) that seem to move slowly, or that when they do build up to something with some kind of energy, do so without the promise of “real” drama, not unlike what it is to prepare to meditate. In the Soto Zen tradition, which is the only one I really know, you go through a fairly momentous ceremony to simply stare at a blank wall, to arrive at something like spaciousness or slowness. On that blank wall is projected everything (after all, you can see your mind there) and also nothing. I like that relationship between drama and quiet, between moving towards something and then just sitting down upon arrival to experience what it’s like to be there. I like it in life and in writing.

I wrote another essay that thinks about the similarities between fiction and landscape painting (as well as character and landscape) because I’ve been realizing more and more how important image and setting are to me as a writer—in a way, even more so than language, and certainly more than plot or story. The question I am now asking myself, that I think I have always asked myself, perhaps without knowing it at first, is: can a story be like a painting, or a video or film, or can it allow for lapses into the space of one of these things for a little while? What happens when a narrative allows us to spend time with an image longer than we are “supposed” to, when it is just as arresting as the story being told?

But, in that second essay, I also talk a bit about Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge, about how the narrator “softens” (and what I mean by this word is that some kind of boundary breaks down) with not only the “architectured” landscape, but also with sentences, and with the physical act of writing. It feels to me as though everything in the book is passing through the narrator’s body or that the narrator’s body passes through everything. I wonder if these impressions mean anything in terms of the way you yourself see the book, if you thought at all about porousness or exchange.

RG Sometimes it’s difficult to separate a narrator from language or the idea of the body and text. I often think they are inextricable, but lately I think it’s more that the narrator (of most of my fictions) and the body (which people ask me about a lot) are sublimated figures. They belong to language; they are problems of language. The only reason there is a body is because there is a text, in this case a “bridge,” to make its form possible. I like when people talk about membranes in regard to writing, because it allows you to visualize a layer that potentially sits on top of language. Because, you see, I think the language of the book is passing through something as well, and it’s not the narrator’s body, rather some abstraction of itself. Language has a dream of itself and the book passes through the dream. The first part of the sentence forms the membrane and the second part of the sentence moves through it. In my mind, it looks like ribboning, but is colorless. Someone writes about language as a skin, which perhaps corresponds with your thoughts on porosity. I am interested in the idea that the skin is an organ, because skin is flat like landscape, like language. If we allow language to be skin in our imaginings then we can move immediately to all the processes happening below that level—so many systems at work with the skin (language) acting as protection, as boundary and container. I think about things entering that membrane and moving through the body beneath and try to imagine what that looks like, sounds like at the reading level. I want the language you see, particularly in Ana Patova, to be alive and in process.

Earlier, in talking about meditation, you mentioned going through “a fairly momentous ceremony to simply stare at a blank wall,” as a way to describe your relationship to narrative. This is really exciting to me, a series of elaborate acts to prepare for one prolonged gesture. (Though I have a problem with the word “one” there. I’m not sure it’s countable.) How does this translate in writing? You talked about the wall, but I’m interested in the ceremony. Where does it take place? Is it outside of the frame of the narrative?

AC I like so much of what you say here, especially about language—what belongs to it (not possessively); what’s just underneath, moving; its dream of itself; the second part of a sentence moving through the first. I often want to ignore language, but of course I owe it everything because I don’t ignore it when I write and, thought about in the ways you describe, how could I? Here (and in Ana Patova) it’s as alive as a character (is character alive?), but it’s not character. It doesn’t want or need to be alive like that. It makes me think of language as a stage, the thing we all show up to see. A character may walk across it, but that is not the important part. Not that I think the two are pitted against each other, or ranked. It’s more about possibility (and I think there’s possibility everywhere in fiction). And the language in Ana Patova is always in process, yes. If a house has burned down in the first part of a sentence it is not necessarily so in the second part, and yet it’s not as if the first part doesn’t still exist. Nothing is reversed. This is something I love about the book. Sometimes an event that seems final happens again. The ribboning, colorless, makes sense to me. I also think of the sentence here as a kind of animal, drawn lightly. Maybe it’s my image-driven mind, but I sometimes felt in reading Ana Patova as if I were seeing drawings that flickered in and out of visibility.

The ceremony takes place in the narrative. Maybe the narrative is the ceremony, there to usher in a setting or moment that can then be stayed with for a while. Sometimes I feel as if I am a selfish writer (though I also think it might be okay), and that I write stories to get to something else, not the actual story. I don’t think that I “use” narrative or story in a negative sense, just that it’s a medium that allows me to get to these places, these moments. I don’t think I could get to them through poetry, for instance (or even through another kind of story with its other concerns). I’ll probably fumble a bit in expressing this, because maybe I won’t quite get to it, but it’s interesting to me looking here at how we both talk about our books, our writing. I have already brought into the conversation words like “character,” “setting,” and “story,” these classic elements of fiction. You and I both do and don’t seem to come to narrative in very different ways, and these differences in how writers arrive at and to their texts is endlessly fascinating to me.

RG I’m drawn to this idea of language as a stage that we all show up to see. First of all, it’s exciting to think there are objects in the field of language, that there are actually things to see, because often I find we leave the object world behind when we speak or write. Language is so abstract and goes on about its business of deducing, connecting, naming, expressing, etc. with nothing tangibly in play. You know what I mean? Language uses our memory of objects and our desire for meaning to world-build. So, if I’m inside your metaphor, and I’ve arrived at this stage upon which I will see language, I’m giddy, because I think I’m looking at nothing. Nothing is happening in my eyes. Though, somewhere else (perhaps through some other kind of seeing) shapes emerge. Signals go off and meaning parades through our brains. How fantastic is that? When I teach poetry, I like to ask my students where does the poem exist? Is it that thing on the page? Is it the words lingering in our brain, some feeling in the body? Where is it? The nothing that happens when one writes “Danielle is sitting in that chair” is incredibly compelling to me. And I think this is something you’ve mastered beautifully in your work—a surface that acts as if it’s devoid of objects, so that it’s less what the words say than how they behave. In “Attached to a Self” you write, “Sometimes there is a great emptiness, like shaking a box nothing is inside of; sometimes the box becomes warm.” I get caught up in the mystery; it’s a sort of displacement of consequence. Things take on surprising qualities in your work. And even though it’s the language that relays these effects, I find it’s more what is absent, what is pulled into an invisible but no-less-felt tautness that I’m waiting to see.

I wonder if you can talk about recent evolutions in your thinking about narrative—what you want it to do, what it actually does—and how the narratives you create correspond to those you experience in the world.

AC That’s really nice—waiting to see what won’t show up alongside of what does, and then, through that absence, being able to see a shape. A seeing without eyes. This might be true for many writers, but the way I’m able to tell if a text is finished is when I’ve cleared out enough space. If it’s too cluttered, certain relationships won’t be able to exist or make themselves known. It’s like a table with too many things on it. In a situation like that even the table is unable to be seen. Something about abstraction is hard for me, at least within a text, partly because it seems there is very little space in it. My feeling is that it gathers too many things around itself without clearing any of it out. Maybe that’s why I am always trying to use this thing that can be so abstract—language—to get to something else.

I don’t know if my thinking about narrative has changed necessarily, but definitely my understanding of what I do through narrative has evolved and become more visible. Mostly I feel I operate in the dark (while actually in the act of writing) and that my subconscious mind knows much more than the conscious one. But I do know that I want narrative to reveal, to let certain things sit next to each other; to catch abjectness and transcendence; and closeness and distance. In many ways, the narratives I write reflect what my experience has been in the world, or what I have been drawn toward, or repelled from, or what I find funny or sad. And, self-indulgently perhaps, as a writer I tend to plunk myself down in a narrative or setting or situation I want to spend time in, either because there’s something in it I want to imagine my way through or recreate. In my life, place has always been really important. This might sound bratty, but there are certain towns or cities that can crush me even if I’m just passing through for a couple of days, and these are not necessarily unliked towns/cities I’m talking about. Los Angeles is a place many people dislike (of course there are people who love it too), and yet for me it is almost therapeutic to be here. In the same way, place (and I might extend this to atmosphere, which brings in psychic as well as physical qualities) often drives my narratives. I take a long time to set things next to each other in a way that will hopefully make them alive and reveal something about their relationships to each other and create the space of the narrative.

What about you? Earlier you talked about language (and sentences) in a way that turned my head around and I really appreciated that. How does narrative fit in? What is the relationship between language and narrative?

And before I forget, I want to set this passage from Ana Patova here, because I want it to be in the space of our conversation and because it struck me so much when I read it:

“I wrote sentences about space so that I could stand up and walk down that hill. I wrote them, because the hill was too steep to descend gracefully with your body upright and steady. Spaces moaned when you crossed them; they didn’t know how to hold you.”

It makes me think more about what language can do, in a text and otherwise.

RG In Ana Patova the city becomes a three-dimensional embodiment of writing, a world propelled by sentences. Sentences, thus, become both propellants and consequences of the events of Ravicka. Ana Patova writes so that she can act in the world. The writing is the site of that action. What happens in between, where she’s actually walking down the hill, is unmappable. I don’t believe that there is any language without narrative, but there seems to be (in Ravicka and in Providence, RI) plenty of language without events. In Ana Patova, I’m trying to follow the line of thinking, letting it pass through these sentence-corridors that are bridges, and I’m doing this because something is being produced through this particular shape. A crossing reverberates, something being crossed. One consciousness crossing another. One’s books crossing others’ books. One’s walking with another’s walking. One attempt to see the crisis with every other attempt, and not only by the one person but also every other person in the city. I think of narrative as the story of our thinking and of language as that material.

So, I’m in the process of writing a long statement on my poetics called The Eleven Calamities. This will be a series of eleven mini-essays on my eleven favorite words or compounds that organize my thinking about writing. The first six on that list are world-building, novel space, sentence, architecture, line, and time.

 

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Book

Renee Gladman Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge
Dorothy, a Publishing Project

‘Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge is the third volume of Renee Gladman’s magnificent, melancholy series about the city-state of Ravicka, or about the architectures of its absence. It is tempting to read the Ravickian books as an extended allegory—of architecture itself, perhaps, except that architecture is already half-allegorical, its every element raised to prefigure whatever meanings can make their way to them. If any can. In Ravicka, meanings—indeed most contact of any kind—remain in abeyance, building, in absentia, the constitutive negative spaces of the narrative. There is a plot; it lays out zones of sheer ambience. Experiences, of which there are many, unfold as a redolent lingering in the structures of immateriality, the radical realities of the insubstantial. Gladman is a philosopher of architecture, though not that of buildings. Rather, she thinks (and writes) the drifts, partitions, and immobilities of identity, affect, communication, the very possibility of being human. Profound, compelling—haunting, even—the story of Ravicka is astonishingly ours.’ — Lyn Hejinian

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Excerpts
from The Brooklyn Rail & FCA

The object world bowed and slept and
grew enormous as something completely
without space, as a container without
volume, lightless, soundless, and did
this inside a world even larger and more
obscure than itself, a world we were
walking through, which no one knew
what to call (other than “old”) and no
one understood the dimensions of but which
was ours, this grid that had been touched
by a circle, these noisy, impenetrable
doors. We had been walking for hours,
looking for a happening, a boundary
event that would put an end to the crisis,
not an extraordinary occurrence—some
magical intervention—but a small act out
of a cabinet of everyday acts that we’d
witnessed numerous times and never
noticed and never saw the way through.
We thought it would be a speech act, so
began to look for instances where we
might chance upon bodies in unconscious
speech: we looked through people’s
windows. But windows looked into houses
whose structures were no longer reliable.
It had become impossible to say that you
were contained, to say “hello, the house,”
as you once had. The object world, we
noted, was drawn on by shadows.

* *

People kept saying other people were
fleeing the city and pointed to themselves.
We became third persons, but not arrogantly
so. I referred to myself as “Ana Patova,”
and said, “Ana Patova must have left.” For
a moment I thought I would sell my home
and wrote in our newspaper, “Ana Patova
wishes to sell her home; she is leaving.” I
read what I wrote and couldn’t believe
my words and couldn’t respond to inquiries.
“I am not leaving,” I said to friends who’d
read my ad. At the same time that they
were convincing me to stay they themselves
began to pronounce strange lines. “Hi, from
Delaware,” Duder Bello said on occasion. “I
am still in France” (Luswage Amini). We
were making chaos with our goodbye notes,
and it wasn’t as though leaving wasn’t
happening but that it just wasn’t ourselves
who were doing it. No one could name names.
We all knew that Hausen wanted to go, and
when he finally vanished, many of us felt
relief. We missed him, though we didn’t
know him (we knew his confinement), but
we celebrated his departure as a threshold
crossing. “Hausen finally made it,” we’d say
and clink our glasses. So, we knew that leaving
was possible and that in many corners of
our neighborhoods people were preparing
to depart, and did depart. But, we couldn’t
call out to them, even when the time came
and the deserter was someone we loved or
someone with whom we worked and drank.
Our mouths would empty, for a long time,
would be dry, and when saliva came back
to us, it was only to ourselves that we could
point. “I’m leaving,” I would misspeak
without knowing. “I’ve left too,” would say
Luswage.

* *

I sat in one of the galleries of the Museum
of Science and Anatomy, recovering from
a story someone had told me, a story I
would never write, but which would
dictate my behavior for the next several
years, everything from how I dressed and
what I read to whom I saluted in the
street and what scared me. The story
wasn’t given to me as most are, as some
kind of choreography beaten against
the body rather it was laid on top of my
voice. I told the story, over the course
of many days, to hundreds of people, or
perhaps to only one person, again and
again. It didn’t seem to matter who heard
it, only that I went on telling it. It was a
story of moments, the moments of
bewilderment that had begun to visit
all of us, of which my time in this museum
now was. You were bewildered by a
certain sharp awareness that made you
stop and sit down, usually to write a book,
but the book that was this story could not
be written. It had become an intruder in
my mouth, when I wanted to be silent, and
sent me running out my door and, for
many days, sitting in that gallery, staring
at walls that had not yet been dressed but
observing lines that were beautiful and
could not be authenticated and were
drawn by no one.

* *

Winds shook the walls of the city, they
did not. Waters from unknown valves
flooded the streets, our streets were dry.
My neighbors leaped from buildings,
slammed their loneliness into the ground,
no one leaped. I set my house on fire: I
burned my first house down; I burned my
second house. Luswage Amini burned her
house. Zàoter Limici burned his house.
Duder Bello destroyed his neighborhood
with fire. Bresia burned the maps in her
house, then burned her house down. My
mother burned her house, even Vlati
burned his—the Governor’s palace. For
weeks, dark smoke bruised the sky, yet
the sky was clear; the sky was always
clear. Someone flew over Ravicka and
drew it and failed. Houses burned. They
did not burn. The phone rang as I wrote
that. I answered five years ago. “The city
is on fire,” the caller shouted. “We are
destroyed.” Luswage went to her summer
home and put fire to it. She called someone,
me, someone else. We all had to let others
know what we were doing. “I burned it,
Luswage,” I told her. “Why is it still
here?” She arched her back climbing out
of the tub, then burned her building down:
“I stood in the ashes. I swear to you.”
“Goddamn,” she said, looking up at the
plane. We knew he was dropping matches
to the earth, though they didn’t land near
us. The plane was supposed to crash.
“Our houses were supposed to burn,” I
said about the crisis destroying our city.

* *

Hausen wrote a book that everyone
was reading. It went that way with men,
and yet this was a book that meant a lot
to me and led to a book of my own.
Hausen wrote a book in the time before
the crisis and people carried it around
in their back pockets; it was mass
produced. In the book, a man walked
over a bridge and entered a building,
where he jumped into a pool with a
mineral-green bottom. He swam back
and forth. He did a breast stroke, he
worked from his back, he banged his
body against the water, he sang, he
shouted. He climbed out and exited
the building, leaving a trail of water. The
book described the water as text; the
drops were signs. They doubled the story
of Hausen’s character. He was a man
who swam at night in empty buildings.
The man went home to someone who
did not seem quite like a woman, but who
also was not identified as a “man.” The
man coming home lay on top of this
person and swam and told a story, which
was a confession, and the body gasped,
but we did not know if the man’s story
was causing this gasping or whether the
cause was his writhing. The reader couldn’t
hear the story, but Hausen had the language
around the story crack and drop heat on us.
And the body writhed on top of the other
body and whispered to it about something
done and undone in the city, something
sitting under water, something terrible.

* *

The city that existed ran like a film
playing in a small movie house on a
forgotten street in the blown out part
of the city we swore never to enter,
never to grace, because of some tragedy
no one remembered but which haunted
our movements in the “safe” parts of
the city, which counted for most of
Ravicka. It was too imbalanced: that
there was this block of streets, off limits
to our living, and within this block
breathed the real body of our city, the
one that existed rather than painted itself
to exist, the living one, at least as I came
to think of it, though I had never seen
that film. I tried to arrive at the movie
house, but got turned away each time.
It was the film of the decade and would
tell me how to live and would open into
new streets, where bodies were possible,
where architecture exceeded itself and
took care of the environment, brought
the park into itself, danced around the
canal, where water ran next to and
summer bodies floated by. It wasn’t a
utopia playing there but the real built
environment, the one that went with the
language you spoke, that could handle
the verbs of your language. It was the city,
but was unreachable, was violent, without
victims and without perpetrators, and
violent, though there were no crimes.

* *

Every time I wrote a sentence something
disappeared, and after many thousands
of sentences, some of which I didn’t keep
or didn’t like, I began to look for those
vanished things. I also wondered whether
it was more that they were invisible than
vanished. I thought writing had something
to do with invisibility and the world tried
to show you this as often as it could, but
disappearances seemed to have more to
do with not writing, from the way things
looked in the city, among my friends and
acquaintances. You were losing hope if
you weren’t writing, which isn’t the same
as things going invisible. You were losing
hope, too, if you were writing, but it was
a different kind of loss, because there was
always something you had more of when
you were done writing, even if it was
sentences that you hated. I wrote
sentences about how men sleep and my
wooden spoons vanished, or perhaps
were no longer visible to the eye. Most
of the sentences I wrote I did so without
thinking of the consequences of objects
going missing. I was often trying to write
about the crisis, which was hard and
took everything you had, which was
almost all your language for that day.
One day I stopped writing and asked
after the vanished things; I wanted to
know where they were. It was strange to
have had them go away so silently. I
asked into the room where they were
and wondered about the thing and all
the things that replaced it. Would they
all come back at once?

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Nick Hudson, Well, well, Nick! Howdy, man! I’m alright, just, you know, film finishing pretty much full time. Happy birthday a little late. Probably too taxing a question, but how did you end up in Tbilisi? I’m following your travails and triumphs on Facebook. Ace about the new album. Oh, sure, my email is [email protected]. Thanks! Keep being you, not that you need my encouragement. xoxo. ** ellie, Hi, ellie! I’m good, pretty good. How’s everything with you? Thanks a lot for reading ‘Zac’s Drug Binge’. You know, I’ve never looked at my gif fictions with music on. It might a weird new way to think about them. Huh. No, not whole books to music. Bits and pieces. There was an album years ago of songs inspired by my work, and there were songs/tracks on there that used things of mine as lyrics or voiceover kinds of things. Oh, wow, a Eliane Radigue Cooper opera. I would literally ascend straight from my desk chair into heaven in that case. We’ve finished the edit of the film, and now we’re desperately trying to raise the funds to do the technical stuff it needs (VFX, sound design, better color grading). And we’re waiting to find out if any upcoming film festivals will take it. Definitely jacket-requiring here. Drizzly and cold. I like cold, but the drizzle is getting very old. Do you like winter? We please and inspire each other, what could possibly be better. You take care, stay toasty, and I hope I’ll get to see you again soon. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yeah, the bank card worries are getting very boring. ‘Prayers’ for a full mailbox today. If your landlord is really nice, he’ll have a heating technician over there today. Did … he? Strange how a hustler with smoker’s lungs is an attractive option. I learn so much about myself making those posts, ha ha. For instance that I think I’m ‘in love’ with kennywantsnachos. There’s no Love without losing [but] don’t worry, I play soccer ⚽️, G. ** Charalampos, I can’t believe I’m saying enjoy the sun, but I am. ‘The Has-Been’ is the name of the audio novel Zac and I are going to make/record soon. I think a piece of the text was published somewhere, I forget. ‘Effi Briest’ is a goodie. Yes, we progress on the film. There’s still a lot of technical stuff to be done before it’s actually finished/seeable. I’m not involved in the new Gisele work. Or, well, actually, I wrote it but then she threw out my text, so I’m not involved anymore. After8 can bankrupt one if one isn’t careful. Clear Paris sky vibes from beneath its very unclear sky. ** Misanthrope, Oh, jeez, about Young Elio. What the fuck is wrong with people? Time for him to realise that when you’re queer your friends are your real family, I guess. I don’t need to ask you to give him all the support he needs. He’ll be fine, but Jesus. ** _Black_Acrylic, Resnais made a lot of topnotch films. Dude, your birthday finally arrived! Teeniest bit late and happiest wishes! The 40s were pretty good. I liked my 40s. Welcome to their near middle! ** Darby 👨‍🎤🎥🌛, Howdy! Yay, about the DMV. What do you need to do to get ready? I remember studying for the written part a little and making sure my eyes were clear for the eye test part. The first place I moved to away from home/Los Angeles was NYC. The finding an apartment part was pretty stressful, but I found one. Otherwise, nah, it was just happy-making newness galore. I think when you’re in a situation that you don’t want to be in, the feelings that you’re feeling are not only normal but key to making yourself get out of the situation. Artist residencies: basically they’re these kind of retreats where you apply with examples of your art and the plans you have re: what you want to make or work on while there, and the residencies go through the entries and pick people to come. So you get to go somewhere where you basically have nothing else to do but work on your art for however long, a week or two or a month or longer. If you search around, you’ll find some. They usually focus on afferent kinds of art, so there are ones for writers, for visual artists, for researchers, etc. So close!!!! Excellent! Us too with the film. Race you. ** Jack Skelley, Scholasticky! Right, Arthur Bremmer, there’s a book of his diaries, or there was. I think I did a cut up thing with them for some fiction piece or something. Yes, I thought my Greenwell answer was potently discrete. But maybe not. Jacques, I loved your submarine. ** Steve Erickson, Great, so there’s more on Vecchiali in English now. Everyone, Steve has reviewed Paul Vecchiali’s little known until recently and apparently very good film ‘The Strangler’. Check it. I’m hoping the selection and mixing of the tracks has the same great pleasure as mixing/selecting a film’s final layout. Make that SoundCloud rap song! You could get rich, viral, something. ** Cap’m, Cap’m, my old, dear pal! How in the world are you? So very lovely to see you! Trust your instincts on clicking. Well, you know that. Wow, late Happy Halloween and early Merry Xmas to you! How are you? xoxoxo. ** Audrey, Hi, Audrey. Ha ha, see, I romanticise your way of talking. Oh, thank you for filling me in and correcting me. I didn’t know that about his earlier fiction films. I must seek them out. Him doing fiction is very intriguing. Since he’s here, they show his films fairly often because he can be there to talk about them. I’ll scour to see if the fiction ones get shown. I know the name Bern Porter, but I can’t remember how. I’m going to investigate Radu Jude, and, as is my wont, try to do a post him about while I search, hoping there’s enough of him available to make one. Sadly there are so many amazing filmmakers whose work has very little direct presence online. I’ll try. Exciting. Obviously I hope that roller coaster flattens out and that the exit station is in your sights. (Sorry for pressing the roller coaster metaphor, my theme park fetish arises). My plan for the waning week is to go look at some art and make sure the French subtitles we need on our film for a grant are okay and watch ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ of all ungodly things because some writer friends and I perversely decided to discuss the Taylor Swift phenomenon on our bi-weekly Zoom gathering on Saturday. I hope your remaining week is at least as oddball as mine. Love, Dennis. ** Okay. Renee Gladman is one of my favorite American fiction writers, and the novel spotlit up above, which is from her Ravicka novel series, is maybe her most beautiful. Highly recommended, in other words. See you tomorrow.