‘“I kneaded mud and I made gold”: Belloc could borrow this verse from Baudelaire, which has become a cliché, to make it the subtitle of his Neons. Story of a self-discovery through obscene misery (the spectacle of a father dying after a boxing match, the mother remarried to a slugger, the discovery of her homosexuality in a pissotière, prostitution between Pigalle and Barbès where one sells for fifty bucks, the orgy in the Bois, the recovery house, the jail, the smashes …) and a cruel and implacable language, Néons leads the reader in his drift, refusing any form of wretchedness and regret … but by looking, convulsively, how to make a saving black humor emerge from the abrasions: ” I hear words:” morbid “,” depraved “and then” poor guy “. […]I look for the word in my dictionary: MORBIDE: relating to the disease: morbid state. Which denotes a sickly, depraved imbalance: morbid imagination. DEPRAVED: Spoiled: depraved taste. Perverted, debauched. For “poor guy”, I’m not looking. I know. “From this strange biographical tale which seeks to recreate, in a pulp novel way , a life whose softness and light have been scraped alive, we retain the sarcastic smile of Denis Belloc, which transforms lust into revealing a certain social truth (“I’m fifteen, I get nothing out of dialectical materialism and I don’t give a fuck about class struggle. I don’t like mine enough.”) And manages to make one feel, under the layers of merciless anecdotes given without coating, all the innocence of a being uninhibited, wild, and of a deafening honesty.’ — Julie Proust Tanguy

‘This is an old story, but one that literature has ignored until relatively recently–a universal story that Denis Belloc sets in France in the 1960s. A poor boy whose mother neglects him and whose stepfather beats him finds excitement and a kind of love in “tearooms,” or public restrooms. Uneducated but good-looking, he is absorbed into a homosexual underworld of prostitution, petty crime and unstable relationships with men a little older and a little better off than he.

‘The protagonist, named Denis like the author, “lives the absence” of his father, a boxer who was killed in a carnival sideshow. He has a vacancy in him that nothing seems to fill. He drifts through blue-collar jobs, prison and intervals as a kept man, periodically infected by syphilis, impulsively drawn to violence, oblivion and flight. The novel’s minimalist style fits the subject. Belloc presents Denis’ life in terse, detached scenes, as brutally clear but as fleeting as the neon lights that flow over him as he guns a stolen motorcycle through the streets of Paris.

‘Denis hardly has a chance. At 20, an ex-con with a drinking problem, his marketability waning–“(my body is) all I have to give”–he seems to have little to look forward to. He does have an interest in painting–his mother’s one positive legacy. And that literary phrase “living the absence” suggests that he may be acquiring an artist’s ability to give form to his pain. Belloc leaves the question open; his main purpose is to show how deforming pain can be.’ — Michael Harris, The Los Angeles Times

‘Néons tells the story of a guy who was massacred before he wrote it down, as though he vomited it and thus exorcised him: a father who died too early (“He was twenty-five years old. me one and a half. And what he did to me that evening in July 1951, I couldn’t forgive him. I thought: […] You are an absent bastard and I hate you.”), a bumping stepfather, a mother overwhelmed by events, the early discovery of raw and sacrificial sexuality (“And I put my satchel in the urinal on going to school, coming back from school, I wank and wank too, sometimes they suck my cock but I don’t want to suck.”), Petty crime, the reform house, the galley, the sidewalk, the descent to the lowest in extreme loneliness and self-loathing (“Lower your pants, spread your legs. Offer your mouth and buttocks. Whirlwind of spunk and shit, filth to be forgotten.”), Death stretching out its arms but the mother coming back, painting and this book to finally get out of it, maybe (and in fact not … but the rest is written in the later novels). We will have understood that reading this one is quite trying: because the truth is never made up there, because its language is raw (even though it is often sublime), because at the end of all that (which leaves to hope) seen how it started there is nothing necessarily. Not love anyway. So nothing but this Neons which is already a lot because of those rare books brought back from Hell which leave the reader (which they spit out at the end dumbfounded and shaken) a taste of ashes in the mouth and the mind upset to come to attend nothing less than ‘a miracle: that of the blossoming, in the mire and the wetness, of a song from the depths all of lack and excess, therefore of great violence… but of pure beauty.’ — Jean-Marc Flapp

 

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Further

Denis Belloc @ Wikipedia
‘Neons’ @ goodreads
‘Neons’ reviewed @ Kirkus
‘Neons’ reviewed @ Publishers Weekly
Denis Belloc: Écrivain sans domicile fixe
Contribution subjective à une mémoire …
Néons, un livre atypique
BELLOC Denis | Néons @ Dissonances
Buy ‘Neons’

 

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Extras

Denis Belloc “Anti-portrait chinois” de Thierry Ardisson

Bernard PIVOT reçoit Denis BELLOC pour son premier livre “Néons”

 

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Press

 

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Book

Denis Belloc Neons
Godine

‘In this brilliant tale of violent sexuality, set forth in stark, hypnotic prose, Denis Belloc presents a straightforward narrative of the homosexual underworld in 1960s Paris. As a young child, Denis (autobiographical parallels are intentional) witnesses his father’s death in a sideshow boxing match and is left with nothing but faded photographs. Numbed by his mother’s neglect and her new husband’s abusive treatment, he turns to Paris’s teeming street life and to the sordid corners of the city’s “tearooms” (public restrooms). He is absorbed quickly into a world of physical and emotional prostitution, and finds temporary stability only with a few lovers and friends. Belloc’s detached style is devoid of self-pity, and creates a savage, involving tension. Blasphemous, unrelenting, uninhibited, this novel will leave no one indifferent.’ — Godine

‘This explosive and magnificent book speaks the truth, always.’
—Marguerite Duras

‘There’s much brilliance in Neons. Belloc’s story of homosexual underlife in Paris may be ages old, but he has sculpted it into a sequence of amazing musical fragments whose cacophonous honesty is perfectly matched to a prose both offhanded and capable of unnerving emotional feats.’
—Dennis Cooper

 

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Excerpts

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thank you! Thank you too for your love’s great intentions for my health. It hasn’t quite worked yet, but it’s the fantasy that counts, as I know all too well. Nice ashtray picks. Love like the sound of coins hitting the floor when some rich kid is grabbed by the ankles, turned upside down, and shaken, G. ** Ashhh, Nice name. Hi. Yeah, I’m still sick, grr, and I didn’t make it to Salon du Chocolat for that reason, so drat. ‘The Crucible’, that’s an interesting Halloween watch. Every time I lend someone a book, I just go ahead and write it off. Thank you marking your friend’s graduation so nefariously. I would want most of the ashtrays in my house, especially the ones that are worth a lot of money, although in that case rather briefly. And maybe not that poor human ashtray, although I guess she likes it, although it doesn’t really look like she does. ** _Black_Acrylic, It did make for a blissful short time. Maybe I need to just stream that episode 24/7 from here on out. Nostalgia for smoking cigarettes is a rosy lie of a longing, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. Great! Best luck with the submission! ** Bzzt, Hi, man, so nice to see you! Wednesday … tomorrow! Yes, please hook us up. Sure, I’d love to hang while you’re here. Just hit me up when you know your schedule, etc., and we’l sort it. Nice! I haven’t read Colette since I was pretty young, and I thought her stuff was kind of so-so at the time, but maybe it ages well or something. It did seem like one of those things where if you don’t read and like it when you’re in your teens you never will. But I could be totally wrong. Look forward to seeing you! ** David, Hi. The name Dennis Nilsen rings a bell, ha ha. I know a guy whose father was one of Nilsen’s victims. I don’t know what one line only on the covid test means, but congrats! ** Bill, Hi. I do know that Caja piece, and why it slipped my mind when making that post is a giant mystery. Yeah, I still feel shitty, but, yeah, hopefully not for long, and thank you. A bit cruel? Ha ha. ** T, Oh, no, you’re one of those annoying people. Ha ha. Don’t start buying packs though. Better to be very slightly annoying than be a full-fledged smoker. Like me. I didn’t make it to Salon du Chocolat due to my feeling shitty, and it’s sad but not, you know, tragic or anything. I could use one of those masks at the moment. Maybe I can put some scotch tape on the edges of my face and fake it. I hope your today turns every staircase into an escalator and every sidewalk into a conveyer belt. xo. ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien. Thank you a lot, sir. Soup sounds really, really good. Split pea … oooh. I’ll see if I can find some. You good? Hope so. ** Steve Erickson, Thanks, Steve. If I was a multi-billionaire, I’d buy a failed mall and have it redesigned into a gigantic mansion. I would. I really think I would. ** Misanthrope, Well, I’m still sick, so watch your back. I would feel terrible if I had any part in preventing you from doing Cornstalkers. ** Okay. Today I’m spotlighting a really terrific novel that is very much an overlooked gem. It’s a novel that I definitely think could be of real interest to at least some of you who frequent this blog or my own books, but I’ve certainly been wrong before. Have a look. See you tomorrow.

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KITH & Notorious B.I.G Ready To Die Ash Tray (2021)
‘With the intention of improving its inclusion and diversity efforts, KITH has revealed a partnership with the Christopher Wallace Estate. The brand has officially launched its second KITH x Notorious B.I.G. collection, promising to donate all proceeds to local schools around Brooklyn.’

 

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Katerina Jebb Balthus’s Ashtray (2015)
‘An exact ceramic replica of Balthus’ original ashtray, serving as a support for a scale 1 transfer of the image scanned in 2008. The artist Katerina Jebb explains how the project came about: “When, in 2008, I entered Balthus’ workshop at the Grand Chalet de Rossinière, left intact since his death in 2001, to proceed with a scanner to an exhaustive digital inventory of the objects therein, I was struck by the feeling that time is motionless, suspended there. Among them, one particularly fascinates me. It is an ashtray containing butts and ashes left by the heavy smoker Balthus. The cigarettes, long extinguished in this ashtray, awaited, in a poignant way, the human presence. Still there, seven years later, they made tangible the breath that had consumed them, close to the last.’

 

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SacredSimulacrum Roach Ashtray (2020)
Resin, plastic, cockroaches

 

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Rene Magritte Rosenthale ashtray (1970)
Designed and drawn by the artist. Limited edition (150 made).

 

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Sterling Ruby Ashtrays (2005 – 2019)
‘The ceramic pieces Sterling Ruby now calls ashtrays, were all initially made as glaze tests. Their form started out as a practical solution for containing pools of liquid, and used to determine color combinations and firing times for his larger ceramic works. Technically they are the evidence of the artist resolving questions, but instead of becoming artifacts of this investigation, they appear as microcosms of rightness with a pent-up physicality. The tests have taken on a life of their own and literally look like miniature, gloopy, rasping, and burbling worlds that offer up endless potential for the imagination. Well, some of them do.’

 

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Yayoi Kusama Ashtray (1988)

 

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Schafer and Vater Ashtray (1928)
‘A novelty ashtray from around the 1920’s or 30’s – a bald headed man singing Sweet Adeline. Rest the ciggie on his lower lip and the smoke will build up and billow out of his ears – an incense pellet can also be used. Made from hand painted porcelain. Part of a series of singing men ashtrays.’

 

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Richard Hamilton Ashtray (1979)
Enamel paint on yellow glass

 

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Yiwugo The Round bird’s nest glass ashtray (1994)
‘Our shop for the entity wholesale shop, located in the world small commodity city – yiwu, zhejiang province, the standard prices are wholesale price, the buyer must understand before take baby description of the shooting method in detail, have minimum quantity limit must be taken by the regulation to buy. Not scattered to sell.’

 

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Rinus Van de Velde Ashtrays (2020)
‘The unwieldiness of Van de Velde’s ashtrays, which are replete with little creatures at work or play, denizens of a miniature Bosch-like landscape, compels viewers to become complicit in their still-frame lives. To the extent that we might think to actually use these ashtrays, we become little gods, ominously lording it over the majesty of an alienated creation, exhaling plumes of fire.’

 

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Unknown Ashtray (1961)
‘I was in Kentucky last month, and while my mom went to an appointment, I speed-shopped the Somewhere in Time Antiques Mall along Highway 31W in Radcliff, Kentucky. It was super duper fun — there was lots to ogle, from all eras, at generally terrific prices.’

 

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Rose Eken Installation (2015)
Marlboro Cigarettes, Round White Ashtray with Cigarettes, Cigarette Butts

 

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Bob Dylan shares a cigarette with Andy Warhol (1965)

 

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Tom Wesselmann Smoking Cigarettes in Ashtrays (1999)
Liquitex on bristol board

 

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Yoshitomo Nara Fuck the Rotten World ashtray (2000)

 

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Ryan Gander A redesigned ashtray for Café Aubette (2011)
‘A reinterpretation of the 1927 Van Doesburg ashtray for Café Aubette in Strasbourg. It has only one place for a cigarette, whereas usually ashtrays have two or three because they go in the middle of the table. But in the para-possible view of the ashtray that the work represents, Van Doesburg never meets Mondrian, so it’s an ashtray for one person only. Van Doesburg designed the ashtray for Café Aubette, so it would have had numerous places for cigarettes because it would have been used for the café tables.’

 

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Claes Oldenburg Giant Fagends (1967)
‘Giant Fagends consists of oversized, urethane-foam cigarette butts crumpled-up on top of one another in a white, polygonal ashtray. They look like cigarette throw pillows made out of synthetic leather. Whatever negative, non-glamorous associations one has about cigarettes—carcinogenic smoke, grubby fingers, stained teeth, and so on—come to the fore here.’

 

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Jiří Černický Phoenixies (2007)
flies, glass, cigarettes

 

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Vik Muniz Untitled ashtray (1999)
‘Muniz takes the classic 1818 painting by Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer, and recreates it in ashes and cigarette butts which was then photographed and screened into a porcelain ashtray made at Limoges in Bernardaud, France. The rim of the ashtray is then hand-painted in silver leaf.’

 

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Isamu Noguchi Ashtray (1945)
‘In 1944, the cigarette was on the lips of allied soldiers, Ingrid Bergman, and Humphrey Bogart; for Noguchi—also a smoker—the cigarette was not only culturally iconic but a memory of youth: smart talk over cocktails and a husky-voiced cabaret singer and a last smoke, past midnight, with the person beside you in the sheets. Friends with architect/inventor/futurist extraordinaire Buckminster Fuller, and fascinated by modern manufacturing, Noguchi saw the invitation of the ashtray, simultaneously, as one of creative challenge and fabulous wealth. He would make the perfect ashtray, and every desk, every meeting-room table, every college classroom, every nightstand by the bed, every airport lounge would be outfitted; to Noguchi, art was everywhere, and so would be his ashtray.

‘The ashtray, which uncannily resembled an archetypical box of bullets (a square of 25), promised total, unthinking efficiency, and easy cleaning. The cigarettes could be placed this way or that, and extinguished between the bullets, and the disassembled object could be washed in the sink. Noguchi pitched it to Fuller for Fuller’s “Dymaxion” line (dynamic, maximum, tension). Fuller politely deferred, as did the other outlets that Noguchi approached. The consensus was that the manufacturing of the device would be overly expensive; the dymaxion ashtray was too complicated. But also, the bullet ashtray was a miss; Noguchi, overwhelmed by history, had produced an exquisite iteration of mid-century horror.’

 

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Monika Mogi Ashtrays (2019 – 2021)
“Being homesick, I wanted to create my own version of a snack ashtray – one that exists in my dreamworld,” 28-year-old Mogi says of the fantasy venture she’s aptly titled Snack Monika. ​“I used to collect signs that I found visually striking, some from real places that hold a special memory for me.”

 

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Peter Fischli/David Weiss Untitled (Very Small Bucket) (1994)
‘Peter Fischli/David Weiss’s replicants refuse to give us any insight into their inner nature and structure, which we, as products of a scientific age, automatically want to investigate. Instead, we are radically confronted with a surface that cannot be penetrated because it conceals nothing but a void.’

 

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Pablo Picasso Ashtray “Bird with Worm (Oiseau au Ver)” (1952)
Glazed earthenware with oxidized paraffin decoration

 

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Ben Churchill Ashtray Cake (2018)
‘Ben Churchill, 31, has created the unorthodox masterpiece that appears to look like a used ashtray. The British chef, who is based on the outskirts of London, fills his diners with not only tasty puddings but also apprehension and confusion. He shows how he brings the displeasing to see dishes to life by using ingredients such as bubblegum meringue dust, that replicates the mould of an orange, to modeling chocolate and syrup that appear to look like cigarette butts.’

 

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Alina Szapocznikow The Bachelor’s Ashtray (1972)
Colored polyester resin and cigarette butts

 

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YOURNELO Modern Lighted Lips Ceramic Cigarette Ashtray Holder for Home (2017)
‘Windproof, deep enough for keeping ash inside.the piece is finished in durable glaze.’

 

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Jon Pylypchuk I wish my parents were still alive (2012)
Silkscreen on ceramic ashtray

 

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TotalCadeau Coughing Lung Ash Tray (2008)
‘Designed to look like a pair of lungs! This coughing and screaming ashtray depicts how harmful smoking is for your body. The ashtray bursts out in a disturbingly realistic coughing and screaming fit as soon as a cigarette is placed over it. If the auditory pleas are not enough, the visual image of the lungs deteriorating with every cigarette should make any smoker think twice!’

 

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Salvador Dali Air India Ashtray (1967)
‘Designed by surrealist artist Salvador Dali in 1967 for Air India. This ashtray was to be given out to Air India first class passengers. The ashtray is composed of a shell shape with a serpent twined around its perimeter and supported by 3 surrealist swan elephants. Dali requested to be paid with a baby elephant so he could achieve his long life dream of following in Hannibal’s footsteps and re-enact the crossing of the Pyrenees 2000 years ago.’

 

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Wayne Dalton Alien Genesis – Unreal engine ashtray (2019)
‘Alien Genesis is a real-time in-game modulated sci-fi interior personal project based around the Nostromo from the 1979 movie Alien.’

 

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Paul Evans and Phillip Lloyd Powell Ashtray (1956-57)
walnut, pewter

 

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Emmett Moore Butt Ashtray (2018)
Cigarette Butts, Borosilicate Glass, Epoxy Resin

 

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Unknown Uranium Vaseline Glass Ashtray (1945)

 

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César Mao Ashtray (1968)
Ashtray in cast aluminum representing the president Mao Tsé Toung.

 

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Unknown Speed Darlington Ashtray (2021)
‘Nigerian rapper and singer Speed Darlington has taken to social media to lament bitterly after a sculptor made a mess of his face. According to the singer, he ordered a custom-made ashtray from a sculptor and sent a picture as reference. However, he got an artwork completely different from what he ordered. Infuriated by this, Speed Darlington took to his page to rant, threatening to sue the sculptor if he doesn’t correct the artwork.

“The carver fucked up I don’t fucking want this ashtray, this is not my face everything is not funny I don’t fucking want this start over or I will start case 😡. This one took 10 days only God knows what my real face is going to take swipe left to see the picture I sent this man that he cannot get right. In his mind he believe if we laugh long enough I’ll just throw my money away and accept it; because somebody put a spell on my head that I’m always going to be looking for a laugh even if it cost me money👎🏿. Yeah right!”

 

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Vanessa Brown Ashtray Earrings (2018)
‘One of Brown’s most iconic works is Ashtray Earrings, 2018. They are the size of two coffee tables, with a giant filtered cigarette, also made of steel, resting on one. The ashtrays are also a set of giant, unwearable earrings. Positing bad advice, “Everyone should be forced to smoke,” the singer Joni Mitchell told her biographer, Michelle Mercer.’

 

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Nicole Wermers Untitled Ashtray (shells) (2018)

 

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“I need a smoke after a long day, but I don’t want to get ash all over my new carpet! Luckily for me I have my slave girl who is more than happy to serve as my human ashtray!”

 

 

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p.s. Hey. Warning: I’m down with a bad cold or mild flu or something, and today’s p.s. will not be at its best. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks. Oh, we don’t know about other events yet. The Pinault people did a recording of the walkthrough, and we need to get it from them (hopefully in the next day or two) before we can approach other venues so they’ll know what we’re proposing. We’re scheduled to have a Zoom with our film producer this week, and then hopefully we’ll know where we are with the fund-raising. Awesome that you had an awesome time with Anita! I was pretty sick all weekend, so my Halloween was a wash out, unfortunately. Worriedteen will do nicely, good eye, and thank you. Otherwise, and granted I’m very hazy brained, but TrannyVenus seems like fun, and NotUrType could be a keeper. Love’s lack of sparkling brain cells this morning can only think to offer you the ashtray of your choice, so … ?, G. ** David, Hi. I’m imagining all of the weekend’s slaves sitting around a campfire listening wide-eyed to you regaling them with your life story. Thanks, hoping the sun’s domination of the morning sky will portend my approaching healthiness. ** _Black_Acrylic, Happy day after! As internally soggy as I was from the neck up, I nonetheless got some solid head banging and grinning time in on Saturday thanks to Play Therapy and nothing else. As soon as I’m fit, ‘Katalin Varga’ goes in the queue. Thanks! My US friends have very similar stories. Unless I’m missing something, Parisians continue to toe the line. Excellent that you’re in the swing and know it, pal. ** Bill, Hi. Hm, my memory of ‘Broadcast Signal Intrusion’ is only that it seemed pretty good, odd enough, but not, like, amazing or anything. But, again, my brain is 3/4 rock this morning. Any Halloween doings? ** Steve Erickson, No, I’ve seen no trace of Magnoti on the s/m sites, but I did come across his escort profile ages ago. I’ll hopefully see the new Wes Anderson this week, but, given that I love all of his films to one degree or another, I’ll be surprised if I agree with you. ** G, Hey, G. Mine was low key too, which I quite enjoyed. No, as I keep saying, I’m sick with something and have been since Friday night, so my weekend was a nothing. If I can fake myself alert and energetic with espressos, I might go to Salon du Chocolat today, which would make up for it. How was your big H? ** James Champagne, Thank you, James! I hope yours was a blast. ** Bob, Hi. The phone number was altered, as are other things in the profiles to protect their authors’ identities. It’s really best if you think them as fictional characters because with the changes I make to disguise them, they might as well be. If you want to find the sites I use you can just do a google search for s&m-oriented hook-up and social media sites because they’re all out there and findable. They’re not hidden away on the dark web or anything. ** T., Hi, T. Oh, man, sorry about the end of your relationship. I hope your sounding okay about that means you are. Sadly, being ill did pretty much kill my Halloween, but then again I guess there’s something Halloween-ish about being ill? Watching horror films often makes for the best possible Halloween, so, cool. Nothing here. I don’t think Parisians trick-or-treat, or maybe in the super wealthy arrondissements? Ha ha, wow, that’s pretty giddy. Seriously, though, if I can somehow psyche and medicate myself up enough to hit Salon du Chocolat today, giddiness will be my destiny. But it’s doubtful. I hope your Monday goes to Salon day Chocolat and returns to you with 15 big garage bags full of the creme de la creme. xo. ** Right. Today the blog presents you with a whole bunch of ashtrays. See you tomorrow.