‘…one of the most important works of twentieth century fiction… When the history of modern literature is written some years from now, it will have to take [Progress of Stories] into account…’ — John Ashbery

‘Laura Riding’s Progress of Stories is something of a litmus test for readers. For some, it is a neglected masterpiece, a revolutionary work in the development of fiction, a book like no other. For others, it a book like no other … in its pretentiousness, its relentless interruptions to remind the reader that he/she is reading a piece of fiction, and its refusal, in many stories, to follow any conventional narrative pattern.

‘Riding first published Progress of Stories in 1935, when she was living with the poet Robert Graves on Majorca and running the Seizin Press. She had already made a name as a modernist poet in the U.S., divorced her first husband, had an affair with the poet Allen Tate, attempted suicide and broken up Graves’ first marriage–although she cut off sexual relations with Graves early in their time as a couple. If Riding comes across as a woman inclined to take things to extremes, that comes across in her fiction.

‘In the words of Graves’ nephew and biographer Richard Perceval Graves, “Her plenipotent intellect and personality swept away all resistance, reducing to discipleship, abject servility, or virtual madness anyone who could not manage to shake him/herself free from her mesmerizing, tyrannical influence. Her most subjective responses to experience were translated (by her as well as her followers) into world-historical imperatives and aesthetic universals, while her insight into the multiple layers of human personality enabled her to manipulate everyone around her intellectually, emotionally, and sexually.” (There is a striking resemblance between accounts of Riding by people who knew her–and her responses to them–and those of another litmus-like figure, Ayn Rand.)

‘I must confess defeat through exhaustion in dealing with Riding’s life and a good deal of her opinions. This is a woman who, in her eighties, could chastise Harry Mathews over four lengthy paragraphs for referring to her in a New York Review of Books article of the 1982 of Progress of Stories as “Laura” rather than “Laura (Riding) Jackson” (her preferred name after her 1941 marriage to critic Schuyler Jackson). She also made sure to note that “my work and myself” were subjects “which no professional literary man or woman can afford to disregard in his or her position-taking.” And I nearly surrendered before even reaching the stories in Progress of Stories thanks to 33 pages of prefaces (the one to the 1935 edition, followed by a second for the 1982 edition).

‘From the start, Riding draws a stark line between her work and those of virtually all her predecessors: “There is a quaint cult of story-writing which practises what is called ‘the short story’; pompous little fragments in whose very triviality, obscurity and shabbiness some significant principle of being is meant to be read.” Instead, it is time, she declares, that “we should be telling one another stories of ideas.” This is no earth-shaking assertion, but soon after it, Riding challenges the reader to digest the following sentence: “Thus the story-telling model of human speaking, or, as speaking recorded for silent apprehending is literarily named, ‘writing’, persists, in its natural casting of speaking or writing as reduplicating the live processes of happening, into the open areas of knowledge and understanding that all minds share as the world of intelligent being—partaking, in their unitary reality as minds, of the identity of mind.”

‘I balked for a moment, but plowed on (write me if you can explain what she meant). Or rather, detoured past the rest of the preface material and headed into the stories themselves. The book is organized in three major sections: the stories from the 1935 edition, followed by a selection of stories from Riding’s first two fiction collections, Anarchism is Not Enough (1928) and Experts Are Puzzled (1930). It concludes with “Christmastime,” a story she wrote in 1966 and her own reflections on some of the preceding stories.

‘The Progress of Stories section represents something of a journey out of conventional story-telling into the new territory Riding proposes to discover. The seven stories in Part One, “Stories of Lives”, a written in a very spare style but still somewhat represent other short stories one might be familiar with, although rather as if being viewed under a microscope like a specimen.
In Part Two, “Stories of Ideas,” however, Riding sets the reader down in wholly unfamiliar material. “Reality as Port Huntlady” opens with a simple, traditional narrative sentence: “Dan the Dog came to the town of Port Huntlady with two friends, Baby and Slick.” OK, no problem there. But then Riding tells us that, “Port Huntlady was not a town as other towns are towns. It was rather like a place where one felt a town might one day be, or where one felt that perhaps there had once been a town.” Port Huntlady, in other words, is not your usual seaside resort town. No, it is a town that–like the story itself–hovers between life in the real world and life in a world of ideas: “Port Huntlady was a place where things might happen; not the things that happened in the world proper, which were personal experiences, but universal experiences, such as the end of the world, or great turning-points in the course of human events.”

‘At the center of Port Huntlady affairs is Lady Port-Huntlady–herself an orphic figure who might well be a fictional counterpart for Riding herself: “Never seeming to say anything—and yet, after one had left her presence, it seemed that she had said a great deal, at least that one had understood a great many things that one did not really understand.” Indeed, a cynic might say the same thing after finishing Progress of Stories

‘But it doesn’t really matter what Lady Port-Huntlady might or might not say during her soirees, since, as Riding soon tells us, “We are all aware that there is no such place as Port Huntlady. It may well be that there is a place to which Port Huntlady stands as a lie stands to the truth. In fact, this is not far from being the case.” The inclusion of details is, for Riding, part of the attempt the story-teller to be believable, but this is ultimately equivalent to hypnotism: “this true-seeming is the power of the story to keep your interest until you have abandoned, quite frankly, those rational standards of interest with which we all prop up our chins when our thoughts scurry between brain and heart and we can do no better than be proud. It is the moral pretence of the story created by our joint vanity in being conscientious, orderly and truthful creatures—before we give ourselves up to its gentle idiocy….”

‘“But, indeed,” she asks further on, “is our story very important? Is any story very important? I assure you that no story is of much importance; and I think you will agree with me. Are we not all agreed that only a few things are really important?” Though she introduces other characters and engages them in various actions, she notes that these matters are both pointless and, therefore, infinite in their possibilities: “… how Lady Port-Huntlady would have consoled the cats by bringing down the remains of their lunch from the lounge; and how Miss Bookworth would have left Port Huntlady soon after to take up a post as secretary to a wealthy invalid whose hobby was corresponding with patients in tuberculosis sanatoria, in which he had spent much of his own life; and how a story may go on indefinitely unless there is perfect understanding at the start of the limitations that keep a story from being anything but a story….” In the end, she writes, driving a last stake through any pretense of honoring the “laws” of fiction, “no amount of ingenuity can save a story from seeming, in the end, just a story–just a piece of verbal luggage, belonging to anybody who cares to be bothered with it.”

‘In an interview, the poet Lisa Samuels, who edited the University of California Press 2001 reprint of Riding’s 1928 collection, Anarchism Is Not Enough, argued that Riding was challenging the very conceptual basis of fiction itself, rather like Brecht breaking the fourth wall between the play and its audience: “Her tone can be crisp in those stories, as you say; but her combinations of the fantastic, fairy tales, interrogating language as power, investigating what it means to draw and disassemble characters, challenging the reader to be aware of their desire for narrative and syntactic seduction, and so on, make for a situation, in my reading, of multiple possibilities (rather than precision) and messy genres (excess – I mean that in a good way).”

‘If you wanted to know whether or not you would get anything out of Progress of Stories, you could actually just go straight to “Reality as Port Huntlady” and draw your conclusions from that. For me, reading it was rather like the experience of looking at a Magic Eye picture, where you can feel your visual perception of the image switching back and forth between what seems like noise and then, a moment later, becomes coherent. It was both disorienting and, in a way, almost thrilling.

‘Continuing on in this manner for another two hundred-plus pages, however, was a like being trapped in a gallery with nothing on the walls except Magic Eye pictures. A little bit is an exciting novelty; dozens of these pictures, one following the other relentlessly, was mind-numbing. Reviewing the 1982 edition in New York magazine, Edith Milton concluded, “All this self-consciousness makes for quite difficult reading, and, despite their formal brilliance, the stories pall.”

‘On the other hand, Harry Mathews–himself a veteran challenger of the conventions of fiction–considered Riding’s venture among the most ambitious in 20th century literature: “Riding’s aim in writing this carefully structured series of stories was to make articulate in the experience of her readers a knowledge of life that is both true and nonconceptual. It was as if she wanted to make the mechanisms of language, usually so approximate and reductive, accurate enough in the effect of their working to initiate the reader willy-nilly into an awareness of what she felt to be the pure, unmediated truth.”’ — The Neglected Books Page

 

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Further

Laura Riding Jackson Site
Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation
Laura Riding @ Wikipedia
My Poetic Side
Beyond Poetry
Laura Riding Roughshod
Laura Riding @ Ugly Duckling Press(e)
Telling Laura (Riding) Jackson, reply by Paul Auster
Laura Riding @ goodreads
Looking for (Mrs) Laura (Riding) Jackson, the anti-social people’s poet, from Jamaica (Queens) to Woodruff Avenue (Brooklyn)
‘The Promise of Words’
Against the Commodity of the Poem: The Poetics of Laura (Riding) Jackson
LAURA RIDING TO THE WORLD: “WHAT SHALL WE DO?”
Experts are Puzzled
Laura Riding’s Quarrel with Poetry
Laura Riding’s Extraordinary 1930 Letters to an 8-Year-Old Girl About Being Oneself
Code of Silence: Laura (Riding) Jackson and the Refusal to Speak
Diving Deep Into the Letters of Laura Riding and Gertrude Stein
With Thanks to Laura Riding
“I Will Not Give You an Answer”
Laura Riding’s bold plan to stop time

 

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Extras

Laura (Riding) Jackson gives a lecture for the Poetry Project

Tour of Laura (Riding) Jackson’s House

Laura (Riding) Jackson recorded at University of Florida 1975

 

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To the Editors

 

‘Poet, seer, muse, and occasional Fury, Laura (Riding) Jackson is back among us, mercifully and pitilessly, as a writer of fictions. A new edition of her Progress of Stories, first published in 1935, reprints the original text unamended, together with twelve other early stories, one later one, and a new preface and commentary by the author. The book has long been unavailable, and its reappearance is to be welcomed; indeed, in a wiser world, its publication date would be declared a national holiday. There seems no point in trying to conceal my own enthusiasm. … ‘ — Harry Mathews, NYRB

To the Editors:

I am writing to you in special relation to a particular feature of Mr. Harry Mathews’s review of the new edition of my book Progress of Stories, which appeared in your issue of April 29th. This feature is a supposed difficulty Mr. Matthews represents himself as encountering in referring to me by name, and the caper of arguing a necessity of resolving it by referring to me in his review’s developing course as, just, “Laura.” The freedom-taking in this country with first-name calling that has been adopted as a professional necessity in television and newspaper quarters, and doctors’ and dentists’ establishments (I have been met, in the last, in requesting address not automatically intimate, with the query “Are you British?”) has not yet, so far as I know, extended to literary journalism: I feel justified in describing Mr. Mathew’s resorting to it in his review as a caper. His arguing it a necessity is based on a rather cavalier neglect of the facts as to naming data in my regard within easy reach of one as exploratorily energetic as himself. Why, then, this caper? I believe the reason to be in there being a purpose in his writing his review, to write an unqualifiedly good review of the book. This, within the tradition of literary attitudes to my work and myself, which no professional literary man or woman can afford to disregard in his or her position-taking as to these subjects, tempts to conversion of the entire performance into a caper—a procedure for outwitting, with gaiety and deft mobility in critical commentary, the prevailing literary world bestowing on me of the character of a bugbear flouting the normal presumptions of “best” literary-world opinion, a rather unreal but sufficiently present nuisance to require occasional dismissal as non-existent. The incidental caper of calling me “Laura” lends to the caper in-the-whole of the treating of the book under review, and my work and myself all, an effect of enthusiastic involvement of personal acquaintance with and feeling about my writings and their life-history protecting the reviewer from accusations of partisan favoring: he wants to be understood as unashamedly meaning all that he avers as to this particular book, my writings generally, and myself personally.

To consider the familiarity of the first-name calling of me, represented as provoked by my making myself difficult in the matter of names, and Mr. Mathews’s frank will to demonstrate that I can be treated as easy to treat of rather than bugbearishly difficult.—In so far as the matter of my names is concerned, Mr. Mathew’s is weirdly in error. The open bibliographical record has no “Laura Gottschalk” or “Laura Gottschalk Riding.” My first publications bore the name Laura Riding Gottschalk: from 1920 to 1925 I was the wife of Louis Gottschalk. After the publication of my first book in 1926, I divested myself of that surname, “Riding” becoming my authorial and legal personal name.

The assertion that “Miss Riding” and therefore Laura Riding “no longer exists,” and the implication that “Mrs. Jackson” and therefore Laura (Riding) Jackson have no literarily legitimate indentificatory validity, the name “Jackson” authorially used, he alleges, as a matter of sentiment, are effronteries to which Mr. Mathews feels himself entitled because of the bold gallantry of his undertaking to write a good (!) review of a book of mine (!). All that is proper to his reviewer problem of dealing with these two successive surnames is a decision on the basis of good literary-behavior manners. The second of these, preceded by my first name, and a parenthesized middle element “Riding” to facilitate reader-awareness of continuity of authorial identity for writing extending over six decades, seems the choice of those having some lively awareness of my later writing; the first seems favored by those having mainly, almost exclusively, awareness of the earlier. The best biographical or literary reference-volumes cope with courteous scholarly nicety with the two authorial names; none of them have thrown up their editorial hands in despair and given me alphabetical place in the “L”‘s. Besides a few verse-indecencies by male poets of early century-periods, there has been no “Laura” literary calling of me. A book of scurrilous character of not many years ago engaged in would-be assassinative “Laura”-calling of me thoughout; but this falls outside the category of literary-behavior manners or policy. In all the bad literary-behavior manners to which I have been subjected—Mr. Mathews introducing into his caper-tactics the appeasement of literary-world colleagues who have found bad manners a convenient mode of dealing with the difficulty for them of facing the requirements of intellectual conscience posed by my work, and by my literary principles, with a characterizing of my treatment of bad manners as bad as the behavior of a “Fury,” and an attributing to me the defect of being, also, besides a poet and a “seer” and a “muse,” that weakling phenomenon, a human being—there has been general avoidance of privilege-assuming of first-name calling of me as warranted by an astutely intimate personal knowledge of me. Mr. Mathews has gone farther in pretending to have such knowledge than many without other will towards me than the denigratory. The pretence, with him, entangles him in the denigratory, as in the characterization “muse,” which he snatches from an area of bad-willed, indeed wicked, concocted, pseudo-narrative.

But what of this review, in what relates in it to Progress of Stories itself? I have encountered considerable interest in knowing what I thought of it, as a piece of criticism. It has been impossible for me to separate the critical portion of the review from the introductory portion, in which the capering spirit Mr. Mathews has obviously thought essential for the production of a “good” review takes its start, and impetus is built for the intended conversion of the capering energy into serious effects of critical enthusiasm. The crucial pass-over point is the leap, from the centering of a history of near-oblivion ascribed to my work and myself, as at least in part a consequence of my incivility to literary-world bad-manneredness, in a most poignantly tragic obliteration of Progress of Stories, to a miracle of rejuvenation of my buried work and self in the republication of this collection of stories. The attempt to cast this subsidiary element of my life’s work in the role of a major element, and key of first importance to the purport and potency of the whole, has a certain flippancy in it, a light-weight enthusiasm, for which the bestowal of honors of attributed literary descent from Poe and Flaubert and Mallarmé cannot compensate. The background of derivation of the stories is in the background thought and sensibility of all my writing; and the celebratory isolation of them into a ground for the setting of a national Laura Day is eclipsed in the Harry Day that the “good” review precipitated into actual literary occurrence.

Laura (Riding) Jackson
Wabasso, Florida

Harry Mathews replies:
Mrs. Jackson’s reaction to my review of Progress of Stories seems beyond dispute. I regret the mistake made concerning her name.

 

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Book

Laura Riding Progress of Stories
Persea

‘This expanded edition of the 1935 classic collection includes the original eighteen stories, which “progress” from “Stories of Lives” to “Stories of Ideas” to “Nearly True Stories,” plus twelve more early stories and one late story, all selected and arranged by Laura (Riding) Jackson in 1982. Though the principle of all her writing is that “words are for truth,” she has said these “made-up” stories are designed to appeal to our universal love of storytelling, “the zest, the yearning, for the true”.’ — Persea

‘…unique and uniquely delightful…. One has to suspect these modern fairy tales of being perhaps quite a lot wiser than the ordinary realistic novel’. — Rebecca West (1935)

Excerpts

Privateness

They have a small bedroom. The bed is small, but they are not fat and they love each other. She sleeps with her knees neatly inside his knees and when they get up they do not get in each other’s way. She says, “Put on the shirt with the blue patterns like little spotted plates,” and he says, “Put on the white skirt that you wear the purple jacket with.” They have no prejudices against colours but like what they have.
—-Their other room is not larger, but it is cleverly arranged, with a table for this and a table for that. He makes the sandwiches at one table while at another she writes a letter to a friend who needs money. She writes promptly to say they have no money and sends their love. It is not true that they have no money; but they are both out of work and must be careful with the little money they have. They are thinking of renting an office and selling advice on all subjects, for they are very intelligent people. The idea seems like a joke, and they talk about it jokingly; but they mean it.
—-They go to a large park. It costs little to get there and they know the very tree they want to sit under. It is more like a business trip than a holiday. They eat their lunch in a methodical way and afterwards look through the grass around them as a mother looks through her child’s hair to see if it is clean. Then they think about their affairs and change their minds many times.
—-They walk about on the grass and feel sensible, but when they walk on paved paths they feel they are wasting their time. Finally they decide to commit suicide. They talk about it in natural tones because they may really do it -and they may not. There is an oval pond in the park with solemn brown ducks paddling in it, and they sit down by it, sorry for the ducks paddling in it, and they sit down by it, sorry for the ducks but not for themselves.
—-They go out of the park at a different entrance from the one they came in by. There are strange restaurants all around they would never think of eating in. It makes them feel lonely, so they speed home in a taxi, though they can ill afford this. At home there is the electric light, which makes them look at each other peculiarly. It is worth going out to be able to come home and look at each other in such a way – not a loving way or a tragic way, but as if to say, “It doesn’t interest us what our story is – that is for other people.”
—-We, then, having complete power, removed all the amusements that did not amuse us. We were then at least not hopelessly amused. We inculcated in ourselves an amusability not qualified by standards developed from amusements that failed to amuse. Our standards, that is, were impossibly high.
—-And yet we were not hopeless. We were ascetically humourous, in fact. And so when Mademoiselle Comet came among us we were somewhat at a loss. For Mademoiselle Comet was a really professional entertainer. She came from where she came to make us look.
—-But Mademoiselle Comet was different. We could not help looking. But she more than amused. She was a perfect oddity. The fact that she was entertaining had no psychological connection with the fact that we were watching her. She was creature of pure pleasure. She was a phenomenon whose humorous slant did not sympathetically attack us; being a slant of independence, not comedy. Her long bright hair was dead. She could not be loved.
—-Therefore Mademoiselle Comet became our sole entertainment. And she more than amused; we loved her. Having complete power, we placed her in a leading position, where we could observe her better. And we were not amused. We were still ascetically humourous. Thus we aged properly. We did not, like mirth-stricken children, die. Rather we could not remember that we had ever been alive. We too had long bright dead hair. Mademoiselle Comet performed, and we looked, always a last time. We too performed, became really professional entertainers. Our ascetically humourous slant became more and more a slant of independence, less and less a slant of rejected comedy. With Mademoiselle Comet we became a troupe, creatures of pure pleasure, more than amused, more than amusing, looker-entertainers, Mademoiselle Comet’s train of cold light. We were the phenomenal word fun, Mademoiselle Comet leading. Fun was our visible property. We appeared, a comet and its tail, with deadly powerfulness to ourselves. We collided. We swallowed and were swallowed, more than amused. Mademoiselle Comet, because of the position we had put her in with our complete power, alone survived. Her long bright dead hair covered her. Our long bright dead hair covered us. Her long bright dead hair alone survived; universe of pure pleasure, never tangled, never combed. She could not be loved. We loved her. Our long bright hair alone survived. We alone survived, having complete power. Our standards, that is, were impossibly high; and the brilliant Mademoiselle Comet, a professional entertainer, satisfied them. Our standards alone survived, being impossibly high.

 

An Anonymous Book

An anonymous book for children only was published by an anonymous publisher and anonymously praised in an anonymous journal. Moreover, it imitated variously the style of each of the known writers of the time, and this made the responsibility for its authorship all the more impossible to place. For none of the known writers could in the circumstances look guilty. But everyone else did, so this made the responsibility for its authorship all the more difficult to place. The police had instructions to arrest all suspicious-looking persons. But as everyone except the known writers was under suspicion, the department of censorship gave orders that the known authors should be put in prison to separate them from the rest of the population and that everyone else should be regarded as legally committed to freedom. ‘Did you write it?’ everyone was questioned at every street corner. And as the answer was always ‘No’, the questioned person was always remanded as a suspect.
—-The reasons why this book aroused the department of censorship were these. One–it imitated (or seemed to imitate) the style of all the known authors of the time and was therefore understood by the authorities to be a political (or moral) satire. Two–it had no title and was therefore feared by the authorities to be dealing under the cover of obscurity with dangerous subjects. Three–its publisher could not be traced and it was therefore believed by the authorities to have been printed uncommercially. Four–it had no author and was therefore suspected by the authorities of having been written by a dangerous person. Five (and last)–it advertised itself as a book for children, and was therefore concluded by the authorities to have been written with the concealed design of corrupting adults. As the mystery grew, the vigilance of the police grew, and the circulation of the book grew: for the only way that its authorship could be discovered was by increasing the number of people suspected, and this could only be done by increasing the number of readers. The authorities secretly hoped to arrive at the author by separating those who had read the book from those who had not read it, and singling out from among the latter him or her who pretended to know least about it.
—-Therefore the time has come to close. I am discovered, or rather I have discovered myself, for the authorities lost interest in me when they saw that I would discover myself before I could be officially discovered, that I would in fact break through the pages and destroy the strongest evidence that might be held against me, that is, that “An anonymous book”, etc. I understand now that what they desired to prevent was just what has happened. You must forgive me and believe that I was not trying to deceive, but that I became confused. I over-distinguished and so fell into satire and so discovered myself and so could not go on, to maintain a satiric distinction between authorship and scholarship.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. I’m feeling worse today — a bad head/chest cold, I think. I’m going to try to do the p.s., but it’s probably not going to be very thoughtful and attentive, sorry. ** Dominik, Hi!!! If only inspiration paid the bills. Love didn’t manage the immediate help I need, but there’s still time. Love with a handful of tissue at his nose and watery eyes, G. ** Lucas, Hi. Oh, yeah, I love Defunctland, of course. I traverse there very often. Thanks, pal. I’m going to need to get my head well before I dare explore your zine further, but I’m excited to and will share thoughts. But I think it’s safe to say the world is giving it a warm welcome. ** jay, Thanks, jay. Yeah, Defunctland and I are good pals, let’s just say. I’m glad you liked the Apes movies. Surprisingly so, right? ** _Black_Acrylic, I would have gone to that museum. They really should have had rides though. I’ll poke around in MUBI for that film when my world de-blears, thanks. ** Misanthrope, Hi! There you are. Sorry for this zonked welcome back. My head is unfriendly. To me, hopefully not to you. That is a nightmare. Jesus, that guy. I still haven’t laid eyes on a single copy of ‘Flunker’. One of these years. Love to you too, and I’ll be sharper next time. ** Pascal, Hi, P. Yeah, try, I mean, what have you got to lose and all of that. I too do find that an exciting film can wake up the old prose machine as well. Antonioni certainly works in theory. My day is destined to suck, but yours won’t, I sure hope. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. The World’s Fair as cruising grounds, wow, well of course. All those nooks and crannies. I’m avoiding all Tr*mp related everything at the moment, but thank you. I saw Elaine Stritch in some play when I was a kid, I cant remember what though. ** Uday, My head cold is definitely not sexy, so I guess that’s your answer. Nice about your friends. All of my friends are away on summer jaunts, but at least I won’t pass along my malady. Thanks, pal. ** Malik, Hi! Thank you. Me too, and definitely about your heatwave. Thank god we’re still temperate here. Oh, I forgot to send you my email. Wait, it’s [email protected]. Thank you so much about ‘Flunker’! That means a ton, and my head cold is now incrementally better. Ha, I too was surprised that I allowed a Five Nights at Freddy’s reference in here. I must have been deranged by my amusement park fixation. I hope you’re doing really well. ** Don Waters, Thanks, Don. Oh, right, the legendary infectiousness of parenthood. I’ve read about that. Thanks so much about ‘Flunker’. Bret and I have always been friendly and mutual supporters. Being on his show was fun. He talks a lot, so it’s a very easy gig. Take care, D. ** Steve, Hi. Thanks. Resting is not something I have any skills at. I just get kind of slouchy at most. The atmosphere of hysteria in the States right now is way beyond anything I have experienced. ** Harper, Hi. I feel like shit, but I guess we’re on similar pages. Barcelona today! Safe, swift trip there and all of that. Cool. I sort of don’t mind the tourists. Tourists in Paris tend to be very romantic and look around in wonder and go ooh and ahh a lot, and I can relate to that. I will ask my three-book friend next time I talk with him. I hope your health is made tiptop by your new surroundings. ** James Bennett, Hi, James! I’m unfortunately feeling very crappy, but such things happen. I knew/know Steve Roden’s work and saw him play live a couple of times, but I don’t think I ever met him. He was friends with artist friends of mine. Very interesting artist. Cool you’re listening to him. Uh, generally I don’t notice the seasons re: my writing’s ups and downs, but if summer was its doldrums, I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised. Did you write something surprising? Surely? ** Charalampos, I’m not quite yet, but thanks. Uh, I don’t know what you mean about a Lorie Moore technique? I don’t know of such a thing, but I am very hazy right now. Good luck with the meditating. Vague by default vibes from Paris. ** Justin D, I agree with you completely. I’m not better, for sure, but I figure it has to be peaking today. The Z Channel, yes, indeed. I remember it and remember watching a lot of things on it. Huh, I forgot all about that channel. Really adventurous compared to any comparably sized ‘cable’ channel nowadays. I’ll go find that doc. I’m glad you’re well and good. ** Oscar 🌀, Sounds worth being in a busy crossing for. Uh, my brain is toast, but, uh … Very hi(gh) weed toking dude trying to send you a smoke signal made out of smoke rings but whose mouth can’t design a recognisable ‘S’ so he gives up early. I did see Godzilla X Kong’. I remember thinking the first, like, hour or something, and the last, like, hour or something were really fun, and I remember the rest of it being rather spotty but totally doable. The fish cutting board is better than money. Okay, maybe not, but it’s a score for sure. I’m kind of sick. It sucks. I never get sick, so it’s an unpleasant and rare surprise. But oh well. I was planning to go see the opening day of ‘Twisters’ on IMAX today, which would have cured me for sure, but I don’t think I’m up for it ultimately. Darn. I am donating what would have been the fun aspects of my Wednesday to you so you can have a doubly fun Wednesday. I hope it works. ** Right. Today I ask you to read about Laura Riding’s legendary yet divisive novel and see what you think. Do that, yes? See you tomorrow in hopefully better mental shape.

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‘Bald Mountain, from Fantasia fame, was to have been built in Disney’s Magic Kingdom. The attraction would have taken guests through a hair-raising experience of escaping from some of Disney’s most famous evil characters. As a log flume, guests would have boarded longboat-style rafts modeled after Hades’ boats in Hercules. Guests would have been taken through Chernabog’s mountain, where the villains were meeting to decide who was the most evil, and how to take over the Magic Kingdom. Suddenly, guests would be “attacked” by a combination of Disney villains, saved only by a slide deep down the plunge in the front of the mountain.’

 

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Starr Park – Invest in the Future

 

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‘London’s Battersea Power Station was to be transformed into a museum surrounded by a giant roller coaster in these competition-winning proposals by French studio Atelier Zündel Cristea. A curved scaffolding structure would weave in and around the building, creating a network of pathways between the exhibition spaces and providing the tracks for the roller coaster running along on top.’

 

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The unbuilt Joker’s Madhouse attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood centered on DC’s villainous murder clown satisfies both thrills and scares. You enter the theme park ride via the dark maw of the Joker, make your way through his warehouse, and then hop on the rollercoaster. You then go through “a psychedelic vision of Gotham” and soon find yourself “hurtling towards a dead-end.”’

 

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Batman Vs. The Penguin (Universal Studios Florida): Before entering the queue, guests would choose which side they wanted to represent: either Batman or the Penguin. Each queue would have been completely unique and lead down to one of two separate loading areas far beneath the streets of Gotham. If your choice was to represent the Dark Knight, that queue would open up to the Batcave where riders would board a flying Batmobile or “BatWing.” If guests chose to represent evil, they found themselves in the sewers of Gotham City in the Penguin’s lair. The idea was riders were going to soar through Gotham and literally do battle with one another while perched inside these unique ride vehicles. Once the coasters left the load area they would find themselves both inside and outside of massive show buildings. The tracks would be designed where the coasters would swing right at each other, resulting in several near misses throughout the ride.’

 

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Epcot’s Cancelled Mt Fuji Rollercoaster

 

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‘A Herbie the Love Bug Dark Ride was envisioned for Disneyland Park. The ride featured a unique system where a 4 passenger car could split in half, and also featured a roller coaster portion as Herbie rides the Golden Gate bridge.’

 

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Roller Coaster Roger Rabbit (Disney’s Hollywood Studios)

 

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‘In 2015, 20th Century Fox announced Tuesday that it was teaming up with Al Ahli Holding Group, a conglomerate based in the United Arab Emirates, to build a 75-acre theme park valued at more than $850 million outside Dubai. It was to include a massive Planet of the Apes Land. The park was killed while in development in on 29 April 2018.’

 

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‘The Alice in Wonderland ride in Disneyland’s Fantasyland area was originally planned to be a walkthrough attraction. Here are a series of concept pieces for the original Alice in Wonderland Walkthrough Attraction that was never built. These pieces are called brownlines, and not original drawings but blue-print-like copies, but brown (hence the name).’ — vintage.disneyland

First up is the Forced Perspective Room. This would be just after Alice has landed at the bottom of the rabbit hole. Notice the key on the top of the table. The text reads: “3 Forced perspective room concealed exit at far end other door to no where”.

Next is Over the Wave, featuring Alice in the bottle on the Sea of Tears. You can also see the Dodo floating by on the left.

Next is the Caucus Race, featuring a rotating floor. Very funhouse.

Next is Alice’s encounter with the Tweedles. The figures were supposed to spin about and bump into each other.

Next is the trial scene with a card maze.

Next the White Rabbit’s house. Another funhouse item, you would crawl through the house and come out the top and slide down the outside.

Next is the Garden of Live Flowers. Presumably they’d sing.

Next is the Caterpillar. Apparently he was supposed to rise up like an accordion, and blow smoke rings.

Next is the Tulgey Wood, with the trees bearing the signs pointing this way and that. Looks to me like they were supposed to rotate.

Next is more of the Tulgey Wood with lots of paths and trees. Again, another concept from the funhouse, apparently it was supposed to be like a mirror room.

Next is the Mad Tea Party. The caption says Animated Scenic, so I guess Alice, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse would move about.

Last is another funhouse item, the counter rotating barrels. This is supposed to represent Alice escaping from Wonderland and returning to the real world.

 

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‘As far back as the 1970s, tentative plans were in place to add a bullet train ride to the Japan Pavilion at Epcot. Guests would have stood on a ride vehicle and looked out windows at screens simulating a journey through the Japanese countryside. At one point Godzilla would rise from the ocean and attack the train on its journey through Tokyo Harbor. Supposedly, the Godzilla Bullet Train never went beyond preliminary conversations with Toho, the studio that owns Godzilla, before the company decided a giant, world-destroying lizard didn’t really jive with the sedate, naturalistic atmosphere at Epcot.’ — collaged

 

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‘The Eiffel Tower Bullet was a fun ride proposed in 1891 in which people would sit inside a giant bullet and freefall from the top of the Eiffel Tower into a pool of water. M.Carron’s bullet capsule would be released from the top of the interior of the Tower, about 1000 feet high, and released to fall into an excavated pool 150’ across and 200’ deep. The idea was that in addition to the springs inside the capsule, the water would act as a “shock absorber”, and so “the shock felt by the occupants on landing will be in no way unpleasant”. The thing would have hit at 178mph or so, and, assuming that the whole thing didn’t get completely crushed on impact, I’m not so sure that 200’ of depth is very much wiggle room for the thing to come to a halt (if it didn’t deform). Also it would have to not have any wind deflection so as to not veer off its perfect entry into the water. And so on. Calculating the force of impact is difficult without knowing how far down the bullet would go, but hitting the water at 80 m/s and stopping at 30 meters would yield something like 28,600,000 KE and 1,274,000 N. There are lots of problems. The thing that made this so appealing is that for the 20-francs that got a person a seat in the bullet, they would each have gotten to go twice as fast as any human had ever traveled before ( 65 miles per hour was about the speed of the fastest train constructed).’ — collaged

 

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‘During the early 1980’s, Bally was developing an interactive Ghostbusters-themed ride called The Hauntington Hotel, for Six Flags theme parks. The modern movie-branded take on Disney’s classic Haunted Mansion attraction would have been the first interactive video game/theme park ride. Six Flags guests would climb into a “Ghostmobile”, a track-set ride vehicle with a drop down lap bar with ghost-busting guns mounted on it. Recruited by the Ghostbusters Agency, park guests would be sent on their first job, to take care of the ghosts in a creepy hotel called The Hauntington Hotel. The ride was expected to last two and a half minutes and would feature a variety of high-tech and low-tech gags for the scenes. Every target would react to being hit, and guests would get to find out their score when exiting the attraction. The whole thing was created, designed, engineered, and prototyped at Sente, and the ride system was in the hands of a prominent roller coaster engineering company, Intamin. But before it could be rolled out in the Six Flags parks (1st one was slated for Six Flags Magic Mountain in Southern California), Bally sold the Six Flags division in 1987, and the project fell into a corporate black hole, never to be seen again, which is too bad, as it was really pretty cool, even by today’s standards.’ — Slash Film

 

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‘The Orlando, Florida project Hurricane World was supposed to be both a serious hurricane research center, and a tourist attraction featuring giant simulated storms complete with 100 mph winds. The developers wanted to build this $5 million tourist attraction on U.S. Highway 192 in Osceola County next door to Walt Disney World.’ — collaged

 

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‘In the early 90s, a theme park that would have resembled a historically accurate replica of Old London Bridge was planned to be build over and across the Las Vegas Strip. It would have included a number of dark rides, an indoor roller coaster, water slides, and other attractions. It was to be located just north of the New York New York Hotel. When the initial cost estimate ballooned to half a billion dollars, the project was scuttled.’ — collaged

 

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‘Geyser Mountain was an attraction developed for Disneyland Paris to be on the Tower of Terror ride system, but it was run in reverse … descending deep into the ground, then exploded upward, riding atop a powerful thermal geyser. After entering the mine building guests would queue through exhibits and displays that set up our elevator journey deep into the tunnels and caverns below. ( Such an elevator exists at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico ). The elevators would first descend into the mine tunnels where various mining operations would be observed as the elevator doors open onto different levels. Then the car descends deeper into the fabled “Rainbow Caverns” where the doors reveal a breathtaking sight. The elevator operator is then given “safety clearance” to continue down to the deepest caverns where “thermal activity” sometimes makes visits impossible … but today of course we are “lucky” … we get to go!” As we descend, ominous rumblings increase and guests are able to briefly see the glowing heat-fed fissures before massive thermal eruptions force the cabin back upward and all the way to the top of the mine shaft tower. The elevator cab thrusts upward and slips back downward…the ever increasing thermal geyser belching out steam beneath the cab (like the 1959 version of Journey to the Center of the Earth). We break free of the earth and bob precariously at the top of the tower…steam escaping from all around below the cabin. Then like a cartoon … the geyser stops with the cab motionless for an instant. Then we fall back downward landing deep in the earth on a pillowy cushion of receding steam. The operator is able to regain control of the cab, and brings the elevator back up to the entry level on the side of the mountain. The reason it was never built was largely technical: much of the attraction was housed underground as it would be impossible to disguise a 13 story tower in the existing Paris Disneyland Frontierland. Thus all the mine scenes and caverns were created in basement structure, leaving the ultimate height only about 70 feet (20 feet lower than the nearby Big Thunder Roller Coaster). The problem ended up being that of capacity. Tower of Terror has 4 to 6 elevator entries and it would have been very difficult to create a scene that looked believable and made room for all those mine elements.’ — Disneyandmore

 

 

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‘Herbert H. Pattee had been a Broadway actor who abruptly changed the course of his career and decided to become an inventor. At first he designed furniture, patenting hinges and the like. But he started designing amusement park rides. One of them was a “Ball Coaster”, in which the passengers would be strapped to the sides of a steel ball and rolled down a roller coaster-like track. Fortunately, this was never built. It would probably have result in serious injuries or death.’

 

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‘The Harry Potter Quidditch Match Coaster was conceived and seriously considered in the early stages of development for Universal Orlando’s Harry Potter park. It was to be a part coaster part shoot-em up thrill ride. As you rode what seemed like a coaster, you entered a quidditch match only to end up in a interactive ride play through of a quidditch match.’ — Season Pass

 

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‘Here, this project imagines a vertically stacked theme park in the middle of the city. With the minimum footprint on the ground, this Vertical Theme Park will itself become skyscraper. Theme park is the place where somebody can experience extraordinary altitude, speed and unexpected events. When people are tired of conventional suburban setting of the theme park, we may have to place our theme park in the urban setting.-for example, in the middle of Manhattan. “Density” of the existing urban conditions will make theme park more exciting place. At the same time, “Height” of the vertically stacked theme park will also help to enhance theme park experiences to the visitors. The classic rides, such as the Ferris Wheel, rollercoaster, and carousel are all re-imagined for a vertical experience. The park is distinguished into five major areas that comprises Vertigo World (carousel and observation deck), Fast Land (flume ride, rollercoaster), 360 World (Ferris Wheel, sky promenade), Abyss City (deep city diver), and the Elsewhere Universe (space exploration, science center). As the Vertical Theme Park will be open 24 hours, many businessmen can come join, after office hours, the Urban Bungee Jumping with their suits and ties to relieve the stressful workdays. Deep in the night, the scattered lights from the other tall buildings will shine like the stars.’ — Ju-Hyun Kim

 

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‘Before he was a Disney Legend, Tony Baxter was a Disney fan. He was just a teen when he landed a job at Disneyland selling ice cream, and later, when he needed a senior project in college, he decided to submit a ride concept for one of his favorite Disney movies: 1964 film Mary Poppins. The result was a ride-through attraction he called Jolly Holiday. To start, guests would board horses on mini-carousels reminiscent of the scene inside the chalk drawing. As the ride got underway, the horses would “jump” from the carousel into the rest of the chalk picture, out into the countryside and through the fox hunt. This would all be accomplished by a revolving theater mechanism, similar to the Carousel of Progress. After meeting the famous penguin waiters, a toe-tapping, supercalifragilistic sing-a-long would ensue. Then, a flash of lightning would signal a rainstorm that would “wash” guests out of the painting. After the chalk melted away, guests would find themselves on London rooftops with the dancing chimney sweeps. Baxter took the concept book to one of his connections at Disneyland, who presented it to his superiors. Shortly thereafter, the hopeful student got a call to meet with Disney producer Bill Anderson. Though Baxter was convinced they were going to offer to build his ride, instead, Anderson offered advice on how to get the proper training to move forward with a career at Disney.’ — micetrap

 

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‘Pandoras Box is a never before seen ride concept from Vekoma, which was developed by the German Mr. Mordelt around 2005-2006. It combines drop or free fall tower like vehicles, which move (!) around a building and tilt and rotate the riders according to the storyline. Sadly this complex ride was never built or sold.’

 

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‘In 1960, Jack Haley, the actor who played the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz and a devout Christian, teamed with Donald Duncan of Duncan Yo-Yo’s. Together they planned to build a new theme park in Cucamonga, one that would rival Disney in its ambition. They even hired two former Disneyland designers, Nat Winecoff and Bruce Bushman. Bible Storyland was their dream. “They wanted to create it in a heart shape,” says Jordan, “which supposedly represents God’s love of humanity. And the park was going to be divided into 6 different lands. You’d be in the Garden of Eden, then Rome, then Egypt, then Israel, and Babylon. And each place would have rides relating to the Bible. “Take Noah’s Ark, a double carousel. It would be a typical carousel, but built inside a large ark and filled with zebras and camels going around the carousel. That’s a very biblical theme, of course. But to the left of it is the Carousel of Mythical Beasts. You see this girl riding on a half horse, half mermaid, with dragon feet. The mythical beasts! I never found that in the bible myself.” And neither did the local clergy. Todd Pierce, a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo professor who’s currently working on a book about early theme parks, says the designers didn’t really put much thought into what their audience would think. “They hired people with minimal contact with religious communities,” says Pierce, “to create a theme park for Protestants and Catholics. Nat Winecoff talked about the trip to hell, and he would get so animated and excited about seeing Satan and the sulfur baths and fire fountains. And then you could go to Circus Maximus and see a recreation of the lions and the Christians played out on stage, and then afterwards you could eat lion burgers. So there was this type of cavalier attitude, this junkiness to it, that smacked of religious profiteering.” There was the the Garden of Eden Boat Ride, which looks a lot like Disneyland’s jungle cruise, with scenes of Adam and Eve standing side by side with cavemen and dinosaurs. And there was a ride into King Tut’s Tomb, which has nothing to do with the Bible at all. “It was supposed to open on Easter 1961,” says Pierce. “In the summer of 1960, the Catholic clergy were organizing to picket the construction of Bible Storyland while earth movers were out there grading the land and getting ready to build.” The project was called off.’ — scpr.org

 

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‘The layout of the never-built Beatles Magical Mystery Tour ride at Hard Rock Park.’

 

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‘An addition to the Casey Jr. Train Ride in Fantasyland, Candy Mountain was supposed to be a mountain, that looked like it was made out of rock candy (and other various types of candy, such as licorice, lollipops, and candy canes), with a glossy, translucent appearance. Planned for the 1957 season, Candy Mountain would have been the first mountain attraction in Disneyland, years before the Matterhorn had been dreamed up. The planned Rainbow Road To Oz attraction, was supposed to go underneath the mountain, and the ride would be inside it. It was cancelled due to Walt Disney being concerned about how they would be able to maintain and clean the mountain “because of all the smog” that came from around Anaheim, California.’ –– collaged

 

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‘Featuring scenes from several of Stephen King’s stories, including The Shining and It, this never officially titled but planned dark ride for Universal Studios theme park in Florida would have featured a false ending. Riders would approach an unload platform and hear a spiel, then the lights would flicker, and a river of blood would pour from the doors at “unload” platform (a la The Shining). Pennywise the Dancing Clown would then emerge from the control booth to attack the riders, who would narrowly escape as their vehicle lunged forward.’ — Theme Park Insider

 

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‘Universal Studios Florida originally planned to build an elaborate dark ride themed to the works of Stephen King. The only detail known about the attraction is its signature scene. Part-way through, riders would pull into the unload station and hear the usual instructions on how to exit without extensive bodily injury. But the restraints wouldn’t lift and the ride wasn’t over. A Shining-sized deluge of blood would flood out of the exit doors, Pennywise Itself would spring from the control room and riders would hurtle deeper into the nightmare/toward the gift shop. The powers that be decided that an attraction requiring a devoted plumbing system for fake blood might not have the wide appeal they wanted.’

 

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‘The original plan for the DinoLand U.S.A. area of Disney’s Animal Kingdom included a major thrill ride themed around a former sand and gravel pit. The site would feature an enormous piece of leftover machinery: The Excavator. This ore car circuit was to form the basis for a huge, heavily-themed, mine cart-style roller coaster that would be one of Disney’s Animal Kingdom’s headline thrill rides. The storyline would be that paleontology students had once again restarted the Excavator, using it to transport dinosaur fossils. The Excavator was dropped from Animal Kingdom’s opening day line-up due to the spiralling costs of building the park’s zoo attractions.’ — Theme Park Tourist

 

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‘There were originally to be three rides in the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge Land at Disney parks. The cancelled ride plans involved a concept where you get to ride a Bantha through the land. The rumored attraction has been described as a Peoplemover style conveyance ride. This slow-moving attraction might have not only provided unique views of Galaxy’s Edge, but could’ve added some much-needed kinetic energy to the area.

‘Thanks to some behind-the-scenes Imagineering footage we can see how the ride mechanics were being designed, to make it feel like you’re really riding on a 4-legged creature. The attraction would utilize a trackless ride path, so it would really seem like you were riding an alien creature, and not just some ride vehicle.

‘This attraction might’ve been located along the land’s main pathway, leading from a loading zone across from the Market to the Resistance base and back. No one is quite sure why this attraction never made it off the ground. Guesses range from a poor estimated hourly capacity, to budget cuts—or, maybe it just plain made people sick. We may never know.’

 

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‘The early concept of Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean attraction had it designed as a walk-through instead of a flume-ride.’ — Disneyandmore

 

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‘In the late ’90s, the theme park attraction design company Sally Corporation produced a dark ride concept based on the original Ghostbusters animated series, billing it as the “greatest dark ride never built.” The vehicles would’ve turned to allow for riders to shoot at the many ghosts that were attacking New York City. There was a themed pre-show room. There would have been huge New York sets filled with shootable targets. The ride’s story appeared to have spanned much of the affected New York City including Central Park. Riders even would have had a close encounter with multiple slimers!’ — Theme Park Review

 

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In the late 1960s, the Knotts Berry Farm amusement park in Southern California briefly toyed with competing with nearby Disneyland by offering even more innovative attractions. One attraction on the drawing board was a very early simulator attraction that would take guests into a swirling hurricane. A model was built for testing, during which the capsule in which riders would sit was continually destroyed, and the ride was abandoned for being technically impossible to realize.’ — Progress City

 

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‘Some of the most memorable scenes in Pixar’s The Incredibles involve the spherical forcefields that the family’s daughter, Violet, is able to generate. These can be pushed and rolled along, in much the same style as the Atlaspheres that used to features in the Gladiators TV shows. Could they have been inspiration for this mythical Disneyland attraction? According to those familiar with the plans, the Gyroball PeopleMover was to replace the defunct Rocket Rods at Disneyland, which closed just two-and-a-half years after taking over the former PeopleMover circuit above Tomorrowland. The fast-paced Rocket Rods were simply not reliable enough, and the attempt to bolt the new attraction onto the existing PeopleMover infrastructure proved to be catastrophic.’ — collaged

 

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‘An intense ride planned by DisneyWorld to fight Universal Studios was Bald Mountain. Based on the segment in Fantasia riders would be taken up inside the mountain in a log flume or a roller coaster and then chased to the top by Disney villains. When they reached the top, Chernabog, the crazy dragon monster Satan look-a-like from Fantasia, would then chase the riders down the steep mountainside. While the goal was to make a more intense ride, Bald Mountain was deemed too intense and never got the green light.’ — collaged

 

 

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‘Amusement park rides from the early 20th century weren’t exactly known for their safety. But if this terrifying attraction from 1919 had ever been built, it probably would’ve been the most dangerous ride ever constructed. Dreamt up by two New York inventors, thrill seekers would be strapped into pivoting chairs inside a capsule that looked like a gigantic bullet. Then that capsule would be shot out of an enormous cannon — an “electric gun” as they called it — only to land in what’s basically a 100-foot tall martini glass. The capsule would splash down into the huge structure and zip through an enormous water flume, landing in a lake below. Guide rails and a conveyor belt would send the capsules back around to where they started, where riders could do the whole nauseating trick all over again — provided they had another quarter.’

 

 

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‘Five Nights At Freddy’s – The Ride was intended to be a real-time, multi-player version of the popular video game, “Five Nights at Freddy’s”. This dark ride would have mixed gaming, animatronics, large scale video projection, special effects, and immersive sets and scenery. Fans will have felt as if they had stepped inside a life-size version of their favorite video game as custom ride vehicles take them through a variety of scenes, both virtual and practical.

‘Like the game, this interactive dark ride was centered on a fictional pizza restaurant called “Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza”, where the riders acted as night security guards. Their mission was to defend themselves from the malfunctioning animatronic animal characters that roam the restaurant at night and try to stay alive until 6am. Their only weapons would have been flashlights, which scared the robots away, and the ability to shut doors. Sometimes the team survived ‘till morning, sometimes they didn’t (there were multiple endings to this frightfully fun dark ride).’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. I’m feeling a little under the weather today, so the p.s. will probably feel under the weather too, apologies. ** Dominik, Hi!!! An embarrassment of riches then. Favorite? I don’t know, maybe ImNotJordan in a pinch. Nah, I’ve heard nothing good about ‘Tarot’, so I skipped it. Love plucked my favorite line there. I saw a video with an older gentleman in his 70s fucking love in every position possible while managing to hold and drink a cup of coffee the whole time, G. ** Michael F, Hi, Michael. Welcome. Oh, hm, I think what they’re referring to is an illustrated ‘guide’-like thing I put together for a magazine, maybe Dazed & Confused (?), at the time of ‘Period’s’ publication? I don’t think I have a copy of it, and I don’t remember what I did, but my guess is that’s what they mean? I forgot all about that. Sorry, but thanks for asking. Nice you’re reading that book. It seems to be really hard to find these days. How are you? ** _Black_Acrylic, Would seem so. No Olympics tickets yet. They’re quite expensive, so I’m kind of waiting to see if my interest in attending wanes or not. I might wait and attend some Paralympics events. They’re cheaper, and that might be more interesting. ** Bill, Guests weren’t bad this time, yeah. Like a Bruce Nauman retrospective kind of thing? Nice, if so. Nothing exciting here. But I’m feeling like shit, so at least the timing seems right. ** Tosh Berman, Yes, I knew about the Price museum, but I think it post-dates my move over here? Check it out, and let me know. ** Lucas, Hi Lucas! I’ve only just glanced at the zine, and my head is clogged with phlegm, but it looks really great (!), and I’ll read it carefully later once I’ve popped a decongestant. Hooray! Everyone, the mighty and talent-packed Lucas has made a zine called ‘traditional doom’, and it’s of course wonderful, and you should head over here without further ado and cast your eyes upon it. Happy to see the good response from the locals. Really exciting, pal! Thank you so much! ** David Ehrenstein, You’ve intrigued me enough about Mr. Brazelle that I’m going to see what I can find about him. Maybe he’s even got a blog post in him. Thank you, sir. I do remember that you knew Bacon at a degree, and that still blows my mind. ** Deisel Clementine, Hi. I’m happy my poems had a three-way with you and your ex even if it sounds like they didn’t exactly help in the long run. Sexy … I presume so? My writer-radar detected sexiness there in or its makings. Fun, for sure, I think? Thank you kindly. The shit is flowing into my week, but nothing to be done about that but shower off accordingly. ** Joseph, Not this month, but the ticklees do seem to tend to be slaves rather than escorts. Trying to charge people to tickle you seems like it might be a bit niche if you’re honestly trying to use your body to make buck. But what do I know. ‘Casey Anthony’, that’s the title? Nice. Obviously heads up when it’s imminent please. I’m no doctor, but I think you’re right! ** Steve, I’m more than half-wishing that there was an app that could block all news coming out of the US. It’s like an insane asylum over there. No, breeding is a perennial and only a more popular/standard desire/request now post-Prep. It’s de rigeur. Thanks about my week. It looks like a grim one, but we’ll see. ** Harper, Hi. Yeah, I relate to your process. I do pretty much the exact same thing, I think. I have a friend, a kind of well known novelist, who’s writing a novel that’s three separate novels that he wants to be published individually. It does seem like a tough sell, but I can see what luck he’s had with that. Weird about the anti-tourist thing. They don’t do that here. There’d be a full-on war going on right now if they did given the gradual filling of Paris with the Olympics invaders. Ha, the escort/slave posts work as a clock for me too, but it’s more about, ugh, rent is coming due. ** Justin D, Hi, Justin. Awesome. Flavorsome list. MaxyYoYo would have definitely won some kind of strange prize if I awarded them. Maybe I should. Hm. Hope you’re good How are you? ** Darby🎱, Hey. My head is a sickness-infused cloud, so my communication right now is the real suspect one. A real 8-ball! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a real one. I wonder if real ones actually tell the truth. Yay on the drive. Did you feel powerful? Or was it, like, what do they say, putting on your socks or something? ** Okay. I’m indulging my amusement park fetish today by presenting a sequel post wherein you can read about sometimes amazing concepts for rides and parks that never came to be due to reality’s sad inabilities. I hope there’s something there that speaks to more than me. See you tomorrow.