Spotlight on … François Augiéras The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1963)

 

‘François Augiéras was born in Rochester, New York, where his father taught the piano at the Eastman School of Music. He moved to Dordogne in France with his mother after his father died while he was still a child. At the age of thirteen, at the public library, he discovered André Gide, Nietzsche and Arthur Rimbaud. Attracted to art, he left school at the age of thirteen years to take courses in drawing.

‘At the age of fourteen, he left home and started on a nomadic life. In 1941, he enrolled in a youth movement that proliferate under the Vichy regime , but in 1942 he breaks away to become an actor in a traveling theater. In 1944, he joined the French Navy.

‘Augiéras spent some time in a psychiatric asylum and in a monastery. He later moved to El Goléa, where his uncle lived. During his stay in the Sahara, Francois Augiéras was sexually abused by his uncle, discovering through this his own gay inclinations. His first novel, The Old Man and the Child, is loosely based on the avuncular rapport that ensued. The book drew the attention of André Gide, who a few months before his death, met the young writer after receiving two letters from the young man. Augiéras later imagined himself as the “last love” of the great writer.

‘Augiéras’ novels deal with incest, homosexuality, sadism and even bestiality. They also describe his trips to North Africa and Greece. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, perhaps his most famous novel, is his only work not based entirely on his autobiography.

‘In 1960, he married his cousin Viviane, but their relationship did not last. His lifetime of wandering, insecurity, and loneliness began to seriously affect his health. He began to spend lengthy times in hospitals and sanitariums. In the late 1960s, he lived in caves in the mountains of France hoping to be undetected and escape further life in hospices. Undermined by poverty and malnutrition and prematurely aged by his terrible living conditions, he moved into a nursing home in Ferns, France, and soon thereafter died in a public hospital in Dordogne in 1971.

‘Augieras is not a household name. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, arguably his masterpiece, is a gallant, almost magical book that is one of modern literature’s esoteric, underground texts. The novel is set in the Sarladais (the Dordogne region of France). An adolescent boy is sent to live with a 35-year-old priest, who becomes his teacher and spiritual mentor, and exerts a powerful control over the boy. He abuses him physically and sexually, but the boy willingly accepts his ‘punishment.’ The boy falls in love with a slightly younger, and very beautiful boy, meeting in secret and having sex.

‘This disturbing story is much more than a tale of a sexually violent predator. The adolescent himself experiences sexual activity with the other boy, but this relationship is one of genuine love and affection, rather than the coercive, harmful abuse he is subjected to by the priest. Augieras rivals Genet for the clarity of his writing, for the ordinariness of his understanding of human nature, for his acceptance and fearless confidence.’ — collaged

 

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Further

Association Littéraire François Augiéras
François Augiéras @ Pushkin Press
Bibliothèque Gay: Le Vieillard et l’Enfant, de François Augiéras
‘François Augiéras – peintre (1940-1949)’
‘La voix de François Augiéras’
‘François Augiéras, le dernier primitif de Serge Sanchez’
‘Lettre à François Augieras.’
‘François Augiéras, el artista que enterró su obra magna en el desierto’
Buy ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’

 

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Extras

François Augiéras, un essai d’occupation. 26′. 16mm. 1998.

François Augiéras : Extraits du “Vieillard et l’Enfant” lus par l’auteur

François Augiéras : Extraits du “Voyage des morts” lus par l’auteur

Augiéras,le peintre.

 

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Super 8 films

François Augiéras : Devant l’église de Saint-Amand-de-Coly (Film 8 mm)

François Augiéras : La Chasse Fantastique (Film 8 mm)

François Augiéras : L’Île du bout du monde (Film 8 mm)

François Augiéras : Ambiances de Tanger (Film 8 mm)

François Augiéras : Planeur à Bassillac (Film 8 mm)

François Augiéras : Vues d’un Sarladais abandonné (Film 8 mm)

 

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Paintings

 

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Interview with François Augiéras’s biographer

— François Augiéras is an author who is rediscovered every ten years. But until now there has been no “mainstream” biography and not much except rare academic works. Do you think that your François Augiéras, the last primitive will change that?

Serge Sanchez: We must not forget to salute the efforts of Jean Chalon and Paul Placet. It is thanks to them that the memory of Augieras has been preserved until now. In particular, we must pay tribute to the book by Paul Placet, François Augiéras, Un barbare en occident, now republished by La Différence.

I don’t like the term “general public” attached to my book. There are only two kinds of books, good and bad. Stevenson, Balzac, Giono, Dickens… “mainstream” authors, indeed. One could name a thousand. Important writers have in common that they can be read by everyone. That said, and in all modesty, I do indeed think that my book has made François Augiéras better known. My efforts were relayed by my editor, Manuel Carcassonne, at Grasset, who showed unfailing skill and enthusiasm in editing this book. The result is that Augieras is out of the ghetto, that he is freed from the label of cursed author as shown by the numerous articles that have appeared in the press as well as the presence of the Last Primitive in the spring selection of the Renaudot Prize, essay category. That was the main goal.

— By “general public” I meant “not academic”. And even if it finds its deserved readership, the work of Augieras remains difficult to access, by its very requirement. In this, far above Marc Lévy and others, he is not a “general public” author. Moreover, and this is an old debate, certain texts by Balzac (Louis Lambert for example, and the novels inspired by Swedenborg) are very difficult to access… In this sense, we must bring François Augiéras closer to Victor Segalen, who , even if he has a university in his name and a “past” as an author in the university program, remains largely unknown outside of enthusiasts.

Serge Sanchez: I leave the responsibility for those remarks to you. I don’t know Marc Lévy. I don’t find Balzac that difficult, but what you say about Segalen seems right to me. In any case, I think that access to thought always requires an effort and that the quality of the reader plays as much as that of the writer, whatever the text.

— Your biography does not refer to previous work on Augieras. Why this choice of silence?

Serge Sanchez: I think I cited all my sources. Interesting works have been scrupulously mentioned, whether the writings of Paul Placet or the articles published in Île Verte or Le Temps qu’il fait.

— Unless I’m mistaken and without wanting to look for the small beast, you do not mention works such as François Augiéras, the sorcerer’s apprentice by Philippe Berthier (Champ Vallon, 1992) or the more suggestive essay by Joël Vernet François Augiéras: The Radical Adventurer (Jean-Michel Place, 2004) You can’t read everything, of course, but Augieras is not Sartre and the bibliography is brief… Are these works not interesting?

Serge Sanchez: This work is interesting and sensitive. I read them, but did not refer to them in the context of the biography, which is not an analysis but the story of a life. That’s why I didn’t mention them. That said, I recommend reading it, which can shed some interesting light on the work.

— You were talking about Paul Placet, the friend and co-author of La Chasse Fantastique. To what extent did Augieras need this magnificent fidelity to carry out his work?

Serge Sanchez: Augieras lived very isolated, but he also needed contacts. Paul Placet proved to be the ideal friend for him. After his disappearance, he organized important exhibitions of his paintings, manuscript, etc. He worked tirelessly to make his work known. Note the Augiéras exhibition which is held in Cahors from June 15 to the end of July. It’s still thanks to him.

“I met Augieras by chance. A professor handed me his faded copy of Journey to Mount Athos, telling me that I was going to find myself there, which was, and I never left his work. How did the meeting go with you?

Serge Sanchez: Jean-Jacques Brochier, who for a long time edited the Literary Magazine, held the work of Augieras in very high esteem. It is thanks to him that my knowledge of this author deepened. He asked me to write several articles on Augieras for the Magazine. I only knew the Old Man and the Child and Une adolescence au temps du Maréchal. Then things took their course. My knowledge of Augieras was made gradually. I found in his books landscapes that I know well: Greece, North Africa, the Dordogne… This created an additional rapprochement.

– This connection done, you stay in his company or you move on to “something else”?

Serge Sanchez: Both. I am currently writing a book on New Guinea headhunters, to be published by Payot. More primitives! This book builds on my previous work. There is no break.

“Wouldn’t a work like his suffer from being too well known?” Isn’t it one of those little secrets that are passed on and that make the salt of literature?

Serge Sanchez: I don’t see how notoriety could harm an author. Augieras deserves more audience than he has had so far and he himself thought that his work would be recognized after his death. And then, nothing prevents everyone from having their own reading. Any relationship to art is an intimate relationship, regardless of the celebrity of the artist. Great ideas, beauty… everyone is receptive to it. There is no great art without generosity, without total gift of oneself.

— We come back to the question of hackneyed literature… the secret is not harmful, for example, Rimbaud, the name is famous, certain poems are very well known, but many still cannot quote a single line. It is gourmet literature and not a buffet.

Serge Sanchez: Nothing prevents you from rushing into it. I don’t make those distinctions. Let’s say it’s gourmet literature if you will…but accessible to everyone. Question of will.

— Augieras bases his work on his almost mystical experience of life. Is he the first autofiction author?

Serge Sanchez: There were others before him, although, you are right, that is one of his characteristics. Every author recreates the reality that surrounds him. He is the material of his own creations. It is the result of a mysterious chemistry that involves both self-centeredness and self-dilution in the realm of ideas. I don’t believe in a universal truth. An artist is necessarily a “visionary”.

“Augieras, primitive?” In which way ? Primordial? He is of no real time, his writings show him engaged in mythical, even mythological time. How could the world, in the middle of the 20th century, give birth to a magnificent savage?

Serge Sanchez: Augieras was very instinctive, especially in his relationship with nature. He identified with the elements, the trees, the animals… Like the primitives. He was also very seduced by the art of ancient civilizations, such as Pharaonic Egypt, or the peoples of Oceania, which he had discovered through reading Malraux. Why a savage? For several reasons, but first of all out of rejection of a materialistic Western civilization which hardly suited it and of which the least we can say today, without being pessimistic, is that it is running towards its own destruction with a tenacity and a vanity that had never been matched in the past.

— The experience of mysticism, of the initiatory quest marks his work and his very life. Is such a course still possible today?

Serge Sanchez: All life is an initiatory journey, in other words, constant learning. It is the greatness of man and his curse to be tormented by questions whose answers remain hidden from him. There is no time for this. The only difference is that today the Western world has become so obsessed with commercialism that important landmarks have been lost. The Catholic Church itself sold off the symbols on which it nourished itself in order to enter fully into the society of the spectacle. It is appropriate for everyone to individually recreate their inner world, to operate their metamorphosis. Reading Augieras, but not only this one of course, can help. One of its qualities is to resonate the soul and the world, like two well-tuned instruments.

— There is still a notable difference between any life and that of Augieras, even that of learning novels like L’Education sentimentale by Flaubert or Wilhem Meister by Goethe. His experience is quite exceptional, and all the more so since he had the literary genius to restore it.

Serge Sanchez: Of course. But let us specify again that under an appearance of fiction the books of Augieras speak of his lived experience. His work is a spiritual fresco that takes root in his very life. We are far from the psychological studies of the past century.

“How, in your eyes, is Augieras essentially magical?”

Serge Sanchez: Augieras believed that life had meaning. He offered himself body and soul to his own destiny. Life is a bet on the absolute, it is not the social marathon in which we are pushed today. It takes into account other values, which must continue to be our pride. If excessive mysticism, the spiritual fundamentalism which opens the door to all tyrannies are illusory, materialism is the most harmful imposture that civilization has known. Wisdom, patience, awareness of one’s own vanity are essential to move forward… But one must also know how to preserve in oneself a gift of almost childlike wonder in order to discover the magic of the world.

— What can a work like his tell us today?

Serge Sanchez: I believe that the work of Augieras takes on its full importance today. As I said before, it opens a door to the absolute. She has the gift of changing lives by bringing us back to essential values. Its nobility is stripping.

— By which work would you recommend the discovery of Augieras?

Serge Sanchez: I really like Domme or the Essay on Occupation. But each Augieras book reveals a facet of this strange character. Some will prefer the Old Man and the Child. Let’s leave it to chance… or magic in this area.

 

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Book

Francois Augieras The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Pushkin Press

‘In the depths of the Sarladais, a land of ghosts, cool caves and woods, a teenage boy is sent to live with a thirty-five-year-old priest, but soon the man becomes more than just his teacher. Published in the United Kingdom for the first time. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a gallant, almost magical book that is one of modern literature’s esoteric, underground texts.’ — Pushkin Collection

‘This tale of spiritualised depravity is genuinely erotic. Whatever one might think of the strange division of morality and spirituality in this novella, it shows that descriptions of generous, world-encompassing desire are not solely the preserve of women.’ — Murrough O’Brien, Independent on Sunday

‘The story has a spiritual as well as a sexual, dimension, and it is essentially pantheistic. None of the characters are named, and that’s relevant to the novelist purpose, for they are vividly realised and shadowy by turns. It is flawlessly translated by Sue Dyson.’ — Paul Bailey, Daily Telegraph

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Excerpt

IN PÉRIGORD there lived a priest. His house stood high above a village made up of twenty dilapidated dwellings with grey stone roofs. These houses straggled up the side of the hill, to meet old, bramble-filled gardens, the church and the adjoining presbytery, which were built on rocks reflected in the River Vézère, flowing past at their base. Few people lived there; this priest served several parishes, which meant that, since he spent all day travelling round the countryside, he did not return home until evening. He was aged around thirty-five, just about as unpleasant as a priest can be, and although this was all my parents knew about him, they had entrusted me to his care, urging him to deal strictly with me. Which indeed he did, as you will see.
—On the evening of my arrival, the sky was a soft shade of gold. He did not offer me any supper; the moment I turned up on his doorstep he took me straight to my room, which was located in a corridor as ugly as himself. Leaving the door ajar, he abandoned me without a word, if you discount a few unanswerable phrases, such as: every cloud has a silver lining; the tables are turned; come what may; sleep well in the arms of Morpheus; and other such drivel. I heard him go into the next bedroom, moving about, doing God knows what, talking to himself, then there was silence.
—I had been asleep for less than an hour when I was awakened by a terrible howling. Sitting bolt upright in bed, my eyes wide open, I waited for what seemed an eternity, petrified that I would hear another sound as terrible as the first. But nothing else disturbed the silence of the night. The moon picked out a few leafy branches among the shadows in a wild garden behind the presbytery; its beautiful rays shone through the panes of my little window, lighting up the corner of a table covered with my blue school notebooks, and a whitewashed wall, and faintly outlining the rim of a water jug. I was sleepy; I drifted off again without worrying too much about my extravagant priest’s odd ways, for it was he who had shouted out in the next room, which was separated from mine only by a thin partition wall.
—In the morning, when I went downstairs, I found my parish priest in an almost good mood, making coffee. I owe it to him to mention that at his house I drank the best coffee in the world, delicate yet strong, with a curious taste of embers and ash. He took a great deal of care preparing it according to his own method, all the time muttering away, not to me, but to the flames which he blew on gently, rekindling the embers, talking to them as if they were people. He removed the coffee from the heat as soon as it began to bubble, returning it for a brief instant to the burning coals which he picked up in his bare fingers, as though he derived enjoyment from the act, and without noticeably burning himself. The whole process took a good quarter of an hour, and he spent the entire time crouched in the hearth, with his cassock bunched up between his thighs.
—After we had drunk our coffee, we went out into the garden. Sitting on some steps, at the intersection of two pathways, he got me to translate some Latin passage or other from my school books. As far as I could see, he had a rather poor grasp of Latin. He had the unpleasant habit of vigorously scratching his horrible black hair, and that got on my nerves. What’s more, he kept reminding me how grateful I should be to my parents, who had had the excellent idea of entrusting me to him. If my attention wandered, even for a moment, he seized me by the ear and I felt two hard, sharp fingernails sink into my flesh. He wore a disgustingly dirty cassock, for he was extremely mean with money, and thought he looked good in it. He addressed me by the sweetest names, while at the same time poking fun at me; he displayed the polite manner one might use when celebrating a small Mass; he kept calling me “Young Sir”; it was as if he were saying: I’m only a peasant, I owe you a little politeness; and there you have it, all in one go; try to be content with it, young Gentleman. This Latin lesson, punctuated with little courtesies, lasted no more than a page; he stood up; I did likewise, and both of us were delighted that it was over—in my case the Latin, in his, the politeness. To tell the truth, in that June of my sixteenth year, what I really wanted were language lessons of a different kind, for love is a language, even more ancient than Latin (and there are those who say even that defies decency).
—Leaving me to Seneca and Caesar, he strode off into the countryside. He had charge of several parishes; very well then, let him leave me on my own, this solitude would not be without its attractions; I was perfectly capable of passing the time and getting by without my priest.
—As soon as he had gone, I put down my books and gave up trying to follow Caesar’s conquests; instead, I opened my eyes wide and took a long look at my new life. All along the banks of the Vézère ran the vast, thickly-wooded hills of the Sarladais. Closer to me, our garden was broken up by little low walls made of heaped-up stones, and by steps and pathways. All kinds of plants were jumbled up together, growing wild, almost hiding the once-ordered layout of a rather fine formal garden. Everything flourished higgledy-piggledy, rose bushes and brambles, flowers, grass and fruit trees. This lost order reinforced the garden’s charm, as well as the anxiety which you felt as you tried to find your way round that tangled mess, whose traceries of flowers were bizarrely watched over by a pale blue plaster statue of the Virgin Mary. She rose above the wild jumble of plants, looking just a touch simple-minded, with her tear-filled eyes, her insignificant, veiled face like a blind woman’s, her gentle, soft hands and her belly tilting forward. Beyond her it was all emptiness; our garden, which was perched at the very summit of the rocks, tumbled down towards the azure sky, the waters of the Vézère and the village rooftops.
—Our church shone in the sunshine. It was a former monastery chapel, with thick walls pierced by narrow windows like arrow-slits. But the thing which commanded my attention was the presbytery, which I had caught only a glimpse of the night before. It seemed very ancient, with its lintelled windows and its substantial stone roof. As I was alone, I decided to get to know it better.
—On the ground floor was the kitchen, where we had drunk our coffee. The dominant feature was a vast fireplace, which filled the whole room with smoke. I pushed open a little door beside a cupboard, and was surprised to see that it led into a stable, occupied by a sparse flock of bleating sheep. I found log-piles and a kind of forge.
—A flight of stone steps led up to the first floor. The previous evening, as I got ready for bed, I had noticed a large, beautiful seashell in my room, and some naval swords, bows and arrows piled up under a dressing table. Did my priest have a nostalgic longing for the sea? I opened the door to his bedroom; the thing which struck me particularly was that there was no bed, just a pile of blankets in one corner. Nearby, I found exactly what I might expect to see in the way of basic conveniences and piety, except for some more weapons, hanging from nails on a wall, and several collections of butterflies. I noted also that there was no clock, calendar or newspaper; in fact nothing at all to tell you the time of day or the date.
—The other bedrooms, further down the corridor, were used for storage. They were unusable and dark because of the piles of assorted objects accumulated by generations of parish priests. It would have taken several days to get to the bottom of the various heaps.
—I opened the shutters of the first room I entered, so that I could see more clearly. It turned out to be a chaos of prie-dieux, desks, benches, broken chairs bowed beneath the weight of gaping chests of drawers, and pea-sticks, heaped so high they touched the ceiling.
—In the second room, which had whitewashed walls like all the other rooms in the presbytery, I bumped into another chaotic jumble of furniture, chests and baskets filled with long-forgotten clothes. There, I found clothing for housemaids and priests, cassocks and heavy cotton skirts, lavender sachets, linen, sun-hats, and white “Bâteau” knickers, slit up the sides, as worn by the Young Ladies you see on a Sunday morning, lifting their skirts behind country churches, while the bells are ringing for Mass. I counted more than fifty pairs in one trunk, all clean and new. Further on in a willow basket, I found faded skirts, soldiers’ uniforms, theatrical costumes; enough clothes to dress myself a thousand times over. Near to a nice little cradle, a picture of the Burial of Christ was rotting away in a corner, and a swarm of maddened wasps was buzzing ceaselessly inside a wardrobe.
—The third bedroom was used as a drying chamber for corn cobs, which had been laid out on the floor. I was going to close the door without going in, when I realised that these corn cobs had been arranged to form a number of perfectly geometrical shapes: circles, squares, suns, and more complicated figures, structured according to gradations of colour, which must have taken my priest several days’ work and infinite patience.
—The final room, at the far end of the corridor, was used purely as a drying-room for tobacco. Bunches of long tobacco leaves hung from the ceiling, and their sweet, pungent scent impregnated the whole house.
—A ladder and trapdoor provided access to the attic, which covered the whole of the first floor. The glimmers of sunshine which filtered between the stone roofing-slabs and the traceries of beams and laths cast an almost adequate light on a scattering of old books on the floor: the complete Virgil, Lucretia, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Cervantes, a copy of Plutarch’s Lives of Famous Men, devotional texts. Rotting portraits of priests, stored away without their frames, looked at me with their large, wide eyes, like judges who were either benevolent or stern, meek or evil, watching me, following every move I made. That made me feel awkward for a while, I couldn’t do a thing without them immediately swivelling their eyes towards me.
—I was reading, sitting comfortably—or as comfortably as one could in a stuffy roof-space—when I heard someone climbing the ladder. My priest pushed open the trapdoor with his head. He did not see me, for it took several seconds to get used to the semi-darkness of the attic. I did not move. A delicious anxiety clutched at me. He climbed up the last few rungs:
—“For God’s sake, are you there?”
—No reply. So as not to have climbed up for nothing, he set about removing the dust which covered the old books, striking the volumes with the flat of his hand, so frequently and so hard as he grumbled to himself that he stumbled and fell on top of me:
—“Ah!” he exclaimed, “so that’s where you were.” Yes! I told him, in the same tone of voice. But could he see my smile? Already he was pulling me towards him. As I was on my knees, he too knelt down to give me a good thrashing. After taking most of my clothes off, he struck me roughly, as he had struck the books. Did I weigh heavy in his arms? He made me get up and lie down across a low beam which ran across the attic; then, pushing my head down, he finished beating me in comfort. After that he went away, leaving me half-naked, panting, covered in sweat, my flesh burning against the rough beam. Once the trapdoor had closed, I regained my senses, telling myself that my fate was not really cruel, that the boys of Ancient Rome had undergone the same punishments and had not died; at last, rather cheerfully, I got down off my beam with my dust-blackened knees and my scarlet torso, put my clothes back on and went back to reading Plutarch.
—By the time I too left the attic, I could tell from the silent house that I was alone again. I went into my room and washed myself in cool water, which took the entire contents of my little water jug, as I was so dusty. Then I rested my elbows on the window ledge and gazed out at the trees and the sky. Birds were singing, hens were pecking around in the yard; a fine, strong smell of weasels drifted up from below. Worn-out from the beating I had endured, and feeling feverish, I was drawn by the calm of the garden.
—At the far end of a pathway was a little murmuring spring, where I drank. In those early days of June, I found the power of the growing plants exhilarating; the scent of the carnations and roses troubled my young flesh. The warm air caressed my face. Evening fell. A sound of violently rattling saucepans told me that my priest had returned. A few logs tossed into the fireplace suddenly crackled and burned all at once. After he had called me two or three times, and since I was mischievously refusing to reply, he appeared in the kitchen doorway, which was all lit up by flames, his tall, thin silhouette stark against the firelight. Finally he came towards the clump of leafy vegetation where I had hidden myself. From my hiding place, among the leaves of a box tree, I saw his hand feel around for me, and finally encounter my face.
—“Right,” he shouted, “get into that house. I’ll teach you to disobey me, you cheeky young…” How had I offended him? We left the moonlit garden and I followed him up to my room, where, after tying me across a chair, he thrashed me with a switch. Then he knelt down next to me and—as peculiar as ever—covered me with caresses, tenderly rocking me in my rush-covered clothes. He put out the light and remained there, beside my chair, in perfect darkness, saying nothing, kissing my face, for a whole quarter of an hour, before freeing me from my bonds.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** scunnard, Hi Jared. Vienna was nice. I was there pretty briefly, so I didn’t really get its lay. The event was good. Yes, that sounds fine re: sending me the post stuff. The freedom to rethink sounds great. At the very least. ** A, Hi. Zac has it, but I haven’t gotten it from him yet. Maybe this weekend, I think. ** Misanthrope, You think? Even in Azerbaijan? What’s wrong with your mom’s teeth? Ouch. I’m pretty sure that wherever you are in life, you and it can split the credit evenly. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Oh, I think I know where the Schönbrunn Palace is, so I kind of know sort of where you’ll live. Seems like a good locale if my memory and imagination are properly in sync. Prater is really pretty and exciting, if you like that sort of thing: old school amusement parks. Lots of dark rides! Lots! So amazing. The event seemed to go very well. I was interviewed onstage, and a young Austrian actor read from ‘I Wished’ in German, and then I signed a ton of books, and then they showed ‘PGL’. The theater where it happened was very cool. Seemed like a groovy hang out, shows lots of offbeat movies. It’s called Schikaneder Kino. They have a fun/rundown bar/cafe too. Might be worth checking out. Well, it’s certainly nice that you’re getting such rich submissions to SCAB, speaking as an ultra-fan. ‘Lilya 4-Ever’, yes, a really good film. I think it’s my friend/collaborator Gisele Vienne’s all-time favorite film, or it used to be at least. What did you think? Ha ha, I took piano lesson when I was a kid, and I was absolutely terrible, so I need love’s help to conquer the organ, for sure. Love watching Hate give Boredom a blowjob, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Cool. I don’t know ‘Deranged’, no, and it does look like something I should hunt down, yes. Maybe I’ll wait until I get your report. Hey, have you been managing to a write at all? ** Sypha, Hi. I haven’t read Martin’s work or even seen the related show or read hardly any fantasy fiction whatsoever, as you know, but his playing as wildly as possible with the facts of his chosen period sounds exciting, yes. Yes, quite exciting. ** Bill, I’m really glad his stuff and collecting/archiving interested you, Me too, duh. I just read that they’re also doing a restoration of Araki’s ‘Nowhere’, which is my favorite from that period of his films for sure. I have hopes at the moment that Queer Japan is on soap2day, but I haven’t checked yet. No pastries were served at my event, and now I feel very deprived. ** Steve Erickson, Happy your ankle is normalizing. I’m, of course, saving GotG3 for a particularly long plane flight, if even then. I thought the previous two, which I watched on planes, were very irksome. No, I didn’t know that about the Quietus. That’s scary. Losing TinyMixTapes was a serious blow, but if Quietus went under, that would be really fuck up the playing field for adventurous music/film seekers. Shit. I guess I’ll watch the fan edit of Lynch’s ‘Dune’. I mean, why not. I do expect it to be the mere cut and paste you’re suggesting. But still. ** Cody Goodnight, Hi. I’m good, you? From what I saw, which wasn’t much, Vienna was kind of pleasant and cozy. I know ‘Vienna’, or I remember it. I always had hard time making he transition from the early, really good Ultravox when John Foxx was the main man to the washier New Wave version of them later, but I should try again. It’s been years. I really am going to watch ‘Phantom’ again. You’ve got me excited. Hm, I’m not sure why ‘Pinocchio’ is my fave Disney. I just reminder it being so rich and inventive visually, and maybe also because it’s darker than a lot of that period of Disney animation. The Island of Lost Boys part with the boys turning into donkeys scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Maybe that’s why too. I hope your today lives up to your yesterday at minimum. ** Okay. Today I am drawing your attention to this now basically forgotten but, at one time, very scandalous novel and its author. See what you think, eh? See you tomorrow.