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<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/atom10full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:openSearch="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005" xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" gd:etag="W/&quot;DEcNR345fCp7ImA9WxBTEUk.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3320187800483491901</id><updated>2009-12-06T16:34:56.024-08:00</updated><title>bustill</title><subtitle type="html">There is a vision that every being has two slaves. The first is Tempus Fugit and the second is Memento Mori. Is irony well served by ellipsis?

The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom, 
for we can never know what is enough until we have experienced 
too much. 
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http://feeds.feedburner.com/mandelbrotia</subtitle><link rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/" /><link rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" /><link rel="next" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default?start-index=11&amp;max-results=10&amp;redirect=false&amp;v=2" /><author><name>bustill</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16809406666384689478</uri><email>bustill.blogspot.com@gmail.com</email></author><generator version="7.00" uri="http://www.blogger.com">Blogger</generator><openSearch:totalResults>1209</openSearch:totalResults><openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex><openSearch:itemsPerPage>10</openSearch:itemsPerPage><link rel="self" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe" type="application/atom+xml" /><feedburner:emailServiceId>blogspot/riZe</feedburner:emailServiceId><feedburner:feedburnerHostname>http://feedburner.google.com</feedburner:feedburnerHostname><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com" /><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;A0IARX8-fSp7ImA9WxNbFkQ.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3320187800483491901.post-3970373707792326764</id><published>2009-11-19T22:45:00.001-08:00</published><updated>2009-11-19T22:45:44.155-08:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-19T22:45:44.155-08:00</app:edited><title>~~Suicide Tryptych-Evolution of Alan Vega~~</title><content type="html">&lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwYt8q21AoI/AAAAAAAAJGg/waRsEyzTbdo/s1600/suicide-tryptich+-+Copie-777820.jpg" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwYt8q21AoI/AAAAAAAAJGg/waRsEyzTbdo/s320/suicide-tryptich+-+Copie-777820.jpg" border="0" alt=""&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;  &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:large;border-collapse:collapse;color:rgb(255, 0, 0);font-weight:bold;white-space:pre"&gt;~~Suicide Tryptych: Evolution of Alan Vega &lt;span style="font-weight:normal"&gt;&lt;b&gt;~~&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;         &lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: &amp;#39;Trebuchet MS&amp;#39;, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; color: rgb(204, 204, 204); line-height: 20px; "&gt;&lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;span style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold; font-size: large; "&gt;mandelbrotia~~Suicide Tryptych: Evolution of Alan Vega &lt;span style="font-weight: normal; "&gt;&lt;b&gt;~~&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); "&gt;&lt;span style="border-collapse: collapse; white-space: pre; font-size: large; "&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt; &lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); "&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; white-space: pre; "&gt;&lt;b&gt;MACRO Museo Arte Contemporaneo ROMA&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); "&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; white-space: pre; "&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); "&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; white-space: pre; "&gt;&lt;b&gt;&amp;quot;New York Minute&amp;quot; Expo, MACRO Rome&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); "&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; white-space: pre; "&gt;&lt;b&gt;(&lt;a href="http://nym.departfoundation.com/blog/?page_id=2"&gt;http://nym.departfoundation.com/blog/?page_id=2&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); "&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; white-space: pre; "&gt;&lt;b&gt;@&lt;a href="http://www.macro.roma.museum/"&gt;http://www.macro.roma.museum/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt; 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     &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;                             &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;         &lt;b&gt;   &lt;br&gt;       &lt;a href="http://mandelbrotia.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"&gt;http://mandelbrotia.blogspot.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;                                                   &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mandelbrotia" target="_blank"&gt;http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mandelbrotia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;                                                     &lt;a href="http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/mandelbrotia" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/mandelbrotia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;                       &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br&gt;    &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;  &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;            &lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;border-collapse:collapse;color:rgb(255, 0, 0);white-space:pre"&gt;mandelbrotia~~~Second Troy~&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt;      &lt;div class="gmail_quote"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;border-collapse:collapse;color:rgb(255, 0, 0);white-space:pre"&gt;&lt;span style="border-collapse:separate;color:rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-weight:normal;white-space:normal"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;border-collapse:collapse;color:rgb(255, 0, 0);white-space:pre"&gt;mandelbrotia~~~Jesus~&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/div&gt; 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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~4/C2UFDIFtUFg" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/feeds/3970373707792326764/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3320187800483491901&amp;postID=3970373707792326764" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/3970373707792326764?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/3970373707792326764?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~3/C2UFDIFtUFg/suicide-tryptych-evolution-of-alan-vega.html" title="~~Suicide Tryptych-Evolution of Alan Vega~~" /><author><name>bustill</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16809406666384689478</uri><email>bustill.blogspot.com@gmail.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="16935147386556320745" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwYt8q21AoI/AAAAAAAAJGg/waRsEyzTbdo/s72-c/suicide-tryptich+-+Copie-777820.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bustill.blogspot.com/2009/11/suicide-tryptych-evolution-of-alan-vega.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;DkAAR3g8eip7ImA9WxNbFks.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3320187800483491901.post-4997206898636713756</id><published>2009-11-19T13:05:00.001-08:00</published><updated>2009-11-19T13:05:46.672-08:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-19T13:05:46.672-08:00</app:edited><title>Dream Baby Dream or Deathmatch: Alan Vega vs/ Bruce Springsteen</title><content type="html">&lt;p class="mobile-photo"&gt;&lt;a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwWzKgf85YI/AAAAAAAAJGQ/pggoNDmthCg/s1600/Vega_02_body-746673.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwWzKgf85YI/AAAAAAAAJGQ/pggoNDmthCg/s320/Vega_02_body-746673.jpg"  border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405923920832161154" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="mobile-photo"&gt;&lt;a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwWzK07RNcI/AAAAAAAAJGY/afDZFYqnHeA/s1600/NEBRASKA-747543.JPG"&gt;&lt;img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwWzK07RNcI/AAAAAAAAJGY/afDZFYqnHeA/s320/NEBRASKA-747543.JPG"  border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405923926315447746" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; "&gt;Dream Baby Dream or&lt;span style="mso-spacerun:yes"&gt;  &lt;/span&gt;Deathmatch: Alan Vega vs/ Bruce Springsteen&lt;/span&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:8.25pt;text-align:right"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10.5pt"&gt;Intro&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;DREAM BAY DREAM is a 1979 single by the band Suicide. Check out &lt;a href="http://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics/d/dreambabydream_original.php"&gt;Suicide&amp;#39;s original version&lt;/a&gt; for more details. Bruce Springsteen, who was influenced by the band, closed his &lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;Devils &amp;amp; Dust Solo Acoustic Tour&lt;/span&gt; shows with a solo version of DREAM BABY DREAM. Note that Springsteen wrote the song title &lt;span style="font-weight:bold"&gt;DREAM&lt;/span&gt; on the shows&amp;#39; handwritten setlists.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10.5pt"&gt;Springsteen and Suicide&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve liked Suicide for a long time,&amp;quot; Springsteen told &lt;span style="font-style: italic"&gt;Mojo&lt;/span&gt; in an October 2005 interview. &amp;quot;I met the guys late in the &amp;#39;70s in New York City, when we were in the studio at the same time. You know, if Elvis came back from the dead I think he would sound like Alan Vaga. He gets a lot of emotional purity. I came across &amp;#39;Dream Baby Dream&amp;#39; again because Michael Stipe included it on a compilation and I thought maybe I could do it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;In his 06 Dec 1984 interview for &lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;Rolling Stone&lt;/span&gt;, Kurt Loder had this exchange with Springsteen:&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;margin-left:.375in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic;text-decoration:underline"&gt;Rolling Stone&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration:underline"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; What bands have you been listening to lately?&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;margin-left:.375in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration:underline"&gt;Bruce Springsteen:&lt;/span&gt; I listen to a lot of different types of things. I like U2, Divinyls, Van Morrison. I like the band Suicide.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;margin-left:.375in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic;text-decoration:underline"&gt;Rolling Stone&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration:underline"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; That makes sense: &amp;quot;State Trooper,&amp;quot; one of the songs on &lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;Nebraska&lt;/span&gt;, sounds very much like Suicide.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;margin-left:.375in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration:underline"&gt;Bruce Springsteen:&lt;/span&gt; Yeah. They had that two-piece synthesizer-voice thing. They had one of the most amazing songs I ever heard. It was about a guy that murders...&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;margin-left:.375in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic;text-decoration:underline"&gt;Rolling Stone&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration:underline"&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &amp;quot;Frankie Teardrop&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin:0in;margin-left:.375in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration:underline"&gt;Bruce Springsteen:&lt;/span&gt; Yeah! Oh, my God! That&amp;#39;s one of the most amazing records I think I ever heard. I really love that record.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10.5pt"&gt;Springsteen&amp;#39;s version&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Springsteen played his modified version of Suicide&amp;#39;s DREAM BABY DREAM on the pump organ with synthesizer in the background (played by Bruce&amp;#39;s keyboard technician Alan &amp;quot;Fitz&amp;quot; Fitzgerald). The song is repetitive, but that adds to its strength. At the end of the song, Bruce just stands up, focuses the mantra directly at the crowd before him, &amp;quot;I just wanna see you smile&amp;quot;, and then walks off the stage while singing the last line, with the synthesizer still playing and the lights dimming.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Springsteen told &lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;Mojo&lt;/span&gt;: &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s a mantra and it works because the night is filled with so much narrative and detail and then at the end there&amp;#39;s just those few phrases repeated and they are the essence of everything else I&amp;#39;m saying and doing in the course of the evening. The night opens and opens and then, at the end, when you think it can&amp;#39;t open any more it does and it&amp;#39;s completely embracing. It&amp;#39;s yeah, I guess... I have an eye for a lot of detail and this is a lesson in, uh, &amp;#39;What is a song?&amp;#39; It&amp;#39;s so purely musical, that&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s beautiful about it, it&amp;#39;s so simple and so purely musical.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10.5pt"&gt;Live History&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Bruce Springsteen debuted DREAM BABY DREAM on 11 May 2005 at Rosemont Theatre, Chicago, IL. That was the 9th official date of the &lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;Devils &amp;amp; Dust Solo Acoustic Tour&lt;/span&gt;. From then on, the song closed every single show of the tour, making a total of 64 appearances.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Suicide&amp;#39;s Alan Vega was in attendance at Springsteen&amp;#39;s 20 Jul 2005 show at Arena At Harbor Yard, Bridgeport, CT. Springsteen dedicated that night&amp;#39;s performance of DREAM BABY DREAM to it&amp;#39;s writer.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10.5pt"&gt;Alan Vega&amp;#39;s comments&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m still high from that show [20 Jul 2005]. Now I can die. Not only he&amp;#39;s [Springsteen] playing &amp;#39;Dream Baby Dream,&amp;#39; but it&amp;#39;s the big encore song, the last song of the show,&amp;quot; Alan Vega told &lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;Backstreets Magazine&lt;/span&gt; in an interview. &amp;quot;A lot of bands have done my stuff, Suicide stuff [...] Thank god, finally somebody did their version of it. He [Springsteen] interpreted my song, he did it his way, and such a great way that I&amp;#39;m going to have to sing it that way, or not sing it at all anymore!&amp;quot; In the interview, Vega talks about Springsteen&amp;#39;s version of DREAM BABY DREAM, the Bridgeport show, how he first met Springsteen, the &lt;span style="font-style: italic"&gt;Nebraska&lt;/span&gt; album, and much more... At the end of the interview, when asked what&amp;#39;s his favorite Springsteen song, Vega answered &amp;quot;&amp;#39;Dream Baby Dream.&amp;#39; On my death bed, that&amp;#39;s the last thing I&amp;#39;m going to listen to. I&amp;#39;ll play it at my funeral.&amp;quot; The full interview can be found in the Winter 2005/2006 (#83/84) issue of &lt;a href="http://www.backstreets.com/"&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;Backstreets Magazine&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10.5pt"&gt;Official Release&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Springsteen&amp;#39;s live 28 Oct 2005 performance of DREAM BABY DREAM at T. D. Banknorth Garden, Boston, MA, was officially released in October 2008 on &lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;Dream Baby Dream&lt;/span&gt;, a UK-only various artists 10&amp;quot; vinyl EP (Blastfirstpetite, catalogue # PTYY 017). The official release date is 06 Oct 2008 in the UK and 28 Oct 2008 in the USA. The release commemorates Suicide vocalist Alan Vega&amp;#39;s 70th birthday. It is limited to 8,000 copies, pressed in two different runs of 4,000 each. It comes in a black-and-white cardboard picture sleeve with individually numbered sticker on rear. The track was also available for official download in mp3 or FLAC formats on the &lt;a href="http://blastfirstpetite.greedbag.com/buy/dream-baby-dream-0/"&gt;Blast First (Petite)&lt;/a&gt; label&amp;#39;s website, and as an mp4 on &lt;a href="itms://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?albumTerm=Dream%20Baby%20Dream%20-%20EP"&gt;iTunes&lt;/a&gt;. According to&lt;a href="http://www.backstreets.com/"&gt;Backstreets&lt;/a&gt;, the seven-minute audio is taken from the yet-to-be-completed &lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;Devils &amp;amp; Dust Solo Acoustic Tour&lt;/span&gt; DVD.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:8.25pt"&gt;Live 28 Oct 2005 version&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:&amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;[Spoken intro:] Alright, this is for Dave. Dave, I&amp;#39;m gonna send this one out to you tonight. [chuckles] Had a great time yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Keep the fire burning&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;We gotta keep the light burning&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, we gotta keep the light burning&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, you gotta keep the fire burning&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on darling and dry your eyes&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on baby and dry your eyes&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on darling and dry your eyes&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on baby and dry your eyes&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on darling and dry your eyes&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, you gotta keep on dreaming&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, you gotta keep on dreaming&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, you gotta keep on dreaming&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, you gotta keep a fire burning&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, you gotta keep the light burning&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on you gotta keep a light burning&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Well I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Now I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Yeah I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Yeah I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Now I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Yeah I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, you gotta keep on dreaming&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, you gotta keep on dreaming&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, you gotta keep on dreaming&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, we gotta keep a light burning&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, you gotta keep a light burning&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on, we gotta keep a light burning&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on baby and dry your eyes&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on darling and dry your eyes&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on darling and dry your eyes&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and open up your heart&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and open up your heart&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and open up your heart&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and open up your heart&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and open up your heart&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on and open up your heart&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Yeah I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Yeah I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Yeah I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Yeah come on and open up your heart&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Oh come on and open up your heart&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Yeah come on and open up your heart&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Yeah I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Now I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Yeah I just wanna see you smile&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Come on dream on, dream baby dream&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Verdana;font-size:9.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:8.0pt"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun:yes"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics/d/dreambabydream.php"&gt;http://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics/d/dreambabydream.php&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;br&gt;/ `--&amp;#39;( ,,,&lt;br&gt;&amp;lt; [] []////////|:::)&lt;br&gt;\_.--.(realdeltablues&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://bustill.blogspot.com"&gt;http://bustill.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe"&gt;http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;  &lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3320187800483491901-4997206898636713756?l=bustill.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~4/Q-6q51t5yOI" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/feeds/4997206898636713756/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3320187800483491901&amp;postID=4997206898636713756" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/4997206898636713756?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/4997206898636713756?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~3/Q-6q51t5yOI/dream-baby-dream-or-deathmatch-alan.html" title="Dream Baby Dream or Deathmatch: Alan Vega vs/ Bruce Springsteen" /><author><name>bustill</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16809406666384689478</uri><email>bustill.blogspot.com@gmail.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="16935147386556320745" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwWzKgf85YI/AAAAAAAAJGQ/pggoNDmthCg/s72-c/Vega_02_body-746673.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bustill.blogspot.com/2009/11/dream-baby-dream-or-deathmatch-alan.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;C0EFRno8fyp7ImA9WxNbFks.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3320187800483491901.post-1401972929661386665</id><published>2009-11-19T12:13:00.001-08:00</published><updated>2009-11-19T12:13:37.477-08:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-19T12:13:37.477-08:00</app:edited><title>Suicide: Alan Vega Is Going To Kick Your +ss or How the GodfathersOf  Punk Kept The Faith</title><content type="html">&lt;p class="mobile-photo"&gt;&lt;a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwWm8c-qcrI/AAAAAAAAJGI/_lcUKUaXwrw/s1600/Vega_03_body-717478.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwWm8c-qcrI/AAAAAAAAJGI/_lcUKUaXwrw/s320/Vega_03_body-717478.jpg"  border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405910485229531826" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul style="margin-left:.0208in;direction:ltr;unicode-bidi:embed;margin-top:  0in;margin-bottom:0in"&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-weight: bold; font-family: Consolas; "&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"&gt;Suicide: Alan Vega Is Going To Kick Your &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-large;"&gt;+&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"&gt;ss or How the Godfathers Of Punk Kept The Faith&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-weight: bold; font-family: Consolas; "&gt;&lt;span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt"&gt;New  Yorkers Alan Vega and Marty Rev were punks before punk was invented, known in  the &amp;#39;70s for their violent gigs and raging synth rock. Now they&amp;#39;re hip again,  with Bono, REM and Radiohead citing them as influences.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;You  may not have heard of American duo Suicide, but you will have heard of the  groups they influenced. Depeche Mode, New Order, Moby, Radiohead - almost  every techno or industrial act, or rock band that uses synthesisers, has cited  Suicide as an influence.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Bono  said U2 were listening to Suicide&amp;#39;s song Cheree when they wrote With Or  Without You. Bruce Springsteen, their early supporter and friend, has recorded  a cover version of their song Dream Baby Dream. Suicide&amp;#39;s eponymous 1977 debut  album has been hailed as &amp;quot;the Sgt Pepper of electronica&amp;quot;, while REM  have described them as &amp;quot;the true sound of New York&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;And  their confrontational performances, which often resulted in orgies of violence  and destruction, led Joe Strummer, frontman of The Clash, to call vocalist  Alan Vega &amp;quot;one of the bravest men I have ever seen on a stage&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;But  they were not always this highly regarded. &amp;quot;Even the punks didn&amp;#39;t like  Suicide,&amp;quot; says Vega today, his thick accent closer to Jackie Mason than a  Bronx hoodlum. &amp;quot;We were the ultimate punks because even the punks hated  us.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Did  he and musical partner Marty Rev relish their ultimate pariah status, being  spat at and having everything from bottles to axes hurled at them?&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&amp;quot;Well,  it made it difficult to get gigs because there would be riots every time. At  one gig in the Hague, the police sprayed the theatre with teargas. At another  in France I got punched on the nose and Marty had to fight off stage invaders  with his spare hand.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&amp;quot;We  had a reputation as the band everyone loved to hate, and I kind of enjoyed  that. But there were times when we thought we were insane. It almost pushed me  towards a nervous breakdown. We confronted and challenged the audience. We  weren&amp;#39;t entertainers - it wasn&amp;#39;t an escape from people&amp;#39;s problems.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Vega  draws a shocking parallel between the aural assault of Suicide at their  confrontational &amp;#39;70s peak - Rev&amp;#39;s ear-punishing keyboard drones and Vega&amp;#39;s  bloodcurdling arsenal of yelps and screams - and the darkest period in Jewish  history. &amp;quot;When the Jews were shipped off to the concentration camps, to  Dachau, Auschwitz or Treblinka, they would arrive and there would be a  beautiful station and they looked like quite nice places. But then they&amp;#39;d walk  past the nicely painted walls through a door right into hell. And that&amp;#39;s  exactly what Marty and I were doing with Suicide: we were giving them  Treblinka. The audience would walk through the door of the venue and they&amp;#39;d be  in hell. We were angry and we wanted to wake people up. The Vietnam War was  raging, Nixon - who I hated - was in charge and the whole country was  collapsing. We were saying: 'Wake up, man! You&amp;#39;ve got to change this  shit!&amp;#39;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Despite  their torn clothes, their choice of band name and the individual aliases they  assumed in the early days - Nasty Cut and Marty Maniac - Vega and Rev were not  your average semi-literate, cartoon-&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;nihilist  delinquents proposing chaos for its own sake: there was a vast difference  between Sid Vicious and Suicide.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Vega,  born Alan Bermowitz in 1938, was brought up in a poor blue-collar household by  his mother and diamond-setter immigrant father. &amp;quot;They were from another  planet,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Fortunately they didn&amp;#39;t ever get to see me  perform, otherwise they would have put me in a mental hospital.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;He  describes himself as a loner who initially studied physics and art at Brooklyn  College before pursuing a career making light sculptures at some of the most  prestigious art galleries in New York.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Rev,  real name Martin Reverby, was an avant-garde jazz buff studying classical  music at New York University who got expelled for refusing to toe the line.  Vega remembers the day in 1971 when Rev turned up at the Project of Living  Artists, an artists&amp;#39; space he was managing in Lower Manhattan.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&amp;quot;He  was a strange-looking Jewish guy with bushy hair like an afro and a blue  turtle-neck who sat down on the floor and started tapping these pencils. He  was out there - the first guy to play jazz rock on keyboards, long before  Weather Report,&amp;quot; he marvels, comparing their meeting to those  epoch-making first encounters between Keith Richards and Mick Jagger and  Lennon and McCartney. &amp;quot;It was,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;a miracle.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Vega  and Rev became part of a music New York scene densely populated with Jews,  including Joey Ramone, Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group, Richard Hell of  the Voidoids and Chris Stein of Blondie.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Vega  even jokingly refers to the legendary club CBGBs where all those bands played  as &amp;quot;one big synagogue&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;As  Suicide, they created a new type of electronic rock&amp;#39;n&amp;#39;roll - they were a  sci-fi Sex Pistols, before the Pistols existed. The problem was, nobody knew  what to make of them or their guitar-, bass- and drums-free line-up. In fact,  they were the prototype synth-duo, the model for Soft Cell, Pet Shop Boys and  the rest, with the lugubrious keyboardist and gregarious frontman.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&amp;quot;If  we were the future, it was a future that nobody wanted,&amp;quot; admits Rev, who  was once approached by the Pistols&amp;#39; manager Malcolm McLaren to form a boy-girl  outfit with Blondie&amp;#39;s Debbie Harry. &amp;quot;There was nothing about us that was  familiar.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Rev  is as thoughtful as Suicide&amp;#39;s music is visceral. Of his religious beliefs, he  says: &amp;quot;I can&amp;#39;t box myself into any one system of practice or ritualised  thought for very long.&amp;quot; And he describes his upbringing as  &amp;quot;social-oriented humanitarianism; non-religious bordering on  agnostic&amp;quot;. He admits, however, that he later &amp;quot;studied in-depth  ancient Hebrew texts for a period of years&amp;quot;. He concedes that he  &amp;quot;can&amp;#39;t imagine living in a world where there isn&amp;#39;t a God&amp;quot;. He admires  non-believers but cannot quite make that leap himself. &amp;quot;Having that sense  of awe about the universe, which is what religion is to me, I wonder how they  can live without that.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;It&amp;#39;s  like love - it doesn&amp;#39;t have to be real or true, but to live without it... It&amp;#39;s  hard enough to get up in the morning as it is.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Vega  is similarly ambivalent. He alludes to the &amp;quot;miraculous&amp;quot; nature of  his career with Suicide and fateful meeting with Rev, begging the question -  does he believe in a higher power?&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&amp;quot;I  distrust the name 'God&amp;#39; but, yes, I do believe in a higher power,&amp;quot; he  says. He adds that he shares the rationalist stance of Spinoza, the  17th-century Jewish philosopher and &amp;quot;pantheist theologian&amp;quot;.  &amp;quot;God is in all of us,&amp;quot; he says, before deciding: &amp;quot;There is an  immense power. There has to be.&amp;quot; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;After  years of changing his back-story, telling journalists his mother was Catholic,  he is finally proud of his roots. &amp;quot;I made that up to fuel the myth,  because really, my whole life has been a myth,&amp;quot; he says. Now he can come  clean. &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s funny, but I&amp;#39;ll never stop feeling Jewish, no matter how  much I might talk my way out of it.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;I&amp;#39;m  very proud to be part of this tradition. It&amp;#39;s brought me a lot of  knowledge.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;He  is equally proud of Suicide and flattered by the attention of musician-fans -  artists as varied as Springsteen, Nick Cave, Primal Scream and Julian Cope are  lined up to release cover versions of Suicide classics every month from now  until 2010. Even Amy Winehouse is apparently keen to get involved.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;&amp;quot;There&amp;#39;s  an authenticity to our music,&amp;quot; he considers. &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s country &amp;#39;n&amp;#39;  eastern music, or New York City blues. I sometimes call it 'Two Jews&amp;#39; Blues&amp;#39;.  Really, though, we&amp;#39;re our own category. People always say: 'You&amp;#39;re too much in  the future.&amp;#39; And I tell them: 'No, you&amp;#39;re too much in the past.&amp;#39;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;To  mark Alan Vega&amp;#39;s 70th birthday, blastfirstpetite is releasing monthly  limited-edition 10-inch vinyl singles featuring versions of Suicide songs,  starting this month with Bruce Springsteen&amp;#39;s cover of Dream Baby Dream.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt"&gt;Snapshot&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Who  are Suicide? Marty Rev and Alan Vega - two Jewish New Yorkers who founded  the band &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;after  they met in 1971. Vega says: &amp;quot;We were angry and we wanted to wake people  up&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Why  are they important? Suicide had a punk-style attitude and violent edge to  their music that predated the Sex Pistols by several years. They invented  synthesiser rock, paving the way for a host of &amp;#39;80s and &amp;#39;90s electro-pop bands&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.0pt"&gt;Who  have they influenced? Who haven&amp;#39;t they influenced? Depeche Mode, Soft  Cell, New Order and Pet Shop Boys would all probably never have existed  without Suicide. U2, REM, Radiohead, and even Bruce Springsteen claim them as  heroes.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:9.75pt"&gt;By  Paul Lester, October 10, 2008&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Consolas;font-size:8.0pt"&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.thejc.com/arts/music/suicide-how-godfathers-punk-kept-faith"&gt;http://www.thejc.com/arts/music/suicide-how-godfathers-punk-kept-faith&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;b&gt;/ `--&amp;#39;( ,,,&lt;br&gt;&amp;lt; [] []////////|:::)&lt;br&gt;\_.--.(realdeltablues&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://bustill.blogspot.com"&gt;http://bustill.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe"&gt;http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; &lt;br&gt;  &lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3320187800483491901-1401972929661386665?l=bustill.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~4/miJN2Zr0vpQ" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/feeds/1401972929661386665/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3320187800483491901&amp;postID=1401972929661386665" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/1401972929661386665?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/1401972929661386665?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~3/miJN2Zr0vpQ/suicide-alan-vega-is-going-to-kick-your.html" title="Suicide: Alan Vega Is Going To Kick Your +ss or How the GodfathersOf  Punk Kept The Faith" /><author><name>bustill</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16809406666384689478</uri><email>bustill.blogspot.com@gmail.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="16935147386556320745" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwWm8c-qcrI/AAAAAAAAJGI/_lcUKUaXwrw/s72-c/Vega_03_body-717478.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bustill.blogspot.com/2009/11/suicide-alan-vega-is-going-to-kick-your.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;Ak8FSXw6fCp7ImA9WxNbFkw.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3320187800483491901.post-6361462474166412093</id><published>2009-11-19T00:18:00.010-08:00</published><updated>2009-11-19T00:20:18.214-08:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-19T00:20:18.214-08:00</app:edited><title>Ten things you need to know about Haruki Murakami</title><content type="html">&lt;p class="mobile-photo"&gt;&lt;a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_wuYTAqI/AAAAAAAAJGA/DqErDovimLs/s1600/haru-718215.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_wuYTAqI/AAAAAAAAJGA/DqErDovimLs/s320/haru-718215.jpg"  border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405726665300181666" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Consolas"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:large"&gt;Ten things you need to know about Haruki Murakami&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;  &lt;/b&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;  &lt;b&gt;The key facts about the coolest writer in the world today&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:#666666"&gt;&lt;span style="color:rgb(0, 0, 0)"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Haruki Murakami is quite possibly the most successful and influential cult author in the world today. The 59-year-old sells millions of books in Japan. His fifth novel, Norwegian Wood, sold more than 3.5m copies in its first year and his work has been translated into 40 languages, in which he sells almost as well. Last year's novella, After Dark, shifted more than 100,000 copies in English in its first three months. His books are like Japanese food — a mix of the delicate, the deliberately bland and the curiously exotic. Dreams, memory and reality swap places, all leavened with dry humour. His translator, Professor Jay Rubin, says reading Murakami changes your brain. His world-view has inspired Sofia Coppola, the author David Mitchell and American bands such as the Flaming Lips. He is a recipient of the Franz Kafka prize, has honorary degrees from Princeton and Liège, and is tipped for the Nobel prize for literature.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;MURAKAMI DIVIDES PEOPLE&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;In June 2000, the panel members of German television's literary review show Das Literarische Quartett disagreed so violently about his writing that one of them quit after 12 years on the programme. Opinion is equally divided in Japan. While younger readers adore him and even choose to study at his alma mater, Waseda University, in the hope of living in the dorm he describes in Norwegian Wood, he is viewed as pop, trashy and overly westernised by Japan's literary establishment, who prefer the formal writing of Mishima, Tanizaki or Kawabata. Born in Kyoto in 1949, he studied theatre arts at Waseda — although the course didn't interest him hugely and he spent much of his time reading film scripts in the library. He was hugely influenced by the student rebellions in 1968, which find their way into many of his novels. As a result, he's a typical baby boomer — openly critical of Japan's obsession with capitalism. He finds Japanese traditions boring. This doesn't go down very well.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;MURAKAMI IS HUGELY INFLUENTIAL&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;As well as countless Japanese novelists, the plot and style of Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation were partly inspired by Murakami's novels. David Mitchell — twice nominated for the Booker prize — owes a huge debt to him after reading him while teaching in Japan. Indeed, the title of his second novel, Number 9 Dream, is a veiled tribute to Norwegian Wood — both were named after Beatles songs. Among others, the Complicite theatre company adapted The Elephant Vanishes in 2003; Robert Wyatt reads from Murakami's books on Max Richter's 2006 album Songs from Before; and the Grateful Dead-style jam band Sound Tribe Sector 9 soundtracked a 2007 film version of the story All God's Children Can Dance.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;HIS BOOKS WOULD NOT MAKE A HIGH-CONCEPT MOVIE PITCH&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Imagine that JD Salinger and Gabriel Garcia Marquez had collaborated on a manga version of The Maltese Falcon. Norwegian Wood is the Japanese equivalent of The Catcher in the Rye — required reading for every troubled adolescent. Curiously, Murakami translated The Catcher in the Rye into Japanese and found it good but incomplete. "The story becomes darker and darker, and Holden Caulfield doesn't find his way out of the dark world," he argues. "I think Salinger himself didn't find it either." Murakami balances the mundane — intimate descriptions of preparing and eating simple meals feature regularly — with the fantastic. His protagonists are usually ordinary people trying to get by in life, until some type of ethereal male guide steers them into a new direction, sometimes quite literally. In All God's Children Can Dance, Yoshiya, a young man working at a publishing company, wakes up with a crushing hangover and heads to his office hours later than usual. On the train coming home that night, he sees an older man who has the distinguishing features of his absent father. Yoshiya follows this man on the train, then through darkened, empty streets, to find himself in a deserted baseball diamond at night. The man vanishes, and Yoshiya stands on the pitcher's mound in the cold wind and simply dances.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;MURAKAMI IS CONFLICTED ABOUT HIS HOMELAND&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Both his parents taught Japanese literature, but he preferred reading second-hand pulp-fiction novels picked up in the port city of Kobe. He is a devoted fan of western music and hates the formalism of Mishima. In 1987, the huge success of Norwegian Wood made him an overnight celebrity, which terrified and annoyed him. In December 1988, he left the country, becoming a writing fellow at Princeton. A Japanese weekly magazine reported his departure under the headline "Haruki Murakami has escaped from Japan". Published in 1994, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle picked apart the cultural groupthink that led Japan into the second world war, a theme he revisited in his first nonfiction book, Underground (published in 1997), about the Tokyo subway attacks by the Aum Shinrikyo cult. He worries about Japan's tendency to forget wartime atrocities. Even so, he says: "Before, I wanted to be an expatriate writer. But I am a Japanese writer. This is my soil and these are my roots. You cannot get away from your country."&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;MURAKAMI USED TO RUN A JAZZ CLUB&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;He owned it from the end of his university years until 1981, when he was able to support himself with his writing. The experience may have contributed to the negative role of drinking in his books. He uses alcohol as a signifier of the petty, the negative and the evil. That is not to say he is teetotal. He loves beer, rewarding himself with a cold one for feats of writing or sporting endurance. Perhaps it was the crushed, social blend of booze and crowds that made Murakami uneasy. He once said: "When I had the club, I stood behind the bar, and it was my job to engage in conversation. I did that for seven years, but I'm not a talkative person. I swore to myself, once I've finished here, I will only ever talk to those people I really want to talk to." As a result, he refuses to appear on radio or television.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;MURAKAMI OWES EVERYTHING TO BASEBALL&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;On April 1, 1978, he was watching a baseball game at the Jingu Stadium, in Tokyo, on a warm, sunny day — the Yakult Swallows against the Hiroshima Carp. An American player for the Swallows, Dave Hilton, stepped up to bat and hit a home run. In that instant, Murakami knew he was going to write a novel. "It was a warm sensation. I can still feel it in my heart," he told Der Spiegel earlier this year. He started work that night on his debut novel, Hear the Wind Sing. It has many Murakami themes: there are animals; the hero is a young man, rather isolated, laconic, operating on cruise control and jobless; his eventual girlfriend has a twin (Murakami likes doppelgängers); cooking, eating, drinking and listening to western music are described often and in detail; and the plot is both incredibly simple and bafflingly complex. Writing while running a jazz bar proved difficult, however, and it is a fragmented, jumpy read. The unpublished manuscript won first prize in a competition run by the influential Japanese literary magazine Gunzo, but Murakami himself doesn't like it very much and didn't want it translated into English.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;MURAKAMI LIKES CATS&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;His jazz bar was called Peter Cat, and cats appear in many of his stories — usually indicating that something very strange is about to happen. It's a missing cat that starts off the whole surreal chain of events in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, while Kafka on the Shore features a confused and possibly brain-damaged pensioner called Nakata, who, after a mysterious incident involving a strange silver light at the end of the second world war, fell into a coma and woke to find that he had telepathic communication with cats. This, it turns out, is fortunate, as a conversation with an unusually bright member of the species, who is on the run from a strange cat-catcher called Johnnie Walker, ultimately leads to Nakata preventing the living embodiment of pure evil from destroying the planet.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;As I said, something very strange.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;MURAKAMI REALLY LIKES MUSIC&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Many of his book titles are musical references: Norwegian Wood after the Beatles song, South of the Border, West of the Sun after a Nat King Cole track and Dance, Dance, Dance after the Beach Boys tune. The three books in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle are named after a Rossini overture, a piano piece by Schumann and a character in Mozart's Magic Flute respectively. In Kafka on the Shore, the hero's contact with the spirit of a dead woman who has obsessed him throughout the novel finally comes about when he discovers a cache of vinyl records in a desolate library on the outskirts of a regional city and plays Beethoven's Archduke Trio. In Pinball, 1973, revolutionary students occupying a university building find a classical-music library and spend every evening listening to records. One beautifully clear November afternoon, riot police force their way into the building while Vivaldi's L'Estro armonico blares at full volume. One interviewer visited Murakami's flat and found a room lined with more than 7,000 vinyl records.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;MURAKAMI REALLY, REALLY LIKES RUNNING&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;His latest book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, is the closest thing he's written to an autobiography (although some fans suspect Norwegian Wood has more than a little of his own life at its core).&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;In this extended monologue, Murakami reminisces about his life as seen through the prism of the sport.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;He began running at the age of 33 to lose weight after giving up smoking. Within a year, he had run his first marathon. He's also run the original marathon, between Marathon and Athens — albeit in reverse, because he didn't want to arrive in Athens during the rush hour.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;His personal best time for a marathon is 3hr 27min, in New York in 1991. In 1995, he ran in a 100km ultramarathon. It took him more than 11 hours and he nearly collapsed halfway through. He describes his second wind as a religious experience, but decided that he wouldn't run another one. He believes that "a fortunate author can write maybe 12 novels in his lifetime. I don't know how many good books I still have in me. I hope there are another four or five. When I am running, I don't feel that limit. I publish a thick novel every four years, but I run a 10km race, a half-marathon and a marathon every year". He gets up at 4am, writes for four hours, then runs 10km. On his tombstone, he would like the phrase "at least he never walked".&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;MURAKAMI IS A ROMANTIC&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;His protagonists are usually transformed by exquisitely tender physical unions with unusual, beautiful and often confused or mysterious women. He describes love with delicate wonder, and his hero is driven by passionate need once the woman of his life is revealed. "I have to talk to you," Norwegian Wood's Toru Watanabe tells the emotionally troubled Naoko. "I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning."&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Yet it usually doesn't work out. Murakami's women are often spirits or extremely fragile. They write the hero long, rambling letters from afar and either attempt suicide or manage to kill themselves during the course of the novel. In one case, the love interest turns out to be the ghost of the hero's mother, captured when she was a teenage girl. Murakami himself has been married since 1971 to Yoko, although he has speculated in interviews about whether this was the right thing to do. "Unlike my wife, I don't like company. I have been married for 37 years and often it is a battle," he told Der Spiegel. "I am used to being alone. And I enjoy being alone."&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight:normal;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Stephen Armstrong&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:10.0pt;color:black"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:8.0pt;color:#666666"&gt;&lt;span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4352966.ece" target="_blank"&gt;http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4352966.ece&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Consolas;font-size:8.0pt;color:#666666"&gt;&lt;span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4352966.ece?token=null&amp;amp;offset=12&amp;amp;page=2" target="_blank"&gt;http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4352966.ece?token=null&amp;amp;offset=12&amp;amp;page=2&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;b&gt;/ `--&amp;#39;( ,,,&lt;br&gt;&amp;lt; [] []////////|:::)&lt;br&gt;\_.--.(realdeltablues&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://bustill.blogspot.com" target="_blank"&gt;http://bustill.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe" target="_blank"&gt;http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;   &lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3320187800483491901-6361462474166412093?l=bustill.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~4/PFc052SMWVk" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/feeds/6361462474166412093/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3320187800483491901&amp;postID=6361462474166412093" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/6361462474166412093?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/6361462474166412093?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~3/PFc052SMWVk/ten-things-you-need-to-know-about.html" title="Ten things you need to know about Haruki Murakami" /><author><name>bustill</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16809406666384689478</uri><email>bustill.blogspot.com@gmail.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="16935147386556320745" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_wuYTAqI/AAAAAAAAJGA/DqErDovimLs/s72-c/haru-718215.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bustill.blogspot.com/2009/11/ten-things-you-need-to-know-about.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;AkAHQHs5eip7ImA9WxNbFkw.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3320187800483491901.post-4446003830625617926</id><published>2009-11-19T00:18:00.009-08:00</published><updated>2009-11-19T00:18:51.522-08:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-19T00:18:51.522-08:00</app:edited><title>How to Conserve Art That Lives in a Lake?</title><content type="html">&lt;p class="mobile-photo"&gt;&lt;a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_a7640TI/AAAAAAAAJF4/NBIjo6QNNOc/s1600/jetty108-731523.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_a7640TI/AAAAAAAAJF4/NBIjo6QNNOc/s320/jetty108-731523.jpg"  border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405726290977804594" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ol style="margin-left:0.2729in;direction:ltr;margin-top:0in;margin-bottom:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt"&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt; &lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:large"&gt;&lt;b&gt;How to Conserve Art That Lives in a Lake?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in"&gt;  &lt;font color="#808080" face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in"&gt; &lt;span style="color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;In 1972, a year before his death in a plane crash at 35, the artist&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/robert_smithson/index.html?inline=nyt-per" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Robert Smithson&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt; wrote, "I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day." And with the creation of his greatest work — "Spiral Jetty," the huge counterclockwise curlicue of black basalt rock that juts into the Great Salt Lake in rural Utah — he certainly put that conviction to the test.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;text-align:right"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;After the piece was constructed in 1970, it spent decades underwater as the lake rose. It has re-emerged in the last few years because of drought, but its appearance has changed markedly, whitened by salt crystals and the buildup of silt. Mr. Smithson, who was fascinated by the concept of entropy, might have welcomed this transformation. But it is less clear what he would have thought about changes wrought by visitors to the remote site, who have, at times, carried off some of the rocks as art souvenirs. Or moved them to construct their own tiny spiral jetties nearby. Or, in one case, used them to spell out what they were undoubtedly drinking at the time — "BEER" — in the pink-hued sand next to the earthwork.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in"&gt;&lt;span style="color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Issues like this recently prompted the &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/d/dia_art_foundation/index.html?inline=nyt-org" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Dia Art Foundation&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;, which owns the work, to begin exploring the idea of systematically documenting the site, photographing it from year to year to give curators and conservators a better idea of how it is changing and a better basis for making decisions — always tricky in the world of land art — about whether to intervene.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;"In my field we're trained to make condition reports," said Francesca Esmay, Dia's conservator, but she added of Smithson's work, composed of more than 6,000 tons of rock and soil: "Its scale is such that I can't just go out with a camera and pencil and clipboard by myself and describe it." So several months ago she turned to the Getty Conservation Institute, an arm of the J. Paul Getty Trust, which has organized and assisted in conservation and monitoring of art and historic sites from Central America to Africa to the Middle East.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;After considering nearly every possible way to document "Spiral Jetty" from above — Rent a weather satellite? An airplane? A helicopter? Use a kite? — the institute, which often works in countries where conservation projects are carried out on shoestring budgets, came up with a remarkably simple solution: a $50 disposable latex weather balloon, easily bought online.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Along with a little helium, some fishing line, a slightly hacked Canon PowerShot G9 point-and-shoot digital camera, an improvised plywood and metal cradle for the camera and some plastic zip ties (to keep the cradle attached and the neck of the balloon cinched), a floating land-art documentation machine was improvised, MacGyver-like.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;"I'm not supposed to use the word cheap — it's inexpensive," Rand Eppich, a senior project manager with the Getty institute, said. Mr. Eppich, who conceived the balloon plan, made the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Salt Lake City last May with a Getty assistant, Aurora Tang, and Ms. Esmay, to put the system in use for the first time.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;And despite a couple of balloons that popped in the Utah heat ("Thankfully, we didn't have cameras on them," Mr. Eppich said), the three managed to get some spectacular and highly useful shots of the jetty from heights ranging from 800 to 1,600 feet, as they unreeled the fishing line tied to the balloon, allowing it to rise.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in"&gt;&lt;span style="color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;"You don't need to be skilled conservators to do this part — it's literally like remembering back to childhood birthday parties," said Ms. Esmay, who joined Dia three years ago as its first full-time conservator. She is also responsible for the condition of sites like Walter De Maria's "Lightning Field" in western New Mexico and for works by artists like &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/donald_judd/index.html?inline=nyt-per" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Donald Judd&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;, &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/dan_flavin/index.html?inline=nyt-per" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Dan Flavin&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt; and &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/louise_bourgeois/index.html?inline=nyt-per" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Louise Bourgeois&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt; at Dia:Beacon in Beacon, N.Y.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Mr. Eppich said the Getty's goal was to create a system that Dia could use annually at little cost and one simple enough that Ms. Esmay could operate it herself. "We want to help people do something that's repeatable and sustainable after we're gone," he said.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in"&gt;&lt;span style="color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Preservation concerns about "Spiral Jetty" have arisen lately not only because of the work's re-emergence from the water but also because of plans announced in the last two and a half years by companies to initiate industrial projects near the site. One is a large expansion of a field of solar evaporation ponds used to extract potassium sulfate from the water for fertilizer. Another is a plan for exploratory &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/info/oil/?inline=nyt-classifier" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;oil&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt; drilling that Dia officials argued would disrupt the way the work would be viewed and potentially harm it physically. As a result of the drilling proposal — currently in limbo — Dia and Utah officials have begun exploring the creation of a buffer zone around the sculpture that would help protect it while still allowing the lake area to be used for other purposes.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;But in addition to industrial threats to the work, there are also natural ones, like silt, which has begun to accumulate between the outermost band of the spiral and the next one in, as the lake's level has dropped. The lake is so low it is now possible to walk a quarter-mile into it with the water reaching only knee-high.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;"In my personal opinion alone," Ms. Esmay said of the silt, "I think it's to such a degree now that it's foreign to the piece. But in 10 years it could be gone or in one year it could be gone. Or it could be worse. You have no way of knowing, and that's just inherent to the work itself."&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;She emphasized that the documentation project was not a prelude to any active plans to rebuild or even touch up the jetty. "Something like that might not happen for 20 years, if it ever happens at all," she said, "but at least we'll have 20 years of data that will show the patterns of change."&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;And if any conservation plans were to go forward, then the really complicated work would begin: trying to figure out what Mr. Smithson would have thought about it.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;"Nature does not proceed in a straight line," he wrote. "It is rather a sprawling development. Nature is never finished."&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial"&gt;&lt;ol style="margin-left:0.2729in;direction:ltr;margin-top:0in;margin-bottom:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt"&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in"&gt;&lt;span style="color:gray"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;By &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/randy_kennedy/index.html?inline=nyt-per" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;RANDY KENNEDY&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:gray"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Published: November 17, 2009&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;ol style="margin-left:0.2729in;direction:ltr;margin-top:0in;margin-bottom:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt"&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in"&gt; &lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt; &lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Pasted from &amp;lt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/arts/design/18spiral.html?_r=1&amp;amp;hp" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/arts/design/18spiral.html?_r=1&amp;amp;hp&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt"&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;/ `--&amp;#39;( ,,,&lt;br&gt;&amp;lt; [] []////////|:::)&lt;br&gt;\_.--.(realdeltablues&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://bustill.blogspot.com" target="_blank"&gt;http://bustill.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe" target="_blank"&gt;http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; &lt;br&gt; &lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3320187800483491901-4446003830625617926?l=bustill.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~4/YRn3YUAbHgQ" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/feeds/4446003830625617926/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3320187800483491901&amp;postID=4446003830625617926" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/4446003830625617926?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/4446003830625617926?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~3/YRn3YUAbHgQ/how-to-conserve-art-that-lives-in-lake.html" title="How to Conserve Art That Lives in a Lake?" /><author><name>bustill</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16809406666384689478</uri><email>bustill.blogspot.com@gmail.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="16935147386556320745" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_a7640TI/AAAAAAAAJF4/NBIjo6QNNOc/s72-c/jetty108-731523.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bustill.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-to-conserve-art-that-lives-in-lake.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;AkAGQnY-fyp7ImA9WxNbFkw.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3320187800483491901.post-7285448594444288123</id><published>2009-11-19T00:18:00.007-08:00</published><updated>2009-11-19T00:18:43.857-08:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-19T00:18:43.857-08:00</app:edited><title>The funny thing about Kafka</title><content type="html">&lt;p class="mobile-photo"&gt;&lt;a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_Y9e5eeI/AAAAAAAAJFw/dR6Q-lBZdRE/s1600/franz_kafka-723858.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_Y9e5eeI/AAAAAAAAJFw/dR6Q-lBZdRE/s320/franz_kafka-723858.jpg"  border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405726257037539810" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:large"&gt;The funny thing about Kafka&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Reviewed by Lawrence Norfolk&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:11pt"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;KAFKA'S SELECTED STORIES&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;trans by Stanley Corngold &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;all by Franz Kafka&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Norton, £6.99; 400pp &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:11pt"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;METAMORPHOSIS AND&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;OTHER STORIES&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;trans by Michael Hofmann&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Penguin, £8.99; 320pp &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:11pt"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;EVERYONE LOVES Kafka. Writers cite him as an influence or benchmark. Readers keep his sales ticking over. Academics set his texts.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Kafka is supremely teach-able. Take &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The Judgement&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;, which he wrote after years of false starts in a single furious night in September 1912. The story begins with Georg Bendemann writing to a childhood friend, now a failed businessman in St Petersburg (the old stamping ground of Gogol and Dostoevsky, two of Kafka's own touchstones), and debating whether to tell his friend that he is engaged.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;We expect the fiancée or the friend to appear. From any other writer that is what we would get. Instead we get Bendemann's magnificently mad father. Consulted on the fiancée question, he launches a multipronged attack on his son whom we begin to suspect of ousting the old man from the family business, neglecting him (suggested via a critique of the old man's underwear) and of falling for a skirt-raising gold-digger.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Even the existence of the "friend" is thrown into doubt. Perhaps the old man is not so mad? Perhaps Bendemann is the one in the grip of delusions? This all takes place while Bendemann attempts to put his father to bed. The terrible row culminates with the old man passing sentence on his son. "I sentence you to death by drowning!" This sentence is then carried out.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Kafka unfolds narrative bends from within his tales that extend their dimensions beyond the normal three. All the above (and much else; I have simplified) takes less than 14 pages. Kafka's insistence on concrete actions releases a superabundance of metaphorical possibilities. Almost any interpretation may gambol in the spacious ambit of Kafka's work: Freudian, Marxist, structuralist, post-structuralist. What does it all mean? Better to ask what doesn't it mean? "Unimaginable quantities of ink and ingenuity have been spilled on Kafka," Michael Hofmann writes in the introduction to his fine translation of Kafka's stories. Stanley Corngold speculates that more is written on Kafka each year than any writer except Shakespeare. Even &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The Zürau Aphorisms&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;, Roberto Calasso admits, "have been published and translated many times".&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Hofmann's wise introduction hints at a solution. Although the interpretation of Kafka is endless, reading him is surprisingly easy. "There is no threshold of boredom or difficulty; you don't even need to have a particularly literary disposition." Why not just do that? His translations render Kafka's conservatively modulated, near-dictionless German into a less dry, slightly more expansive English. It is the most readable version of Kafka to date.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The selection is Kafka's own - the works that he allowed to appear in his lifetime. The (very) short stories of &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Contemplation&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; form a kind of prologue, reading as if sampled from works yet to be written. With hindsight, some read as self-parody.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;"When it had already become unbearable . . ." begins a vignette entitled &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Being Unhappy&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;. The book gets properly under way with&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The Judgement&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;. This was when "Kafka became Kafka", Hofmann comments. &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The Stoker&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;, which follows, later became the opening chapter of the unfinished novel posthumously published as&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Amerika&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;, and brings us to the heart of Kafka's work: the near-novellas &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Metamorphosis&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; and &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;In the Penal Colony&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;, the shorter works collected in &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;A Country Doctor&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;, the four stories of &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Hunger Artist&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; and three miscellaneous pieces round out the book.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;In terms of bulk, this is not much to show for a lifetime's commitment to literature. But Kafka's editor, Max Brod, famously ignored the instruction to burn his manuscripts: &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Amerika&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;, &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The Trial,&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The Castle,&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; along with shorter works such as &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The Great Wall of China,&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Researches of a Dog&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; and &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The Burrow&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; and other bits and pieces.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Potentially at least, Kafka is funny. The mainspring of his fiction is the maintenance of hope amid overwhelming evidence. In&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Metamorphosis&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; Gregor Samsa struggles on, hoping for the best. His predicament is serious, he knows, but surely not hopeless? This from a man who has been locked into his room by his family after turning into a cockroach.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;It is less funny, I would argue, at length. Hofmann notes that Kafka's novels give a heft to the &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;oeuvre&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; that has helped his posthumous reputation. That is a polite way of saying that academics like "serious" writers to have serious-looking bodies of work. My copy of &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The Castle&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; was given to me, optimistically perhaps, on my 14th birthday by my mother. I had some difficulty finishing it but was mollified by the discovery, 30 years later, that Kafka hadn't finished it at all. In the strange world of Kafka's work, the "novels" are the fragments. The short stories reach and define the boundaries.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Corngold has translated and edited &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Kafka's Selected Stories&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; for a Norton Critical Edition. All the major stories are here, except for&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Metamorphosis&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;, which appears in a Norton Critical Edition of its own, also edited by Corngold. For this edition, Corngold states that he has "translated each story 'cold' " and has resisted the temptation of a "colourful colloquial bounce". Excitability has been consigned to the footnotes.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;"Feel the self-reflexivity of this," one exhorts. There are essays at the back, one of which spends 13½ pages on a 400-word story.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The exorbitance of Kafka criticism is, obviously, Kafka-esque. Wonderfully, Corngold blames its recent explosion on a plethora of work by recently unrepressed academics from Eastern Europe. Damn those Czechs! Kafka's very concision seems to provoke the bulk response, so we can expect much academic chuntering on&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;The Zürau Aphorisms.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; These brief paragraphs and sentences, written while he recovered from tuberculosis in 1917, are translated by Hofmann and introduced by Roberto Calasso, in a beautifully produced compact hardback. The contents of this intellectual design-object could have been printed on two sheets of foolscap, but no matter. Kafka compels, and we read on.&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;span style="font-style:italic"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Aphorism Five&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; encourages: "From a certain point, there is no more turning back. That is the point that must be reached."&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:11pt"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:8pt;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article1294285.ece" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article1294285.ece&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;span style="font-size:15px"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;br&gt;/ `--&amp;#39;( ,,,&lt;br&gt;&amp;lt; [] []////////|:::)&lt;br&gt;\_.--.(realdeltablues&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://bustill.blogspot.com" target="_blank"&gt;http://bustill.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;  &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe" target="_blank"&gt;http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3320187800483491901-7285448594444288123?l=bustill.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~4/QDHi-oZEOyg" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/feeds/7285448594444288123/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3320187800483491901&amp;postID=7285448594444288123" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/7285448594444288123?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/7285448594444288123?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~3/QDHi-oZEOyg/funny-thing-about-kafka.html" title="The funny thing about Kafka" /><author><name>bustill</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16809406666384689478</uri><email>bustill.blogspot.com@gmail.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="16935147386556320745" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_Y9e5eeI/AAAAAAAAJFw/dR6Q-lBZdRE/s72-c/franz_kafka-723858.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bustill.blogspot.com/2009/11/funny-thing-about-kafka.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;AkAGQX09fyp7ImA9WxNbFkw.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3320187800483491901.post-1363475273521096494</id><published>2009-11-19T00:18:00.005-08:00</published><updated>2009-11-19T00:18:40.367-08:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-19T00:18:40.367-08:00</app:edited><title>Franz Kafka’s porn brought out of the closet</title><content type="html">&lt;p class="mobile-photo"&gt;&lt;a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_YDtqTfI/AAAAAAAAJFo/7RmoYd6ZRx0/s1600/Franz+Kafka%27s+Metamorphosis-720368.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_YDtqTfI/AAAAAAAAJFo/7RmoYd6ZRx0/s320/Franz+Kafka%27s+Metamorphosis-720368.jpg"  border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405726241530203634" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul style="margin-left:0.0208in;direction:ltr;margin-top:0in;margin-bottom:0in"&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:black"&gt;&lt;font face="tahoma, sans-serif"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:large"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Franz Kafka's porn brought out of the closet&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt"&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;  &lt;b&gt;A stash of explicit pornography to which Franz Kafka subscribed has emerged for the first time after being studiously ignored by scholars anxious to preserve the iconic writer&amp;#39;s saintly image.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;  &lt;b&gt;Having stumbled by chance across copies in the British Library in London and the Bodleian in Oxford while doing unrelated research, James Hawes, the academic and Kafka expert, reveals some of this erotic material in Excavating Kafka, to be published this month. His book seeks to explode important myths surrounding the literary icon, a &amp;quot;quasi-saintly&amp;quot; image which hardly fits with the dark and shocking pictures contained in these banned journals.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Their additional significance is that the publisher, Dr Franz Blei, was also the man who first published Kafka in 1908 - a series of miniature stories later gathered in his book Meditation.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Hawes, an Oxford graduate and university lecturer, emphasises his total admiration for the literary Kafkaesque genius who wrote brooding classics such as The Metamorphosis, The Castle and The Trial, and argues that these discoveries merely show Kafka as more human than the popular image. He believes that &amp;quot;suppressing&amp;quot; them detracts from sensible assessment of his work, and has even led to nonsensical evaluation.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt"&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Even today, the pornography would be &amp;quot;on the top shelf&amp;quot;, Dr Hawes said, noting that his American publisher did not want him to publish it at first. &amp;quot;These are not naughty postcards from the beach. They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark, with animals committing fellatio and girl-on-girl action... It&amp;#39;s quite unpleasant.&amp;quot;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&amp;quot;Academics have pretended it did not exist,&amp;quot; Dr Hawes said. "The Kafka industry doesn't want to know such things about its idol.&amp;quot;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;He added: &amp;quot;Perhaps Kafka&amp;#39;s biographers simply don&amp;#39;t like the idea that their literary idol was helped out in this... way in the vital early stages of his career... Of the world&amp;#39;s authors, only Shakespeare generates more PhDs, more biographies, more coffee-table books... Everything Kafka wrote, every postcard he ever sent, every page of his diary... is regarded as a potential Ark of the Covenant... Yet no-one has ever shown his readers Kafka&amp;#39;s porn.&amp;quot;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;The journals&amp;#39; title - The Amethyst/Opals - reveal nothing about their contents, but Kafka kept his collection locked at his parent&amp;#39;s house where he lived, taking the key with him when he went on holiday.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Perhaps he feared his father Hermann. But the obsession with a supposed brutal father and with being a Jew, are two other myths which Dr Hawes challenges. Hermann, a conventional Jewish businessman and ex- sergeant-major in the Hapsburg army, was probably &amp;quot;a father of his time&amp;quot;, may indeed have been stern, but Dr Hawes - who is also senior lecturer in creative writing at Oxford Brookes University - argues that Kafka admits that he &amp;quot;hardly if ever actually hit&amp;quot; him. He also let him study what he wanted, live at home rent-free for years, when Kafka earned handsomely, and come and go &amp;quot;as he pleased&amp;quot;.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;As to the myth that Kafka&amp;#39;s works are based on his experiences as a Jew in Prague, and that Kafka somehow predicted the Holocaust, Dr Hawes acknowledges that Kafka was very much aware of being Jewish. But &amp;quot;there is zero actual Jewishness&amp;quot; and no Jewish characters or scenes in his work. He was immersed in German culture.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Dr Hawes&amp;#39;s biography also challenges the enduring popular portrait of Kafka as a tortured and lonely figure, neglected in his own lifetime, stuck in a dead-end job and struggling to write. The true Kafka could not have been more different, he said, describing him as a popular and well-paid state lawyer whose writing was supported by a prominent literary clique. It was only towards the end of his short life in 1917 that TB was diagnosed, and his poverty only occurred near the end due to economic collapse after the 1914-18 War.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Commenting on the book&amp;#39;s discoveries, Ritchie Robertson, a professor of German at Oxford University and author of Kafka: A Very Short Introduction, said he was unaware of any academic actually looking at the pornography pictures, let alone reproducing them for biographies, even though they knew of his subscrition to Amethyst/Opals.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;He added: &amp;quot;The many myths about Kafka circulating among the semi-informed public... do include the idea of Kafka as a kind of saint, originally propagated by his friend Max Brod. So it&amp;#39;s salutary to assemble evidence that he was human.&amp;quot;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Kafka&amp;#39;s interest in pornography, which left traces in such works as The Metamorphosis, matters if it makes us look at any of Kafka&amp;#39;s fiction in a new way, he said: &amp;quot;Kafka had a strongly visual imagination, and the importance of the visual arts for him hasn&amp;#39;t yet been fully explored.&amp;quot;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt;  &lt;b&gt;Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:black"&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt"&gt;  &lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:8pt;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4446131.ece" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;b&gt;http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4446131.ece&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt"&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;b&gt;/ `--&amp;#39;( ,,,&lt;br&gt;&amp;lt; [] []////////|:::)&lt;br&gt;\_.--.(realdeltablues&lt;br&gt;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://bustill.blogspot.com" target="_blank"&gt;http://bustill.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe" target="_blank"&gt;http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt; &lt;br&gt; &lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3320187800483491901-1363475273521096494?l=bustill.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~4/Cit1nLOtjJY" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/feeds/1363475273521096494/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3320187800483491901&amp;postID=1363475273521096494" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/1363475273521096494?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/1363475273521096494?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~3/Cit1nLOtjJY/franz-kafkas-porn-brought-out-of-closet.html" title="Franz Kafka’s porn brought out of the closet" /><author><name>bustill</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16809406666384689478</uri><email>bustill.blogspot.com@gmail.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="16935147386556320745" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_YDtqTfI/AAAAAAAAJFo/7RmoYd6ZRx0/s72-c/Franz+Kafka%27s+Metamorphosis-720368.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bustill.blogspot.com/2009/11/franz-kafkas-porn-brought-out-of-closet.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;AkAEQHYyeip7ImA9WxNbFkw.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3320187800483491901.post-7652986837576717013</id><published>2009-11-19T00:18:00.003-08:00</published><updated>2009-11-19T00:18:21.892-08:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-19T00:18:21.892-08:00</app:edited><title>Pornography as high art</title><content type="html">&lt;p class="mobile-photo"&gt;&lt;a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_TaDJlII/AAAAAAAAJFQ/wGzOenEx0A0/s1600/arb-701893.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_TaDJlII/AAAAAAAAJFQ/wGzOenEx0A0/s320/arb-701893.jpg"  border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405726161626567810" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:georgia;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Pornography as high art&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:arial;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt;  Alain Robbe-Grillet&amp;#39;s latest novel is obscene and disturbing, the more so because of its evident artfulness&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:arial;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;In Britain, we have the annual &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2217967,00.html" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial;font-size:10pt"&gt;Bad Sex award&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;, created by Auberon Waugh to celebrate instances of embarrassing sex writing in novels; in France, they have the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.prixsade.com/" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial;font-size:10pt"&gt;Prix Sade&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;, to reward &amp;quot;works defying the moral or political order of society&amp;quot;. Transgressive US gay author &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/10/a_good_writer_as_bad_as_youll.html" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial;font-size:10pt"&gt;Dennis Cooper&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:arial;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;has just been awarded the 2007 prize for his novel The Sluts. How typical that we should denigrate sex in literature while the French call for its celebration.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:arial;font-size:10pt"&gt;&lt;span style="color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;However, even in France, the recently published novel by &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Alain_Robbe-Grillet?PHPSESSID=81cb1109238a9965ba125900f7fc09cf" target="_blank"&gt;Alain Robbe-Grillet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt; - &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.thejohnfox.com/bookfox/2007/10/and-i-thought-h.html" target="_blank"&gt;Un Roman Sentimental&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt; - is creating something of a stir, with calls from various sources for its actual ban. Publishers Fayard, aware of its potential to disturb, even went to the extent of issuing the book with pages uncut, sporting a sober, purely typographical cover, with each copy shrink-wrapped and featuring a warning sticker to the effect that &amp;quot;this is a fairy tale for adults and a fantasy that might well shock sensitive souls&amp;quot;. Were Robbe-Grillet not a member of the respected Academie Francaise and best known for having invented the ascetic and stylised form of the nouveau roman, it is unlikely his novel could have been published at all even in these liberated times. But then, cinemagoers will recall the frequent nudity and sado-masochistic tropes present in many of &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0730237/" target="_blank"&gt;the art films he has directed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;, including Trans-Europ-Express, La Belle Captive, Glissements Progressifs Du Désir and L&amp;#39;Éden et Après. Unlike the flesh on frequent display in the films of Peter Greenaway, Robbe-Grillet&amp;#39;s movies never had the alibi of a painter&amp;#39;s perspective and the bound, captive women he loved to display always evoked a disturbing sense of troubled eroticism and deliberate fetishism.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:arial;font-size:10pt"&gt;&lt;span style="color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Un Roman Sentimental, however, is unlikely to be filmed. It&amp;#39;s a venomous flower of a novel which defies convention and taste and takes a tradition invented by &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.neilschaeffer.com/sade/timeline/index.htm" target="_blank"&gt;the Marquis de Sade&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;, principally in 120 Days of Sodom (the Prix Sade jurors presciently awarded their prize to Robbe-Grillet in 2004 for the whole of his oeuvre), and its film adaptation by Pasolini in Salò.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:arial;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;What constitutes pornography is very much in the eye of the beholder, but there is little doubt that this is an openly and joyfully pornographic book, in that it turns into an unbound celebration of deviancy at its most explicit and imaginative.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:arial;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Gigi, also known as Djinn, a young girl in her early teens, is being groomed by her father to become a woman much like her own mother, Violetta, whose education, contamination and death by devices and persons unknown occurred some 10 years before the novel begins. The fact that Gigi is underage and sleeps naked in her own father&amp;#39;s bed is only the transgressive prelude to a series of stories within stories within stories in which the fate of similar young girls is examined in the most minute detail, often culminating in terrible orgies of desecration, violation and ecstatic torture to the point of death. Every female character in the book is well under the age of consent, and are all complicit in their fate to a troubling extent.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:arial;font-size:10pt;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;There is little doubt that Robbe-Grillet is a major writer and the precise, almost analytical prose that unfolds over the 239 short chapters is classically elegant even as the action moves from disturbing to perverse and well beyond. The book is intended to shock but also to arouse in the most unhealthy of ways, as an hypnotic waltz of domination and submission forces the reader to face his or her own morality or even sanity. Excessive it no doubt is, but it also engenders a worrisome form of fascination for the evil inside us, the temptations of sex for its own sake.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:arial;font-size:10pt"&gt;&lt;span style="color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Since Sade, many French writers have continued to mine this lonely and disturbing area: &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/apollina.htm" target="_blank"&gt;Apollinaire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/aragon.htm" target="_blank"&gt;Louis Aragon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.xtec.es/~jducros/AP%20Mandiargues.html" target="_blank"&gt;André Pieyre de Mandiargues&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style="color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;... Robbe-Grillet, now 85, is not, as some critics have suggested, just another dirty old man, but another trailblazer on this perilous and very French road. And what could well be his final book should be read with the utmost care. Provocation, titillation or an intellectual divertissement? I remain uncertain. But one thing&amp;#39;s for sure: I cannot imagine any English or American writer daring to take such an unholy risk.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:8pt;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt;   &lt;a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/dec/18/pornographyashighart" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/dec/18/pornographyashighart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;/ `--&amp;#39;( ,,,&lt;br&gt;&amp;lt; [] []////////|:::)&lt;br&gt;  \_.--.(realdeltablues&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://bustill.blogspot.com" target="_blank"&gt;http://bustill.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe" target="_blank"&gt;http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;  &lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3320187800483491901-7652986837576717013?l=bustill.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~4/9sQ_n4Nx1gk" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/feeds/7652986837576717013/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3320187800483491901&amp;postID=7652986837576717013" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/7652986837576717013?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/7652986837576717013?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~3/9sQ_n4Nx1gk/pornography-as-high-art.html" title="Pornography as high art" /><author><name>bustill</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16809406666384689478</uri><email>bustill.blogspot.com@gmail.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="16935147386556320745" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_TaDJlII/AAAAAAAAJFQ/wGzOenEx0A0/s72-c/arb-701893.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bustill.blogspot.com/2009/11/pornography-as-high-art.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;AkEMSXsyeCp7ImA9WxNbFkw.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3320187800483491901.post-3510143482372781609</id><published>2009-11-19T00:18:00.001-08:00</published><updated>2009-11-19T00:18:08.590-08:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-19T00:18:08.590-08:00</app:edited><title>Books: 10,001 nights of piety and pornography</title><content type="html">&lt;p class="mobile-photo"&gt;&lt;a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_QDJKhSI/AAAAAAAAJFI/6Zsh-fh_laY/s1600/arabian_nights-788591.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_QDJKhSI/AAAAAAAAJFI/6Zsh-fh_laY/s320/arabian_nights-788591.jpg"  border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405726103938172194" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:large"&gt;&lt;font face="&amp;#39;arial narrow&amp;#39;, sans-serif"&gt;Books: 10,001 nights of piety and pornography&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Georgia;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;   &lt;span style="font-size:x-small"&gt;Jan Morris hails the Victorian Burtons, a globe-trotting double- act who could outperform mere movie stars; A Rage to Live: the life of Isabel and Richard Burton by Mary S Lovell Little, Brown, pounds 25, 910pp&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:x-small"&gt;Jan Morris &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(70, 70, 70)"&gt;   Saturday, 31 October 1998&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Calibri"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;   A RAGE to Live is about Richard Burton - but not, as one of its author&amp;#39;s young relatives was heard explaining to a friend, &amp;quot;the famous one&amp;quot;. The young relative was wrong, though. I suspect that long after the world has forgotten Richard Burton the actor, and his Cleopatra, authors will still be writing books about Richard Burton the Victorian adventurer, savant and pornographer extraordinaire, and his doting, brave and foolish wife, Isabel.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Burton&amp;#39;s was a life of astonishing richness, embracing grand physical exploits and works of profound learning. True, too, that his wife was an archetype of Victorian pluck and dedication, given added piquancy by Roman Catholic fundamentalism. Still, they were essentially minor historical figures of the 19th century, and it proves their personal fascination that they generate such a continuing plethora of literature.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Mary S Lovell now gives us the most ambitious Burton study of them all, a whole-hog blockbuster of a dual biography. It contains more than 900 pages, 78 pages of source notes, eight pages of bibliography and a stunningly comprehensive index. By my count, 72 individuals are named in its acknowledgements, not to mention helpful institutions from Aberystwyth to Kuwait. No detail of the Burton&amp;#39;s story is neglected, no date ignored, no symptom of sickness undiagnosed. Their life&amp;#39;s journey is followed mile by mile, from their birthplaces to the end of their road as Her Majesty&amp;#39;s Consul and his consort at Trieste.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;And what do we get from all this diligence? Not exactly a work of art; no very thrilling new facts; just an agreeable read that will doubtless engage the specialist passions of Burton scholars, but for the rest of us might well be cut by half. The compensating charm of the book is its engaging sense of the amateur. Mary Lovell has written several successful biographies, but still there is something beguilingly innocent about her manner. It is not just that she makes the occasional naive slip, implying that Hussein is a Christian name, or that the second highest mountain on earth is in South America. What is more endearing is a sort of writers&amp;#39;- circle enthusiasm: she is so delighted with her researches, so proud of her massed material, so pleased to offer gentle corrections to previous biographers, above all so irrepressibly devoted to her subjects.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;This affection, rather unfashionable in modern biographies, is the real point of the book. Others have depicted the Burtons more ambiguously: Richard as glamorous but bad - if not a Muslim apostate, as contemporary rumour had it, at least a secret homosexual; Isabel as a besotted and sanctimonious ass, who unforgivably burnt many of her husband&amp;#39;s most precious erotic writings after his death.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Lovell will have none of this. Burton&amp;#39;s interest in sexual variety was purely anthropological; Isabel did nothing that her husband would not have approved; they loved each other dearly, and through their lives were undeserving victims of malicious rivalries, greedy opportunism and the myopic obfuscation of bureaucrats.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;I was not entirely convinced. Of course, Burton&amp;#39;s journeys were tremendous, and he wrote some admirable books about them. Of course, he was a marvellous linguist, one of the best fencers of his day, splendidly iconoclastic and outrageous. His sexual investigations were brave and original. His unexpurgated translations of The Thousand and One Nights and other Eastern classics, defying all the Grundyism of the day, were great works of scholarship.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;But he could be extremely tiresome, and even Mary Lovell cannot disguise the fact. He loved to shock people: even when he was far too old for that kind of thing, he deliberately surrounded himself with mysteries and enigmas, and he was childishly ready to make enemies and bear grudges. As a British Consul, he must have been one of the most maddening ever appointed, constantly getting sick leave to go on one expedition or another, or grumbling about pay and promotion. By the end of this book I felt quite sorry for the poor Foreign Office functionaries who had to deal with him - often confused as they surely were by the influential bigwigs whose sympathy Isabel enlisted on his behalf.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;For Isabel is always present in the story: organising, protesting, fussing, contacting Lords or Secretaries of State, writing prolix books of her own, making a fool or a heroine of herself, riding on camels, fending off villains, standing up for her mate against all the vagaries of fate, human prejudice and misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Lovell is very fond of her, too, and brings out the best in her. Her burning of the books at Trieste, A Rage to Live demonstrates, was neither so unreasonable nor so extensive as everybody used to think. She was a snob and a religious nut, but her wifely devotion is wonderful to witness now that uxorial duty has gone to pot. On she plugs, now sorting dear Richard&amp;#39;s papers in her &amp;quot;little flat&amp;quot; in Baker Street - only nine rooms, plus kitchen - now wondering, on page 666, whether her current ailment could be due to what had happened &amp;quot;during the flight through the forest from the brigand&amp;quot;. (Which brigand was that? See page 471.)&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Verdana;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;I think Mary Lovell would have been wiser to stick to Mrs Burton alone - Lady Burton as she became, Countess as (thanks to something to do with the Holy Roman Empire) she was entitled to call herself. Nothing very new is here revealed about the old hero of the tale, who just seems to me to have been an actively omni-sexual agnostic, as many sensible people are. But the portrait so carefully drawn of his childless wife, so pathetic but so courageous, so fiery in the defence of husband, faith and animal life, is genuinely touching. They don&amp;#39;t make women like that any more - Elizabeth Burtons still, but not many Isabels.&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Calibri"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:8pt;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt;   &lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books-10001-nights-of-piety-and-pornography-1181744.html" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:small"&gt;http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books-10001-nights-of-piety-and-pornography-1181744.h&lt;/span&gt;tml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;   &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Calibri;font-size:11pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;/ `--&amp;#39;( ,,,&lt;br&gt;&amp;lt; [] []////////|:::)&lt;br&gt;\_.--.(realdeltablues&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;a href="http://bustill.blogspot.com" target="_blank"&gt;http://bustill.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe" target="_blank"&gt;http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;   &lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3320187800483491901-3510143482372781609?l=bustill.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~4/f3YxhXRNMU4" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/feeds/3510143482372781609/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3320187800483491901&amp;postID=3510143482372781609" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/3510143482372781609?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/3510143482372781609?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~3/f3YxhXRNMU4/books-10001-nights-of-piety-and.html" title="Books: 10,001 nights of piety and pornography" /><author><name>bustill</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16809406666384689478</uri><email>bustill.blogspot.com@gmail.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="16935147386556320745" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_QDJKhSI/AAAAAAAAJFI/6Zsh-fh_laY/s72-c/arabian_nights-788591.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bustill.blogspot.com/2009/11/books-10001-nights-of-piety-and.html</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry gd:etag="W/&quot;AkAER3k9cCp7ImA9WxNbFkw.&quot;"><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3320187800483491901.post-6692771719491603209</id><published>2009-11-19T00:17:00.010-08:00</published><updated>2009-11-19T00:18:26.768-08:00</updated><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-19T00:18:26.768-08:00</app:edited><title>A Rough Trade</title><content type="html">&lt;p class="mobile-photo"&gt;&lt;a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_UmNxTII/AAAAAAAAJFY/ZM95p0H4nQo/s1600/MartinAmisREX_468x658-706772.jpg"&gt;&lt;img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_UmNxTII/AAAAAAAAJFY/ZM95p0H4nQo/s320/MartinAmisREX_468x658-706772.jpg"  border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405726182072208514" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:large"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:large"&gt;A rough trade&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;font color="#333333" face="Arial"&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/font&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Martin Amis reports from the high-risk, increasingly violent world of the pornography industry&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(102, 102, 102)"&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Arial"&gt; &lt;span style="color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Pussies are bullshit. Don&amp;#39;t let them tell you any different. &amp;quot;Answer me something,&amp;quot; I said to John Stagliano. We were stepping out of the porno home - on to the porno patio with its porno pool. This was Malibu. Down the slope and beyond the road lay the Pacific Ocean; but the Staglianos have no access to its porno shore, in the evening they can watch the porno sunset with its porno pink and mauve and blood-orange, and then linger awhile, perhaps, under a porno moon. &amp;quot;Answer me something. How do you account for the emphasis, not just in your . . . work but in the industry in general, how do you account for the truly incredible emphasis on anal sex?&amp;quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;After a minimal shrug and a minimal pause Stagliano said, &amp;quot;Pussies are bullshit.&amp;quot; Now John was being obedient to the dictionary definition of &amp;quot;bullshit&amp;quot; which is nonsense intended to deceive.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;With vaginal, Stagliano elaborated - well, here you have some chick chirruping away. And the genuinely discerning viewer (jack-knifed over his flying fist) has got to be thinking: Is this for real? Or is it just bullshit?&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;With anal, on the other hand, the actress is obliged to produce a different order of response: more guttural, more animal. As Stagliano quaintly puts it, &amp;quot;Her personality comes out.&amp;quot; He goes on: &amp;quot;You want guys who can fuck really good and make the girls look more . . . virile.&amp;quot; Virile of course, means manly; but once again Stagliano is using the King&amp;#39;s English. You want the girls to show you &amp;quot;their testosterone&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;The name of Rocco Siffredi, again and again, was wistfully and reverently conjured. Rocco, the big-dorked Italian, and porno&amp;#39;s premier buttbanger or assbuster (to use the dialect of this tribe).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;Rocco has far more power in this industry than any actress,&amp;quot; said Stagliano, pleased to be pulling one back for the boys (generally speaking, men are the also-rans of porno). &amp;quot;I was the first to shoot Rocco. Together we evolved toward rougher stuff. He started to spit on girls. A strong male-dominant thing, with women being pushed to their limit. It looks like violence but it&amp;#39;s not. I mean, pleasure and pain are the same thing, right? Rocco is driven by the market. What makes it in today&amp;#39;s market place is reality.&amp;quot; And assholes are reality. And pussies are bullshit.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Features and gonzo&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;There are, at present, two types of mainstream American pornography: Features and Gonzo. Features are sex films with some sort of claim to the ordinary narrative: characterisation, storyline. &amp;quot;We don&amp;#39;t just show you people fucking,&amp;quot; said a Features executive. &amp;quot;We show you why they&amp;#39;re fucking.&amp;quot; These movies are allegedly aimed at the &amp;quot;couples market&amp;quot;. Couples, it asserted, want to know why people are fucking. I can give these couples a three word answer that will hold true in every case: for the money.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;In Flashpoint (Wicked Pictures), for instance, a bunch of porno stars are dressed up as firefighters. As the film opens, we see the porno stars sliding down the pole and boarding the crimson firetruck. An exploding car, a colleague (not a porno star but an ageing extra) falling in the line of duty. There follows an insanely boring funeral, which includes the whole of the Lord&amp;#39;s Prayer and the slow and solemn furling, by a porno star, of the American flag. Porno star Jenna grieves for the fallen extra. After returning from the funeral she finds herself alone with another porno star dressed up as a firefighter. He seeks to assuage her grief, so she gives him a blowjob plus full intercourse. The next sex scene, which occurs about a millennium later, is also triggered by grief counselling. Here a male porno star comforts two female porno stars, one of them anally . . .&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;After a while you begin to think that porno stars, despite being very bad at acting, are very good at acting in one particular only: they can keep a straight face. But then humourlessness, universal and institutionalised humourlessness, is the lifeblood of porno. Films like Flashpoint go out to the video stores and, in the soft version (where the hard action is partly obscured by some stray object - a fireman&amp;#39;s hat, say, or a fireman&amp;#39;s boot), are sold to cable and to hotel chain franchises, and so on. Features owes the humiliating fatuity of its conventions to an old legal precedent called the &amp;quot;Miller Test&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Miller v California (1973) established that a dirty movie was obscene if it was &amp;quot;utterly&amp;quot; without social, literary, artistic, political or scientific &amp;quot;value&amp;quot;. In juridical terms, the key word here, of course, is &amp;quot;utterly&amp;quot; and millions of dollars have been spent on its definition.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;With a wife like Hillary, Bill Clinton could never be a true pal of porno, but he largely left it alone on First Amendment grounds. Unlike his two predecessors, who systematically harassed the industry with confiscations, multiple prosecutions, fines, jail terms. It&amp;#39;s a fair guess that porno never felt more gorgeously secure than when Clinton, in his second term, became in effect the porno president.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Now porno is tensed and braced forchanges. It feared Gore. It dreaded Bush. Gonzo porno is also known as &amp;quot;wall-to-wall&amp;quot;. It shows you people fucking without concerning itself with why they&amp;#39;re fucking. There are no Lord&amp;#39;s Prayers, no furled American flags in Gonzo. Features porno is much, much dirtier than it used to be, but Gonzo porno is gonzo: way out there. The new element is violence.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Strength and Pain&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;I had lunch with Temptress (Features). I had lunch with Chloe (Gonzo). And the next day I joined Chloe on the set of Welcum To Chloeville.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;My lunch with Temptress was a relatively sedate affair. At first I was reminded of the time I interviewed Penny Baker, a Playboy Playmate of the Year: within a minute I had run out of questions. Temptress, like Penny, seemed to be inhibited by the presence of a company executive - in this case Steve Orenstein of Wicked Pictures, for which she is a contract player. But Temptress loosened up.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;Tell me, Temptress,&amp;quot; I said (having apologised for the corniness and mild hostility of my inquiry), &amp;quot;what won&amp;#39;t you do?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;I won&amp;#39;t do anal,&amp;quot; said Temptress. &amp;quot;They keep trying to coax me into it. You know: &amp;#39;Just a finger or a tongue. Or just a little bit: just the tip.&amp;#39; But I won&amp;#39;t, I used not to do facials. But I do them now.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Temptress is not talking about beauty treatments. She is talking about the destination of what is variously referred to as the &amp;quot;pop-shot&amp;quot; or the &amp;quot;money-shot&amp;quot;: the ejaculation of the male.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;What happens,&amp;quot; I asked, &amp;quot;when a co-star can&amp;#39;t get hard?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;The fiasco used to be the nemesis of porno. A penile no-show could make the difference between profit and loss. But the situation has been changed, I was told, thanks to Viagra. On Viagra, the actor performs 45 minutes behind schedule, with a flushed face and a headache. &amp;quot;You also lose a dimension,&amp;quot; John Stagliano would explain. &amp;quot;The guy&amp;#39;s fucking without being aroused.&amp;quot; He&amp;#39;s just &amp;quot;showing off&amp;quot; - and pretty soon you&amp;#39;re back to bullshit.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Another thing with Viagra is that the guy can have a problem with the pop-shot, thus endangering the facial.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;What do you do then, Temptress?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;You get some pina colada mix. The cock&amp;#39;s in your mouth and you let it, like, ooze out around it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Physically Temptress reminded me of the daughters of my friends. She didn&amp;#39;t sound shy, but she looked it. With her long straight hair frequently steered over her shoulders by her slow-moving hands, with her face unglazed by cosmetics, with her gently narrowed eyes, she exuded what Philip Larkin called the &amp;quot;strength and pain/Of being young&amp;quot;. I asked about her history and she told me something of it. And there was strength and there was pain (and there was certainly youth: Temptress is 21).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;But I don&amp;#39;t want you to write about that. And could you not mention my real name? . . . I don&amp;#39;t have relationships any more. They make life unstable. The only sex I have is the sex on screen.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Temptress is one of the lucky ones. She&amp;#39;s a star. After lunch I went to Wicked Pictures and had a talk with Jonathan Morgan (performer turned director) in a computerised cutting-room while he edited his latest Feature, a fantastically unfunny comedy called Inside Porn.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;Ah,&amp;quot; said Jonathan. &amp;quot;Now here we have a double anal.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;A double anal is not to be confused with a DP (double penetration: anal and vaginal). A double anal is a double anal. And there have been triple anals, too. &amp;quot;The girls could be graded like A, B and C. The A is the chick on the boxcover. She has the power. So she&amp;#39;ll show up late or not at all. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of them do that.&amp;quot; He gestured at the screen and said, &amp;quot;Here you have a borderline A/B doing a double anal. Directors will remember that. She&amp;#39;ll get phone calls. For a double anal you&amp;#39;d usually expect a B or a C. They have to do the dirty stuff or they won&amp;#39;t get a phone call. You&amp;#39;ve had a kid, you&amp;#39;ve got some stretchmarks - you&amp;#39;re up there doing double anal.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;Some girls are used in nine months or a year. An 18-year-old, sweet young thing, signs with an agency, makes five films in her first week. Five directors, five actors, five times five: she gets phone calls. A hundred movies in four months. She&amp;#39;s not a fresh face any more. Her price slips and she stops&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;getting phone calls. Then it&amp;#39;s, &amp;#39;Okay, will you do anal? Will you do gangbangs?&amp;#39; Then they&amp;#39;re used up. They can&amp;#39;t even get a phone call. The market forces of this industry use them up.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;I thanked Jonathan Morgan for his candour. But he wasn&amp;#39;t as candid as Chloe. We met in the lobby of my hotel and we strolled out to her Mustang.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;See that?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;The number plate said: STR82NL&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;Straight to anal,&amp;quot; said Chloe.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;And she hadn&amp;#39;t even got started.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Chloe was gonzo. She gave me the truth.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Extreme Productions&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;A single issue of Adult Video News (April 2000) yields the following. Last October porno star Vivian Valentine attended the XXX-Treme Adults Only vacation in Mexico sporting the black eye she copped from Jon Dough on Rough Sex (Anabolic Video).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;I have no regrets or bad feelings about it,&amp;quot; she said. Regan Starr who worked on the second film in this &amp;quot;line&amp;quot;, Rough Sex 2, had a different take. &amp;quot;I got the shit kicked out of me,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;I was told before the video - and they said this very proudly, mind you - that in this line most of the girls start crying because they&amp;#39;re hurting so bad . . . I couldn&amp;#39;t breathe. I was being hit and choked. I was really upset, and they didn&amp;#39;t stop. They kept filming. You can hear me say, &amp;#39;Turn the fucking camera off&amp;#39;, and they kept going.&amp;quot; The director of the Rough Sex series (now discontinued), who goes by the name of Khan Tusion, protests his innocence. &amp;quot;Regan Starr,&amp;quot; Tusion claims, &amp;quot;categorically misstates what occurred.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;If you don&amp;#39;t like Khan Tusion, you won&amp;#39;t like Max Hardcore. AVN&amp;#39;s regular &amp;quot;On the Set&amp;quot; column carries a cheerfully scandalised account of the making of Hollywood Hardcore 13. In this scene, actor-director Hardcore is having rough sex with Cloey Adams, who is pretending to be under age. &amp;quot;If you&amp;#39;re a good girl, I&amp;#39;ll take you to McDonald&amp;#39;s later and get you a Happy Meal.&amp;quot; Hardcore then &amp;quot;proceeds to piss in her mouth&amp;quot;. Addressing the camera, Cloey Adams says, &amp;quot;What do you think of your little princess now Daddy?&amp;quot; Nor is Hardcore through with her. &amp;quot;Turning to the crew, he calmly says, &amp;#39;I&amp;#39;ll need a speculum and a hose&amp;#39; . . . One of Max&amp;#39;s favourite tricks is to stretch a girl&amp;#39;s asshole with a speculum, then piss into her open gape and make her suck out his own piss with a hose. Ain&amp;#39;t that romantic?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Now. American porno (and how could it be otherwise?) is market-driven. We can see what the above tells us about porno. But what does it tell us about America? And if America is more like a world than a country, what does it tell us about the world?&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;• The average American spends three hours and 51 minutes of every day watching porno (video and internet).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;• The average non-homeowning American male spends more on porno than he spends on his rent.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;• Porno accounts for 43.5% of the US Gross Domestic Product.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Like pussies, these statistic are bullshit.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;I made them up. But the true figures are similarly wild, similarly dizzying, similarly through-the-roof. This isn&amp;#39;t bullshit.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;• Porno is far bigger than rock music and far bigger than Hollywood.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;• Americans spend more on strip clubs than they spend on theatre, opera, ballet, jazz and classical concerts combined.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;• In 1975 the total retail value of all the hard-core porno in America was estimated at $5-10 million. Last year Americans spent $8 billion on mediated sex.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Whatever porno is, whatever porno does, you may regret it, but you cannot reject it. To paraphrase Falstaff: Banish porno, and you banish all the world.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Chloe&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;I have herpes,&amp;quot; said Chloe as she drove me to a smoker-friendly bar. &amp;quot;After you&amp;#39;ve been in this business for a while, you have herpes. Everyone has herpes. On the set sometimes you&amp;#39;ll say to a guy, &amp;#39;What&amp;#39;s this?&amp;#39; And he&amp;#39;ll say, &amp;#39;What? That? It&amp;#39;s a fuck sore.&amp;#39; And it may well be a fuck sore, what with all the traffic. But it&amp;#39;s more likely to be a herpes sore, and that guy shouldn&amp;#39;t be working. My movies are all-condom, but condoms won&amp;#39;t protect you from herpes. They don&amp;#39;t cover the base. Sometimes when you&amp;#39;re doing girl-girl you&amp;#39;ll say, &amp;#39;Honey, I think you should go and see someone.&amp;#39; It can be a very stinky scene down there. I&amp;#39;ll send her to a porno-friendly doctor (the others treat you like shit) and she&amp;#39;ll come out holding her Flagyll prescription with multiple refills.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Chloe is 26. For 10 years she trained as a ballerina; then, at 17, she got into drugs, mostly speed (&amp;quot;I&amp;#39;d fuck for 72 hours&amp;quot;); at 20 she started shooting up heroin and was already in the industry by the time she quit, over two years ago. Chloe has fair, fine red hair and a warm and clever face. She has a ballerina&amp;#39;s body: strong legs, a full muscular butt -&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;- and no tits. It&amp;#39;s true that some Features companies urge the girls to have implants and offer to pay for it. On the road [ie, stripping] girls used to boast about the cubic capacity of their titjobs. &amp;#39;I&amp;#39;ve got 840s.&amp;#39; &amp;#39;I&amp;#39;ve got 1220s&amp;#39;. One of them turned to me and said, &amp;#39;Get tits or suck cock.&amp;#39; I&amp;#39;d rather suck cock, I really would.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;If you&amp;#39;re going to be a porno star, what do you need? It&amp;#39;s pretty clear by now. You need to be an exhibitionist. You need to have a ferocious sex drive. You need to suffer from nostalgie de la boue (literally &amp;quot;mud nostalgia&amp;quot;: a childish, even babyish delight in bodily functions and wastes). And - probably - you need damage in your past. You also need to be humourless. Chloe is not humourless. When she talked to me she was like someone peeping over a wall demarcating two different worlds, telling me stories about the other side.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;I like to be peed on. I like being spat on: it feels like come on your chest. I like to be choked. I like to be fisted. Here we have the &amp;#39;no-thumbs&amp;#39; rule? A girl can have 16 fingers up her. But no thumbs.&amp;quot; She laughs, and continues: &amp;quot;For vaginal I prefer a girthy kind of dick. And some of these guys&amp;quot; - Chloe seizes the broad base of a water glass on the table before us - &amp;quot;are like this. For anal I prefer a longer, thinner kind of dick.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;So when you do DP you get one thick one and one thin one.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;Right . . . No. Come to think of it,&amp;quot; she said brightly, &amp;quot;I get two thick ones. I like to feel crammed. You know, I did my first anal for $200? I still can&amp;#39;t believe that.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;And what are your rates now, Chloe?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;In Gonzo, you&amp;#39;re paid, not by the picture, but by the scene. So it&amp;#39;s girl-girl: 700, plus 100 for an anal toy. Boy-girl: 900. Anal: 1,100. Solo [a rarity]: 500. DP: 1,500. I won&amp;#39;t do anal fisting or double anal. People ask me how I can hang on to my title as Anal Queen of LA when I won&amp;#39;t do double anal. But I have hung on to it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;In common with about 10% of the porno girls (her estimate), Chloe retains the approval of her parents (and so does Temptress). In fact, Chloe&amp;#39;s guardians are gonzo. She recently shot a film out near their place, and her stepfather (while absenting himself from his stepdaughter&amp;#39;s scenes) &amp;quot;was like a towel-boy&amp;quot;. And Chloe&amp;#39;s mother, for two years running now, has marched out of the AVN Awards, brandishing Chloe&amp;#39;s Best Anal trophies above the heads of the crowd.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;After lunch we drove to Chloe&amp;#39;s apartment: barred gates, the feel of a two-floor motel, a modest, comfortable, orderly apartment, featuring a cute black cat with a porno name, Siren. Chloe thinks that some porno girls get their names by looking out of the window at the road sign: Laurel Canyon, Chandler, Cherry Mirage.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;For a while Chloe talked about her love life. She is torn, at present, between the neglectful Chris, a rock musician (bass), and the attentive Artie, a fellow performer. She suspects that Chris just strings her along because it&amp;#39;s a status symbol for a rock star to have a porno-star girlfriend. Chris, I think, knows about Artie. But Artie doesn&amp;#39;t know about Chris.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;And with Artie, he comes over and I&amp;#39;m horny as hell and he says, &amp;#39;I can&amp;#39;t, I have to do two scenes tomorrow.&amp;#39; &amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;With private sex, is there a crossover in your head?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;Oh yeah. I find myself thinking, &amp;#39;Fuck. I should be being paid for this.&amp;#39; Or &amp;#39;Fuck. I wish I had a camera.&amp;#39;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;I&amp;#39;d better not write about Chris and Artie.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;Go ahead. They&amp;#39;ll both be over anyway. Here, it doesn&amp;#39;t last.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Chloe was unforgettable. I won&amp;#39;t forget the way she said this (she said it with sorrowful resolve): &amp;quot;We&amp;#39;re prostitutes . . . There are differences. You can choose your partners, and they&amp;#39;re tested for Aids - you won&amp;#39;t get your john to do that. But we&amp;#39;re prostitutes: we exchange sex for money.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;You&amp;#39;ve thought this through.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;I looked it up in the dictionary and that&amp;#39;s what it says.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;In etymological terms pornography is what I&amp;#39;m doing: I&amp;#39;m writing about whores. I will see Chloe on set tomorrow morning. The scene they&amp;#39;ll be shooting? Gonzo girl-boy-girl anal.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Mister Monster&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Towards the end of Rabbit At Rest, John Updike writes: Rabbit thinks of adding $5.50 to his bill to watch something called Horny Housewives . . . The trouble with these softcore porn movies on hotel circuits, in case some four-year-old with lawyers for parents happens to hit the right buttons they show tits and ass and even some pubic hair but no real cunt and no pricks, no pricks hard or soft at all. It&amp;#39;s very frustrating. It turns out pricks are what we care about, you have to see them. Maybe we&amp;#39;re all queer, and all his life he&amp;#39;s been in love with Ronnie Harrison.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Or, as a friend would put it to me later that week: It&amp;#39;s no good without Mister Monster. You must have Mister Monster.Must you? Gore Vidal once said that the only danger in watching pornography is that it might make you want to watch more pornography; it might make you want to do nothing else but watch pornography. There is, I contend, another danger. As I sampled some extreme productions on the VCR in my hotel room, I kept worrying about something. I kept worrying that I&amp;#39;d like it. Porno services the &amp;quot;polymorphous perverse&amp;quot;: the near-infinite chaos of human desire. If you harbour a perversity, then sooner or later porno will identify it. You&amp;#39;d better hope that this doesn&amp;#39;t happen while you&amp;#39;re watching a film about a coprophagic pigfarmer - or an undertaker. That week in Los Angeles I found out what I don&amp;#39;t like.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;I don&amp;#39;t like Mister Monster.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;High up in higgledy-piggledy Hollywood Hills, I hobnobbed with Andrew Blake, the Truffaut of porno, and two incredibly beautiful girls in incredibly expensive underwear (and six inch heels).&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Strictly speaking, Blake&amp;#39;s work is Gonzo: scriptless, storyless, with the performers interacting with the camera. But Blake is pre-eminently &amp;quot;high-end&amp;quot;. His actresses look like voluptuous fashion models, and he flatters and glorifies them on the screen, with oils, unguents, silks, cords, ribbons, textures.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;I hired Monica because she has these beautiful breasts,&amp;quot; he told me, &amp;quot;and that&amp;#39;s what we&amp;#39;re going to be concentrating on. I&amp;#39;ve never worked with Adriana before but she seems to be really something.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Laconic, gruff, direct and, of course, humourless, Blake goes about his business.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;Now put your hand into her panties . . . And maybe a nipple comes out, a nipple is revealed? . . . Squeeze them, caress them, do the whole nine yards with them . . . Try opening your legs. Kind of tease the panties . . . Don&amp;#39;t smile so much. Just kind of be into yourself . . . So is the bra ready to ride? Kiss the nip . . . Arch up your butt a little more . . . Cross and uncross your legs. Show a little pussy . . . Now this is the panties coming off . . .&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Behold. A platonically perfect pubis, wearing nothing but the latest hairstyle, a minimal mohawk.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;This must be a tough day&amp;#39;s work for you,&amp;quot; said the make-up girl amiably. &amp;quot;Someone&amp;#39;s got to do it. Right?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Her remark obliged me to examine my &amp;quot;affect&amp;quot;, or feeling-tone. I admit to a strong sense of furtive beauty-assimiliation. But the instinct being aroused in me was not sexual so much as protective. Naked Adriana was 20 years old. And the last thing I wanted to see, at that moment, was Mister Monster.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Outside, during an intermission, Blake said in his flat, declarative style, &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m into looking at woman. Not all this &amp;#39;pissing and fisting&amp;#39;. I&amp;#39;ve never had any legal problems.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Work permit&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;A &amp;quot;tough&amp;quot; day&amp;#39;s work for me, then, and the same could be said for Adriana and Monica. They weren&amp;#39;t being slapped around by Khan Tusion or peed on by Max Hardcore. But were they being &amp;quot;used up&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;If you&amp;#39;re a porno performer, your latest HIV test is your work permit. Two years ago the actor Marc Wallice started to become evasive about his work permit. He was using an out of town health centre and seemed to be fudging his results. By the time he was found out, Wallice&amp;#39;s condition was fulminant. He infected six actresses.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;The tests we take only test for Aids,&amp;quot; says Chloe. &amp;quot;We&amp;#39;ve contained Aids in the industry but what about all the others? You know we&amp;#39;re now up to Hepatitis G?&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;You should be at least 21 before you work in this industry. You should know your body, understand your body. But that would wipe out half of San Fernando Valley. There are whole lines on the 18 pluses.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;And there are: Dirty Debutantes, Nasty Newcomers, Filthy First Timers . . .&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;One of the actresses infected by Marc Wallice (his condition now is so pitiful that no one thinks him worthy of persecuting) is Mrs John Stagliano. Stagliano himself, the pioneer of gonzo, is HIV-positive (he contracted the virus recreationally, in a Rio bordello). A medium-sized fortune has been made by Stagliano, in a business where, contrary to popular belief, very few fortunes are made. But I often think of the Staglianos, out by the pool, gazing at an ocean to which they have no access.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Gonzo Girl-Boy-Girl&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Chloe&amp;#39;s shoot is on Dolorosa Drive.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;The porno house, the porno fish in the porno tank (the fish are porno-coloured: yellow, mauve, blood-orange), the porno TV set (as big as a double refrigerator), the porno deck, the porno pool, with a plastic duck floating around in it. Beyond the fence stands the house of the pain-in-the-ass neighbour who keeps climbing on to the roof with a mouthful of nails to get himself shocked enough to call the police.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Girl-boy-girl: the girls are Chloe and Lola (a friendly Amerindian-style beauty); the boy is Artie (Chloe&amp;#39;s offscreen lover: tattooed, muscular, balding). Artie seems to be a nice guy, but he keeps talking with a jokey French accent. Porno performers are great ones for funny voices, funny faces. German scientists, Russian spies, French connoisseurs; in Features they can keep it up all movie long.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;There is a crew: the DP (for the time being this means Director of Photography) and the sound-recordist, who go about their business like middle-aged handymen; a plump youth who seems to be there for general work experience; and Chloe&amp;#39;s sister, Shannon, caterer and towel-girl. Chloe will soon be calling out to Shannon, &amp;quot;Stop that phone!&amp;quot; Shannon: &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s the home phone! There&amp;#39;s like ten of them!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Artie is giving us more French accent, then more French accent, while Chloe and Lola strip for the &amp;quot;pretty girl&amp;quot; shots that will go on the box-cover. Chloe, with whom I spent five hours the previous day, walks past me, naked. It doesn&amp;#39;t bother her that she&amp;#39;s naked. She doesn&amp;#39;t know she&amp;#39;s naked.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;The porno stills by the porno pool. &amp;quot;See pink? Want lots of pink?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Let&amp;#39;s have some booty.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Open it? You want it all?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;It is barely 10 o&amp;#39;clock in the morning, and I am, I realise, experiencing the kind of anxiety that usually precedes a mild ordeal. A line is about to be crossed. I shouldn&amp;#39;t be here. None of us should be here. But we all have work to do.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Fifteen minutes later, referring to the achievements of Lola, Chloe stabbed a hand through the air at me, and shouted with joy and triumph (Chloe is the director, remember, and she was thrilled to have this scene in the can): &amp;quot;That&amp;#39;s the kind of blowjob I was telling you about yesterday!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;I reeled out into the yard with my notebook, laughing, and shaking my head. There are plenty of &amp;quot;jokes&amp;quot; on a porno set, and there is much raucous mirth to dispel tension. But only a Chloe, only an exception, can inject humour. She sounded like Mel Brooks, in The Producers, saying, &amp;quot;That&amp;#39;s our Hitler!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;The kind of blowjob Chloe was telling me about yesterday was this kind of blowjob. It is as if the girl&amp;#39;s passionate - indeed desperate - intention is to kiss the boy&amp;#39;s lower abdomen. She faces an obstacle. She can&amp;#39;t go around it. She has to go through it. &amp;quot;I mean,&amp;quot; Chloe had said admiringly, &amp;quot;some of these girls go down. Drooling and slobbering, saliva everywhere, choking dry-heaving.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;It had to be said that the dry-heaving, from Artie&amp;#39;s point of view, was visibly efficacious. When Lola was done, he gazed down with some complacence as Mister Monster went from three o&amp;#39;clock to half past 12.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;And that was the tenor of it: heat. That is where the market is taking us: toward heat, intensity, a frenzied athleticism. More than this, porno, it seems, is a parody of love. It therefore addresses itself to love&amp;#39;s opposites, which are hate and death. &amp;quot;Choke her!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Spit inside me!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Break me! You can&amp;#39;t break me! Try!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;COMING!!!&amp;quot; Chloe screamed this last word like a mother answering a child&amp;#39;s cry from the other end of the house. Then, to Lola, &amp;quot;Choke me!&amp;quot; And Chloe&amp;#39;s entire upper body flushed with pink, and she seemed to swoon . . .&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;I wanna piss,&amp;quot; said Artie, during one of his many intermissions.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;For a moment the DP&amp;#39;s eyes widened in alarm. He thought, wrongly, that Artie wanted to piss on camera. &amp;quot;Pissing is as bad as coming,&amp;quot; he confided to me. &amp;quot;They&amp;#39;re supposed to piss and they can&amp;#39;t. They go off to the shower, then they say they can piss and they can&amp;#39;t.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Artie trudged back from the can, worriedly nursing his condomed erection. &amp;quot;God I&amp;#39;m old,&amp;quot; he muttered, as he headed back to the fray.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Well I&amp;#39;m old too, and I blew a kiss at Chloe and took my leave - before the anal and the popshot. Shannon drove me back to the hotel. Poor Shannon: she was having one of those days. First, shopping in a health-food store, she dropped a jar of wheatgerm on her foot and was now limping heavily. Then she discovered that her boyfriend was cheating on her - and she fired him. Contemplating the suspension of her love life, Shannon said sadly, &amp;quot;And when you compare it to that, the sex doesn&amp;#39;t seem much anyway.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;I knew what she meant, in a sense. Chloe-Artie-Lola made me feel like a virgin.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-weight:bold;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;The owl and the bullshitcat&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Later that afternoon I journeyed from San Fernando to Pasadena. I was expected at a conference on &amp;quot;The Novel In Britain, 1950-2000&amp;quot; at the Huntingdon Library. After some prompting, I told a gathering of delegates about my recent experiences. &amp;quot;Pussies are bullshit&amp;quot; became the (unofficial) conference slogan.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;If pussy is bullshit then bullshit is pussy. On the second night I played a regrettably sophomoric parlour game on this theme with Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and Mr and Mrs Christopher Hitchens. What&amp;#39;s New Bullshitcat. Bullshit in Boots. The Owl and the Bullshitcat (&amp;quot;Oh lovely Bullshit! O Bullshit, my love,/What a beautiful Bullshit you are.&amp;quot;) Bullshit-whipped. Bullshit-wagon. Bullshit&amp;#39;s in a well. Someone mentioned the character from Goldfinger: Bullshit Galore, Salman Rushdie paused; his eyes widened and he said, suddenly,&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;&amp;quot;Octobullshit.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Jokes have been defined (by Nietzsche) as epitaphs on the deaths of feelings. In other words, the best jokes are always a new low. It is utterly characteristic that the coiner of &amp;quot;pussies are bullshit&amp;quot; had no idea that he was joking. In any case, porno is littered - porno is heaped - with the deaths of feelings.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Every time a porno star opens a megastore, or advertises a line of perfume, or does a walk-on in a TV show, porno people start saying that porno is &amp;quot;mainstream&amp;quot;, that porno is hip, that porno is cool. Is masturbation hip? It doesn&amp;#39;t feel hip. And it doesn&amp;#39;t look hip either: you don&amp;#39;t see anyone doing it. Porno can never be mainstream, partly because of the contrarian nature of the form. For porno to become mainstream, human beings would have to change.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;Porno people: they&amp;#39;ve changed. In the yard of the house on Dolorosa Drive, during a break in filming, Chloe, Artie and Lola stood there naked, discussing a new rollercoaster ride called Desperado. They were all smoking. I came across many a good little smoker in pornoland. What with the risks they run already, who cares about smoking? Then it was butts out and back to work. And I do mean work. Porno is a proletarian form. And porno people are a hard-grafting, ill-paid fraternity who, by and large, look out for each other and help each other through. They pay their rent, with the deaths of feelings.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;No, Chloe, you are not a prostitute, not quite. Prostitution is the oldest profession. And porno is the newest profession. You are more like a gladiator: a contemporary gladiator. Of course, the gladiators were slaves - but some of them won their freedom. And you, I think, will win yours.&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:0in;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(51, 51, 51)"&gt;© Martin Amis&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:8.0pt;color:#666666"&gt;&lt;span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/17/society.martinamis" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/17/society.martinamis&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:11.0pt"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:10.0pt;color:#333333"&gt; &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p style="margin:0in;font-family:Arial;font-size:11.0pt"&gt;&lt;span&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br&gt;/ `--&amp;#39;( ,,,&lt;br&gt;&amp;lt; [] []////////|:::)&lt;br&gt;\_.--.(realdeltablues&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href="http://bustill.blogspot.com" target="_blank"&gt;http://bustill.blogspot.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;  &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe" target="_blank"&gt;http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt; &lt;/div&gt; &lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3320187800483491901-6692771719491603209?l=bustill.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~4/pow16Bu2RRg" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://bustill.blogspot.com/feeds/6692771719491603209/comments/default" title="Post Comments" /><link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3320187800483491901&amp;postID=6692771719491603209" title="0 Comments" /><link rel="edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/6692771719491603209?v=2" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/3320187800483491901/posts/default/6692771719491603209?v=2" /><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/riZe/~3/pow16Bu2RRg/rough-trade.html" title="A Rough Trade" /><author><name>bustill</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16809406666384689478</uri><email>bustill.blogspot.com@gmail.com</email><gd:extendedProperty name="OpenSocialUserId" value="16935147386556320745" /></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EZaeP-5pWP0/SwT_UmNxTII/AAAAAAAAJFY/ZM95p0H4nQo/s72-c/MartinAmisREX_468x658-706772.jpg" height="72" width="72" /><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://bustill.blogspot.com/2009/11/rough-trade.html</feedburner:origLink></entry></feed>
