I also must thank Jeremy for letting me be a part of the Jump Start Records table at the Punk Rock Flea Market this sunday Feb. 1st. Four Thousand Flavs volume one will in fact be on sale at the flea so if anyone doesn't get a chance to come to the release party saturday I'll be at electric factory sunday hopefully with some of the screened copies left, but definitely with inkjets. More info on the punk rock flea here.
I recently finished my second book by an author named Hubert Selby Junior(Requiem for a Dream). I read some of his short stories a few years back and I've been wanting to read more of his stuff ever since. I just borrowed Last Exit to Brooklyn from my downstairs neighbor and I'm pretty bummed that the book is over. It's a novel, but it's written in a way that it's kind of like a bunch of short stories taking place in this terribly poor and destitute part of New York City. Selby Jr. Has this way of writing about low class, ordinary people with all kinds of personal issues that is extremely engaging and elegant yet at the same time incredibly disturbing and often a little depressing. But the way he sets up his characters for their ultimate inevitable failure is brilliant. He writes in this absurd train of thought-vernacular speech that is never one thing or the other, just a jumping randomly between narration, things that are happening, what people are saying, thinking, doing and looking at, throwing parentheses inside parentheses inside parentheses, deeper and deeper into the emotional complexity of the characters in a story. Like several other writers who I believe came after him, he has virtually no regard for grammar whatsoever and I think it fucking rules.
There's this one part earlier on in the book about this drag queen, and normally I wouldn't be into this sort of thing believe it or not, but the language he uses to describe this character totally makes you feel for her(/him) as some sort of protagonist and somehow makes it seem completely ok that this person is living this outrageously sexually confused life and that she could easily be one of your buddies you hang out with at the bar:
Georgette was a hip queer. She (he) didnt try to dis-
guise or conceal it with marriage and mans talk, sat-
isfying her homosexuality with the keeping of a secret
scrapbook of pictures of favorite male actors or athletes or
by supervising the activities of young boys or visiting turk-
ish baths or mens locker rooms, leering sidely while seeking
protection behind a carefully guarded guise of virility (fear-
ing that moment at a cocktail party or in a bar when this
front may start crumbling from alcohol and be completely
disintegrated with an attempted kiss or groping of an at-
tractive young man and being repelled with a punch and-
rotten fairy-followed with hysteria and incoherent apolo-
gies and excuses and running from the room) but, took a
pride in being a homosexual by feeling intellectually and
esthetically superior to those (especially women) who
werent gay (look at all the great artists who were fairies!);
and with the wearing of womens panties, lipstick, eye make-
up (this including occasionally gold and silver-stardust-
on the lids), long marcelled hair, manicured and polished
fingernails, the wearing of womens clothes complete with
padded bra, high heels and wig (one of her biggest thrills
was going to BOP CITY dressed as a tall stately blond (she
was 6'4" in heels) in the company of a negro (He was a big
beautiful black bastard and when he floated in all the cats
in the place jumped and the squares bugged. We were at a
crazy pad before going and were blasting like crazy and
were up so high that I just didnt give a shit for anyone
honey, let me tell you!) ); and the occasional wearing of a
menstrual napkin.
More news to come soon. Volume two out on valentines day. May I
recommend seeing two films if you have the chance:
Waltz with Bashir . One of the only films I've seen recently during the late oscar season, but it was an amazing account of the Lebanese War and most of the animation is killer. It is actually an animated
documentary which I did not realize until after I saw it. Incredible.
Beautiful Losers. Another documentary about 'alternative' artists
including Barry Mgee, Mike Mills, Steve Powers, and one of my favorite people in the world, Ed Templeton. It's just made really well and the artists are amazing. Talks about all this art that came from graffiti and skateboarding evolving into a sort of pop culture presence, but not really in a bad way I guess. I saw it at a screening at International House in Philly and I don't know if it's really available anywhere yet but if it's being shown anywhere near you it is definitely worth checking out.
