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Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Climbing the google ladder

I notice that if you search for the term "book club" on google and specify "pages from the UK" - The Book Club Blog is currently returned in a respectable 9th place. What will it take to catch up with Richard and Judy?

Posted by Nick @ 23:18 GMT

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Monday, June 28, 2004

Phew . . .

Gerrard to stay at Anfield!

Posted by Nick @ 14:42 GMT

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Friday, June 25, 2004

The Poet of Dirty Words

History takes a second look at Philip Larkin. By Stephen Burt.

Posted by Nick @ 23:09 GMT

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Monday, June 21, 2004

The National Art Collection Fund

The Art Fund exists to make great art available for everyone to enjoy. Seems like a good idea!

Posted by Nick @ 11:52 GMT

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Tuesday, June 01, 2004

The Black Rider - Some Background Reading

Ahead of the outing of a select group of Book Club devotees to the Barbican's staging of The Black Rider, a bit of context:

From “The ‘Priest’, They Called Him: The Life and Legacy of William S. Burroughs”, Graham Caveney

In his collaboration with Tom Waits and Robert Wilson, Burroughs turned to the nineteenth-century myths of Germanic folklore. The Black Rider began life as an opera – it premiered at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg in 1990 and continues to be performed in repertory today – Tom Waits recorded his compositions for the album released in 1993. Burroughs wrote the libretto in its entirety, contributed lyrics to many of Wait’s songs and, as Waits wrote in his sleeve notes, ‘[provided] the branch this bundle would swing from. His cut-up text and open process of finding a language for this story became a river of words for me to draw from’. The concept was an ideal vehicle for both concerned. Pitched somewhere between Bedlam and the carnival, it allowed Waits to pursue his interest in vaudevillian nightmare – a process that he had begun in Swordfishtrombones and carried on into the staging of his album Frank’s Wild Years. For Burroughs, the story resonated with the kind of Faustian motifs he had grown familiar with via his own Ugly Spirit.

The Black Rider was first incarnated in Das Gespensterbuch, a body of Romantic literature first published around 1810, and found its most famous expression in Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freishütz. The tale concerns a young clerk’s bid to marry a forester’s daughter; in order to win her hand he must first triumph in a shooting contest. A hopeless marksman, he is approached by a ‘dark horseman’ who is in possession of magic bullets that are guaranteed to hit whatever they are fired at. The Devil, however, is to have control over the final bullet. The suitor succeeds in winning the contest, but on the wedding day the Devil calls in his marker. The newly-wed shoots at a wooden dove, but the result if that he kills his bride.

The parallels between this fable and Burrough’s shooting of Joan are glaringly powerful, without being limited to them. As with his shotgun art, Burrough’s empathy for The Black Rider invites personal speculation whilst artistically refuting it. Burroughs moves between biography and fiction in such a way as to suggest that the two are synonymous. The task that he sets us is not to separate life from art, but to wonder at the nature of the contract between them. As Waits said, ‘Burroughs found some of the branches of the story, and let them grow into more metaphorical things in all of our lives every day that, in fact, are deals with the devil that we’ve made. What is cunning about those deals is that we’re not aware we’ve made them. And when they come to fruition, we are shocked and amazed.’

The Black Rider had its American debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, and was also performed in Vienna, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin. As an album it constitutes Burrough’s most enduring musical contribution to date. It is a haunting danse macabre, an evocation of the dark melancholy of the Faust myth as well as its demonic edges. Waits and Burroughs complement each other with a dramatic unease, like two inmates forced to share a cell. John Rockwell in the New York Times heralded it as a cross between The Threepenny Opera and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, whilst Jackie Wullschlager wrote that it transforms ‘childrens’ drawings into three-dimensional monstrosities . . . Waits’ sarcastic ballads, full of folk and blues and rock, call back the scarred idealism and mock simplicity of Kurt Weill, while Burrough’s monosyllabic banality has here found the setting which makes it seem perfect.’

Graham Caveney recounts the story of Burrough’s shooting of his wife, Joan, in an earlier section of the book:

On 6 September 1951 he and Joan decided to sell one of his handguns via their friend John Healy. They had been drinking all afternoon before arriving at Healy’s appartment at 6pm. When the buyer failed to show up, the couple continued to hit the bottle. Joan had been taunting Burroughs all day, daring him to prove his marksmanship. ‘I began throwing down one drink after the other’ said Burroughs. ‘I was very drunk. I suddenly said, “It’s time for our William Tell act. Put a glass on your head.”’ With the carefree abandon of a hardened drinker, Joan laughingly agreed, although it was the first time they had played the game. She balanced a six-ounce water glass on her head, and Burroughs fired a bullet through her temple. The pronouncement of death at the Red Cross Hospital was a formality.

Much speculation has been given to the killing. Was Joan suicidal, or acting out the nihilistic bravado of an alcoholic? Was Burroughs homicidal and using the game as a cover for murder? There was certainly nothing premeditated about the event, and the most plausible explanation is simply that Joan’s death was an accident brought about by drunken abandon. The most tragic irony of the episode is that Joan’s death forced Burroughts into taking himself seriously as a writer. As he was to comment later,

‘I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan’s death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from Control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit and manoeuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have no choice except to write my way out.’

A few interesting links:
Interview with JG Ballard on William Burroughs
Interview with Marianne Faithful on The Black Rider / William Burroughs
Burroughs on how to handle pacts with the Devil

Posted by Jon @ 09:20 GMT

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