An "unfunny and rather crabby" exercise in post-modernist penis envy as bitter and twisted as David MarksFlogging the Sacred Cow of Borges and Calvino
An "unfunny and rather crabby" exercise in post-modernist penis envy as bitter and twisted as David Markson. Not to mention...A mercifully short mockery best reserved for when you run out of Tom Sharpe trifles, "Five Escape Brexit Island" satires, your partner's derivative juvenilia and your gallery full of buried books. Rated five stars by the publisher/ editor/ barista/ blowhard PR person at Sagging Meniscus Vanity Press, not to mention one of his stablemates (who admires the author's "poignancy" in his puffed-up reviews, and who seems to thrive on conflicts of interest as much as Donald and Rudy). Yours sincerely, I remain (Arthur Kane).
Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus Three - "N. Y. Doll"
"I never finished the book There's always someone to be loved Or to be forgotten But if you take a long look Well there's always someone young and fresh Or cold and rotten."...more
How's your German? It's a pity this Gedenkschrift wasn't a Festschrift in the true sense of the word, because then we might have had theLiber Amicorum
How's your German? It's a pity this Gedenkschrift wasn't a Festschrift in the true sense of the word, because then we might have had the added pleasure of a response from Christine Brooke-Rose during her lifetime.
If you've already read some of her non-fiction, you'll know that there is no better critic or explicator of her work than the author herself.
Another matter for regret is that many of the friends who could have contributed to a Festschrift or a Gedenkschrift predeceased her.
Hence, necessarily, this work can't live up to the expectations of a Gedenkschrift. However, that's OK, because whatever the pretence of its title, most of the content doesn't pretend to be criticism.
If you're friend or family of an editor or contributor, I recommend that you acquire this work in one format or other, regardless of merit or your familiarity with the subject author. The financial support will enable this not-for-profit enterprise to publish additional works of both Brooke-Rose and other authors, some of whose work might have fallen between the cracks.
For other potential readers, it's a matter of determining the promise of the work, whether it matters and whether the editors and contributors have delivered on it.
My Wakean Year
Remember 2013 and 2014, when your GR feed was filled with pastiches of "Finnegan's Wake", whatever the subject matter?
As T.S. Eliot said of "Ulysses", it was a "book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape", even if (like William Gaddis) we haven't read it.
Overnight, grammar and punctuation deteriorated, double- and treble-semi-colons became the nu blak;; meaning went both troppo and entropic;; and what had once been many individual voices became one perpetual stream of self-conscious imitation (it's rumoured that it continues to this day). It was as if Joyce's legacy was gobbling up everything in its path, digesting it and excreting it in its, ahm, wake.
Somebody thought it would be a good idea to wake up Christine Brooke-Rose, so to speak, so that, paradoxically, they could celebrate her own unique prose. The question remains whether Brooke-Rose needs to be (or benefits from being) viewed through the lens of a predecessor, as great as Joyce might have been.
As Gaddis said of his own experience, "anyone seeking Joyce finds Joyce even if both Joyce and the victim found the item in Shakespeare, [even if they] read right past whole lines lifted bodily from Eliot etc, all of which will probably go on so long as Joyce remains an academic cottage industry."
Still thrives this cottage industry.
Nevertheless, let's celebrate Brooke-Rose's awakening, before trying to assess her achievement and the contribution of this Gedenkschrift to her legacy.
...and hello a lo again naturally it was time to pass auf one's moore and envision a moorening become eclectic when a way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, through their goode looking glasses, a mötley crüe of pirates, ensconced aboard the fearsome pirate shippe, "the Evil Grappa", fresh from six weeks hell-raisin amidst dangerous currants, espied another fabulous inn, deserving of their customs and agape o'grape, and lo it was Christine's, a handsomely appointed tavern, a contributary to having the right honourable financial Bacchus, it being named and numbered hup two three for the strawberry girl whose bananas split, famously, and it was perched high upon the left banke where the anciente brooke rose from the estuarie mouth, and they did descende from their humble vessel, as soon as they were foreshore of their footing, and having ceased disclaiming arrgh me arrghties a handful of years ago-go, lest they appear too jeff tweedy and academick, they regaled the banshee-like Christine with their insight and wit, ad-free infinitum, usw, and she laughed politely, as if in a song, trying not to shatter kaleidoscope style, hiding personality changes behind her red smile, thinking every new problem brings a stranger inside, helplessly forcing one more new disguise, usw, it is a nice song, isn'tit, and lo the base play of the cure having caused her even greater dis-ease, she did consider retiring from the hospitability business, it's not a game of monopoly, after all, you know, even when you own your own hotel, Christine being more used to guests who lived and laughed and loved and left promptly after paying their bill, for which departure she did but have to wait unstill after several months, fueled by their own consumption, the pirates finally adaired to ungrippe Christine from the clutches of "the Evil Grappa", and thence parted company and resumed their careering, the steady hand as planned behind the reasoning, in pursuit of their next most adventuresome enterprise, and so on their voyage home or thereabouts they did open their journals and record their impressions of Christine and their good selves and each one another in learned finneganisms and earnest incantations which untold pirates and pastichio nuts, having read and herded them, decanted and recanted them all for many years to come again, which brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs as it does and always shall do until the next gedenkschrift so help me dog amen...
Unsung and Invisible?
To be totally frank, I'm uncomfortable and sceptical about two aspects of the publisher's stated aesthetic stance that I would like to declare and explain, so that a reader of this review can form their own opinion on this enterprise.
This scepticism doesn't relate to the works of Christine Brooke-Rose in their own right, about which more below.
The publisher states that it has three "raisons d’être":
* "Grape ά republishes out of print titles ignored by other non-profit publishing houses..., primarily by non-conformist writers...
* "Sultana β fêtes one fabulous and unsung innovator or mischief-maker on a triannual basis by soliciting donated submissions from writers, critics, readers, poets, hobos, and librarians, to create a series of festschrifts where egos, agendas, and carping opinions are eschewed in favour of a celebration of deserving literature, away from the sniping eye of Critical Consensus.
* "Currant γ assists authors of the daring to find a platform for publishing."
It might be nit-picky to highlight that the raisons d’être define two enemies: other non-profit publishers (i.e., competitors) and "Critical Consensus" (no matter how that might be determined). However, wouldn't it make more sense to focus on why any particular author or work is "deserving" of celebration?
This particular Festschrift is Verbivoracious Press' flagship issue, dedicated to a "fabulous and unsung" writer described as "an invisible author".
Much of the book (a quarter by item) consists of material by Brooke-Rose, some of which comes within the category of B-sides and Rarities. If no licence fee has been paid to her estate for this material, it could have been made available online. Instead, it's been secreted behind a paywall, and bundled with other material of diverse quality, some high, some not so, some critique, some pastiche, all of it apparently "donated" (I'm not sure whether the Harry Ransom Center waived its fee in relation to anything derived from its collection). You have to pay for the critique to get the Brooke-Rose, and you have to pay for the pastiche to get the critique.
Somehow, in the process of going from donation to bundling, the publisher has acquired overheads. As a result, you have to buy the whole album (including filler), instead of accessing it track by track. You have to wonder whether this is the best way to attract attention to the work of Christine Brooke-Rose.
Her work is of such merit that it warrants its assembly into a series of Collected Works.
While not all of her work is in print, it is already split between at least two publishers (not to mention any rights held by the Harry Ransom Center): Dalkey Archive Press and Carcanet Fiction. Dalkey actually published a genuine Festschrift ("Utterly Other Discourse", which contains fifteen essays) dedicated to Brooke-Rose in 1995.
To the extent that this Festschrift has licensed original Brooke-Rose works not released by these (non-profit?) publishers or other works held by the Harry Ransom Center, it simply adds a third publisher to the list and presumably makes the prospect of a Collected Works even more problematical.
That said, it seems to be hyperblurbole to describe Brooke-Rose as "unsung and invisible", as deserving as her works clearly are.
She has been sung, she is being sung, she is not invisible.
The question is: do her legacy and her estate and her readers and her potential audience deserve more than this?
Nick Cave - "Death is Not the End" (Featuring Kylie Minogue, Shane MacGowan, Blixa Bargeld and Mick Harvey)
"Oh, the tree of life is growing Where the spirit never dies And the bright light of salvation shines In dark and empty skies."
Canon Fire
The second concern is at least good for a laugh, if you like to play dress-ups.
The aesthetic from which Verbivoracious Press emerged is best described, if somewhat obliquely, in "Prayer for the BURIED", an incantation delivered by someone who would have been its patron saint, but for the fact that they prefer a higher office (besides the role was already taken by Christine Brooke-Rose herself).
"Prayer" would have made an excellent Preface, Foreword or Introduction to the Festschrift, except that it already had one of each. Instead, apart from a poem by Brooke-Rose and a Postscript, it represents the last word on its subject matter, something its author is wont to do.
No sooner does the Word become Speech than the Speeches become Commandments and Imperatives. The grim reapertition of "Prayer" drones on, trance-like, until everybody has been either entranced or exited.
So why this "Prayer"?
We've become accustomed to debate about the existence of a literary canon. Even those who would condone the concept rarely agree on what should be included in one. However, more importantly, many readers think the whole concept is dubious.
"Prayer" adopts a different approach. It doesn't question the role of a canon. It simply wants an alternative one. It falls to "Prayer" to eviscerate all previous canons and ordain a new one. Again, no insight into why any particular author or work is "deserving" of celebration. What matters most is the (self-) adornment and ordination of the speaker (i.e., the elevation of the status of the speaker so that authority is conferred on and by their every word).
Brooke-Rose would herself describe the canonical phenomenon (at least the practice) in terms of "a priesthood..., a club, a sacred male preserve,...a privileged caste,...i.e., essentially male, priestly and caste-bound." As far as I can tell, she would find the priestly self-aggrandisement of "Prayer" quite foreign to her own temperament, even if it incidentally sought to elevate her own status.
As is customary, the author of "Prayer" (let's call them Pseudonimus) achieves their earthly mission by donning priestly garb, entering the realm of the canonical, and proceeding to canonise every neglected or overlooked or underloved author who comes to mind.
The argument is that these authors have been "buried" by "Spade-Wielders" such as the canon or commercial publishers or other non-profit publishers or critics or academics or readers (let me know if I've missed anybody) less discriminating (or is it more discriminating?) than Pseudonimus or Verbivoracious Press.
Traditionally, different literary canons have focussed on individual books, even though one author might have a number of entries in the canon.
The "Prayer" approach is quite different. As is more consistent with the meaning of the verb, it "canonises" the author. It declares the writer a saint, and by extension of the declarative/imperative all of their acts or works are now saintly. Everything they wrote must be a masterpiece, for yea, verily, it is written in the "Prayer". And we must acquire it toot sweet (psst, from a not-for-profit publisher near you). Hence the hyperblurbole to assist the curious purchaser/reader.
Buy the Whole Set!
So much for the absolutism. Now that we know what's good for us, we're supplied with shopping lists that guide our way to completism and, needless to say, completism is followed, short festschrift, by supply.
We're encouraged to purchase the lot for the sake of our intellect and credibility. Overnight, GR wishlists have swollen, even if the number of reviews of so-called buried books (ultimately, a review being the best remedy for neglect) remains infinitesimal. And woe betide any reader who reads a canonical work in other than the prescribed manner (fAKE!!!!) or any reviewer who fails to award a work a hagiographic five star review (hERETIC!!!!). You will be hunted down, woken from your humble slumber, and expelled from this New Eden by the Haus Committee's posse of Fatwahstards, all members of a religio-political movement (for it is they) responsible for spreading the "Finn Stain".
Inside its ranks, apparently, the code name for Verbivoracious Press is the "Oyrish Republishing Army". A Finn-Stained Manifesto is available now as a Syllabus (for the Ev-Angelical). Of course. And if your contribution was previously freely available online, it seems it must be removed, so that it can be housed behind the paywall. Oh sweet vanity press!
It would be hilarious if it weren't so laughable!
If only the focus could return to the writer, the reader and the book in hand.
HELPFUL ONLINE ASSESSMENTS OF THE LIFE AND WORKS OF CHRISTINE BROOKE-ROSE:
"..the price to be paid for writing fiction that resists critical pigeonholes and eludes classification is obscurity and invisibility vis-à-vis the various critical constructions of the canon. The second half of this essay will argue that it is in its resistance to the already extant “canonic networks and labels” that lies the strength of Brooke-Rose’s oeuvre. That, in fact, it is thanks to its combination of virtually all the chief thematic and stylistic concerns of post-war fiction (technology, gender, history, the future, discursivity, subversion, hybridity, linguistic innovation and playfulness) that Brooke-Rose’s work can (and should) be accorded an exemplary, paradigmatic status."
Christine Brooke-Rose: the great British experimentalist you've never heard of
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