Showing posts with label brief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brief. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 02, 2023

The Road Not Taken


Richard von Sturmer: doppelgänger (9/12/2020)

The Interrupted Journey

Yesterday I packed up my office at the University of Waikato and am now back in Auckland. When I was passing the photo wall in the foyer of the Arts building, I saw you and wondered, “What is Jack doing here?” Looking closer, your hair was the wrong colour. But in the background there was the message “Ross the face of.” Sort of Yoda-speak. It left me rather confused. And why are you, if it is you, why are you holding up an illustrated map of the Central North Island? I’m still a bit perplexed.
- Richard von Sturmer, email to JR (9/12/2020)
When Richard sent me the image above with the query: ‘Is this you?’ I too felt quite perplexed. The photo does indeed look quite a lot like me. The words ROSS THE FACE OF are also unequivocal, but the Central North Island is certainly not a region with which I have any particular affinity. My roots lie more in Northland.

Another interesting thing about it is that it shows a middle-aged man with full cheeks, narrow-rimmed glasses and ruffled orange hair. I have the full cheeks and the glasses, but my hair is dark brown going on grey. I did once have it dyed, in a moment of feverish reinvention, during a trek in Thailand. The idea was to go blond, but unfortunately, due to the hairdresser’s unfamiliarity with European hair, it came out orange instead.

So, yes, I did once have hair to match that in the picture, but I was much thinner and younger-looking then – it was more than two decades ago – so while all those attributes have certainly belonged to me at one point or another, I never had them all at the same time: in this part of the multiverse, at any rate.


Gabriel White: Jack in Mumbai (15/1/2002)


Another perturbing recent event involved one of those late night searches to confirm your own existence, which in this case took the form of a series of clicks on the ISBN codes for my own books.

Most of them were fine – they duly led to the publication in question – but one of them came up with quite another book. Presumably the National Library had made a mistake, and confused one obscure small publication with another. I had a lot of problems with that book, in fact: it was an anthology of student life writing, and I decided to title it [your name here] in order to gesture (as I thought cleverly), at the essential interchangeability of all such human experiences.

Unfortunately the librarians took that title to be a mere stand-in for the actual title still to come, and refused to list it in their catalogue under that appellation. I had to explain to them again and again just what I had in mind before they would relent. Indexing a title which begins with a square bracket also offers some unique challenges for both human and machine intelligence.

I wonder if John Ashbery had the same problems with his own 1998 book of poems Your Name Here, which appeared a few years after my stroke of bravado? Whether he did or not, any merit there may have been in this jeu d’esprit has now been eclipsed by the so-many-times-brighter magnitude of his star.




All of which brings me to the principal pretext for this meditation. The other day I made a surprising find: a large grey volume of variations and additions to Georges Perec’s famed 1979 short story ‘Le Voyage d’hiver’ [The Winter Journey] by members of the European experimental literature club Oulipo [[OUvroir de LIttérature POtentielle] = Workshop of Potential Literature].

Georges Perec / Oulipo. Le Voyage d’hiver & ses suites. Postface de Jacques Roubaud. La Librairie du XXIe Siècle. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2013.

The reason this seemed so strange is that I’m the only local Perec enthusiast I know of (despite all my best efforts to turn others onto his work), so it’s hard to see how this particular volume ended up, second-hand, in a vintage bookshop in Auckland.

What’s more, this particular story is probably my favourite among all of his fictions. It has a strange atmospheric charm to it which seems – to me at least – almost to outweigh its admittedly intriguing hypothesis.

The conceit of the story is that a single author, Hugo Vernier, wrote an obscure book in the mid-nineteenth century which anticipated not just the ideas but even the verbal substance of most of the greatest works of French poetry from Baudelaire onwards. Unfortunately the one copy of this work seen and scrutinised by the protagonist is torn from him by the fortunes of war. His Winterreise, winter journey, takes place in 1940, just before the fall of France, and he is never able to relocate the book subsequently.

The various members of Oulipo run with this basic idea of anticipation and turn it into an extraordinary farrago of counter-plots involving Hitler, J. Edgar Hoover, and a whole raft of Journeys here, there and everywhere.

A good deal of the merit of Perec’s story comes from its brevity. This book of sequels is over 400 pages long. So where did it come from? How did it end up on the neglected ‘foreign language’ shelf of a city bookshop? Did it belong to some visiting scholar, compelled to abandon their luggage by the demands of the coronavirus? Or a local experimental literature fanatic, who either read and forgot it, or else found the somewhat demanding idiom of some of the stories beyond their linguistic abilities?

Not that I found them particularly easy going either. The only way I got through them, in fact, was to ration myself to just one of the 26 voyages per diem (a device I’ve employed before to get through seemingly impossible reading tasks: the whole of Proust in French, for instance, or the multiple discursive volumes of Casanova’s memoirs).

Most of the stories in the Oulipo book are predictable enough: more-or-less ingenious variations on the forest of themes built up by their predecessors – since the concept of this group of stories as a ‘roman collectif’ appears to have arisen fairly early in the piece.

As I kept on reading, though, the conviction that they’d somehow missed the point of Perec’s story grew and grew. His protagonist’s fortuitous discovery of Vernier’s book is the central moment in his existence mainly because he allows it to be. The rest of his life is spent in a futile search for it as a way of recovering not so much the artefact itself as that lost moment.

It was, after all, the last instant at which France – or even European civilisation – could be said to have been truly itself, before the events of June 1940, the Nazis processing through Paris, the long inexorable ‘Night and Fog’ of the occupation.

Vernier’s book was an apport from an unknown, frankly impossible past. Its very existence adds to but does not cause the uncanny atmosphere of Perec’s story, one of the last he was to publish before his untimely death at the age of 45.

The photo of my double must surely be an apport, too. It exists because Richard snapped a picture of the picture and sent it to me. Even he, however, didn’t know of the coppery hair. Its true significance was hidden from him.

Is it a fetch, then, in the form of a doppelgänger? Or, that even more sinister portent, a Vardøger? The photo of me with red hair was taken on top of a building in Mumbai. I’ve never been back to India since then, so is this a reminder to resume my pilgrimage?

I have a strong sense of a fork in the path of my destiny back in the early 1990s, when I chose to return to Auckland instead of staying in Palmerston North. Is the face in Richard’s photo that of my might-have-been? He looks cheerful enough, but with something a little haunted about the eyes.

One thing is certain, this discovery sets up choices. One is to try to return to that moment, my own Morgenlandfahrt, my Journey to the East. Another is to ignore it totally, and hope it’s not the bad omen such sightings so often seem to be. The other – which I think I may now end up choosing – is to listen to the voice of the thunder, resume the interior journey, and reform my life.


[9/12/20-16/7/21]



The Road Not Taken: A Global Short Story Journey. Maurice A. Lee & Aaron Penn. USA: Lee and Penn Publishing, 2023.

That's not quite where the story ends, though. I sent the piece printed above to the editor of local literary journal brief shortly after finishing it, and it was accepted for issue 57, which was due to appear in 2021. I even received some proofs to correct, but it has (alas) never materialised.

Given the last issue of brief came out some four and a half years ago, in 2018, I suspect now (I hope I'm wrong) that it never will, and that brief must be added to that illustrious list of New Zealand alternative literary magazines which have now, unfortunately, departed the scene.

I felt that a year and a half was probably long enough to wait before sending it elsewhere. The trouble with that, though, it that it's such a "brief" piece of work, comprehensible within that setting, but a bit too allusive and offbeat for most other editors.

I was, therefore, a bit surprised to receive an email a few days ago informing me of the appearance of the anthology pictured above. I do remember sending them a story a year or so ago, but had no particular expectation of ever seeing it in print.




What really astonished me was the title, though. It's not that it's an unfamiliar one. Most people have at least heard of Robert Frost's poem, even if they haven't actually read it. If not, here it is to remind you:


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

David McCoy: Robert Frost & Edward Thomas (composite image)


The poem was, according to Frost, written about his friend, fellow-poet Edward Thomas, and his eccentric way of taking a walk.

Thomas chose to go off to war, to the Western Front, where he was killed by a shell on April 9th, 1917. Frost returned to America, where he became probably the most famous and honoured (though also, possibly, the most feared and hated) poet of his generation.

Which of them took the right path? We'll never know.





Thursday, July 15, 2010

Some Ads:


[Rubble Emits Light]

RUBBLE EMITS LIGHT
The Film Archive presents films by Richard von Sturmer

Where:
The Film Archive, Auckland
When:
Wednesday 14th July 2010 - Friday 13th August 2010


I went to the opening of this limited season of Richard von Sturmer films (curated by Gabriel White) the other night, and I definitely think it's worth making the effort to check it out when you're next on K Rd. There are three films, The Search for Otto (1985), Aquavera (1988) and 26 Tanka Films (2007), all on continuous loop. There are also a lot of other bits and pieces of footage taken at various times to sample.

Von Sturmer is (I think) one of our most interesting poets, and these films form an essential part of his work to date. Gabriel's essay in the exhibition catalogue is also well worth reading.





[John Dickson & Ted Jenner, “After Hours Return"]

brief the fortieth
Editor: Ted Jenner
Number 40 (July 2010)


The latest issue of New Zealand's longest-running avant-garde literary magazine (1995-2010) is now out, and can be ordered from the Titus Books website here.

Guest editor Ted Jenner has assembled a rather modified assemblage of whacked-out freaks for this special anniversary issue - not just your old favourites but some newcomers too ...





[bravado 19 (July, 2010)]


The latest issue of Tauranga's literary magazine bravado is also now out, with the fiction guest-selected by yours truly, and the poetry chosen by Majella Cullinane.

I would have liked to include quite a few more of the stories which were sent in, I must admit, but the ones that did make the cut certainly constitute a pretty strong group, I reckon.





[Jack Ross: Kingdom of Alt]

This is Brett Cross's rather elegant ad for my forthcoming book of short stories, Kingdom of Alt. The image comes from Bronwyn Lloyd's pop-up version of the Wolfman story "Notes found inside a text of Bisclavret". The basic idea of the collection is storytelling through unusual means: notes written in the margins of other texts, in course journals and private diaries and even email exchanges ...

Just to give you an idea of what to expect, here are some of the reactions I got to my previous collection of short fiction, Monkey Miss Her Now, in 2004:

Original, dense, musical; and … erm … confusing. … Reading this book is like a wild lunge in the dark – you just never know what you’re going to find.
– Sue Emms, Bravado

As postmodern as it is parochial, Monkey Miss Her Now drags a venerable tradition into the strange new worlds of twenty-first century New Zealand.
– Scott Hamilton, brief

Woody Allen sometimes springs to mind, but so equally do the Surrealists.
– Roger Horrocks

Nobody else in New Zealand writes quite like Ross …
– Mark Houlahan, NZ Books

Outside of literati farm, this sort of thing has a very limited life expectancy.
– Joe Wylie, Takahe




Oh, and last but definitely not least, Mike Johnson's eagerly-awaited new graphic novel Travesty is due out from Titus Books next month. The book will be launched by Dylan Horrocks at the AUT Centre for Creative Writing on Thursday August 5, at 6.00pm:

"Mike's thirteenth published book, it's also a graphic novel in several senses of the word - including more than 30 striking panels drawn by comics artist Darren Sheehan.

To attend Thurs August 5 @ 6.00pm please RSVP Helen HuiQun Xue - HXue@aut.ac.nz - by Friday 30 July."






Tuesday, December 18, 2007

brief note






















"Your industriousness is a little frightening," says Brett.

Yes, well, I'm just trying to get a lot of things tied away and sorted out before the end of the year. Next year I'm planning to spend a lot more time pursuing my own projects, and a lot less time on editing and bureaucracy generally.

So with that in mind, I've put up a companion to the Poetry Archive website. This one serves a similar indexing function for brief magazine (originally A Brief Description of the Whole World), which I edited between 2002 and 2005.

The longevity of brief is becoming a bit of a phenomenon in itself. It was founded by Alan Loney in December 1995, so with the latest issue, #35 (edited by Brett Cross), it's now reached its twelfth anniversary. (I tried to embed that information in the "profile" page of the new blog, but they informed me that you have to be over thirteen years old to use blogger, so I'll have to wait till next year before fessing up to the magazine's true age.)

I put out a brief index in 2003, shortly after taking over the editorship from John Geraets, and then a short supplementary index in 2005, before handing responsibility for the journal over to Scott Hamilton. So it wasn't all that much trouble to update it, since all that information was still floating around on my computer.

I've put in links to various of the articles which have been reprinted online, notably in the three feature issues - Smithymania (2003), Alan Brunton (2003) and Joanna Margaret Paul (2005) - published as joint ventures with the nzepc, but also to the brief section of the Titus Books website. Other than that, though, the site is really just a big hyperlinked contents list to the issues and authors published by the magazine to date.

Check it out., Hopefully it'll be useful to someone, at any rate.

*

Oh, and by the by, I'm tendering a bit of an apology to the New Zealand Herald. I was extremely scornful about them in my last post, so I was pleasantly surprised when they named Louise Nicholas as their New Zealander of the year for 2007.

I've just been reading her book, and I have to agree that there doesn't seem to be much serious doubt that the cops she describes did indeed regard themselves as above the law when it came to pressuring young girls into having sex with them (for more thoughts on the whole subject of what constitutes "Consent," see Tracey Slaughter's story of that title. It appears as the opening salvo of my "Open House" issue of Landfall.) The sooner that kind of crap goes out the window, the better. Apparently it was more or less up to individual policemen what "moral standards" they wished to apply in such circumstances. Cops have too much power in the community generally not to be subject to the same rules as teachers and doctors in that respect, I think myself.

So good on you, New Zealand Herald. Maybe you're not so subhuman after all. Though I still think you could break an intellectual sweat from time to time without completely alienating your fan-base, I have to admit that the choice of Louise Nicholas runs precisely that risk, so I do think you deserve hearty congratulations on this one.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Scott Free

[Ellen Portch, front cover image for brief #34: War]


The Arts journal brief was founded by Alan Loney in 1995 under the title A Brief Description of the Whole World. In those days it was a quarterly, with a certain number of pages reserved for each of a small number of contributors. The first ten issues of the magazine appeared between December 1995 and October 1998 (a double issue: 10/11).

John Geraets revived it in mid-1999. His first issue was a reprint of Leigh Davis's Willy's Gazette (1983), but he went on to edit eleven more issues, taking the magazine through at least three more name changes (ABDOTWW / Ab.WW & AbdotWW) before settling on the more succinct appellation brief which it retains today.

Geraets asked me to take over as editor in 2002, and I edited the magazine for the next three years, from July 2002 until May 2005, approximately nine issues (depending on whether you count the immense #30/31: Kunst-Kultur issue as one or two). In my time brief moved from being a quarterly to appearing three times a year.

I also followed John Geraets' lead in trying to develop brief's publishing arm, the Writers Group, which issued two titles under his editorship and three under mine. They are, in order:

- Alan Loney’s Reading / Saying / Making: Selected Essays (2001)
- Sugu Pillay’s The Chandrasekhar Limit and other stories (2002)
- Jack Ross's A brief Index: 1995-2003 [Supplemental Index: 2003-2005] (2003/2005)
- Kendrick Smithyman’s Campana to Montale: Versions from Italian (2004)
- K. M. Ross’s novel Falling through the Architect (2005)

Throughout the first ten years (and 32 issues) of its existence, brief's format remained relatively consistent: A4 sheets, copied – so far as possible – exactly as their authors wrote them, ordered, bound, then distributed with bio-notes and a cover. The magazine has always had a commitment to publishing technically adventurous literary and graphic work, by acknowledged (and newly discovered) innovators. Pageworks, critical articles, poems and fictional texts were equally prominent in most issues. The Writers Group, and brief, have never received any official funding beyond subscriptions and donations, so all but occasional guest contributors have had to be subscribers.

Scott Hamilton took over as managing editor late in 2005. He now cedes that role to Brett Cross of Titus Books, who will be editing the next issue, no. 35.

What can one say about Scott as editor? An immensely inspiring and stimulating writer, and generous supporter of other people's work, Scott, I think, has done fine things with the two issues of brief he's edited. His intense political consciousness also gave the magazine a new relevance. All of that is on the plus side.

On the minus side, it's true that it's taken a very long time for those two issues to appear, and that in the process our original commitment to producing three issues a year has rather gone by the board. That's the only negative aspect I can see about his incumbency at brief.

Where the magazine goes to from here I'm not really sure. We've had to scale its size down from the original A4 format to A5 mainly for reasons of cost, but there doesn't seem to be any diminution in the quality -- or quantity -- of material in each issue.

Nor do I get any sense of growing indifference to the concept of an avant-garde literary magazine committed to representing the kinds of material which you won't see in the other journals.

Anyway, once again the managing editor is gone, long live the managing editor! Good luck to Brett in his new role. I hope you continue to support him. Maybe, with your help, this most maverick of literary magazines can continue for another decade or so ...

Here's a summary of the issues to date:

A Brief Description of the Whole World
Editor: Alan Loney
No 1, December 1995: 70 pp.
No 2, March 1996: 52 pp.
No 3, June 1996: 67 pp.
No 4, November 1996: 82 pp.
No 5, May 1997: 58 pp.
No 6, July 1997: 56 pp.
No 7, September 1997: 66 pp.
No 8, December 1997: 76 pp.
No 9, April 1998: 55 pp.
Nos 10 & 11, October 1998: 47 pp.
[629 pages overall]

A Brief Description of the Whole World
Editor: John Geraets
No 12, June 1999:
Leigh Davis: Willy’s Gazette (1983) [vii + 111 pp.]
ABDOTWW
No 13, September 1999: 93 pp.
No 14, December 1999: 110 pp.
ABDOTWW / description
No 15, March 2000: 86 pp.
Ab.WW / AbdotWW
No 16, June 2000: 85 pp.
Ab.ww / Loney
No 17, September 2000: 96 pp.
brief.
No 18, December 2000: 100 pp.
No 19, March 2001: 80 pp.
No 20, June 2001: 68 pp.
No 21, September 2001: 93 pp.
No 22, December 2001: 100 pp.
No 23, March 2002: 100 pp.
[1011 pages overall]

brief
Editor: Jack Ross
No 24, July 2002: 84 pp.
No 25, October 2002: 111 pp.
No 26, January 2003: 118 pp.
No 27, June 2003: 104 pp.
No 28, October 2003: 126 pp.
No 29, March 2004: 102 pp.
Nos 30/31, October 2004: 120/120 pp.
No 32, May 2005: 120 pp.
[1005 pages overall]

brief
Editor: Scott Hamilton
No 33, March 2006: 150 pp.
No 34, February 2007: 188 pp.
[338 pages overall]

[Ellen Portch, back cover image for brief #34: War]