"The Metaphor Delivered" - An exerpt of Norman Mailer's "Armies fo the Night"

So I finally just finished reading this book - and it was about as awesome as "history as a novel" or "the novel as history" could possibly be.

The story recounts the march on the pentagon to protest the war in vietnam in '67. Back then people could only expect to hear what really went on about these events but from a few key media sources. Needless to say these media sources were most (not all!) -- but mostly on the side of Lyndon Johnson's administration.

For his experimental recounting of these true events from first the perspective of his own person (as a novel) and then from the perspective of a historian (part 2 of the book), Norman Mailer earned himself the Pulitzer prize and a national book award.


Here goes:

11: The Metaphor Delivered


Whole crisis of Christianity in America that the military heroes were on one side, and the unnamed saints on the other! Let the bugle blow. The death of America rides in on the smog. America-- the land where a new kind of man was born from the idea that God was present in every man not only as compassion but as power, and so the country belonged to the people; for the will of the people -- if the locks of their life could be given the art to turn-- was then the will of God. Great and dangerous idea! If the locks did not turn, then the will of the people was the will of the Devil. Who by now could know where was what? Liars controlled the locks.


Brood on that country who expresses our will. She is America, once a beauty of magnificence unparalleled, now a beauty with a leprous skin. She is heavy with child-- no one knows if legitimate -- and languishes in a dungeons whose walls are never seen. Now the first contractions of her fearsome labor begin-- it will go on: no doctor exists to tell the hour. It is only known that false labor is not likely on her now, no, she will probably give birth, and to what? --the most fearsome totalitarianism the world has ever known? or can she, poor giant, tormented lovely girl, deliver a babe of a new world brave and tender, artful and wild? Rush to the locks. God writhes in his bonds. Rush to the locks. Deliver us from our curse. For we must end on the road to that mystery where courage death, and the dream of love give promise of sleep.


I also found this next passage pretty interesting. Mailer describes the military police (here I'm guessing described as the "working class"...) systematically brutalizing (with a particular focus on women) the hippie protesters of the war (here again I'm guessing those described as the sons and daughters of the middle class). Mailer was himself from a working class neighborhood in brooklyn NY. Here we go, page 258:


The sons and daughters of that urban middle class, forever alienated in childhood from all the good simple funky nitty-gritty American joys of the working class like winning a truly dangerous fist fight at the age of eight or getting sex before fourteen, dead drunk by sixteen, whipped half to death by your father, making it in rumbles with a proud street gang, living at war with the educational system, knowing how to snicker at the employer from one side of the mouth, riding a bike with no hands, entering the Golden Gloves, doing a hitch in the Navy, or stretch in the stockage, and with all, their sense of élan, of morale, for buddies are the manna of the working class: there is a God-given cynical indifference to school, morality, and job. The working class is loyal to friends, not ideas. No wonder the Army bothered them not a bit. But the working class bothered the sons of the middle class with their easy confident virility and that physical courage with which they seemed to be born -- there was a fear and a profound respect in every middle class son for his idea of that most virile ruthless indifferent working class which would eventually exterminate them as easily as they exterminated gooks. And this is not even to mention the sense of muted awe which lived in every son of the urban middle class before the true American son of the small town and the farm, that blank-eyed snub-nosed innocent, bewildered, stubborn, crew-cut protagonist of all conventional American life; the combination of his symbolic force with the working class was now in focus here.




(...As the MPs wedged through the seated hippies, clubbed them and dragged them off to jail for acts of civil disobedience.)

Essence of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" 1

I wouldn't feel totally comfortable describing what this book is really about, yet, as I'm only on page 145... But I have my suspicions that it may be about much more than architecture.

That said, here is a little paragraph that really impressed me.

"... He asked himself whether he actually hated his daughter.
       But one picture came back to his mind, irrelevantly, whenever he asked himself that question. It was a picture of her childhood, of a day from some forgotten summer on his country estate in Connecticut long ago. He had forgotten the rest of that day and what had led to the one moment he remembered. But he remember how he stood on the terrace and saw her leaping over a high green hedge at the end of the lawn. The hedge seemed too high for her little body; he had time to think that she could not make it, in the very moment when he saw her flying triumphantly over the green barrier. He could not remember the beginning nor the end of that leap; but he still saw, clearly and sharply, as on a square of movie film cut out and held motionless forever, the one instant when her body hung in space, her long legs flung wide, her thin arms thrown up, hands braced against the air, her white dress and blong hair spread in two broad, flat mats on the wind, a single moment, the flash of a small body in the greatest burst of ecstatic freedom he had ever witnessed in his life."

Essence of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer"

While I've fallen behind in my "essence of" theme posts, I haven't by any means fallen behind in my reading.

Next will be a piece that I feel represents well Saul Bellow's "Humboltd's Gift".

But first, Miller's thoughts on why Paris can make a poor man feel rich and NY, make even a rockefeller feel like a broke dirt-bag beggar (in my own words).

In Miller's words -- my favorite passage begins half way through paragraph 2 @ "A Wagon...":



"Pont Alexandre III. A great windswept space approaching the bridge. Gaunt, bare trees mathematically fixed in their iron grates; the gloom of the Invalides welling out of the dome and overflowing the dark streets adjacent to the Square. The morgue of poetry. They have him where they want him now, the great warror, the last big man of Europe. He sleeps soundly in his granite bed. No fear of him turning over in his grave. The doors are well bolted, the lid is on tight. Sleep, Napoleon! It was not your ideas they wanted, it was only your corpse!
       The river is still swollen, muddy, streaked with lights. I don't know what it is rushes up in me at the sight of this dark, swift-moving current, but a great exultation lifts me up, affirms the deep wish that is in me never to leave this land. I remember passing this way the other morning on my way to the American Express, knowing in advance that there would be no mail for me, no check, no cable, nothing, nothing. A wagon from the Galleries Lafayette was rumbling over the bridge. The rain had stopped and the sun breaking through the soapy clouds touched the glistening rubble of roofs with a cold fire. I recall now how the driver leaned out and looked up the river toward Passy way. Such a healthy, simple, approving glace, as if he were saying to himself: "Ah, spring is coming!" And God knows, when springs comes to Paris, the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise. But in was not only this -- it was the intimacy with which his eye rested upon the scene. It was his Paris. A man does not need to be rich, nor even a citizen to feel this way about Paris. Paris is filled with poor people -- the proudest and filthiest lot of beggars that ever walked the earth, it seems to me. And yet they give the illusion of being at home. It is that which distinguishes the Parisian from all other metropolitan souls.
        When I think of New York I have a very different feeling. New York makes even a rich man feel his unimportance. New York is cold, glittering, maligh. The buildings dominate. There is a sort of atomic frenzy to the activity going on; the more furious the pace, the more diminished the spirit. A constant ferment, but it might just as well be going on in a test tube. Nobody knows what it's all about. Nobody directs the energy. Stupendous. Bizarre. Baffling. A trememdnous reactive urge, but absolutely uncoordinated.
       When I thinking of this city where I was born and raised, this Manhattan that Whitman sang of, a blind, white rage licks my guts. New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joins that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, skyscrapers, meals, posters, jobs, crimes, loves.... A whole city erected over a hollow pit of nothingness. Meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. And forty-second Street! The top fo the world, they call it. Where the bottom then? You can walk along with your hands out and they'll put cinders in your cap. Rich or poor, they walk along with head thrown back and they almost break their necks looking up at their beautiful white prisons. They walk along like blind geese and the searchlights spray their empty faces with flecks of ecstasy."     



That's it folks - I spared you Miller's 3 page description of a prostitute's "rose bush".

Stay tuned for a passage of Canadian born - Chicago raised 1976 nobel (literature) prize winner Saul Bellow.

Capturing the essence of "100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I finally got around to reading this amazing Nobel Prize winning book - and decided to transcribe a sentence from this book that I think really captures the style of "magical realism" that was coined after Cien  Anos de Soledad was first published in 1969.

It's probably also the longest sentence I've ever read...


"Aurelian Segundo was not aware of the singsong until the following day after breakfast when he felt himself being bothered by a buzzing that was by then more fluid and louder than the sound of the rain, and it was Fernanda, who was walking through the house complaining that they had raised her to be a queen only to have her end up as a servant in a madhouse with a lazy, idolatrous, libertine husband who lay on his back waiting for bread to rain down from heaven while she was straining her kidneys trying to keep afloat a home held together with pins where there was so much to do, so much to bear up under and repair from the time God gave his morning sunlight until it was time to go to bed that when she got there here eyes were full of ground glass, and yet no one ever said to her, "Good morning, Fernanda, did you sleep well?" Nor had they asked her, even out of courtesy, why she was so pale or why she awoke with purple rings under her eyes in spite of the fact that she expected it, of course, from a family that had always considered her a nuisance, an old rag, a booby painted on the wall, and who were always going around saying things against her behind her back, calling her churchmouse, calling her Pharisee, calling her crafty, and even Amaranta, may she rest in peace, had said aloud that she was one of those people who could not tell their rectums from their ashes, God have mercy, such words, and she had tolerated everything with resignation because of the Holy Father, but she had not been able to tolerate it any more when that evil José Arcadio Segundo said that the damnation of the family had come when it opened its doors to a stuck-up highlander, just imagine, a bossy highlander, Lord save us, a highland daughter of eveil spit of the same stripe as the highlanders the government sent to kill workers, you tell me, and he was referring to no one but her, the godchild of the Duke of Alba, a lady of such lineage that she made the liver of presidents' wives quiver, a noble dame of fine blood like her, who had the right to sign eleven peninsular names who was the only mortal creature in that town full of bastards who did not feel all confused at the sight of sixteen pieces of silverware, so that her adulterous husband could die of laughter afterward and say that so many knives and forks and spoons were not meant for a human being but for a centipede, and the only one who could tell with her eyes closed when the white wine was served and on what side and in which glass and when the red wine and on what glass, and not like that peasant of an Amaranta, may she rest in peace, who thoughts that white wine was served in the daytime and red wine at night, and the only one on the whole coast who could take pride in the fact that she took care of her bodily needs only in golden chamber-pots, so that Colonel Aureliano Buendia, may her rest in peace, could have the effrontery to ask her with his Masonic ill humour where she had received that privilege and whether she did not shit shit but shat sweet basil, just imagine, with those very words, and so that Renata, her own daughter, who through an oversight had seen her stool in the bedroom, had answered that even if the pot was all gold and with a coat of arms, what was inside was pure shit, physical shit, and worse even than than any other kind because it was stuck-up highland shit, just imagine, her own daughter, so that she never had any illusions about the rest of the family, but in any case she had the right to expect a little more consideration from her husband because, for better or for worse, he was her consecrated spouse, her helpmate, her legal despoiler, who took upon himself of his own free and sovereign will the grave responsibility of taking her away from her paternal home, where she never wanted for or suffered from anything, where she wove funeral wreaths as a pastime, since her godfather had sent a letter with his signature and the stamp of his ring on the sealing wax simply to say that the hands of his goddaughter were not meant for tasks of this world except to play the clavichord, and, nevertheless, her insane husband had taken her from her home with all manner of admonitions and warning and had brought her to that frying pan of hell where a person could not breathe because of the heat, and before she completed her Pentecostal fast he had gone off with his wandering trunks anf his wastrel's accordion to loaf in adultery with a wretch of whom it was only enought to see her behind, well that's been said, to see her wiggle her mare's behind in order to guess that she was a, that she was a, just the opposite of her, who was a lady in a palace or a pigsty, at the table or in bed, a lady of breeding, God-fearing, obeying His laws and submissive to His wishes, and with whom he could not perform, naturally, the acrobatics and trampish antics that he did with the other one, who, of course, was ready for anything, like the French matrons, and even worse, if one considers well, because they at least had the honesty to put a red light at their door, swinishness like that, just imagine, and that was all that was needed by the only and beloved daughter of Dona Renata Argote and Don Fernando del Carpio, and especially the latter, an upright man, a fine Christian, a Knight of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, those who receive direct from God the privilege of remaining intact in their graves with their skin smooth like the cheeks of a bride and their eyes alive and clearlike emeralds."

Yup. That was one sentence. I should know, I just copied it verbatim after reading it three times more to make sure I hadn't left out a full point.

To quote the New York Review of Books, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is now recognized as "the most popular and perhaps the best writer in Spanish since Cervantes", an author who "forces upon us at every page the wonder and extravagance of life".  I think this has been made abundantly clear.

Next exerpt; a few much, much -- much shorter sentences from Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, on the difference between living as a poor man in Paris or a rich man in New York.

Montreal Film Group Networking Party!!

Dear Montreal Film Group Members! (Français ci-dessous) Surprise! Just like that, we felt like throwing a party to celebrate the warmer weather, so we'll be having a film/TV networking event at the Segal Centre's ArtLounge next Monday, March 1st. Cash bar and yummy food available for purchase at the counter (sandwiches, soups, desserts, etc.) This will be an excellent opportunity to meet others in our fine city's film & TV industry. The MFG has over 2000 members so you never know who you'll meet for the first time or reconnect with... Bonus: Free bottle of Dr. Bronner's Magic organic hemp soap for all who show up between 7pm and 8pm!  Join us for a fun night and feel free to spread the word to your film friends. Monday, March 1st, 2010, 7-10pm ArtLounge at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts 5170 Cote St. Catherine Rd. (corner Westbury; 2 blocks West of Metro Cote-Ste-Catherine; bus 129 or 17) No cover charge! No RSVPs required! Continued success with all your projects! Here's a taste of what many of you have been up to these days:http://www.montrealfilmgroup.com/news.html Best! Ezra Ezra Soiferman Director and Co-Founder Montreal Film Group http://www.MontrealFilmGroup.com http://www.MontrealFilmGroup.com/ezra.html Not already a member of the MFG? Here's how to join (fast & free): http://www.montrealfilmgroup.com/join.php *** Cher membre du Montréal Film Group (MFG)!  Surprise! Nous avions envie d'une fête pour célébrer les temps chauds qui reviennent; nous organisons donc un événement de réseautage film/télévision dans  le ArtLounge du Centre Segal, lundi prochain, le 1er mars. Service de bar payant et nourriture de choix seront disponibles pour achat au comptoir (sandwichs, soupes, desserts, etc.) Une belle opportunité de rencontrer d'autres gens de notre belle industrie montréalaise du film et de la télévision! Le MFG compte plus de 2000 membres; vous ne savez donc jamais qui vous aurez la chance de rencontrer pour une première fois ou avec qui renouer... En prime: Une bouteille de savon organique au chanvre de Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps sera remis à tous les membres qui se présenteront entre 19 h et 20 h! Joignez-vous à nous pour une soirée amusante et invitez vos amis de l'industrie du film. Quand: Lundi, 1er mars 2010, 19 h - 22 h Lieu: Le ArtLounge du Centre Segal des arts de la scène 5170, chemin de la Côte-Ste-Catherine (coin Westbury; 2 blocs à l'ouest du métro Côte-Ste-Catherine; autobus 129 ou 17) Aucun frais d'entrée! Aucun RSVP nécessaire! Bonne continuité et bon succès! Voici un aperçu des projets sur lesquels chacun travaille ces jours-ci :http://www.montrealfilmgroup.com/news.html Au plaisir, Ezra Ezra Soiferman Directeur et Co-Fondateur Montreal Film Group http://www.MontrealFilmGroup.com http://www.MontrealFilmGroup.com/ezra.html

Quay Branly - Birth and Orpheo Negro: The Galaxy of Nilk-Narf Gallazma or Doom, Gloom and the Death Sceptre

First door of the 2009-2010 Season - Quay Branly - after the a newer folk-art museum in Paris (rive gauche - xxème?)

This and the following 3 were composed, assembled and polished at the same time upon the artists' return from Paris / St-Germain, where he and his wife spend 5 weeks every year 'replenishing' the proverbial well.

The bottom two panels of the door. Butterflies, dolls limbs anxious to answer the teacher's question ("me me, oh golly gee sir, won't ya pick me!").

Original B&W photo taken by artist in the 60s. Mother of pearl butterfly isn't real - or was never, how shall I put this, 'animated'...

Bottom right pannel, doll heads impaled by wooden handles from dutch sewing tools. Bandanas.

Left Left, African amulet made from African statuette -- used in a western context to avoid african.... luck.

Right left, left right. doll head mounted on a cake icing syringe used for fine pastries -- gives new means to 5 minutes of pleasure 5 years on the hips.

A better view of the first door of 2009-10 season in its entirety of panels.

Up right panel, a beetle-juice resembling slithery snake composed of African ebony statuette head, on vertebrae of some poor mamal -- tail is a gazelle horn.

Center piece --- as glam as they come --- buttons on paper, so arranged.

Door #2 of the 2009-10 season -- "Birth"

Et tantôt Brancusi, tantôt plutôt Cornell (how is cornell THAT famous? it's not like his art is sooo innovative...)

Pastry utensils.

This is as close as I've ever seen one of these famous 'honey combs' come to being put to good use.

You remember the wooden honey spatulas they would use in cereal ads (honey nut cherios) to make the cereal look like it was just fresh baked in a farm in nebraska? or Arkansas? Well this is what those utensils are really only good for.

Cat skull on paper in an interior domino frame. Exterior frame of upper left egg shaped stone, old printer stamps (the dark wood) and what appears to be (on the bottom right) a piece of a stone or clay pipe I brought back from india.

Below, little wooden sculpture emerging from behind turtle shell curtains, adorned with luxurious seagull feathers. The extravagance!

Iroquois or Sioux head piece on doll head with a wind instrument reed protector as adornment, below. Wood scepter type "stick" is perhaps from a wind instrument --- most certainly from a tree.

It is exposed on an official looking, close to a century old, document. Also, most probably originating from a tree.

One last "vue d'ensemble".

THIRD DOOR of 2009-10 season --- "Orpheo Negro" last door to be presented for this season until new material is collected for next Fall-Winter collection.

(Funny thing about the Courier font, it was created for IBM in the early 20th century for typewriters. Conservative, orderly and equaly spaced for each character, it is a rare font that cannot be "bolded".

This artist (Franklin Amzallag) worked some 27 years for that same company and was almost as revered as famous within the company culture for his 'bold', no nonsense personality and "get the fucking deal closed" salesmanship. He was nick-named "Dr. Death". Go figure.)

Back to Ariel, for a description of the 3rd of 6 doors - and last to be presented - of the Fall-Winter 2009-10 collection. (For a description of doors 4 through 6, please refer to my previous blog post)

So in dedication and loving memory of IBM's changing corporate culture (a company that allowed our entire family to live quite well), and in the spirit of these hard times of doom and gloom, I'd like to name this following door "The Scepter of Dr. Death".

BEHOLD! The wonderous sceptre of Dr. Death!

"For he who wields this wonderful instrument has the greatest power known to man ---''

More seagull head mounted on a clarinet neck, vertebrae interspersed with wood, with a hardened sharp bone at the base.

We've all heard of children of the corn -- this panel to the right features their toys. Butterfly's, doll limbs (YES!), a cow's femur and osso bucco... not sure what rests on their noggins though.

Upper panel, bones, crab shell, domino, keys, tooth, in the molds of what you now know to be for making "Madelaines" (small seashell shaped French 'brioche' cakes).

Right Pannel, African statuette on a door's ornate key area - ebony and brass. Next to it, a war decoration from my great-grandfather Raymond Dieumegarde with a little lead minnow shaped weight for fishing, as well as a non-descript round object --- all on a piece of medium brown wood. Thermometer. Old rusty box of mints below ornate african statue frame.

Around; other stuff...

I believe this one to be quite self-explanatory.

Perhaps this is the mask of Dr. Doom - the tribal witch doctor. African mask, native american blanket. crab legs, porcupine quills sticking out of a same cone shaped pipe from India.

Bottom right, brass instrument valve.

Sceptre #2, teeth, small shell, ebony wood, piece of terra cotta cloth from pillow from Artist's childhood casablanca.

Bottom left pannel (just above) bird made from --- wait for it --- sculpture of bird. (*aside -- "Really!?! ... Franklin -- really!%? .... You're not even trying anymore are you? How to f*** do you want me to sell this shit!!") ... Just kidding...

But seriously folks, it's an ivory bird sculpture assembled as a bird with bone head, animal claw -- oh and wait I love this part -- -a feather!! ... How un-birdly...

Here it is again below:

I think it's wearing a seashell as a hat - or helmet.

A helmet -- as they say in motorcycle rider parlance -- of the "brain-bucket" variety.

Dernière vue d'ensemble:

LET ME KNOW if you're interested - and I'll LET YOU KNOW when we finally organize a vernissage!

Happy new year 2010!

Zack Amzallag | Manager

J'Adoor! -- The Art of Franklin Amzallag

Portes Épiques - L'Art de Franklin Amzallag

http://www.portesepiques.com

(514) 690-9605

portesepiques@gmail.com

DOORS 45-47: AVATAR, FOSSIL & MARIENBAD

DOOR #45 --- AVATAR

A first dragon's eye view:

Noteable objects: Cow's hip bone. Tobacco pipe stems as sun rays, clarinet and bone, bean husks from exotic location. Rare natural materials...

Pipe and husk at closer inspection:

Here we have pastry cream icing tips so disposed, and wood. Lots of different kinds of wood...

Cow hip as 19th century modernist native american folk art mask. Shall i repeat that?

Its set on a background of cape cod (long nook beach) drift wood.

DOOR # 46 -- FOSSIL

Not much to say here. What you see is what you get

Porcupine pricks, cow bone, animal horns, turtle head. Your average everyday 'assemblage', you know?

Seashell, bean husks, clarinet body, spice crusher.

MAo on the left, between copper thimble on drift wood, flattened moulds on wood, piece of piano below two oval eye type pieces of metal top left. Right, seagull head, under chicken wishbone atop copper or brass music instrument wrapped in snake skin, accessorized by piano string hammers, tail feathers composed of what looks like flat metal tear drops.

Why is my font all of a sudden blue 'ariel'?

In what appears to be an allusion to Dali, this box on stilts is carrying dismembers pieces of doll limbs (YES!).

I guess Franklin Amzallag ran out of early 20th century coffee stained musical score paper or handwritten letters from about the same time, so as a background for this section, he used pocket watch faces from 'broquantes' in france. He usually negotiates to poor flea-market stand holders down to tears to get hundreds of such pockets watches on the euro.

DOOR #47 -- MARIENBAD

I can arrange a showing of the atelier where the last 16 doors are exposed.

If you know anyone in the art world, I would love to be put in touch.

We're currently looking for a gallery to show the doors in montreal.

Below; Doll face on the left, in mother of pearl sea shell, with a crank to walk about on these quills. Looking like the shell of the huge panther in Avatar, the body seems to be composed of up spoon shaped articulated armor

Above on the right, leather pouch holds stamp handles. Wooden end of a wooden domino box holds more doll limbs (YEAH!). All on a background of paper and piano anatomy.

On the left, cow ribs, under cat head, above flute, feathers, string and all. The orange fabric is still from the same cushion from the artist's childhood Casablanca.

Atop the beautiful picture of whom I assume is Marienbad, metal molds of what french pastry makers use to make "madeleines", with ivory dominos inside a couple of them.

Marienbad has gorgeous brass door ornaments arranged like a carnival / maskerade mask.

Are those table top decorations scattered accross the photo? (Billes chinoises?)

Above left, fish spine on a bunch of little seashells from the Cape. Tail of the spine a stone pipe I brought back from India. By now you should be able to identify the rest of this Burton-esque piece.

A better view of the piece as described above.

We can now see that was what omitted above are toupees.

Yes, children's toys.

Small doll faces, papers like 'papier-maché', then painted black, disposed very originally on a hand written note from France.

Obviously these aren't african masks (the facial characteristics are, er, caucasian in shape). Sometimes we have to make do with what's available.

We're running out of space to stack these doors in the atelier. So if you know anyone in art, or who owns or works in a gallery, I would be very grateful to be put in touch!!

Till next time...