June 2010 Archives

Josh Brown, a historian who heads the Social History Project / Center for Media Learning at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, has been posting his visual blog Life During Wartime once a week since 2003.

... I am happy to say ... with another jaundice-yellow antidote to all things purple...

...including purple prose. Which is just what the doctor ordered. As I was reminded by these remarks, per Claude Pélieu on Flypaper, 'tiz "a voice w/out make-up."

By way of introduction ...

Claude Pélieu, «l'iconoclaste, le déflagrateur» Francœur dixit, s'est éclipsé, après bien des morflances, le 24 décembre 2002, à Norwich, dans l'état de N Y. Après avoir plaisanté avec Mary au téléphone en lui détaillant le programme des festivités organisées par l'hosto pour ce jour de Noël. Il a chambré une dernière fois l'infirmière de service, a souri à la vioque coquette bigleuse qui le prenant pour un chippendale, lui avait quelques jours plus tôt glissé un billet de un dollar dans la ceinture de son bénard, et a gratifié d'un clin d'œil gouailleur la Camarde qui l'attendait à la porte du réfectoire.

Claude s'est tiré pour de bon et nous sommes restés comme une flopée de ronds de flan, nous ses amis, avec notre douleur et le souvenir de lui à jamais rivé au cœur.

La mort ne parviendra jamais à effacer certaines alliances, ni les mots qui cimentent les fortes complicités.

Six années se sont écoulées depuis sa disparition. Afin de ne plus rester prostré, assis au bord du vide creusé par son absence, j'ai décidé, un jour de mai 2004, de retour de Cherry Valley, avec l'accord et le soutien de Mary, de rassembler quelques témoi- gnages, plus des textes de lui, des images, des lettres et collages, pour réaliser un ouvrage collectif. Tout au long de son existence, au fil de ses rencontres ou échanges épistolaires, Claude a tissé un formidable réseau d'amitiés indéfectibles.

Par delà les océans et les continents, il a permis à de nombreux poètes, musiciens et artistes de se rencontrer et de fraterniser. Malgré leurs voyages et déménagements multiples, avec Mary, il est toujours resté le point de convergence pour bon nombre d'entre nous. Et il le demeure. Cet ouvrage en est la preuve irréfutable, même par delà la mort.

-- Alain Jégou, (extraits de En guise d'intro)

... ya can't beat the French for purple prose.

Here's one for the books -- an attractively designed boxing anthology with heart, The Fighter Still Remains, just out from Fore Angels Press and DIBELLA Entertainment. I'm told all profits will go to the Berto Dynasty Foundation to benefit Project Medishare for Haitian earthquake relief.

The fact that the book has been brought out by an obscure press in collaboration with a fight promoter (who, for all I know, may be one and the same) probably means that no major publisher would touch it. It also means -- pardon my cynicism -- that the book is not likely to get much exposure and won't earn much in the way of profits. But every penny for Haitian earthquake victims counts, right?

In any case, readers who buy it are shitsure going to get their money's worth. Selected and edited by George Kimball and John Schulian, with an introduction by Taj Mahal, the anthology celebrates "boxing in poetry and song from Ali to Zevon."

Selections include a wide range of choices, everything from "The World's Shortest Poem," by Muhammad Ali ("Me / Whee!"), and Paul Simon's song lyrics for "The Boxer," to Ishmael Reed's "White Hope," Warren Zevon's "Boom Boom Mancini," and "Ready to Rumble Rag," a song by Kimball and Tom Paxton that consists of nothing but boxers' names -- or rather the monikers invented for them by fight fans and headline writers:

Marvelous Marvin Gaseous Cassius Gentleman Jim
Homicide Hank ... Smokin' Joe
Brown Bomber Little Red Pink Panther Al Blue Lewis ...
Black Rhino
Neon Leon Iron Mike Toy Bulldog Fainting Phil ... Jersey Joe
Wild Bull of the Pampas Bronx Bull Baby Bull Atomic Bull
... White Buffalo ...

...

Kid Dynamite Kid Chocolate Dixie Kid Kid Diamond ...
Baby Joe
Pretty Boy Golden Boy Honeyboy Schoolboy ...
Boston Strong Boy
Hit Man Sandman Magic Man Pac Man ... Cinderella Man
Ice Man Matchstick Man Orchid Man Quiet Man ...
Ding-a-ling Man

There are also short prose excerpts from, among others, Leonard Gardner's Fat City, J.P. Dunleavy's The History of the Ginger Man, Elmore Leonard's Out of Sight, Pete Hamill's Flesh and Blood, and Philip Roth's The Facts, and even something by Ted Berrigan, a poet you would not normally associate with the sweet science.

The Fighter Still Remains came about when Kimball and Schulian finished editing a different anthology, At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing, to be published by the Library of America in 2011. "Our dream for that book was to include fiction, poetry, song lyrics, and screenplay excerpts as well as nonfiction," Schulian writes in an e-mail message. "But even at more than 500 pages, the book turned out to be best suited for nonfiction. It was George who had the idea to gather what you find in The Fighter Still Remains. The biggest heart of all belongs to him. My contributions were minimal. Mostly, I was a West Coast-based cheering section for George." When not cheering for old Westerns, that is.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Susan Fleet's first crime thriller, Absolution, is set in pre-Katrina New Orleans. Homicide detective Frank Renzi takes on a serial killer who preys on women. (Click for the Kindle edition.)

Now why would a cultivated classical musician like Fleet -- she plays a mean baroque trumpet and also happens to be a feminist music historian -- bother getting her hands dirty with such a tale?

"If you'd like to hear it sometime, I've got a long rationale," she says. "But to cut to the chase, too many of these sickos get off in real life. In my books, the bad guy always gets his in the end."

I'd say she was piping Steig Larsson's Lisbeth Salander if I didn't know better. I met Fleet years ago in Boston, before she moved to New Orleans. She was a feisty original then. Still is. She doesn't need to pipe anyone.