Straight Up |: March 2008 Archives

Now that this blog has been redesigned to take advantage of the latest in Web technology -- thanks to ArtsJournal's publisher and editor Doug McLennan, also known as "resident genius" -- it occurred to me to check the first blogpost put up here.

This is what struck me:

Have an online look at two things in real time: the mounting cost of the war in Iraq and what's happening in Times Square. I would suggest there's a direct correlation: The higher the cost, the glummer the tourists.

That blogpost, which went up on Aug. 11, 2003, also googled "weapons of mass destruction," noted the news coverage of John Cage's "music for the ages," and described how the media (specifically msnbc.com) was "shilling for celebrities." So little has changed, eh?

The title -- "Motherfuckers: The Auschwitz of Oz" -- tells you it's an unusual novel. But it still doesn't prepare you for the story (or the swastika on the cover). Which is why "Horror Panegyric," published today by Savoy Books, works so handily.

As Keith Seward explains in his introductory essay:

Motherfuckers' principals are Meng and Ecker, twins who had been subject to "scientific" experiments by Josef Mengele. After the war they find themselves in northern England, waiting for Lord Horror the way others wait for Godot. Ecker is rational but violent, Meng is a mutant whose huge cock and tits are nothing compared to the mutations of his mind. Not Holocaust survivors in any sense you've ever seen before, Meng and Ecker have adopted the ways of their captors -- the bloodlusts and hates. However, there is nothing paramilitary about them. They're not neo-Nazis or skinheads. They're more like the ultraviolent droogs of A Clockwork Orange, though it is quite possible that the droogs would not feel any affinity in return. Meng and Ecker are even further out in some post-war delirium. Auschwitz, meet Oz.

"Motherfuckers" is the third in a series of novels by the British writing and publishing team David Britton and Michael Butterworth. The other two are "Lord Horror" (now out of print) and "Baptised in the Blood of Millions." The novels succeed as "satire via hyperbole and excess," Seward writes, by applying to literature what he calls "the Boschian method":

• "time no longer flows in a straight line"
• "history loses its coordinate points and therefore its constancy
• "cause and effect are sundered"
• "space loses its divisions"
• "motion loses its efficacy"
• "gravity loses its inescapability"
• "life loses its phyla"
• "characters mutate"
• "behaviours lose their norms. Or rather, norms are represented not as injunctions but as worst-case scenarios"
• "art loses its conventions"

"Sure, there are writers who 'push the envelope,'" Seward adds. "But Motherfuckers does not just push the envelope. It beats at it with its fists, kicks, bites, and stabs the envelope. No matter how jaded a reader you are, no matter how much you've read your Henry Miller and Marquis de Sade, this is the book that will leave you feeling bad for the envelope. After Motherfuckers, it will never be the same again."

The police in Manchester, England (where Britton and Butterworth are based), didn't appreciate the idea of "satire via hyperbole and excess." Not long after "Lord Horror" was published, in 1989, the pair paid for their provocations in jail time and other forms of harrassment. Half the print run was confiscated, and a judge declared the book obscene, "less for its sex or violence than for anti-semitic ravings put into the mouths of anti-semitic characters," Seward notes. (The fact that the title character of "Lord Horror" is based on the World War II British fascist William Joyce, popularly known as Lord Haw-Haw, apparently failed to strike the judge as relevant.)

Britton went to prison for four months. Instead of discouraging him, the sentence hardened his resolve. It was in prison that he conceived the story of "Motherfuckers."

Here's a taste of it, taken from "Horror Panegyric," which offers excerpts of all three novels:

Fifty years on, Horror had confided to Ecker, Auschwitz would be a recognisable brand name, a mythic character as well-known as Sherlock Holmes or Tarzan. A fortune awaited the author who could bring 'Mr Auschwitz' to life. To recreate the persona of Auschwitz would be an ordained mission. Auschwitz, the holy end-all of life's futile pattern, slinking through the subconscious of humanity, the one archetypal riff common to all nightmares, fuelled on the anvil of Little Richard.

In a hundred years, Auschwitz would form its own genre and become the most successfully marketed product in the history of the world, a name as well-known globally as Coca Cola, taking all media under its encompassing umbrella. The camps were the obvious ultimate enclosed world, the desired image of world television, beamed by satellite into each city, town and village, ideal for community soap operas (a story of everyday life on the edge of life), of science fiction time travel (travel back through your life and end it in Auschwitz). In this televised scenario the dog-boys loomed large as Heathcliff doomed lovers, the spice of sexy bodice-rippers which thrilled millions of women. Guilt would never stand in the way of commerce ...

Seward calls "Motherfuckers" a masterpiece and compares it to the works of the Marquis de Sade and William S. Burroughs. After reading it myself, I'm inclined to agree. But he prefers not to emphasize "the rectitude of these books" for their moral instruction. "You can read them like the Gospel, if you want, and draw out the lessons," he writes. "But that's not really the point. These are not moral books. They're good books."

To read Seward's entire essay, go here.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Things are going so well in Iraq that, as the headline says, "Pentagon Urges Delay in U.S. Troop Reductions in Iraq." Or as retired four-star Gen. Barry McCaffrey said the other day at the Council on Foreign Relations, "If you look at the totality of our experience in Iraq, it's been a major disaster. There's no two ways about it."

Words won't do:

No Penetration.

I couldn't be there for his speech to the financial bigwigs, but Gail Collins was. Her column this morning shows yet again that the President With His Head Up His Ass is well named. She writes:

The president squinched his face and bit his lip and seemed too antsy to stand still. As he searched for the name of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia ("the king, uh, the king of Saudi") and made guy-fun of one of the questioners ("Who picked Gigot?"), you had to wonder what the international financial community makes of a country whose president could show up to talk economics in the middle of a liquidity crisis and kind of flop around the stage as if he was emcee at the Iowa Republican Pig Roast.

The column is also charming proof that Collins must be a fan of the 1940 screwball comedy "His Girl Friday" and Walter J. Burns, the editor of The Morning Post, who orders an underling in the newsroom, "Take the President's speech and run it on the funny page."

Burns has plenty of gems like that. Here's another: "Now, listen, Duffy -- I want you to tear out the whole front page... That's what I said -- the whole front page! Never mind the European war! We've got something a whole lot bigger than that."

Some folks in Montreal want to name a busy subway station for the late great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson in the Montreal nabe where he was born and raised, The Globe and Mail reports.

But zehr eez a leetle problem: The station is already named for Lionel-Adolphe Groulx, a locally famous Quebec priest notable for his xenophobic racism (a k a "nationalistic" beliefs).

Not to worry. A McGill University professor suggests that the station name be shared. He favors "paying homage to both men" (you read that right) with the hyphenated name Station Oscar Peterson-Lionel Groulx.

"Yes, there is a disagreeable underside to the man -- the anti-Semitism, the fascist sympathies," the prof concedes, referring to Groulx of course. But he tells the paper, "I feel uncomfortable about erasing his impact from Quebec history." (If only.) And the prof adds, "We could enjoy the pleasure of an interesting meeting of two important historical figures." (You read that right, too.)

"Yeah," says a friend of mine, a Montreal native who fled the city long ago. "For an allegedly enlightened society, a great number of hardcore fascist bastids is still well entrenched there. I theenk, senor, Kweebek could be considered der Österreich of N. America."

Postscript: Rename the station? Forget it.

A reader from Oregon writes, "Help us, we who check your blog regularly!! Please add something -- ANYTHING!!!! I forget about it being there and then get my special dose of heavy metal speed before I can mute the chaos! -- Your loving fans in the thousands ..."

OK, you asked for it. Here's anything:

A reader from Yurp writes, "Ach!! The Blinding Titties! I'm wearing a string of garlic around my neck now which I clutch feverishly whenever they appear ... and I'm stuffing chunks of garlic in my ears whenever I get hit by the Torture Hit Parade (Actually, I luuuuv it ... Our kraut secretary of the interior, by the way, has "The History of Torture" on his coffee table...) ... Nader: Isn't he, in effect, saying that those of his Florida voters who would have switched to Gore in the case of his abstinence would have given Al a fat lead? However, math is not my forte ...  P.S. The Ladykiller rides again...He is now wreaking havoc in Paris ... Sauve qui peut ..."

And another from the Southwest boondocks: "Have you seen this? The mind boggles at possibilities in the hands of neo-quizzers. 'twould make water boarding obsolete, not ta mench human cattle prod ta line 'em up ... Forget da arbeit macht frei signs."

Then yesterday there was David Brooks to the grammar born: "I'm far from the biggest Hillary-lover on the planet, but her resilience and courage is moving." Which brought this reply: "Brooks listens far too much to his hero, the President With His Head Up His Ass. They is fucking stupid."

And finally, shades of James Gilray: