I listen to Jeff VanderMeer’s advice for one reason: He’s too good a writer not to be doing something right. I’m halfway through reading Finch and it rocks. I think maybe Jeff’s parents found him in a rocket ship from a planet with superior writing skills and raised him as an Earthling. Either that, or he works really hard at it.
I suppose my recent cut-up experiment is more about marketing than writing. It’s certainly easier to write a cut-up than it is to get someone to read it, but I don’t want to trick anyone into reading something that isn’t any good. Quality should always come first. One should believe they have a product of top-notch quality before promoting and marketing it. One produces a good cut-up the same way one creates good poetry or prose – study, practice, persistence, and patience.
I used to think maybe I was “cheating” when I added, deleted, or otherwise manipulated the raw composite of two different texts joined together in the middle. Finally, a quote from William Burroughs himself, which I found at Reality Studio, put my mind at ease. In a statement to the 1962 International Writers’ Conference, Burroughs said, “In using the fold in method I edit, delete, and rearrange as in any other method of composition.”
Note: A fold-in is simply a variation of the cut-up. As Burroughs explains in the same Statement to the 1962 International Writer’s Conference:
“Brion Gysin, an American painter living in Paris, has used what he calls ‘the cut up method’ to place at the disposal of writers the collage used in painting for fifty years — Pages of text are cut and rearranged to form new combinations of word and image — In writing my last two novels, Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded, i have used an extension of the cut up method I call ‘the fold in method’ — A page of text — my own or some one else’s — is folded down the middle and placed on another page — The composite text is then read across half one text and half the other — The fold in method extends to writing the flash back used in films, enabling the writer to move backwards and forwards on his time track — For example I take page one and fold it into page one hundred — I insert the resulting composite as page ten — When the reader reads page ten he is flashing forwards in time to page one hundred and back in time to page one — The deja vue phenomena can so be produced to order — (This method is of course used in music where we are continually moved backwards and forward on the time track by repetition and rearrangements of musical themes.”
Go to Reality Studio to read more of Burroughs’ statement as published in the Transatlantic Review
Now, back to my statement that quality should always come first. I’m enjoying a novel by Jeff VanderMeer called Finch (the third and possibly last in the Ambergris cycle). This reminded me that Jeff and I had briefly discussed an article by Jessa Crispin about Jeff’s other new book, Booklife. It went like this:
19 October 2009 at 6:21 PM
Bill Ectric says:
Jeff, I would like to say a word about the one negative review of Booklife that I’ve read. I’m a fan of Jessa Crispin and many of the books she recommends are right up my alley, but when she says Booklife “made her uneasy” and has questionable priorites, it occurs to me that virtually every book Crispin likes has already been through the “networking” and “ego-feeding” processes that she apparently finds distasteful. The difference is, in many cases, those authors have people in the trenches to do the legwork and nurturing for them. Jeff, I believe you wrote Booklife for authors who must “switch hats” from artist to publicist to merchant without loosing foucus. Anyone who has read your fiction knows that creativity and skill are first and foremost. I’m finding Booklife to be quite solid and helpful.
19 October 2009 at 6:27 PM
JeffVanderMeer says:
Bill: I was bothered by it because it seemed to insinuate that I was being dishonest in the book. But I’ve since asked Jessa if I can interview her for this site, and she accepted. That’ll run sometime in November or December, but it’ll go into more detail about her views on writing, creativity, and careers. I do plan in the second edition to reference that “non review” as she called it, in the context of double and triple making sure that readers understand why I’m offering up the information in the Public Booklife section.
I really look forward to further dialogue between Jeff and Jessa, two of my favorite bloggers, and I hope it happens!
Fresh from the research field!
I’m the first to admit this experiment was not as scientifically controlled as it could have been. It was more of a warm-up exercise; nevertheless, I did learn something that I found quite interesting.
First, a brief summary of the experiment:
I created a piece of cut-up writing from two newspaper articles and asked twenty people to read it. Each person was asked to write a brief summary, at least one sentence, as to what the piece was about. There were no wrong answers, as this particular cut-up piece was by no means self-contained and coherent. I did in fact have a story line in mind when I created the piece, but the point of the experiment was not really what the readers thought the piece was about, but whether or not they even gave it a chance.
The readers were divided evenly into two groups. When I say “groups” I don’t mean they were gathered together in one room at the same time. I interacted with each person individually.
Group One received no explanation at all as to the technique I used to write the cut-up, nor were they advised of the sources material (newspaper articles A and B), or given any other information.
I gave Group Two an explanation of the cut-up method and briefly described my source material. In a departure from my original plan, I gave in to temptation and added more “clues” after the first two subjects in Group Two expressed complete bafflement upon reading the cut-up. Beginning with the third person in Group Two, I asked them think of the piece as Science Fiction. By the fifth person, I found myself explaining that some cut-ups are impressionistic, evoking images or feelings that are not literally stated. As I said earlier, this was not a strictly controlled experiment.
The interesting discovery I mentioned at the beginning of this article is this: The more I spoke to each subject about the cut-up, the more they found to say about it after they read it. This is not to say they necessarily understood what they were reading, if that were even possible, but even if they didn’t understand it, they were more willing to talk about it and less shy about venturing “guesses” about the meaning of the piece.
This result seems to confirm my hypothesis, which is that the work of William S. Burroughs would be much less accessible without the helpful blurbs and reviews that serve essentially as tutorials to potential readers, as exemplified in the Amazon.com Product Description for The Soft Machine:
“An adventure that will take us even further into the dark recesses of his imagination, a region where nothing is sacred, nothing taboo. Continuing his ferocious verbal assault on hatred, hype, poverty, war, bureaucracy, and addiction in all its forms, Burroughs gives us a surreal space odyssey through the wounded galaxies in a book only he could create.”
I am not suggesting that Burroughs is anything less than a genius, or that he owes his reputation only to hype and marketing. Far from it; he is one of my favorite writers and my favorite person to hear reading from his own books in audio recordings. I do, however, believe that the promotional blurbs and reviews bring in more readers who would otherwise deem his work unreadable. While this is somewhat true for almost any book (think of an American Literature teacher saying, “While reading Gatsby, look for examples of excess and decadence…”), it is especially true for the cut-up works of Burroughs and other writers.
One might say, “And you needed an experiment to prove that?” Still, until something is proven, it is only an assumption, no matter how obvious it seems.
A more in depth study would include a higher number of subjects, divided into more groups based on their reading habits as determined by a questionnaire. I simply asked each potential subject if they preferred fiction or nonfiction, whether or not they ever shop on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, and approximately how many books they read in the past year. There were an equal number of men and women in each group.
What follows is the cut-up piece that I used in the experiment, followed by a record of the responses from the twenty subjects, reproduced as closely as possible to their actual written responses.
(My comments are in parentheses and italics).
The Cut-up:
A friend from Cairo and that man, Reynolds, if he would, in the midst of a telescope someone starts to cry. Florida feels helpless and sure.
“Reynolds, they don’t know how to have you.”
“Got that, suddenly,” said Reynolds. “We’ll ship them rather than facts. Woman friend, an official worry, justifiable in most technologies.”
“Edibility and competent. How many have they asked again, or too emotional to succeed?
“We’ll get them out environmentally. Next few weeks. The crying is, how many are conned voluntarily responding? It’s old, an association that can muster tears and science actors.”
“College at Jacksonville on the Westside, about 12,000. Expect the eye. Humans.”
Reynolds gulped and replied, “Among all the creatures, the five tractors have facial nerves and use Northeast Florida as respiratory and facial, which is closely related, so distributing them free, they sometimes merge, and other organized laughter.”
“And a 1986 Florida teacher, other former executives in communication centers in Oakland, evidenced when infants donate members. Attention strong, because the company may trigger that line.”
“Anymore, anger a society member such as joy, and since it types range, it may be related.”
Group One Responses (no information given)
Group 2 – Given Extra Information
TOP: William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin BOTTOM: Jed Birmingham, Oliver Harris
Wikipedia says:
“The Cut-up Technique is performed by taking a finished and fully linear text (printed on paper) and cutting it in pieces with a few or single words on each piece. The resulting pieces are then rearranged into a new text. The rearranging of work often results in surprisingly innovative new phrases. A common way is to cut a sheet in four rectangular sections, rearranging them and then typing down the mingled prose while compensating for the haphazard word breaks by improvising and innovating along the way.”
Dr. Oliver Harris of Keele University, in a paper called “Burroughs is a poet too, really”: the Poetics of Minutes to Go (The Edinburgh Review 114 (2005), 24-36), says:
“Burroughs claimed that the results in Minutes to Go were presented intact, but the precise selection of the source material already pointed the way for his use of chance as a middle-term, opening up possibilities for further dialectical development that he would explore for the best part of a decade.
“As with the newspaper cut-ups, both these texts end with a note that identifies the source text, but here it is followed by another line: “Words by Rimbaud, arrangement by Burroughs and Corso” (23). There are several things to say about this. Firstly, the term “arrangement” clearly denotes a design, the exercise of control, and so contradicts the assumption of materials presented entirely intact.”
My email to Oliver Harris, 11/03/09:
Does this sound correct to you?
While there are many cut-up methods (one might even say an infinite variety), I’m thinking that all these methods can be divided into two broad categories.
The first category uses only the texts chosen for the cut-up, with no additions by the composer. This type of cut-up yields a more coherent message if the texts themselves are focused on specific subjects, or a relationship is implied (i.e. half a page on viruses, half a page on language), or if the sources are identified.
The second category uses texts from a variety of sources, some of which may seem completely unrelated, but the composer then polishes the rough edges by adding and subtracting words to make the sentences flow more naturally. Cheers, Bill Ectric
Dr. Harris’ reply, 11/05/09:
“Dear Bill,
Interesting – although my instinct is to say ‘look at concrete examples’ and see if it works…. you might find precisely the opposite! Certainly, some single texts when cut up could seem incoherent (think of what happened to Rimbaud’s “To A Reason” whereas some composite texts seem to ‘work’ despite being obviously drawn from heterogeneous sources. But, essentially, the point is that this kind of analysis HAS NOT BEEN DONE – and NEEDS TO BE! There is still a sad tendency to generalize about the method and then just focus on whatever text is in hand (although there’s not much of that) – so keep going is my advice! You will see, on RealityStudio, some really good new work on cut-up publications by Jed Birmingham and others that is headed in the right direction.
My best wishes for now, Oliver”
Several years ago, when I created my first two cut-up poems, Club Web and Developing the World For Profit, I manipulated the texts extensively and in every conceivable way.
This seemed like the right way to create a cut-up, and the closer I come to finishing this introduction to my experiment, the more likely it seems that I was correct. It also seems likely that every bit of data available for analysis can be broken down into smaller bits of data for further analysis. This brings to mind a problem in quantum physics, in which measuring the position of a subatomic particle changes the particle’s momentum, which is why quantum physicists emphasize a statistical approach. Just as a certain percentage of particles will behave a certain way, perhaps a certain number of people will interpret a cut-up a certain way, based on certain conditions.
This experiment will be to create a cut-out from two newspaper articles, related only in that they came from the same newspaper (but on different dates), and ask two groups of subjects to read the resultant cut-up and venture to say what it’s about. One group of readers will be made aware of the source material of both cut-ups, including title of article and name of newspaper); the other group will be not. My purpose is to discern if foreknowledge of the titles and sources of the articles will affect the reader’s interpretations of the cut-up.
I chose two newspaper articles from The Florida Times-Union:
1. The Crying Game: Showing Emotion in the Workplace, by Candance Moody, FL Times-Union, Thursday, May 22, 2008
2. 12,000 Telescopes Magnify Group’s Job, by Sandy Strickland, FL Times-Union, March 1, 2007
Here is the cut-up:
A friend from Cairo and that man, Reynolds, if he would, in the midst of a telescope someone starts to cry. Florida feels helpless and sure.
“Reynolds, they don’t know how to have you.”
“Got that, suddenly,” said Reynolds. “We’ll ship them rather than facts. Woman friend, an official worry, justifiable in most technologies.”
“Edibility and competent. How many have they asked again, or too emotional to succeed?
“We’ll get them out environmentally. Next few weeks. The crying is, how many are conned voluntarily responding? It’s old, an association that can muster tears and science actors.”
“College at Jacksonville on the Westside, about 12,000. Expect the eye. Humans.”
Reynolds gulped and replied, “Among all the creatures, the five tractors have facial nerves and use Northeast Florida as respiratory and facial, which is closely related, so distributing them free, they sometimes merge, and other organized laughter.”
“And a 1986 Florida teacher, other former executives in communication centers in Oakland, evidenced when infants donate members. Attention strong, because the company may trigger that line.”
“Anymore, anger a society member such as joy, and since it types range, it may be related.”
Originally, I intended to simply copy the sentences and sentence fragments exactly as they appear on my taped-together newspaper clipping. In an interesting psychological development, I found it extremely difficult not to modify sentence fragments, thereby preserving at least some semblance of logic. This was also true for changing plural to singular and vice versa. Many times, when I create a cut-out, a unique story seems gradually to suggest itself to me from the fragmented texts. Some observers will say that I project a story onto the text, not the other way around. It is possible that both are true at the same time and are two ways of seeing describing the same phenomenon. If this is problematic, it is because my tampering with the text might influence the message received by the subjects of the experiment. Whenever a story begins to suggest itself from texts, my natural inclination is to assist in its birth. Is this a moral issue or an aesthetics issue? And does it skew the experiment?
It seems likely that the more limits one imposes on their cutup method, the higher number of cutups one must create to find one that is aesthetically pleasing, much in the same way a roller of dice must toss the dice repeatedly until they achieve the desired number. This is the equivalent of throwing paint randomly on a canvas until one obtains a pattern worthy of framing. The less rules, the less left to chance, and the sooner one can create a cut-up of which can be said, “That’s a keeper.” But is that really what we want?
TO BE CONTINUED
Consarn it, Maud Newton! I try not to feature any one blogger too often here at Bill Ectric’s Place, but you keep posting such damned interesting stuff! I’m referring to this and this.
I think that photo of Henry James , Edith Wharton , and Howard Sturgis would make a great poster. I’m going to look into getting the picture enlarged and framed.
Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Howard Sturgis in 1904
I, too, like James’ The Aspern Papers better than Turn of the Screw or Daisy Miller, which are usually cited as his most famous works. I’m also partial to his short story, The Author of Beltraffio.
Today I reserved a book at my local public library called The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton because I haven’t read any of those. I can also read them here, but I want an actual book I can carry around.
Maybe we overlook this question because it is so taken-for-granted, but when exactly, in the book of Genesis, did God tell Adam & Eve that nudity was wrong? The answer is, he didn’t. It is almost as if Adam & Eve assumed it, and God decided to let them go on believing it.
After eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve hide from God.
The book of Genesis says, “Then the Lord God called to the man (Adam), and said to him, ‘Where are you?’
Adam answers, “I heard the sound of Thee in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.”
To which God replies, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
Well, first off, God asks presumably asked, “Where are you” like a parent humoring a young child, pretending they can’t find the toddler hiding under in an obvious place. God sees and knows everything.
Secondly, God could have said, “Your bodies are nothing I haven’t seen before. I made you. I designed the whole reproduction process, remember?”
But God drops that subject and moves on to the fruit and the serpent, ultimately banishing the couple from the garden of Eden, but not before making some garments (of skin, not leaves) for them to wear. It doesn’t say what kind of skin God used for the garments, but we know cows and sheep were in for a rough time in the books that followed.
From that point on, the Bible assumes that people should not look upon each other naked, but it never really explains why.
I personally think that during the Dark Ages, some of the priests kept themselves covered because they were ashamed of their bodies, possessing either scrawny or flabby frames and in some cases, tiny penises, but that didn’t stop them from stripping the clothes off of accused heretics in front of leering, bloodthirsty crowds. Why is it that every time somebody was thought to be a heretic during the Inquisition, or a witch during colonial times, it was okay for the church people to strip off their clothes in public? See, that just seems counter-intuitive.
In favor of nudity, we’ve had Allen Ginsburg, the Age of Aquarius celebrated in the Broadway musical, Hair, and even Forrest J Ackerman, the editor of Famous Monsters Magazine in the sixties & seventies, who proudly proclaimed his membership in a nudist colony. And I don’t know this for a fact, but I’ve always thought that Professor Farnsworth, on the animated series Futurama, is based loosely on Ackerman, especially after watching the episode in which the Professor lauds nudity as natural and healthy.
On the other hand, widespread nudity would put even more people out of work (I’m thinking of clothing manufacturers, but yeah, porn producers, too).
But I’m not here to discuss the appropriateness of going without clothes. The release of R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis Illustrated has simply made me curious about the origins of the taboo. William S. Burroughs would probably say it’s another control tactic. On the other hand, I like wearing clothes, so there is no urgency to figure it out.
Basement Halloween Landscape
Two things come together:
First thing: If you’re a regular here at Bill Ectric’s Place, you know I like to put together a collage for each blog entry. Sometimes the collages become so time-consuming, I wonder if it interferes with my writing.
Second thing: Deciding how much of my novel, Tamper, to make available free online. I posted the first three chapters a couple of months ago. Maud Newton made the first chapter of her novel available for Narrative Magazine to publish online (and won a prize for it!), and Levi Asher has been publishing his memoir, which may or may not become a book, online in serial format. Corey Doctorow says that making his novels available free online doesn’t hurt sales of his books.
Anyway, I found a way to play with photos and promote Tamper at the same time, by illustrating chapters of my book online.
Top Center: Bruce "Zolar" King; Bottom Center: King's book, which was featured in the "Libra man" scene of the 1976 Grey Gardens film by by David and Albert Maysles, Elen Hovde, Muffie Meyer, & Susan Froemke; Right: the face of Occult America author Mitch Horowitz photoshopped onto a coin-operated fortune teller
Aside from reading, my big three interests are (1) writing (2) promoting my writing, and (3) erasing the line between science and mysticism. I’m reading Occult America by Mitch Horowitz. Fun and fascinating. This passage is only tangentially related to writing, but it’s got the other two covered nicely:
One vending machine especially caught my eye: a dime horoscope dispenser. Drop in a coin, pull a lever, and out would slide a little pink scroll wound in a clear plastic sleeve.
That coin machine . . . machine had it’s own story, one perhaps less august than that of ancient scholars or Renaissance courts but, to a young boy, no less fascinating. It was invented in 1934 by a clothing and securities salesman named Bruce King – or, as he was better known by his nom de mystique, Zolar. (“It comes from ‘zodiac’ and ‘solar system’,” he explained. ‘Registered U.S. trademark.”) His initiation was not in the temples of Egypt but on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, New Jersey. There he witnessed a goateed Professor A. F. Seward thrusting a pointer at a huge zodiac chart while lecturing beachgoers on the destiny of the stars. Professor Seward sold one-dollar horoscopes to countless vacationers – so many, the rumor went, that he retired to Florida a millionaire. (The rumor, as will be seen, was true.)
Bursting forth from the boardwalks, Bruce King knew he had what it took to sell mysticism to the masses. “I felt the competition wasn’t great,” he told John Updike in The New Yorker in 1959, “and I could become the biggest man in the field.”
And that’s only the beginning. I’m going to enjoy this book, and will probably finish reading it just about the time UPS delivers my pre-ordered copy of Jeff VanderMeer’s new Ambergris novel Finch, which promises to be a fantastic noir/dark fantasy thriller of high literary caliber.
Oh, and here’s the Grey Gardens link.
Photo of Ingmar Bergman taken during the production of Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället) (1957). Svensk Filmindustri (SF) press photo. Source: Svenska filministitutet. Collage by Bill Ectric.
Excerpt from the book: Bergman on Bergman: Interviews With Ingmar Bergman by Stig Bjorkman, Torsten Manns, and Jonas Sima Translated from the Swedish by Paul Britten Austin, The Touchstone Edition, published by Simon & Schuster,1986. Original Swedish language edition © 1970 by P.A. Norstedt & Soners Forlag. This translation © 1973 by Martin Secker & Warburg Limited
TORSTEN MANNS: You have another play-within-the-play in The Hour of the Wolf. Are you a bit fixated on this sort of interlude?
INGMAR BERGMAN: After one has been working awhile on a full-length film, it’s a relief to interpolate something different. There sits your audience, looking in one direction. And suddenly you stick your head out and say – take a look over there for a while! And everyone turns his head. It gives them exercise. It’s as simple as that.
There was a good deal of discussion about the bit in Persona where the film snaps. A lot of wiseacres thought the interruption silly. They said it distracted the audience from what was going on, etc. Personally, I’m of exactly the opposite opinion. If you distract the audience temporarily from the course of events and then push them into it again, you don’t reduce their sensibility and awareness, you heighten it. In A Passion I’ve four clean acts – the film is built up in four blocks, and each block is rounded off with an aria. The actors appear and comment on their roles, place themselves slightly outside it…
… JONAS SIMA: The French nouvelle vague experimented with these ‘distancing’ effects. Belmondo, in A Bout de Souffle, turns direct to the audience now and again and comments on what’s going on. At the time this was regarded as something new and shocking.
BERGMAN: But it’s as old as the hills, don’t you realize that? In the theatre! The author turns directly to his audience. It’s simple and delightful.
Russ Davis (left and inset), an as-yet unidentified man-in-the-middle, and Stetson Kennedy (right) at Beluthahatchee in 2007, photo by Bill Ectric
Civil rights advocate Stetson Kennedy celebrated his 93rd birthday on October 4, 2009 at his home in Fruit Cove, Florida, on land that is known now as Beluthahatchee Park. Bridget Murphy, writing for the Florida-Times Union, tells us about the event, including the arrival of “a sight-impaired Jacksonville man (who) delivered the first copy of an audio version of Kennedy’s book The Klan Unmasked, as made for the Bureau of Braille and Talking Book Library Services.”
That “sight-impaired Jacksonville man” is my good friend Russell “Radio Rusty” Davis, folk singer, conservationist, occasional radio personality, and PR/Media Chair for the Foundation Fighting Blindness here in Jacksonville, FL. Russ was instrumental in making the audio book a reality, acting as liaison between the Stetson Kennedy Foundation and the Talking Book Library Services.
The last time I attended a Stetson Kennedy event, a couple of years ago, Russ played his guitar and sang a song by Woody Guthrie, whom Stetson knew personally and who sometimes visited Beluthahatchee back in the 1940s and ‘50s. When Russ finished the song, Stetson said, “I haven’t heard it played that good since Woody did it.”
Russ is modest and says Stetson was just being kind, but I heard it, too, and “Rusty” is the real thing when it comes to folk music.
