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.

Collage: God introduces Eve to Adam in R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis Illustrated;   poet Allen Ginsberg holding a flower, standing in front of life-size photograph of himself, by  ”Allen 2 (Portrait – Two Polaroids)” by Elsa Dorfman, 1986 ; Professor Farnsworth in Matt Groening’s Futurama;  Sally Eaton, Barry McGuire, and Hiram Keller from the musical Hair, photographed by Kenn Duncan for After Dark Magazine, December 1968, via Hair – The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, backed by a Hair poster that was also the album cover of the original cast recording; an illustration depicting tactics used by the Spanish Inquisition to compell confessions from accused heretics, via The Cutting Edge.

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 93^rd 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.

You can read the entire article by Bridget Murphy here.

Congratulations to Maud Newton for winning the Narrative Magazine Annual Fiction Prize for her novel excerpt, When the Flock Changed.

Former Animal superstar Eric Burdon talks to Bradley Mason Hamlin about writing, filmmaking, shady record deals, and more at Mystery Island.

 On the House of the Rising Sun musical arrangement, Burdon says, “We didn’t have the time or the space to put the name of everyone on the credits. M.J., our inventive manager had a plan or maybe he and Mr. Price had a plan. ‘Lets put Alan’s name on the single for now and we will sort it out later, we’re all good friends here!’ Star-struck, drunk & stoned–we went for it in a hurry. There are many stories in the rock and roll business but this one takes the biscuit; it was the first of the great rip-offs and stands in history as that.”

 On writing, Burdon says, “Since the early days I used to write about my experiences while on the road and about life in general. I would dress them up with collages and photographs. When I met Nina Simone she took a look at one of my journals and she told me, ‘You are a music historian.’”

I recently reread Bergman on Bergman: Interviews With Ingmar Bergman by Stig Bjorkman, Torsten Manns, and Jonas Sima, translated by Paul Britten Austin.

In the February 24, 1969 interview, Swedish film director Bergman balks at questions that are more like statements, explaining, “Every time you’ve put concrete questions to me I’ve tried to express myself in my own way and give you an answer. But when Torsten delivers a little lecture – however interesting I find it in itself – and then leaves me a wide field to expatiate on, I feel depressed, because it isn’t a concrete question. For me my work, or whatever you like to call it – these thirty films – are something solid, something I’ve made. So I must have concrete questions if I’m to give you concrete answers.”

That sounds like something Jeff VanderMeer told me early on when I interviewed him for Literary Kicks (his statement didn’t make it into the interview. Maybe it should have – it’s actually kind of instructive).

From Student Publications,  John F. Reed Honors Program, Fort Lewis College, April 2009, in a thesis called Ancient Spooks Through Modern Specs: The Contemporary Demand for Esoteric History, Melissa B. McConnell says:

“Ancient Egypt and ancient Greece, two immortal civilizations of the ancient world, have recently been found to be rife with what is, to the modern eye, grotesque practices and dark ideas about the nature of life and death. In the last several decades, there has been an explosion of study focused on this topic and an increased interest in magic, its definition, and uses within the historical context.

“Where does this sudden attention come from? Because modern American and European culture has become enamored with the esoteric, there has been a sudden increase in demand for arcane history. This focus has been romanticized from the contemporary framework which has built supernatural up to be so unusual and strange.

“This is an exegesis on contemporary popular culture and its influence and how it steers the course of popular and academic history. In the past several decades, an increasing interest in gothic and supernatural phenomena has captured certain segments of the population. Movies, books, video games, and even fashion have dabbled in things arcane. From Harry Potter to death metal, the explosion in fascination in the occult has created a market for ‘weird history.’ ”

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I know I’m not the first person to have a problem with Thomas Wolfe. I’m stuck on the racist treatment of Blacks and Jews by the protagonist, Eugene, and his friends during their childhood.

Even though it had been years since I read Look Homeward, Angel, I included Wolfe, as well as Proust and Kerouac, as influences on the semi-autobiographical aspect of my novel Tamper. I recently decided to read Angel again, and I can’t get past that ugliness.

 Sure, many people have explained that “those were different times,” or that Wolfe is not condoning the racist actions, but simply “telling it like it was.” Some even see it as a soul-baring confession. The thing is, even keeping all these explanations in mind, I find it very difficult to identify or sympathize with the perpetrator of these gross injustices.

I thought I would find more about this on the internet, but apparently, all the in-depth essays on the subject are restricted to journals that I can’t access unless I finally make good my threat to go back to college.

Over at Amazon.com, book reviewer Mark Valentine says, “I doubt if Wolfe will be read by a wide audience in this day because his race references can easily be construed as racism. Push past that, though, and read it for its heart, not the age in which it was written.”

According to The Washington Post, civil rights crusader/punk rocker Henry Rollins thinks highly of Wolfe, which means Rollins either shares Mark Valentine’s view, or, like me, hasn’t read Angel lately and has forgotten all the bad parts.

 Here’s something interesting: The YMI Cultural Center in North Carolina, reporting on the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Reopening in 2004, allows that “Wolfe’s depictions of African-American individuals are sadly stereotypical. Wolfe’s closest contact with African-Americans came in brief snatches while on his paper route. This short, impersonal contact helps explain the shallowness of Wolfe’s understanding of African-Americans. In conjunction with the reopening of the Old Kentucky Home boardinghouse, Wolfe’s childhood home, the Thomas Wolfe Memorial and the YMI Cultural Center are presenting (Wolfe’s play) Welcome to Our City… While we will stick closely to Wolfe’s original text, the African-American characters will be portrayed with more depth than Wolfe originally gave them.” And that comes from an organization that presumably likes Thomas Wolfe.

Most exciting to me, so far, is that I found a book I want to read, and that’s always a good thing. The Fourth Ghost: White Southern Writers and European Facism, 1930-1950, by Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr. The thesis of this book, according to reviewer Ted Atkinson on H-Net, is that “European fascism indelibly shaped how southern writers understood southern society and culture and, as a consequence, exerted a profound influence on their writing–sometimes directly, but more often than not as a haunting force.”

Quite a dilemma.  Any comments?