Sunday, 2 March 2014
Transactions of the Flesh, A Homage to Joris-Karl Huysmans, edited by D.P. Watt & Peter Holman, Zagava & Ex-Occidente Press / Onion Songs by Steve Rasnic Tem, Chomu Press
There is little need to be a lover - or harbour knowledge equivalent to
its eighteen contributors - of J.K. Huysmans to appreciate the latest
'ZEX' co-production. Only a mind open to the broad scope of European
literature at large, past and present. I write this knowingly of the
former and, at least, in ongoing hope of the latter.
The subject for which these tales are in homage has certainly
focussed and exercised these writers more formal literary abilities -
with the results, in the main, both lovely and surprisingly fresh.
The restraint in ruminations, 'adventures of the self,' (in Jonathan
Wood's 'Pray to the God of Flux') feel perfectly contemporary while
remaining prescient. Disillusionment, perhaps, making a comeback.
Art's historic relationship to Disease bears novel interpretation, in
Louis Marvick's 'The Red Seed' and Eugene Thacker's biographical
essay on the 'corporeal anomolies' of the tragic, infected, St. Lydwina.
('An Expiatory Pessimism'). Colin Insole's luxuriously decadent
'Salammbo and the Zaimph of Tanit' sees transient beauty emerge
from the degradation of an 1860s' Parisien slum to sensualise an
amateur artist thus far disappointed in marriage only to be returned,
too soon, to the primordial mud from whence it came in a sumptuous
paene, as much to Flaubert or Baudelaire as Huysmans alone.
I've long been intrigued, and not a little perplexed, at the idea of
the Catholic Sensualist; a peculiarly southern European trait.
While the UK has had its fair share of self-doubting religios, (such
as the Inkling set of Lewis and Tolkien), the issue of sex as felt
rarely, publicly, reared its inquisitive head. Huysmans very Frenchness
held sway in one characteristic regard; his openness.
Just one tale here directly indulges, (purple) head-on; M.O.N.'s
'Indescribable.' The secretive author's title might be deemed unwise,
placed before the reviewer, though he or she does manage to avoid
nomination for this year's Bad Sex Award by describing feeling with
rather more gynacological gymnasticism than the act itself.
Other treats here include Berit Ellingsen's northern mythic 'Summer
Dusk, Winter Moon,' where an immortal hero is callously used as
eternal protectorate to an ungrateful village; a lovely statue whose
original model reappears brought to startlingly unexpected life features
in Harold Billings's 'Angel Head.' Fans of the ubiqitous Mark Valentine
and his writing partner John Howard will be pleased to see they each
have characteristic new tales included. ('The Key to Jerusalem' and
'Ziegler Against the World'). There is a nineteenth tale - a newly-
translated playlet co-penned by Huysmans himself. ('Pierrot the
Sceptic'). A riotous romp, almost Ortonesque, that climaxes the book's
intellectual pretensions with a welcome pie-in-the-face.
Being a ZEX release this is a very limited edition, but another
exceptional production in its faux crushed silk cover in Royal
blue and art-endpapers by Louis Ricardo Falero. The finest original
collection of the year so far.
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Rasnic Tem, it appears, is another of those authors (for which, Pan
readers will note, I've a particular fondness) capable of describing
long-harboured mania in language of deceptive simplicity. Even where a
character's subjective view of themselves lack subtlety, as with the
office worker's constant perception of his life as a circus clown in
'Slapstick,' or the divorcee's suicidal desire for complete alienation
in 'Unknown,' the experiential mindset of each rings entirely true.
What connects each tale in this forty-two set release, (alongside a
whole three-decade gamut of obsession, depression and schizophrenia),
is the feeling of a stable delusion suddenly shifted to a unstable
reality. Rasnic Tem recognises how the older we get, any relief we may
once have felt awakening from a childhood nightmare is now tempered by
far more frightening everyday truths. Age and experience offer no
safer landings.
Another meticulous obsession, prompted by familial loss, is 'drawn'
out in 'Doodles,' where a father fills the unfillable space in his
life in a way that might see history repeating. In 'The Figure in
Motion,' a widower feels compelled to publicly demonstrate only happy
memories of the wife he's lost, self-denying to the point where he no
longer percieves his own fate. Most painfully touching in this regard
is 'Charles.' Seemingly constructed as a modern gothic ghost tale, it
soon becomes clear that any apparent spirit is no more than that of
the sad, unattainable hope of a dementia-afflicted mother.
As 'everyday truths' go, these are drawn as anything but mundane.
In 'Cats, Dogs and Other Creatures,' are the parents' children just
play-acting fatalities on the lawn? Or are Rasnic Tem's narrative
descriptions rather more literal? 'Night, the Endless Snowfall' and
'Archetype' each add to the sense of familial insecurtiy; that families,
far from safe, reassuring communities, are as alienating in their own
way as any group of perfect strangers.
Labels: keywords
Chomu Press,
Joris-Karl Huysmans,
Steve Rasnic Tem,
Zagava & Ex-Occidente Press
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