Anatomy. Monotony.

Edy Poppy

Original Publication: 2005

Original Publication in English Translation: 2018

Original Publisher in English: Dalkey Archive Press

Although I’m filing this as a “Reading the Dalkey Archive” post, it’s actually about two books: by Norwegian author Edy Poppy, translated by May-Brit Akerholt, and by Norwegian author Nina Lykke, translated by B. L. Crook.

And no, I’m not putting these two books together simply because they’re both by female Norwegian authors; I’m putting them in conversation because they’re both about extramarital affairs, the quest for romantic freedom and satisfaction, and jealousy. The two novels explore two different approaches—an open marriage, a secret affair—to the dissatisfaction, or incompleteness, so often found in traditional relationships.

They also present two different types of monotony. In Poppy’s book, the repetitive nature of the couple’s open relationship—taking a lover, returning to one’s “primary” partner, cutting things off, starting again—becomes repetitive. Poppy states this much more eloquently in her conversation with Siri Hustvedt (read the whole conversation ):

I had sent them an early version of the novel, then called:��Speculations Ģ����ý What Once Was, But That I Can Now Only Remember. In return I got a big analysis of my work and a refusal. One criticism was regarding the marriage of my main protagonists, a Norwegian wannabe writer called Vår and her French husband and mentor Lou. It was that the couple’s constant love experimentation was resulting in an unexpected form of monotony. Of repetition. And even though it was meant negatively, I thought, well, that’s very interesting; I want to explore that more, not less! I understood many things about my writing through this rejection.

In Natural Causes, the monotony is of the narrator ��������’s life and marriage. She’s a general practitioner whose patients tend do the same things over and over again. (Sometimes dangerous, such as continuing to smoke and drink, never to diet. Other times not so dangerous, but just as annoying, such as the hypochondriac who never stops coming in hoping for a diagnosis.) And her relationship with her husband, who is obsessed only with participating in skiing competitions, is a total monotonous drag.

There’s an affinity between these two books, a shared urge between the two female protagonists to find the best way to keep going, to live a life that’s fulfilling in a way that feels deserved and right.

*

But let’s back up and take these one at a time.

Anatomy. Monotony. is the story of Vår who, like any good protagonist in a Dalkey book, is struggling to write a book about her relationship with her husband. She’s married to Lou, but early on in their marriage was encouraged by him to maintain an incredibly passionate, almost obsessive relationship with a painter. (He’s referred to as “The Painter” in the excerpts from the novel she’s writing, and referred to as “The Lover” in the “real life” sections of the novel. I’ll use “The Lover” from here on out.)

A thruple, in modern parlance, and one that works . . . sort of . . . for a time. Lou encourages her to pose for, be painted by, and make love to The Lover; and Vår is caught between the love and desire she has for her husband and the freedom he allows, and the near animalistic passion she experiences only with The Lover.

But then, jealousy. And things end with The Lover.

“The Lover and I . . . We could never get enough. It was on the border of cannibalism . . . I really loved him, I truly did, I almost sacrificed Lou. But then it turned out to be wrong after all. Because now it’s over. Now I feel something else, less painful, safer . . . Friendship.”

The Lover remains a constant in the background, throughout the rest of the novel, sometimes as the friend Vår wants to talk with late at night, the love she hasn’t really “gotten over” (one of the best lines in the book is “nostalgia doesn’t mean anything other than what used to be is over, and now you wish it could be again”), and as an experiment that maybe went too far—at least for Lou. Which is why he proposes a sort of game, a chance to do it all over again, to find a similar type of freedom, but that this time he’ll be able to handle himself, to deal with the jealousy, to do things right.

Of course, in the present time in the book, Lou has gotten quite involved with Sidney, a young girl who resembles Jane Birkin (R.I.P.), and with whom he takes lots of long walks, pines over, randomly spends nights with, so on and so forth. Which makes Vår jealous.

In her words: “Jealousy is something I have nothing but contempt for, but it still gnaws away inside me. I refuse to be broken.”

So Lou makes a proposal. With a sort of Nietzschean logic he tells Vår that if she falls in love with someone again, like she did with The Lover, he’ll leave Sidney for good.

Enter The American. A cello player (his cello being the “only woman I’ve never left, and who has never left me,” a line so cheesy that Lou’s mocking groan slightly vindicates him) who lives in Amsterdam, has written a composition called “The Sexual Life of Plants” (another groan) that he’s about to debut, and with whom Vår has an instant, intense connection.

I don’t want to recount this book beat for beat—and to be honest, I’m cherry-picking moments here to try and logically build a sordid situation, whereas the book itself is muddier in a delightful, emotional way with semi-erotic digressions and meditations, and lots of other details rounding out these characters and their love affairs—but I wanted to get to this point, because this is where the masculine jealousy really starts to kick in.

Jealousy is always bad. And masculine jealousy is toxic and frequently dangerous.

Edy Poppy

If what I’ve written so far has you at all interested, you really should read this book for yourself. If you’ve ever felt love for multiple people at once, regret a relationship from the past that went sour or ended, or simply entertained the possibility of a nontraditional arrangement (“I never dreamed of finding the man of my life. I wanted to be independent. Free. Feminist. Lou, on the other hand, always dreamed about finding the woman of his life, even if he didn’t dream that this woman would be me. He wanted to be dependent. Macho. But it didn’t turn out like that.”), this book will raise a lot of questions and bring to light a lot of complicated feelings.

There’s also a pervasive sense of male creep throughout this novel, which the book undermines without being didactic or strident. Occasionally Poppy will be direct and on point, like in this passage:

“I mean that you should go to Amsterdam, Vår, that you should see, smell, feel, and let yourself be ‘fertilized’ . . .” says Lou and mocks me with the American’s cliché. “That you should take a chance. And if it goes to hell, if it goes the way I want it to . . . then I’ll take you back.” [Emphasis mine.]

But oftentimes the creep is just lurking, there in the background, in the form of phone calls and questions, and a latent desire to control the narrative . . . which all leads to a surprise (in part because it is not physically violent) resolution.

*

By contrast with Vår, Elin in has always lived within the bounds of what’s deemed “acceptable.” From the way she deals with her patients (who all test the bounds of her patience in different ways, each expecting the world, a quick and easy solution, without consideration for anyone or anything else), to her cozy life with her husband in a totally pleasant suburban community.

It’s not that she’s “buttoned down,” rather that that’s just the way things are. You work hard, earn a decent salary, live a comfortable life, and enjoy (maybe too much) drinking wine.

And then, almost by accident, she messages her former boyfriend—the one before her husband, the one with jealousy issues—and her life swerves.

At the start of Lykke’s novel, a year has passed since Elin sent that initial message, and a lot has happened. Most notably, ��������’s been having an affair with Bjørn, and more notably, her husband just found out. And unlike Lou from Anatomy. Monotony., he’s not about to entertain the possibility of any sort of “open” relationship.

What follows are essentially two plotlines: one recounting the development of the affair with Bjørn, the joy and freedom and hope and peace it brings to ��������’s life, the other a micro-analysis of her day at the clinic and all the stresses and impossible requests the average person makes of doctors and science in today’s day and age.

These intersect and bounce off one another, and equally held my interest, but for the sake of this particular piece, the affair is the only one I really want to write about.

In this instance, the jealousy displayed ������’t necessarily as tinged with destructiveness—or at least that ������’t the primary focus when it comes to Aksel, ��������’s husband—instead it plays as a sort of selfish narcissism, an inability on her husband’s part to understand ��������’s needs and desires. (“Aksel might have wanted the same thing that I did, that we would get over this crisis and grow from it and keep the home fire and the hearth fire and the daily fire burning, but none of that helped as long as other parts of him did not agree. And since these other parts of him were the parts that determined the basic functions, he was unable to sleep as long as I was next to him in the bed.”) And that’s just as hurtful, and just as disappointing. Especially since Elin sees the vibrancy gained through her relationship with Bjørn as a potential ��Dz����پ�������for her relationship with her husband.

And yet, quite clearly, and with my full consciousness, I noticed how quickly the normal, ordinary version of myself was replaced by this being who must have been asleep inside of me, and who behaved contrary to all of the things I’d said and believed up to that point.

Early on I began thinking in this way: What if I can take this energy and joy which I’ve found, all of this secretiveness and excitement, everything that’s welling up inside me, and which makes me have less desire for drinking wine and watching TV and everything else that I used to chew and drink and swallow in order to soothe and calm myself—what if this could give me and Aksel a new life?

By applying a kind of controlled and intelligently designed alchemy, the illegal would become legal, the dirty would become pure, and the painful would transform into something edifying. The end would sanctify the means, and all of this goodness, this wonderfulness, the delectable, the forbidden, would be permitted to go on and on and on, for eternity.

Nina Lykke

I’m not going to use this (very small) platform to promote cheating on your spouse, or necessarily embracing an open relationship—which ������’t for everyone, and can be tricky even for those who are into it—but it’s not unusual to reach a certain age and, despite the quality of your relationships, feel like there might be something more. Not necessarily a Grand Love Affair, or a Passion for the Ages, but a connection that is invigorating. Life is simultaneously very short and very long, and confining a person’s ability to love and experience—especially the way men have traditionally restricted their wives—feels so small and petty and limited.

And although neither of these books offer any direct solution to this age-old issue, they both wrestle with the complexities and paradoxes of love and freedom in ways that will definitely resonate with a wide swathe of readers—male and female, jealous or supportive.

*

To return to Anatomy. Monotony. for one second, with that idea of complexity and paradox in mind, it’s worth thinking about the way in which Vår is writing what is essentially autofiction inside of Poppy’s novel that, well, reads like autofiction.

The book is dedicated to: “my husband, who has given me everything, even what I didn’t want. (He is now my ex-husband).”

And ends with the Fresán-esque disclaimer: “P.S.: Everything I’ve written is true apart from what I’ve invented.”

Finally, there’s this quote from Vår that’s right at the heart of desire’s contradictions: “I answer that to miss me is wrong. That to miss me is the same as wasting time. A lot. If he can’t forget me. I close my eyes and I suppose that deep down, that’s what I hope. That I’m unforgettable.”

Mulligan Stew

Gilbert Sorrentino

Original Publication: 1979

Original Publisher: Grove Press

First Dalkey Archive Edition: 1996

“Cheers!” So this may be the first—but definitely not the last—entry in this series that is kind of weird.

First off, unlike the earlier posts, which try to say something semi-comprehensive about the book in question, this one is more of an invitation: I want everyone who reads this to join along with the landmark 20^th Season of the Two Month Review podcast and read with us throughout September and October. (And maybe a bit into November. Our idea of “months” and “time” is a bit slippery.)

Additionally, as TMR progresses, I’m going to be adding to this post every week. This may take the form of quotes, short analysis, info from outside sources, whatever. But in the end, it will be a chronicle of reading Mulligan Stew, rather than a static, singular post.

Anyway! Let’s dig in! Five reasons to read Mulligan Stew:

1) Sorrentino’s Reputation.

Gilbert Sorrentino is a foundational Dalkey Archive author. Actually, more than that, he’s like the literary father figure that the press’s catalog aspires to impress. He was one of John O’Brien’s aesthetic mentors, and a very close friend who was instrumental in the foundation of the Review of Contemporary Fiction and the press as a whole. (I think they came up with the name “Dalkey Archive Press” together.) The number of stories I heard about “Gil”—even though Gil was no longer speaking to John at the time, which, gulp, yeah, I totally get—could fill volumes. I heard about how Gil didn’t have any depth perception, thus fuck metaphor. I heard about the people who lived in the apartment complex that was the setting for Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things, which was the Novel of Dismissive Mean-spiritedness that John latched onto.

Sorrentino’s career was long and varied, seeing that he experimented with form and the possibilities for fiction with each and every book. There may well be a “Sorrentino Voice”—a bit sardonic, sharp observations, exacting in terms of how language and fiction function—but I’m hard pressed to think of a particular style or approach that would define his career. If you talk to a half-dozen Sorrentino fans—all of whom would be more qualified than I am to write this—you’ll end up with an array of both “best” Sorrentino books and suggestions of “where to start” with his oeuvre. —a remarkable meditation of sorts, akin to Gass’s —is a great starting point, although might be the most emotional, and most straightforward in terms of the formal experimentation. might be the funniest—and filled with the most daggers—and is the book everyone should read when they’re preparing for a divorce. is unparalleled in how it captures the ins and outs of a particular Brooklyn neighborhood, and does something similar, but using the tarot as its framework. is a novel in all questions, and, well, Mulligan Stew (my personal favorite and the only of his books with its own Wikipedia entry) is a complete blast from start to finish.

2) It’s a Book about Writing a Book.

The most Dalkey of all Dalkey tropes! But in this case, rather than focusing on the difficulties of figuring out how to write a book, Mulligan Stew revels in the generative nature of creation, spilling forth list after list, joke after joke, opinion after opinion. It’s like Flann O’Brien on crack, with a touch of the movies covered on the How Did This Get Made? podcast.

Here’s the set-up, as simply as I can put it: Antony Lamont is an experimental writer who has never really received the attention he (thinks) he deserves for his novels. But this new book he’s working on? This is going to be the one. A “new wave murder mystery” narrated by the killer, that merges detective fiction and high literature. And is populated by characters he’s borrowed from James Joyce, Dashiell Hammett, etc., etc. (Antony Lamont is a reference to Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds)—characters who, when Lamont ������’t paying attention (aka, actively writing about them), they’re exploring the half-written house they live in and the nearby town, seeking a way out of this horribly written book. In addition to excerpts from the “novel in progress” and the characters inside, we get to read Lamont’s increasingly unhinged correspondence with his sister (especially about her husband, his literary nemesis), a professor who maybe wants to teach one of his books, a poet he’s trying to get into bed, and so so much more.

3) Myriad Forms That Dissect the Nature of Writing.

Although there are certain recurring bits, a big appeal of this book—for me at least—is its diversity of forms, aping everything from detective novels to erotica to epistolary novels to surreal plays to . . . And in each instance, Sorrentino via Lamont manages to expose the quirks and flaws and oddnesses at the limits of fiction. Things that conventional novels coax us into ignoring are presented so baldly in this novel in a way that’s funny and aesthetically captivating.

This will become more and more apparent over the course of this season of TMR, but here are a few fun little quotes to whet your appetite.

First, this is from the front matter, which is a series of rejections of the novel Mulligan Stew:

Dear Gilbert Sorrentino:

It’s wonderful of you to think of us here at New Views Press as possible publishers for your new novel, MULLIGAN STEW. Wow! as my seven-year-old says, all too often, six hundred pages sounds like something! When you say you worked on it almost four years, I can well believe you!

I’m afraid my “batting average” at second-guessing “the Boss” is somewhat less than 1.000 right now, but I’ll go “out on a limb” and risk telling you that it seems very doubtful that we can even consider taking it on, “alas”!

I’m sure you’ve read the newspaper “stories”—albeit many of them were predictably exaggerated—on the dolphin-training project that L was deeply involved in and that came, unfortunately, “a-cropper.” L was rather upset, partly because of the money loss involved, but more importantly, because he hoped to publish an anthology of “Dolphin Poems,” translated by Dr. Mullion Blasto. You can imagine what a “blow” it was to L when Blasto went with Disney. But enough of our troubles!

At the moment, as above noted, I would venture a tentative guess that L simply could not think of publishing such a work as yours. We are still “picking up the pieces” here. I take the liberty of wishing you and yours well, and of extending L’s good wishes to you.

To “good letters,”

John Cates

Managing Editor

Next up, a poem from Lorna Flambeaux’s The Sweat of Love:

“Hot Bodies”

 

Hot bodies entwined together

stuck with sweat, the gorgeous guck of love.

We fuck . . .

—all unashamed!

Proud of our . . .

Hot bodies!

In my laughing flesh lies hidden

that dark inferno, Life’s secret Word.

It yearns to reach out and whisper

to your smold’ring core. It CANNOT! It CANNOT!

So you, beloved, in my widespread loins must find

the entrance to this deep and tender Word.

YES!!! YES!!!

Only the dead

say “No” to love. Our hot bodies—are aflame

with Life! And now your Life plunges

to my thrilling deeps . . . OH!!!

. . . I swiftly swoon . . .

And here are some of the clichés a group of cowboy characters have been subjected to by hack writers over all the books they appeared in;

In one job I threw my clothes on at least twenty times.

My interest slackens when I’m forced to watch the smoke from my cigarette curl lazily in the air.

Especially when it’s blue smoke . . . and it’s always blue smoke!

But how often have you thoughtfully knocked out your pipe? Or filled it?

If I stretch luxuriously one more time . . .

Right! But how do you feel about your eyes scanning the horizon?

That’s as bad as not liking it because it’s too quiet.

How many times, I pray you, have you emerged into the sunlight blinking?

Not as many times as I’ve grabbed for the phone.

I once had a position where I wheedled every third page.

I was once dazzlingly insouciant to the point of nausea.

I’m damn sick of getting home and going straight to bed without washing.

I’m just as tired of the sun in my eyes always waking me up.

How do you like the wet streets that shimmer in the fog? I’m up to here with them.

I don’t mind the women whose bosoms heave—unless they crack their gum. Or chew it furiously. Or simper.

I was in a scene once with a woman who primped and simpered. As a matter of fact, I think she also whimpered.

As long as she didn’t whine . . .

 

4) Incredibly Funny.

I think this is obvious by now, but damn, this book is just delightful. Sure, it’s about a writer’s mental breakdown and mental illness is no joke, but holy shit, I dare you to read this book and not laugh. Even the mathematical paper that’s inserted in here (what ������’t included?) is funny in a certain light.

But truly, this is a masterpiece of comedic literature. Again, it’s like Extreme Flann O’Brien, or maybe a bit like a contemporary Tristram Shandy. It’s a giant book, and one that does raise—and answer—certain questions about fiction and the craft of writing (this is one of Sorrentino’s “writer’s writer” sort of books), but it’s a book that truly entertains on every page. There are bits—often crass or crude—that function more like traditional jokes, but most of the humor arises from the voices—also frequently crass and crude—found throughout, especially Antony Lamont’s which is soooooo self-serious at times, frequently cringey, and increasingly more and more batshit.

5) Bad Writing Is So Good.

It’s really hard to pull off, but intentionally bad writing is so rewarding to read. Just like really bad movies can be so fun. I used to spout off about—at every logical opportunity—a “theory” I had about art that ~95% of it is devoutly mediocre: technically competent, fine enough, but basically just average. And instead of wasting time on those sort of middling movies or books, I only wanted to read the truly amazing, and the absolutely awful.

And in Mulligan Stew, you get both!

Bonus: There’s Baseball In It.

Just a moment to insert the scorecard of the baseball game Sollis took me to. Whatever it means! It has a certain arcane beauty to it, though. A conversation piece if I work at a decent job soon? I showed it to Ned just before he left and he glanced at it and laughed long and loud.

*

Again, this book is a one-of-a-kind tour de force that is very re-readable, and a great entryway to the Sorrentino world—I’m looking forward to rereading, and writing about, so many of his books over the next couple years—and I can’t wait to dig into this with my TMR cohost, Brian Wood (author of Joytime Killbox and a forthcoming novel featuring a character whose persona and writing would be right at home in Mulligan Stew), a number of guests, and, hopefully, all of you.

Buy a copy of the book, follow along with the reading schedule, and enjoy this season!

The Book of Jokes

Momus

Original publication: 2009

Original publisher: Dalkey Archive

is first original Dalkey Archive�� title to be part of this series, and woo-boy is it a doozy. If you’re playing “Offensive Dalkey Archive Content Bingo,” you’re all set! There are jokes about incest, religion, women, pedophilia, murder, shit, penises, farmyard animals . . . and probably a dozen other potentially offensive bits, all wrapped up in a semi-metafictional story that eschews realism in favor of something much more unhinged and provocative.

In other words, it’s your average Dalkey title: a NSFW that values form over content, exploring the idea of what a novel can be rather than producing a straightforward depiction of “life.”

It’s also very entertaining and a delightful (yes, I’m going with “delightful”) representation of three key elements of joke telling that left me literally (yes, literally) laughing out loud, receiving deservedly strange looks from everyone on the bus, in the bar, at the library. (All places I would not recommend reading this filthy book.)

(Also: probably not a great idea to read from over Zoom, at a staff meeting. Just saying.)

But before we get to the meat of the matter, what is this book and who is Momus?

Last things first: Momus is Nick Currie, a Scottish musician and rabble rouser, whose songs include “” (for which he was sued by Michelin Tire Company for using their mascot as a metaphor for “hypersexualized rubber fetishism”[1]), “” (for which he was sued by Wendy Carlos, since the song “postulated that after post-sexual reassignment surgery, Wendy could travel back in time to marry her pre-surgery self”[2]), but also “,” and “.” Not to mention, he was an influence on Jarvis Cocker and Pulp and Suede—and was friends with Justine Frischmann of Elastic (1990s Chad just )—and worked with Cornelius. (If you want a fast introduction to his music,��is a great place to start.)

So yeah, controversial, but also quite influential and a serious, respected musician and artist.

And is the first of six novels (The Book of Scotlands, The Book of Japans, UnAmerica) along with a memoir from FSG entitled Niche: A Memoir in Pastiche.��(I don’t know the backstory for how Dalkey came to do this book, nor why�������������appears to only be available as an audiobook only . . . )

So, although it’s fun to play up the controversial, enfant terrible aspects of his life and art, that’s not entirely fair. Controversy sells—and invites cancellation—but being an artist across decades, across media is such a curious challenge. (Both David Bowie and Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X come to mind.) When you’re a true working artist, there’s so much more at play—so many songs, so many books, so many performances. And sticking just his writing for now, The Book of Jokes is an absolute blast that’s hard to put down—except to laugh—and, to continue proving Momus’s credentials to an imagined audience unaware of his work, this books was favorably reviewed by the , who compared him to John Barth and Robert Coover. (Two other Dalkey authors.)

So what is The Book of Jokes actually about? Well, being trapped in a narrative determined by dirty jokes—what else?

Call it “joke dharma,” if you like. Bad jokes, dirty jokes are, to my world, what the force of gravity is to yours. They shape every event in my life, and in the life of my family. I am not sure why it is so, but that it is, I cannot doubt. As a result, I live in a grim mirror world. I am a character trapped in a book of jokes—jokes, furthermore, which are in very poor taste.

Our narrator, trapped in this bizarro world in which life is like a blue Cinemax stand-up special, is in jail, where he has two companions: a molester and a murderer. The triad (back to this idea in a minute) decide to escape and, since obviously none of them have committed the crimes for which they were imprisoned, agree to commit the exact crimes they were convicted of, so that, in a weird, karmic way, they make up for the time they’ve already spent behind bars.

That storyline runs throughout the novel, serving as a clothesline off of which to hang one offensive story from Sebastian Skeleton’s life and childhood after another. It’s not entirely satisfying in terms of a “plot,” but it functions the way it should, starting from a conversation about whether someone could “have an uncle who was also his nephew” and ending with a quite satisfying twist: “We weren’t speaking to you,” we say, speaking to you.

But for me—someone who pretends, too frequently, especially when intoxicated, to have aspirations of doing stand-up comedy, one-time, some day—this novel is primary a taxonomy of joke structures. (Or at least three particular structures.)

Joke Structure #1: The Unexpected Ending

One theory of what makes funny things funny is the way in a joke’s set-up takes you right up to the edge of a relatively reasonable explanation, but then veers. The unexpected is what catches you off guard and, especially when it transgresses certain taboos, allows a momentary catharsis in the form of laughter.

Momus takes this to the extreme, sure, and, in that extreme, pulls out a few different laughs.

“Okay, Dad, here’s another. One dark, stormy night a couple are in a car driving fast through a foreign city. The car breaks down and the husband has to go and get help from someone who can speak his language. He’s afraid to leave his wife alone in the car, so he winds up the windows and locks the car before leaving. When he returns the car is in the same state he left it in, but his wife is dead, there’s blood on the floor and there’s a stranger in the car. Explain what happened.”

“Well,” explained Dad, “the car broke down because the husband crashed it, killing his wife. The stranger was a policeman, investigating the crash. The man had been afraid to leave his dead wife alone because the area was a notorious necrophilia black spot.”

“A necrophilia black spot?” asked Luisa. “What does that mean?”

“It means a place where there are a lot of people living who like to fuck dead people,” explained my father.

“Are they marked with traffic signs?” asked Luisa. [. . .]

“No,” I said, “no, top marks for imagination, Dad, but that’s not right. The wife was about to give birth. They were on their way to a hospital. While the man was fetching help the baby was born, but the wife died in childbirth.”

“You’re an incredibly boring person,” said my father.

The real joke in there is the “traffic signs,” but you can only get there via the absurdity of the father’s “guess,” which is its own sort of set-up.

Joke Structure #2: And and and and and and and and

Here’s where I attempt to tie this post into the one on Djuna Barnes’s Ryder . . .

So, as I was reading this book—and trying to explain to friends and family why I liked it so much—and what kept coming to mind was . Not only for the filth baked into every telling of that joke ( and Sarah Silverman’s are still legendary), but for the overstuffing, the endlessly adding to the jokes, the improv that never stops . . . because whatever you add in there only makes the joke even funnier.

It’s not as dirty, but in college I would love to get really stoned and tell the “horse’s ass” joke. The one in which a young kid, let’s call him Jimmy, goes to the circus, and gets called out of the audience by a clown so that he, Jimmy, can be part of a joke—THE GREATEST MOMENT OF HIS LIFE—and the clown says, “are you a horse’s head?” “No . . .” “Well then, you must be a horse’s ass!” Massive laughter erupts from throughout the big top, and the kid, poor little Jimmy, who’s friendless and saw this chance, him, in the spotlight with a clown!, to be his one shining moment after which, duh and or obviously, Bethany would totally read all his love notes (reminder: never write love notes), pisses his pants so gushingly that everyone—even in the nosebleed section—can see the stream pouring down his bare legs, darkening the sawdust at his feet. More laughter. It’s fucking hysterical. More embarrassment for Jimmy. And a sudden, lifelong, Captain Ahab level quest for revenge.

That set-up—which is fine in its own right, premised upon a bit that, if we’re being honest, isn’t really all that funny—functions as the launchpad for the (stoned) joke-teller to just start riffing. Sure, there are beats that must be hit—Jimmy prepares and prepares, has a second meeting with the clown, fails, regathers his strength, trains again, finds the clown a third time—but the joy is in the details.

LIKE WITH RYDER the information, the message is not the point: it’s how you get there.

Where do you take Jimmy? Exactly what sort of preparation does he go through before the ultimate confrontation with clown? As the (stoned) joke-teller, you can send him to Comeback University. Or to Mars. Maybe the Amazon to spend a decade gathering wisdom from a tribe that specializes in getting verbal revenge. Whatever you want to do, (stoned) joke-teller, go for it! The more ludicrous the better. Go all out, make the joke lasts 30 minutes (or, well, ten? stoned joke-tellers are prone to exaggerate), add as many detours as you want, then land it with the extremely simple punchline.

And, of course, about three-quarters of the way through The Book of Jokes, after several other examples of the “and and and and and and and” joke structure, we finally get the aristocrats joke.

“. . . When he comes, a huge bucket of sperm is tipped over us from above and the curtains swing shut as we writhe about in it.”

Farquar looked thunderstruck. “And what do you call this act?” he asked.

“I can’t think of a name,” said my father.

Joke Structure #3: The second time is annoying, the fifth time is golden

I am so guilty of this! (And NOT just when I’m a stoned joke-teller!)

Trebling is one thing—the threes that pervade folklore, joke telling (“a molester, a murderer, and a narrator meet in prison”)—but when you take a particular line, a short bit and turn it into a motif that recurs and morphs and structures a comedy set, a night, a novel . . . that’s so much funnier. Instead of playing it twice for tragedy, and thrice for comedy, play it ten times and make it more and more outrageous.

I absolutely can not give away what the running gag is in The Book of Jokes, which is killing me and, I swar, if you get me on the phone, I’ll tell you the joke AND make it extra dirty! For now though, trust me, it’s good. (And I’m neither stoned, nor telling the joke!) The original joke is great, and every single iteration got me—even when I could see it coming a mile off—and the final variation brings the whole thing home.

*

Anyway, since it’s “Dalkey Music Week” on Three Percent, I’m going to leave you with these lyrics from Momus’s “”:

I like you, and I’d like you to like me to like you
But I don’t need you
Don’t need you to want me to like you
Because if you didn’t like me
I would still like you, you see
La la la
La la la

I lick you, I like you to like me to lick you
But I don’t need you
Don’t need you to like me to lick you
If your pleasure turned into pain
I would still lick for my personal gain
La la la
La la la

I fuck you, and I love you to love me to fuck you
But I don’t fucking need you
Don’t need you to need me to fuck you
If you need me to need you to fuck
That fucks everything up
La la la
La la la

*

[1] From Wikipedia

[2] Again, Wikipedia

Ryder

Djuna Barnes

Original Publication: 1928

Original Publisher: Boni & Liveright

First Dalkey Archive Edition: 1990

This is a baggy novel of excess, and as someone who finds it nearly impossible to keep the thread—or develop a coherent thesis (any and all AI grading systems would plant my writings firmly in the C to C+ range)—and who, by natural gift, or curse, likes to overstuff every post with footnotes and asides and self-references, I’m willing to bet that this appreciation of Barnes’s playfully polyamorous novel of Wendall Ryder, his mother Sophia, his wife Amelia, his lover Kate (aka Kate-Careless), and all their myriad kids, ������’t going to follow from point A to Z, but instead follow a more natural path of observation and exclamation, admiration and exhalation, repetition and repetition, all with the singular (maybe I can stick to something?) goal of convincing anyone who braves these paragraphs to read this book, or, if nothing else, at least skip-around in it.[1]

I’m convinced that Djuna Barnes is about to have her (overdue and deserved) renaissance.

By sheer coincidence (and laws about public domain), not only is Dalkey reissuing Ryder in a splashy new “Essentials Edition” this summer—with a new printing of Ladies Almanack coming early next year—but New York Review Books Classics is bringing out a Collected Stories in 2024 (?—as I write this, I can’t find a proper listing), with an introduction by Mervé Emre.[2]

And thus, the pieces are in place and the stage is set. But Barnes’s lasting appeal goes far beyond business machinations of the marketplace. She was a singular writer, with an approach and style so many readers of today will likely delight in discovering. The Lispector rediscovery comes to mind, although, on a stylistic level, Barnes is frequently compared to Nathalie Sarraute, another author ripe for rediscovery—and another Dalkey author.

Barnes is primarily known for her 1936 masterpiece, Nightwood, which is published in paperback by New Directions, and in a different, hardcover, version by Dalkey Archive, and is probably the only one of her books regularly taught in college classes across the U.S. And yet! She was a pioneer, perfect for the academy. A Rabelaisian writer, who, in the words of Paul West—whose afterword deserves to be read by all and sundry—“wanted to undo all readers, to deflower them in one way or another, to stop them from expecting fiction to behave like some well-bred social organism.” He goes on in that same afterword to state:

Early, she discovered the principle of addictiveness, meaning that she could always add something to something else, not because the first something was inadequate but because the observing or defining mind required such elbowroom. Her writing delineates, often with mordant accuracy, but she bloats it too, just to tell us she is there, serving the cause of plenty. She is among those rare souls, the phrase-makers, to whom a phrase no one else could have dreamed up is more precious than whole sequences of action or talk. Her work is there to evince her own mind, and to overface ours. Sometimes you have to read her with tweezers, other times with a trowel and a scoop, especially when she has let someone loose in a soliloquy. I think she sometimes thought of the novel as the supremist form of soliloquy, which is to say the novel at its closest to poetry. She has a superb sense of rhythm, so much so that she hears the rhythm long before the words arrive and the rhythm brings the combinations into being. Her prose evokes Wendell’s longing for “an extra large English pudding with whacking diamond-shaped goblets of suet shot through.” Above all, she is the virtuoso of the sentence, the ability to make which kept her going to the age of ninety. She built with bricks when others trifled with straw. She remained intense. She attuned herself to the constant ambience of heroic voice. She was serious, critical, and terminal, like an illness.

*

Djuna Barnes was born in 1892, and was a highly sought after journalist and illustrator—the Dalkey edition of Ryder includes almost two-dozen of these illustrations—who moved to Paris at the start of the 1920s (like some other American authors you may have heard of, who are taught in an array of English classes), and had a run of consecutive works—The Book of Repulsive Women (1915), A Book (1923), Ryder (1928), Ladies Almanack (1928), Nightwood (1936—the year of grand literary works), and The Antiphon (1958)—that’s almost unprecedented. (And, like West alludes to in his afterword, ������’t everything she left behind: she died at 90 and wrote for her whole life.)

The “plot” of Ryder—so much as there is one—is basically what I put in my opening ramble of a paragraph: It’s set around the turn of the nineteenth century, and features Sophia Grieve Ryder, a scandalous character who marries over and again, and breeds like her fore-mother (who had fourteen kids of her own), including by giving birth to one Wendall, the second of her sons, who, in England with his mother, meets Amelia, and eventually brings her back to America to be his wife. They wed. They start procreating. He immediately gets involved with Kate—who has her own non-traditional past of lovers and whatnot—and the three (four, counting Sophia) live together as separate from society as they can be (for not only is their bigamist/poly-situation a thing with the locals, but they don’t believe in sending their kids to school, which, again, pisses off the law-abiders), raising their eight (I believe that’s right) kids, having philosophical (and comic) conversations about love and life, squabbling with one another, roaming and repenting, and just making do.

It’s a great fable—a playbook if you will—for our troubled times. For the freedom-seekers looking for liberation and to transcend traditionally imposed, and most definitely male-centric, models of being.[3] Although incredibly complicated—no one’s relationship in this book is clean or “chill”—there’s a thread of outlaw joy from the deconstruction of societal assumptions that is both logical and a potential pathway to more open, human-to-human, relationships.

But putting aside the sociological import of the book and its desire to break free from everything—including expectations of what constitutes a “novel”—I want to focus on the fun, free-flowing frolic of Barnes’s prose, which, in every way, on every page, throws itself to the front of the stage, taking precedent over plot and “moral messages.”

*

This book cycles through styles like a postmodern Dreamachine, entrancing and dazzling the reader in a way that—maybe it’s our age, our attention spans, or maybe it always was this way—forces one to read and reread, to figure out how to parse the sentences, or, more accurately, how to hang on to the paragraph’s momentum, and, to throw out a reference point, although it predates Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by decades, there’s an affinity, a sort of roller-coaster vibe that rewards with every swerve, with every loop, every phrasing that feels anachronistic, or maybe stodgy? on the surface, but is just evidence of a high-wire act that’s almost inconceivable if you’re wedded (poly reference totally intended) to today’s dominant form or American neo-realism.

Let me try to explain.

But first, let me try and scare you off.

Or, rather, let me let Barnes simply show off. Here’s the opening of Chapter 1, “Jesus Mundane,” subtitled “By Way of Introduction,” which is wonderfully not for those who blush at unbridled ambitiously��Biblical��prose:

Go not with fanatics who see beyond thee and thine, and beyond the coming and the going of thee and thine, and yet beyond the ending thereof,—thy life and the lives that thou begettest, and the lives that shall spring from them, world without end,—for such need thee not, nor see thee, nor know thy lamenting, so confounded are they with thy damnation and the damnation of thy offspring, and the multiple damnation of those multitudes that shall be of thy race begotten, unto the number of fishes in thin waters, and unto the number of fishes in great waters. Alike are they distracted with thy salvation and the salvation of thy people. Go thou, then, to lesser men, who have for all things unfinished and uncertain, a great capacity, for these shall not repulse thee, thy physical body and thy temporal agony, thy weeping and thy laughing and thy lamenting. Thy rendezvous is not with the Last Station, but with small comforts, like to apples in the hand, and small cups quenching, and words that go neither here nor there, but traffic with the outer ear, and gossip at the gates of thy insufficient agony. [Boldface mine.]

First time through, that can be daunting. A clause-heavy opening sentence coming in at 102 words, which include three thee’s, two thy’s, and a begettest (!). Also, a lot of damnation. So much damnation. And a phrase set off by em-dashes that sounds like it’s coming right out of the mouth of a preacher: “Thy life and the lives that thou begettest, and the lives that shall spring from them, world without end” . . . You can almost hear the unwritten “Amen!”)

But, like every great book, it’s demonstrating how you can learn to read it, letting you in on what this book is all about.

Go not with fanatics who see beyond thee and thine, for such need thee not, confounded as they are with thy damnation and the damnation of thy offspring.

In short:

Hey, Wendall? Tell all those moralizing townies hating on your life, your wife, your mistress, and your kids to go fuck themselves! And don’t worry: those shit sippers aren’t actually paying attention to you: they’re all about ‘salvation.’ Hang out with the riffraff.

Again, this is the backbone of the “plot” that a reader might like to know up front; off this clothesline hang tons of asides, set pieces, and musings that aren’t always “functional” in a strict “advance the plot” sense, but instead tend to be where the fun and frolicking is at.[4]

*

I’ll admit: Returning to����������almost a quarter decade after the first (and only) time I read it, one of my initial thoughts was, “oh, shit, this book is going to be��difficult.”

Ryder is a novel that can be “difficult” to read because of the conflict between current patterns of speech and communicative gestures (texts, Instagram reels, emoji, directness), and the more baroque, labyrinthine way of articulating a journey instead of a message evidenced in every paragraph of the book, a style which tends to require such patient parsing. The reader has to attune themselves. And, frequently, be willing to release their grip on rules of concision and grammar (Struck & White can fuck themselves with those shit sipping townfolk of above) to allow a voice to lead them.

And sometimes, a literal voice helps.

(Recording done by Kaija Straumanis.)

It’s easy to read right past the pauses and emphases when you first visually encounter the opening paragraphs of this section:

It was a sweet spring morning, once upon a time, many, many, many years ago, when the two women, Amelia de Grier and Kate-Careless, went, as nature would have it (there being nothing new under the sun), upon their four feet to do up the dirty mess, and damn their infinitesimal-lime-squirting-never-stop-for-consideration-of-a woman cloacae (and she with the backache and the varicose veins climbing her legs), or whatever-you-call-the-backsides-of-a-pigeon, and to look into the matter of the eggs and casualties.

Up the dusty stairs they went, besoms in hand, a flower between Amelia’s teeth, and with stomachs crawling (for alas! there’s nothing new under the sun), into the thraldom of feathers, and there, strutting and cooing and bill-begging, round and round in a dance of death, went Blue-Wing and Sweet-Tuft, the metal rings on their twiggy ankles knocking out a convict’s tune against the imbrication of their feet, round and round in a merry pigeon lust, squirting trouble as they went, and smelling most hideous insufficient, as is the way with a bird.

Unlike the previous example, in which snapping off the grammatically key packets of information and lining them up eases a sense of understanding, this section works better if it’s performed. Read aloud, time distends in the paragraph, slowing down to allow the asides to land—asides that function almost like the motifs of a good stand-up comedy performance, something we’ll see a lot more of in a future installment in this series of posts when we get to Momus’s and Ben Slotky’s —letting the reader/listener fall into the rhythms, finding an understanding of the paragraph’s intent in its delivery rather than its strict meaning.

For me, the irony comes through better when I hear it read than when I see it on the page.

*

I love this book. Every chapter, a journey. (Stay tuned to this spa

ce for a couple of longer excerpts closer to the time that this will be reissued.[5]) And more than the specific ideas, the

dismantling of traditional partnerships and expressions of sexuality (quick note: the book was censored when initially published in America[6]), it’s the way in which each chapter of Ryder asks new things of the reader—to cotton onto what style is being invoked, to enter into the jazz of the text—reading like a game in which all sides can win.

Again, and circling back to the beginning, it’s time for the Barnes-assance.

*

Oh! There are also drawings:

Which is as good a place to wrap this up as any given the images and design-heavy elements of Ladies Almanack that will inevitably be part of a future post. Till then, I’ll leave with one final line: “And whom should he disappoint?”

*

[1] In Macedonio Fernandez’s Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel), he writes about the “skip-around reader” who follows whims instead of page numbers, driving Macedonio to put his book together all out of order—so that the “skip-around reader” would chance into reading it in the order Macedonio actually intended.

[2] It should go without saying, but if you want actual insight and literary analysis into Barnes’s work, read Emre’s intro! (And/or the issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction on her.) Not necessarily this piece.

[3] Although in our topsy-turvy world, this same basic situation could be, maybe, and I’m just riffing here, adopted by the libertarian right, those who want to live in partnerships (with both guns and the right to fiscally deceive other people) without too much local (government) oversight,�� “parents’ rights” when it comes to education?

This may be a book about the paradoxes of morality and the people who attempt to enforce it, but this probably ������’t the place to point out that the “hands off my ____” thread of extreme conservatism should really, more than almost any other object or idea, be applied to books, words, and their general access. This also isn’t the time or space to mention the obvious dissonance between wanting to use all the so called “non-Woke,” “offensive” words, yet not want the opposite—the “Woke,” and to-a-fault “non-offensive” ones to exist alongside. These are not brilliant observations, just expressing a desire for honest shithousery in modern discourse: If you’re gonna be shitty, at least be honest about being shitty.

[4] “‘Nicknames,’ said Wendell, ‘give away the whole drama of man. They fall into many classes; the three most current are: those we invent to make a person what he should be—or names of persuasion; those we invent to make him appear as he is not—or names of cunning, and those we invent to more tightly wrap him in that which he is, and these are as various as our opinion of the person involved. Let us call them nicknames o f opinion. Take my own case,’ he continued, ‘for philosophy, like charity, should begin at home. Let us tell then, the story of your mother’s first reactions to your humble servant, and we shall have a case in hand. It will instruct you in the nicest turns and twists of such games, for and against, that you can think of, to say nothing of the abundant humours therein involved. It will be more to the point,’ he added, ‘than whole dissertations on nature, and will round out the inevitable end as you know it.

‘During this soliloquy, heed well what she does, and what she does not call me, for therein lies the whole mad obscurity of the female heart. Observe where she might have mocked and did not, where again she might have placated and forbore, how, again, she might have had me swollen with pride, and spake not the word. Indeed, she might have said a number of things—but, enough!’

[5] I have at least two chapters that I’m dying to share. Hang tight.

[6] From Barnes’s foreword: “This book, owing to censorship, which has a vogue in America as indiscriminate as all such enforcements of law must be, has been expurgated. [. . .] Hithertofore the public has been offered literature only after it was no longer literature. Or so murdered and so discreetly bound in linens that those regarding it have seldom, if ever, been aware, or discovered, that that which they took for an original was indeed a reconstruction.”

Perfect Lives

Robert Ashley

Original Publication: 1991

Original Publisher: Archer Fields Press

First Dalkey Archive Edition: 2011

Let’s start with the cover.

When this first arrived in the mail, I was certain that Ingram had sent it to me on accident. It looks nothing like other Dalkey covers—especially from that 2012-2020 period of stock photos, usually in triplicate—with its striking full-color photograph and attractive font. It looks almost commercial. And the image itself? It’s like something an art publisher would use to emphasize the performative nature of the text and position it as a book for gallery-goers, for artistes.

Which, after reading the book, is pretty accurate! This is a book that—although it’s from the early-1980s, replete with Nancy Reagan refs—has its roots in 60s counterculture. Without context, you could read it as a sort of extended beat poem set to psychedelic jazz.

In some ways, Perfect Lives is unusual in the Dalkey catalog, being an opera (not sure Dalkey published any other operas) that scans like poetry (reminding me a bit of ), reads like jazz music, and begs for the reader to watch it[1] (or hear it performed) in order to really immerse oneself in this little Midwestern world featuring a bank theft, “The World’s Greatest Piano Player,” an elopement, and two old people in love who can’t marry.

Perfect Lives consists of seven acts totaling 146 pages of what looks like poetry. That said, like poetry—or like opera, I assume, and yes, I’ll admit my ignorance and philistine nature now: I’m not very familiar with opera and, as such, am not a big fan, but something about this particular piece has lit my mind on fire—it requires concentration, rereading, zooming in and out, and, again, listening to the almost .

In addition to the text itself, this volume contains a forty-page addendum of bits from talks Robert Ashley gave at Mills College Center for Contemporary Music in 1989 that, honestly, is worth the price of admission by itself. His notes are so unadorned and direct, a fascinating look into how this opera—and the others in the trilogy, Atalana and Now Eleanor’s Idea—were constructed, why certain choices (what he refers to as “improvements”[2]) were made, the collaborative elements of making music, the camera angles and shots dictating the movement of each act, and other amazing observations.[3]

He also provides a concise summary of the core event fueling the opera for anyone lost in the flow:

[. . .] the basic theme was an over-the-hill entertainer and his somewhat younger pal on the Midwest circuit, who find themselves in a small town, playing at the Perfect Lives Lounge, telling stories about the people of the town. They become friends with two local characters, the son and daughter of the sheriff. The four of them hatch a plan to do something that, if they are caught doing it, it will be a crime, but if they are not caught it will be Art. The idea is that the son of the sheriff, who is the assistant to the manager of the bank, will make it possible for them to take all the money out of the bank for one day. And then they will put it back. They’ve set themselves a challenge, but it’s outside the realm of crime; it’s not like Bonnie and Clyde. There’s a kind of metaphysical meaning for the removal of the money.

This event takes place in “Act III: The Bank (Victimless Crime),” but, well, if you’re expecting this to be some sort of wild heist . . . you’re likely to be disappointed. Sure, the money is taken from the bank (and kept in a car that races toward Indiana with Gwen and Ed, who are planning to elope, and Dwayne and The Captain of the Football Team), but the theft (premised upon sound to get into the vault) happens off-screen, and is only discovered in Act III, when Isolde attempts to break up a dogfight in the bank with a bucket of water, but instead dumps it all over the bank manager. Who, for reasons unexplained, yet necessary to making the plot, such as it is, move forward, keeps a spare set of clothes in the vault. So when he goes to change, he realizes the money is gone. “The Bank has no money in the bank.”

Although the crime/art performance is the centerpiece of the opera’s plot, like all real literature, the real pleasures are to be found in the overall construction, the achronistic presentation of the seven acts begging to be put in order, and, most importantly, the poetry itself, which shifts scene to scene and line to line, taking on serious tones, such as these “philosophical” musings on the Self from “Act IV: The Bar (Differences)”:

 

The Self is without coincidence, being

The only thing the Self.

The Self is without attainment,

Being perfect.

[. . .]

And we said the Self is ageless being

What I don’t know.

The word eternal is a mystery to me.

I don’t understand that word.

to observations about supermarkets made by an old couple who fell in love in an assisted living home (“it’s different being old alone and being old / together”), yet can’t marry without losing their benefits:

 

it chooses its manifestation

it makes a mistake it chooses the mirror this

supermarket is stupid this supermarket wants itself

in the form it finds itself this supermarket has

some problems imagine yourself can of succotash in hand

part of th’material body of the supermarket in the

checkout line you are about to be exhausted

symbolic writing fills the skies ufo’s link to

weird animal mutilations (p)age eight Cher

my strange relationship with Sonny centerfold how

to make your life more meaningful (p)age fifty-two how

to make your marriage more exciting (p)age thirty

��

to this incredible bit that literally made me laugh out loud, spoken by the sheriff as he “solves” the “crime” in “Act V: The Living Room (The Solution)” through a strange verbal ritual with his wife:

 

[. . .] in

this theory the important element is (quote) the opportunity (unquote).

f’r instance, only yesterday i decided for myself: no more incidental music.

as soon as i made this plan, the phone rang. the voice said:

there’s money in it for you. i restrained myself from saying:

hot diggity. instead i said: oh, boy,

i am totally, exclusively, completely’n only into—

as they say—song. Who’s gonna write the words?

the voice said: well, what we had in mind was something more abstract.

i said: do you mean as in music that supports action that is

unexplained? the voice said: yes. i said:

do you mean i find music from my own motives, and while that music is performed

people in costumes will jump around on stage?

the voice said: that’s more or less the idea. i said:

fuck you man. next time you’re in the bathroom, hang yourself. that’s

what i mean by the element of (quote) opportunity (unquote).

to the understated final line (spoiler?): “I’m not the same person I used to be.”

*

Given the disorder of the seven acts—which take place first at 11am, then 3pm, 1pm, 11pm, 9pm, 5pm, 7pm—and the fact that most all of the poetic lines are unattributed, well, and, the lack of a traditional “cause begets effect” plot, and the slippery, abstract poetic nature of the writing (and the music itself! and the experimental television broadcast!), Perfect Lives probably comes across as a rather daunting read. But if there’s one message I want to get across over the whole of my life, it’s that great literature (and great Dalkey Archive titles) will open up and explain themselves to you—if you have the patience and mental openness to let them.

Ashley is clearly a genius[4]—I can’t wait to listen to the other parts of this operatic trilogy, and to revisit Perfect Lives in all of its forms, including the special performance by Matmos [INSERT LINK] of a few acts, an all-time favorite band [INSERT LINK]—but he’s also incredibly Midwestern in terms of approachability and the desire to tell stories.

And that’s what Perfect Lives really is: a series of stories about connected individuals.[5]

Which is what most Dalkey Archive titles are as well. Stories about people conveyed in ways that tend to dwell on and elevate the form of the telling of the story instead of its content.

*

Which leads me to one last note about the form and structure of Perfect Lives, namely, this symbol, which precedes every act:

Related to each act, a certain motif in the symbol is highlighted. (See the near triangle formed from the darker lines in the image above.) Based on Ashley’s notes,[6] I believe this stems from how they visually arranged the television production, with each act focused on a particular line or set of lines that stands in for the movement of the camera.

The camera movement is explained in the table of contents which, very helpfully, sets the scene and illuminates the general motion. For example, here’s “Act II: The Supermarket (Famous People)” (the symbol for which is pictured to the right):

Helen and John, who live at The Old Folks Home and have a strange “arrangement,” are shopping on their day off. Thoughts on consumerism and wearing out. The landscape is a large Midwestern supermarket. Lines converge at the horizon in the distance. The camera zooms in. 3 pm

As a non-reader of poetry, cues of these sort go a long way to transforming a text from “daunting” to “enjoyable.” Although maybe that’s actually my big takeaway when it comes to Perfect Lives: I opened the book expecting to be flustered and dismayed, having to double-down to “make sense” and find anything worthy of sharing, publicly. It took an intro (which we’ll publish soon) and the opening line—“He takes himself seriously”—for me to find myself just giving in and letting the text itself guide me.

[1] This opera was produced for London’s Channel Four and broadcast in seven parts over the course of a week. It’s never aired in the U.S.—to the best of my knowledge—but some brave, and likely bored, soul, uploaded all of it to YouTube in 2020, during the pandemic.

[2] “There is an instant, right before you play the chord, where you decide to will that chord into existence. It’s not the piano that does it, it is you. You go . . . [plays chord] . . . and then you have to accept what came out. Now, having made that first move, the next thing you have to do is to decide whether to keep it, or improve on it. Now, if I’m going to improve on it, I have to apply a whole range of social opinions, including Nancy Reagan’s opinion. Everybody is involved in whether I’m going to improve on what I just did, or whether I like what I just did. If I like myself, I actually have to like what I just did. And that’s what makes you original.”—Robert Ashley

[3] “At the time we were engineering Perfect Lives, I would go into the studio in the evening, and by the time we’d got the studio set up it was time for the reruns of All in the Family on television. I’d never seen All in the Family. I mean, I knew who Archie Bunker was, but that was all. So, every night I’d watch it just before we’d begin work on Perfect Lives. You know, I’d be eating my sandwich and drinking a Coke and watching All in the Family. And I thought, this guy is doing very crude operas. It’s just like Perfect Lives: There are the two kids, there’s the middle-aged guy, and there’s the world’s greatest piano player—his wife.”—Robert Ashley

[4] “It seems to me that when I hear people doing the most interesting thing for them to do, in the most exotic realms of popular music—I’m talking about people like Michael Jackson—the most important thing he is doing is he’s trying to break down that time. He’d trying to shatter the grip of that symmetrical time, without going into 5s and 7s that cannot be put together easily. You can’t stay out there on the stage for two and a half hours if everything is going 4/4, it makes you crazy. You have to think of a way that it’s interesting for you spiritually. Otherwise you might as well be driving a car.”—Robert Ashley

[5] “Perfect Lives is just the great Midwest, and no story has a beginning or an end. It’s all digressions.”—Robert Ashley

[6] “We divided the screen into seven equal bands vertically and six equal bands horizontally. The templates in that geometry were a way for us, as musicians, to communicate with the visual people. I had the idea that for each episode there would be a characteristic camera movement, a dynamic, and the camera dynamic would be illustrated graphically in a pattern on the screen.”—Robert Ashley