JB is up there with G. Dyer. Of that there is little doubt. Of course, since he's a 'proper' writer you might expect his range of interests to be more tightly defined, such as France, French writers etc., and then narrowing down further, as if entering a country road, the backwaters, Provence, Flaubert...And Dyer remains, when all is said and done, a gloriously roaming spirit, an amateur who seems to find everything interesting. You wonder to yourself if that results, ultimately, in finding nothing interesting?
Lydia Davis has written short stories in three lines. Perhaps some will find that pretentious, too gimmicky. Let's see. The connection being, of course, Flaubert. The bare bones, a minimal structure, Latham's black sun, Malevich...strands left fluttering in the air, part of some long forgotten religious ritual?
You choose your writers by tone and temperament rather than according to depth, 'lyricism' and that horrid word, 'content'. You envy those who find appeal in the low key, unfashionable and obscure. You seem to be drawn to the flashy or the homely. You suspect Salter, DeLillo because they come across as being enamoured by style.
Anyway, do check out JB's wonderful essay here
~~~
The other day I was told of an old man who was attacked because he was eating in a public place during the fast. There are many horrendous things happening in this country-people being burned alive by their brothers, young girls gang raped. It's all quite medieval in its gruesomeness. Now and then there are particular events which strike you as a departure from your run-of-the-mill evil, to use an old-fashioned word. Depravity here seems in these cases to be more specific. The burying of a woman alive, for example. It was passed off, amazingly, as being part of 'Balochi tradition'. Or then there is the forcing of women to dance naked in public as a form of punishment for alleged infidelity (in England, according to E.P., they used to feather and tar those who brought shame to the community..something that still persists, you think, over here-at least in the language if not in practice...to 'blacken someone's face). The cutting off of someone's nose to mark them out as unfaithful is another one of those brutalities that hardly gets a mention, and if it does then it's a few lines stuck towards the middle pages of the newspapers.
Tribal or feudal stupidities, as old as civilisation itself, all mixed up with economic and sexual anxieties, religious fanaticism, make for a very warped 'society'. The mystical east? Give me a break! In the end one loses interest in these 'stories' so frequent are they. People gawk at them on the television and it never crosses our minds that despite being able to drink cafe latte we're living in a different time zone from the rest of the world. Nothing is serious or serious enough. You sometimes wonder to yourself if it wasn't the Turks and Uzbeks who came to Lahore all those years ago but a troupe of circus performers, leaving behind them a motley bunch of fraudsters, tricksters, clowns, prostitutes and pimps.
~~~
Anyway, my three-liner for the day:
The old gatekeeper eats to avoid starvation.
Says that his watch has stopped in the holy month.
And is promptly beaten to death.
~~~
Scratching himself with a revolver with an overly
sensitive trigger, M. Edouard B. removed the tip of his nose in the
Vivienne precinct house.
Nurse Elise Bachmann, whose day off was yesterday, put on a public display of insanity.
Scheid, of Dunkirk, fired three times at his wife. Since he missed every shot, he decided to aim at his mother-in-law, and connected.
The corpse of a sixtyish Dorlay hung from a tree in Arcueil, with a sign reading, "Too old to work."
Louis Lamarre had neither job nor home, but he did possess a few coins. At a grocery store in Saint-Denis he bought a liter of kerosene and drank it.
Before jumping into the Seine, where he died, M. Doucrain had written in his notebook, "Forgive me, Dad. I like you."
The sinister prowler seen by the mechanic Gicquel near Herblay train station has been identified: Jules Menard, snail collector.
In a hotel in Lille, M. H. Hallynch, of Ypres, hanged himself for reasons that, according to a letter he left, will soon be made known.
A ruling by the mayor of Angers concerning parades forbids union banners, songs not of a liturgical character, and canes.
Lightning in Dunkirk struck some men who were installing lightning rods. One of them fell into the soot from 135 feet up and survived.
Medical examination of a little boy found in a ditch on the outskirts of Niort showed that he had undergone more than just death.
Four hundred ecclesiastics welcomed, at Moulins station, Mgr. Lobbedey, their new bishop. Five of who were overcome with sacred frenzy were arrested.
Standing on her doorstep, modiste Rudlot, of Malakoff, was chatting with a neighbor. With an iron bar her wild husband made her shut up.
"To die like Joan of Arc!" cried Terbaud from the top of a pyre made of his furniture. The firemen of Saint-Ouen stifled his ambition.
A dishwasher from Nancy, Vital Frerotte, who had just come back from Lourdes cured forever of tuberculosis, died Sunday by mistake.
Nurse Elise Bachmann, whose day off was yesterday, put on a public display of insanity.
Scheid, of Dunkirk, fired three times at his wife. Since he missed every shot, he decided to aim at his mother-in-law, and connected.
The corpse of a sixtyish Dorlay hung from a tree in Arcueil, with a sign reading, "Too old to work."
Louis Lamarre had neither job nor home, but he did possess a few coins. At a grocery store in Saint-Denis he bought a liter of kerosene and drank it.
Before jumping into the Seine, where he died, M. Doucrain had written in his notebook, "Forgive me, Dad. I like you."
The sinister prowler seen by the mechanic Gicquel near Herblay train station has been identified: Jules Menard, snail collector.
In a hotel in Lille, M. H. Hallynch, of Ypres, hanged himself for reasons that, according to a letter he left, will soon be made known.
A ruling by the mayor of Angers concerning parades forbids union banners, songs not of a liturgical character, and canes.
Lightning in Dunkirk struck some men who were installing lightning rods. One of them fell into the soot from 135 feet up and survived.
Medical examination of a little boy found in a ditch on the outskirts of Niort showed that he had undergone more than just death.
Four hundred ecclesiastics welcomed, at Moulins station, Mgr. Lobbedey, their new bishop. Five of who were overcome with sacred frenzy were arrested.
Standing on her doorstep, modiste Rudlot, of Malakoff, was chatting with a neighbor. With an iron bar her wild husband made her shut up.
"To die like Joan of Arc!" cried Terbaud from the top of a pyre made of his furniture. The firemen of Saint-Ouen stifled his ambition.
A dishwasher from Nancy, Vital Frerotte, who had just come back from Lourdes cured forever of tuberculosis, died Sunday by mistake.
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