Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

What do you mean > thea takes more time/work ? If any GRs can help out here, pls do. What is Rand talking about?

In sum, we are concerned with unBURYing things of a textual nature. Films are only occasionally textualized, such as Last Year at Marienbad: Text for the Film by Alain Resnais; and plays, should they take on a textual life independent of their performance, are typically NOT BURIED. Then there are plays published for the wider interest of the public because their playwrights are more widely known for having written novels or poems, such as those seldom-read plays by the likes of a Vonnegut or Heller, and which are often enough of not much literary interest. The BURIED Book Club would only be interested in the very rare bird of a play which would hold a textual/literary interest beyond the interest of a theatrical performance.

What we are not doing is unBURYing films, records, symphonies, sculptures, paintings, etc. We do welcome ESSAYS, NOVELS, SHORT FICTIONS, POEMS (not my area of expertise), and the like; and I DON'T want to exclude DRAMA, BUT drama's relevance to us may be marginal.

==Thank you. And then we rest on the 7th day.

Sketchbook wrote: "What do you mean > thea takes more time/work ? If any GRs can help out here, pls do. What is Rand talking about? "

I think he's suggesting that a film is a fixed artistic product, but that plays, because they are performed in real time, can be modified, either in the staging or in the actual dialogue. Shakespeare's work is modified all the time, but the story remains. At least I think that's what he's getting at...

That being said, I agree with Nathan and think we should probably stick to writing that was meant to be read and stay away from plays and screenplays, which are meant to be performed.

Tks. Onward to a double vodka martini.

Sketchbook wrote: "Agreed. A play's success often depends on its "star (s)" or direction by a major talent. And contempo plays are usually rooted in the moment of time they're produced, w the longevity of today's new..."

Sb,you are a veritable treasure trove of Americana but pls stop dissing O'Neill- I like quite a few of his plays.

@ Jim: "Plus plays are meant to be watched,not read..."

Yeah,right but don't ppl read Shakespeare & Chekhov? And didn't some one finish reading Marlowe recently & is further planning to read Mamet? Just sayin :-)

Mala wrote: "eah,right but don't ppl read Shakespeare & Chekhov? And didn't some one finish reading Marlowe recently & is further planning to read Mamet? Just sayin :-) ..."

You forgot Goethe and Aeschylus...

Yes, there are plenty of plays that are read as literature, like Wilde for example, but they're not buried. A buried playwright is probably not the general target writer Nathan had in mind when he started this group, but of course, if there is a buried writer worth exhuming who also wrote plays, then I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem to discuss them here... I think?

"You forgot Goethe and Aeschylus..."

Ah,nice catch!
Agree with your assessment,Jim. I guess it's NR's call.
Btw,both of you shd read some poetry...

Mala wrote: ""You forgot Goethe and Aeschylus..."

Ah,nice catch!
Agree with your assessment,Jim. I guess it's NR's call.
Btw,both of you shd read some poetry..."

Coincidentally, I just downloaded some Baudelaire and Victor Hugo poetry en français. I'm also itching to get back to Rilke...

Baudelaire,you shd discuss with Geoff Wilt- he's a fan ( I'll have to check his Baudelaire reviews).I read a few of his poems in Eng translation,but you must be reading in original French,lucky you!

Mala wrote: "Baudelaire,you shd discuss with Geoff Wilt- he's a fan ( I'll have to check his Baudelaire reviews).I read a few of his poems in Eng translation,but you must be reading in original French,lucky you!"

I have Paris Spleen (Le Spleen de Paris) en français and English and will be reading side-by-side as a learning exercise. My French is very limited at this point...

Poetry ? Mala, you've inspired me to reread the Pulitzer-winner William Carlos Williams.

Sketchbook wrote: "Poetry ? Mala, you've inspired me to reread the Pulitzer-winner William Carlos Williams."

Humble Moi? No,no,perhaps this review did :

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

AOk. It was He & She...

Martin Bax

Garima wrote: "Martin Bax"

New Directions, 1976 = ADD please. [but not the medical books]

Someone should add Elaine Kraf, painter and writer. She has one Dalkey title and three others languishing out of print.

I say someone, i.e. not me, since I don't have time right now.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Garima wrote: "Martin Bax"

New Directions, 1976 = ADD please. [but not the medical books]"

New Directions accommodates several buried writers I reckon

Garima wrote: "New Directions accommodates several buried writers I reckon"

I think of them as the proto-Dalkey.

Except they were usually the original publication of their roster, rather than repertory. But yeah, their 70s releases especially are always worth a look, I think.

Nate D wrote: "Except they were usually the original publication of their roster, rather than repertory. But yeah, their 70s releases especially are always worth a look, I think."

Like when the Spine says "Dalkey" but you know nothing else about the book, too, if it says "New Directions" and you know nothing else.... nearly guaranteed to be worth the effort.

@Sketchbook: apologies.

@ Jim: thank you for clarifying that

@ NR: one of the prizes in my library is a 1947 anthology from New Directions (not in this database as it predates ISBNs). This book, , is a sort of ur-text for early 20th century American Modernist / experimental / "advance guard" authors, some of whom are very much buried. It is a "best of" of what was published in the annual "New Directions in Prose & Poetry" (those early annuals were all hardcovers and —check out the ) & contains 40 authors (it may have too much poetry for your tastes, NR). The book can be reasonably had via online resellers at about the same price I paid for it roughly fifteen years ago.

Among other things it contains some William Carlos Williams (prose + poetry), the buried Parker Tyler (the essay "every man his own private detective" —on the metaphysics of The Maltese Falcon & the poem "Freud of Assisi" —sample stanza: "His symbol from the garden of the phallic fiction / Grows up in grooming and gets into space: the dress / For flying in the complex naked bed: or breeding / The peacock of consolation for the barren princess" )

Then there's an excerpt by Djuna Barnes's one unburied novel, Nightwood (which I see at least two of us BBCers have already tackled).

But the real diamond in the rough here would be a little manifesto by the very much buried Eugene Jolas (he being the American responsible for publishing what would become The Wake via the journal "it) entitled "Vertigralist Pamphlet". It's been (originally appeared as a broadside) and is a fine piece of anthroposophical hopes and dreams and thoughts on the creative force.
Since the end of that pamphlet is not viewable via google books, i'll type it here (if crunchy transcendental talk leaves a bad taste in your cognitive apparatus, do click away) :

We may be passing through an inner mutation which, eventually, will give us the capacity for a new vision, the third eye, the zenith vision, the gift of peering into eternity, which will permit us to comprehend the idea of Psychic Time, the multi-dimensional stratification of Time, cosmic Time.

This will probably be the human being foreshadowed by the great scientist and visionary, C. G. Fechner, in his astonishing book, Zend-Avesta: the man who will participate in the collective consciousness, with the "world-soul".

This eternal principle can no longer be found in the creative arts today.

I am convinced, however, that the creative instinct should be identical with the instinct of ascension. The arts are analogous to existential mysticism and, as such, should once more become conjuration, a mantic means of liberation or exorcism.

Their role should be to emancipate the human being from the obsession of fear in the world of matter.

They should mirror the expansion of consciousness in a migration to higher space, to the supernatural, to "the divine dark".

For this a cosmic expression and form, a planetary imagination, are needed:

The cloud glass-city.

The skyscraper-cathedral of New York.

Monumental sculptures as ritualistic symbols of a communal celestial aspiration.

Polyphonic music as hymnic expression, pan-rhythmic liberation, the chorus mysticus. Synthesis of the terrestial and the celestial emotion. The human being participating in a seraphic chant. This music to be executed not only in concert-halls, but diffused in the open, or in gigantic buildings that are adequate to its architectonic universalism.

Absolute painting giving the colour-vision of the bridge between the finite and the infinite.

Poetry taken in the universal sense of Dichtung, or the sacred logos.

A new art of the word in a constant interweaving of lyric and epic expression.

Pan-logos.

Invention of new languages to voice the inter-linguistic sense of unio mystica.

The word as rune, as liturgy, as a hymnic eulogy, as incantation.

The phantasmatic metaphor.

All the arts interpenetrating in the mutation from the frontier-world of the three-dimensional consciousness to the experience of a multidensional, frontierless cosmos.

All the arts, combining past, present and future, building the new myth of the heightened creative life.

Paris, 1938.

Rand--
You've got a number of things going here. Could you paste them in their several appropriate threads? Spearhead could go in the Great Heaps, and an entry could be made for goodsreaders' pleasure. Same too with the New Directions periodicals whose existence I'm aware of but haven't gotten around to spending any time with. Parker Tyler looks like he could use an entry, with especial interest for film buffs. Jolas is a bit of a crank, as your quoted selection would indicate to my temperament. There's an essay in The Wake of the Wake about him and his manifestos, most of which are all pretty silly. But transition is seminally important for especially The Wake but also for other stuff I'm sure. I haven't looked into how available the transition stuff is today.

NR, i did not include the bit where Jolas says we'll all develop ESP because I had a hunch you already knew of him and found him to be a crankcase in point.

a Very Good quality edition of transition will run over 1.5k USD. Their print runs were only one thousand, according to wiki.

It appears that Jolas published Joyce's "Work In Progress" serially, to a rather mixed reception. Craig Monk wrote about the interplay between those two Js in an essay in the critical anthology (that book is not yet rated here on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ and nobody's yet gotten the itch to read it either). Also, one of the contributors to that title (Jean-Michel Rabaté) did a different essay on Joyce and Jolas that goes into greater detail on the theory-end of their relationship, using Jolas's autobiography as fresh contextâ€�.

For those put off by PDFs, heres the poem by Joyce which Rabaté uses as preface (minus the proper line spacing) :

VERSAILLES 1933

There's a genial young poetriarch Euge
Who hollers with heartiness huge:
Let sick souls sob for solace
So the jeunes joy with Jolas
Book your berths: Apres mot, le deluge!"

Louise Bogan

I am interested in, and intend to track down a book by, William Gardner Smith. An African-American journalist and novelist, he wrote some very interesting looking novels. In particular last of the Conquerors - all of his books are out of print with no reviews on GR. I found an interesting quote or two online from his work and want to get hold of it. I dont know yet how 'elite' he is, but something about him has got its hook in me...

Garima wrote: "Louise Bogan"

Unlike Ali's optimism, I've gotta say she don't look quite BURIED. a) she's a poet and seems to be read about as much as any poet, ie, not much b) it would seem that The Blue Estuaries collects ALL of her significant poetry and IT has 112 ratings c) for the most part, her other books seem to be an autobiography, a collection of prose, a collection of letters. In other words, on the strength of anything in "c)" she could be inducted; BUT I suspect none of it is of the merit which is already recognized in The Blue Estuaries. Therefore, in my typical fashion of deferral, Garima, please add her if you believe any of her other work would stand on its own as satisfying our demand of "elite" stuff that is great; don't add, but use her name frequently, if you regard Estuaries as her main raison-de-notread.

Jonathan wrote: "I am interested in, and intend to track down a book by, William Gardner Smith. "

I'm not optimistic. a) the covers, by which I feel free to judge a book's aspirations, indicate pure pulp b) that quote is uninspiring. c) if you find that it has ANY literary aspirations, let us know via a review. d) if it's just funfunfun campy stuff, fine, but we are SNOBS at the BBC just like in England.

To be fair the mass market paperback cover is misrepresentative (and the hardback looks much more legit) as the content and style seems much more 'serious' than it suggests. Nevertheless, I agree it is probably not BBC worthy, but I am curious and wanted to sprinkle a bit of that curiosity here (just in case anyone else had heard of him).

Oh and I changed the quote to one more interesting (and the one that caught my eye in the first place).

Jonathan wrote: "sprinkle a bit of that curiosity"

That's what we do. I'm not exactly sure, either, what the style of those mm's covers indicates. [replacement quote better indicates an optimism]

I'll just recommend her name to my friends who read poetry (because I don't) and hopefully she'll get some recognition in this corner of goodreads. She is definitely not unknown as I can see Moira Russell's name among her fans and Bonnie marked one of her books to read. I think she's a little sweet for this group but like Ali said not experimental doesn't mean she's not worth reading, so..well..ok, not adding.

Firbank is one for us. He's got the Steven Moore seal of approval. Sontag's campy tag is a different campy thing than the campy tag I used above for the mm book covers of Gardner Smith. I seem to have already qualified him as UNDERread but not deeply BURIED. If you disagree and feel he oughta be certified by our cemetarial club, I won't refuse you. So, but I was only advocating the opposite of yourself, that he IS of literary interest, but that his #### say he's not very deeply BURIED.

Garima wrote: " not experimental doesn't mean she's not worth reading"

The expire=mental/inOVAtive tag is my own prejudicial preferences which I intend to not be cause to limit other versions of literary value/quality/interest. But, as I will insist, I don't have many guiding stars for the evaluation of poetry, but my suspicion is that poetry and its poets are generally not widely read and so therefore for their certification as BURIED require a more stringent application of criteria. But by all means, ask about anyone here because even if UNDERREAD and not BURIED, a name drop here is at least a name drop and a bringing to attention which is what we are all about. {this comment has concerned itself with
Louise Bogan }

How about her: Luisa Valenzuela. I was just going through Dalkey Archive paperbacks list given at the end of my copy of Island People and noticed her name.

Garima wrote: "How about her: Luisa Valenzuela. I was just going through Dalkey Archive paperbacks list given at the end of my copy of Island People and noticed her name."

Yes, please. And I say yes. Which of hers does Dalkey do?

Nathan "N.R." wrote: " expire=mental "

Glad to see you're making good use of the expire=mental®

That will be $2.55 please. And never fear all you interested users, there is an exchange rate.

He Who Searches

Would you please create the topic? I don't have much to say :-/

Anthony wrote: "expire=mental® "

Yeah, but legally, your application for the ® came too late. I acknowledged your credit upon my first re-use of it; but it's been released already; too late. Sorry sir, but I KNOW that your application was denied. [but the "inOVAtive" is under one of those linux-esque copywrights; feel yourself free.]

Lee K. Abbott: "A professor of creative writing at Ohio State University who has published five short story collections and a collected stories collection of his work. He has won many awards over the course of his career and summers in New Mexico."
is the author bio available in my local libraries database (which hilariously enough, is a mish-mash of amazononia and GRrevues, complete with links to BUY BOOKS)

His numbers are low. He's a GoodReads author who hasn't checked into the site in over two years (might the exclusion clause for goodreads authors be waived if an author is absent from this site for more than a year or 2?). His works look interesting; he was cited by someone on the wallace-l listserve as being an inspiration for a certain obscure story (link to + link to ) in dfw's first collection of fiction.

My local library only has his two of Abbott's newer appearances in print: an anthology of golf writing and one called Best of the Web 2009. The latter might not be crap & the former sounds like a good walk ruined. but check the diametrically opposed reviews on this book here—that sort of discrepancy is exciting, no?

ALSO Abbott's wiki page (,full of dead links to outside media) lists the EVEN MORE BURIED R.V. Cassill as a primary influence. Strange how these BURIED authors PILE UP on top over one another, eh?

Rand wrote: "(might the exclusion clause for goodreads authors be waived if an author is absent from this site for more than a year or 2?)"

Nope. Also, to be BURIED, important kinds of stuff (books) have to be AT LEAST pre-1990 and from the 1980's only if author has been BURIED already by a UNION gravedigger, in flesh-space. When the bulk of the oeuvre is post-1980 and author is STILL drawing BREATH, they're drawing enough BREATH to do their own SELF-unBURIAL. Raymond Federman (or, for instance, D. Keith Mano) represents THIS side of that cusp -- died recently, made his major efforts in the 1970's, subsequent decades refused to take any interest in his work. If an author is STILL BREATHING, they can do their own promo-stuff. [also, seemingly contradicting this principle, is the inclusion of Stuart Mitchner, but, despite still breathing and having an account on goodreads, but not part of the author program, his books were published 1976 & 1983, WE discovered HIM, HE found US, and he is doing nothing to promote his books and we are happy he is still BREATHING and reading Alexander Theroux.]

okay, NR. point well-made.
But I will still attempt to unbury R.V. Cassill, as he was .

Rosalyn Drexler, Christine Brooke-Rose, and Nicole Brossard are all still breathing, but they've also all been writing completely forgotten novels since the 60s. I think lady authors tend to have more of the longevity in general. II should hope they'll not be penalized for it.

Nate D wrote: "Rosalyn Drexler, Christine Brooke-Rose, and Nicole Brossard are all still breathing, but they've also all been writing completely forgotten novels since the 60s. I think lady authors tend to have m..."

Initial and major works from the 1960's which are UNREAD DEFinitely certifies one as BURIED. And Christine is very much DEAD; nearly the only thing findable on the internetz are her OBITS. I also make lots of exceptions to any and every principle, zB, with Nicole Brossard, it's clear to me on a first glance that she's so high highfalutingly LITERARY that the MASSes will never spontaneously discover her transgressive works; and she's been publishing since the '70s/'early 80s at least (and in French, which BURIES her furtherly among a reading culture which reads veryvery little in translation)

Rand wrote: "But I will still attempt to unbury R.V. Cassill, "

Being from Iowa would seem to increase the chances of having six feet of EARTH piled upon one. What do you know about his books?

Among his students, wikipedia tells us, were Clark Blaise, Raymond Carver, and Joy Williams.

Ali wrote: "Gerald Murnane"

Another on-the-cusp kind of BURIEDness.

a buried intuition of sorts

Any principles of SIX-FEET-UNDER which I might suggest can do little more than elaborate upon such an intuition. I do my damnedest to be clear and distinct (merci, M. Descartes) but WORTHIness tends to be rather FUZzy. [I'd love to ADD Evan Dara, but he's young enough to decide his own fate] I'd take the moment to remind as well that ADDing implies some degree of ADVOCACY, that you already know author/book deserves some attention or you've got an inkling of a twinkling of a suspicion that something's gone awry and oughta be corrected with a SPADE.*

[edit: what I mean, for instance: /review/show... [Rod #5]]

@ NR
I know nothing, other than he was Norton-anthologized.
I will read something of his before ADDing into this.

Rand wrote: "@ NR
I know nothing, other than he was Norton-anthologized.
I will read something of his before ADDing into this."

He was EDitor after retiring from BRown (where he must have been in touch with Robert Coover). I caught that in the wikipedia article.

Spare a moment pls:
Morris Renek

This NYT article throws some light on why he deserves a place in the BBC:

Morris Renek, Novelist With Hard-Boiled Stories, Dies at 88