”I’m twenty-five years at the auction house, forty-three years of age. They call me Rilke to my face, behind my back the Cadaver, Corpse, Walking Dead”I’m twenty-five years at the auction house, forty-three years of age. They call me Rilke to my face, behind my back the Cadaver, Corpse, Walking Dead. Aye, well, I may be gaunt of face and long of limb but I don’t smell and I never expect anything.”
Rilke has been called out to a deal of a lifetime. A house brimming with antiques that will put Bowery Auctions back in the black. The sister of the deceased owner wants a quick sale, not for the usual reasons of greed, but because she wants to free herself from a distasteful association. She instructs Rilke to personally dispose of all the contents of the attic, not in the usual way, through the auction block, but by burning.
There are books up there, you see, very unusual books in matching green and white bindings (some of you will know the publisher from the banner colors). There is an old saying that a lot can be learned about a person by their bookshelves. I’m not sure what my bookshelves would tell someone, except that I have a wide range of interests, that some might say is unfocused. In the case of McKindless’s books, they give Rilke an idea of some of his predilections, some of his fantasies, but it is the stack of photographs that Rilke finds that might give a clearer picture of what lurked behind the man’s eyes.
When Miss McKindless tells Rilke to burn the books in the attic, he crosses his fingers and assures her that he will do the deed. ”I can smile and smile and be a villain still.” I’ve never been in a circumstance where I’ve been instructed to burn a valuable book collection, but I can tell you that I wouldn’t be able to do it, nor would I be able to stand by and watch it happen either. I’ve been in a situation where they haven’t even thrown dirt on the man’s grave and the widow is demanding that I haul away her husband’s book collection. Not because the sight of the books made her grieve more for her husband, but because she had a deep-seated resentment towards books that he quite possibly adored more than her. So Rilke will not burn the books. He’s not sure what he will do with them, but he will not be party to something that is certainly an aspect of cultural genocide, even though these particular books are considered to be abominations by a certain percentage of the population. Whether they are trash or treasure is a matter of perspective.
”Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me, and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life.”--Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
He has bigger problems. The woman in the progression of photographs is shown with her throat slit by the end. Are these true snuff photographs or are they staged? Is McKindless a garden variety pervert or is he a murderer? Rilke might tiptoe back and forth across the line between right and wrong, but sadistic murder is firmly on the side of wrong. He launches an investigation that will take him deep into the Glasgow underbelly of sexual deviancy. What consenting partners choose to do with one another is one thing, but what these pictures show is too sinister to contemplate. The water is rising swiftly, and Rilke’s thrashing about only seems to drive him deeper under the water. His own sexual desires might land him in more trouble than he can handle.
This was funny: ”Shelves of videos. I slid one out...featuring real girls from Glasgow. Why not Real Girls from Rio? Taut, tanned buttocks losing out to the Pillsbury Dough cellulite of the girl next door. It cheered me to think that given a choice the average Scottish pervert wanted to wank to the robust Scottish girl in the street. Then I wondered if all straight men liked these big-busted, well-fed young women, or if it was just the perverts. The thought depressed me again.” Rilke is much more interested in the taut, tanned buttocks of Brazilian men than women, but he is not impervious to an attractive woman. I have to admit there is something strangely sweet about the pervs of Scotland preferring the reality of the girl next door compared to the surgically altered glamour girls of Rio. To me, fantasy is best grounded with at least a modicum of reality.
I really enjoyed the moral dilemmas of the book. As Rilke unwinds the McKindless secrets and deals with his cash strapped boss, he is constantly having to reevaluate his sense of right and wrong and the really wrong. People disappoint him, and sometimes he feels like a fool for even trying to do the right thing. He has to interpret the ambiguous prophecy of a ”strung-out sibyl, amphetamine seer.” He has to survive the religious ferver of a demented bookseller who believes he is the left hand of God, bringing justice to bear on those in need of punishment. He has to weigh his own greed and decide if he can live with the consequences of his own decisions. Most importantly, he has to find out the truth about the woman. His future can not begin until he solves the mysteries of the present.
I also really enjoyed the auction house aspects of this story, which were not that dissimilar from my own experiences in the book biz. I was hoping that Louise Welsh had written more stories about this unusual detective, but alas, that does not seem to be the case.
“‘A broad wants me to be one way, wants something from me, I can do it, I told you that already, just with you, it’s different. I feel like I’m runnin“‘A broad wants me to be one way, wants something from me, I can do it, I told you that already, just with you, it’s different. I feel like I’m running all the time. Running just to stay even.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I was furious.
‘You didn’t do nothing.’
‘I know. I’m sorry that you feel that way.’
He nodded. Softening. ‘You’re not easy.’
‘Why would you want me to be?’
He shrugged. ‘You know what’s wrong with you? You know your worth. You know just how much you’re worth.’
‘And that’s why I’m not easy?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Yeah.’ He paused, as if I really wanted him to come up with a right word. ‘Yeah.’”
I think we have all taken a wrong turn while looking for a bathroom in a bar in a serpentine building and discovered with mild anxiety that we were lost. Most of us don’t come across a gorgeous redhead giving fellatio to a man in the shadows, but that is exactly what happens to Frannie Thorstin. Do you leave? Do you stay? Clear your throat and ask...excuse me, where is the bathroom?
The man notices Frannie watching. He doesn’t care. If anything, it makes him lose his nut faster.
Frannie teaches English to a misfit group of young adults, one of whom has dragged her into this bar. ”Cornelius was having trouble with irony.” Her hobby, maybe it will turn into a book, is compiling a list of street vernacular. Words that have been appropriated for new uses, or new words that have been created whole cloth to fit the evolving changes on the New York street. Virginia, Snapper, Brasole, Gash-hound—all slang terms involving the vagina. Gangster lean...the cool way to sit in the driver’s seat of a car. Chronic...drug addict. Dixie cup...a person considered to be disposable. The street creates its own language, like lawyers, doctors, and psychologists. She is the chronicler. A person on safari, unaware that the lions and tigers and hippopotamuses can come too close.
Detective James A. Malloy comes by her apartment to ask some questions. The bartender gave up her name. The redhead has been found with her throat slit and her body disarticulated.
She runs the word around her tongue. It’s a good one.
Did she see anything?
Frannie saw something. More than she is willing to tell. She saw a tattoo, a distinctive one. The same one that Malloy has.
Is he the killer?
Does she care?
She’s hot for Malloy. ”It would have been my third or sixth or tenth mistake. I’d stopped counting.” It was like having the street right in her bed, right in her cut. She likes him for all the wrong reasons. She lusts for him for even worse reasons. He is her deep-cover, research project...a barbarian within the gates.
It’s like everyone is watching her, stalking her, weighing her. She is more alive than she has ever been and never been closer to death. What is really going on, and who does the killer want next?
The sex scenes are raw and explicit, but also central to the plot, and add to the overall uneasiness that the reader feels as the suspense ratchets upward. We are aghast at the chances Frannie takes and wonder if she is trying to live on the edge or looking for a push off the ledge. I love Susanna Moore’s writing style for this book. It’s cut so lean it shows the bone. This is a literary novel with splashes of gritty prose that could have been written by authors like Fredric Brown, Cornell Woolrich, and Jim Thompson. This novel reeks of blood, spit, semen, and sweat. The plot is going to be too real for many people because Moore is going to push your sensibilities right to the breaking point, but there are truths revealed in this novel where other authors fear to tread. Jane Champion directed the 2003 movie based on the book, starring Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, and she keeps the movie true to the book. We all tremble for Frannie.
‘It isn’t a question of loving him,’ said Ursula. ‘I love him well enough--c”The situation was almost ridiculous.
‘But do you love him?’ asked Dorothy.
‘It isn’t a question of loving him,’ said Ursula. ‘I love him well enough--certainly more than I love anybody else in the world. And I shall never love anybody else the same again. We have had the flower of each other. But I don’t care about love. I don’t value it. I don’t care whether I love or whether I don’t, whether I have love or whether I haven’t. What is it to me?’
And she shrugged her shoulders in fierce, angry contempt.
Dorothy pondered, rather angry and afraid.
‘Then what do you care about?’ she asked, exasperated.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ursula. ‘But something impersonal. Love--love--what does it mean--what does it amount to? So much personal gratification. It doesn’t lead anywhere.’
‘It isn’t supposed to lead anywhere, is it?’ said Dorothy, satirically. ‘I thought it was the one thing which is an end in itself.’”
When I think of epic masterpieces, I think of something of Tolstoyian length, an 800 to 1200 page monster that will consume your life for a month or two. My Everyman’s Library edition of The Rainbow weighs in at 460 pages, a rather modest number to achieve such a distinction as epic. And yet here I am declaring this an epic masterpiece.
It has been decades since I’ve read D. H. Lawrence. I was reading The Unexpected Professor by John Carey, and he talked about a lot of books, but in particular, it was his discussion of spending a summer reading all of Lawrence’s works that inspired me to consider returning to Lawrence. Carey wrestled with Lawrence, not of the homoerotic desire type, but with his structure and style. He couldn’t really say he enjoyed him or liked him, but he couldn’t stop reading him!
Aye, I understand that perfectly. I would read a big chunk of this book and set it aside, only to return to it a few days later and read another big chunk. I finally became exasperated with myself and decided to devote myself to Lawrence. In a flurry of hot reading, where I was completely immersed in the damp, black soil and the twisted sheets of the sexual revolution happening in the Nottinghamshire countryside, I finished the book, leaving myself completely spent, completely satisfied, wishing I smoked because I was in desperate need of something to settle down my hammering heart and my frayed emotional psyche.
This is a story of three generations of the Brangwen family. We have Tom and Lydia, then Anna and Will, and finish with Ursula and her torturous relationship with Anton Skrebensky. Through these characters, Lawrence explores the larger concepts of what relationships really are and our expectations for them. Certainly sex is a part of it, but what is more interesting for me is the emotional reactions that people have to one another. The misunderstandings, the misplaced passions, and ultimately with Ursula, a rejection of the need to submit to the suffocating baggage of a permanent, committed relationship.
Tom is the second husband for Lydia, which unbalances the relationship. Tom is caught up in the grand passions of his desire for his wife, but she doesn’t gulp her passions like he does. She sips them. She is more measured because she, in so many ways, has been made older from her past experiences in more than just years.
”It was not, he had to learn, that she would not want him enough, as much as he demanded that she should want him. It was that she could not. She could only want him in her own way, and to her own measure. And she had spent much of life before he found her as she was, the woman who could take him and give him fulfilment. She had taken him and given him fulfilment. She still would do so, in her own times and ways. But he must control himself, measure himself to her.”
How many times do relationships fail because we try to change the person we are involved with into who we want them to be, or maybe we want to cocoon them as they are so that they never change from the person we first fell in love with?
Lawrence is adept at hitting the reader with these great moments of understanding when everything that had been so murky becomes so clear.
”She did not know him as himself. But she knew him as the man. She looked at him as a woman in childbirth looks at the man who begot the child in her: an impersonal look, in the extreme hour, female to male. Her eyes closed again. A great, scalding peace went over him, burning his heart and his entrails, passing off into the infinite.”
Anna Lensky, who is Lydia’s child by her first marriage but was raised by Tom Brangwen, marries Will Brangwen. Like most of us, she is swept up in the romance of the courtship when desire supersedes all else. That time when the possibilities are endless. Once the reality of marriage hits and she can see the halcyon days of her childhood disappearing forever in the mists of the past, she starts to rebel. She is sensitive and assumes much from Will’s inability to always express himself in terms of reassurance. She lashes out at what he loves, wanting him to share her growing misery.
Tom, for all intents and purposes her father, really puts a fine point on exactly what is driving Anna to make Will so miserable.
”’You mustn’t think I want to be miserable, ‘ she cried. ‘I don’t.’
‘We quite readily believe it,’ retorted Brangwen. ‘Neither do you intend him to be hopping for joy like a fish in a pond.’”
It is quite a shock to settle into quiet domesticity. Anna wants for little, but for all that, there is certainly something missing. The fresh linen feel of the courtship faze has been replaced by sheets that have been washed and washed again. It is a question we all reach at some point in our lives, sometimes many points in our lives,…Is this all there is? Will is crazy about her, but doesn’t always know how to tell her, and she takes maybe too much pleasure out of torturing him about his beliefs, but the fury this inspires does eventually prove to be an aphrodisiac.
So this all brings us to Ursula Brangwen, the oldest daughter of Will and Anna. She has opportunities that no female has ever had before in her family. She goes to college. She holds down a job outside the home. She experiences a level of independence almost equal to what she would have had if she had been born a man. This isn’t just given to her. She has to fight her family for it. As she feels herself become mired in the same marriage traps that her grandmother and mother surrendered to, she can’t let herself submit. She must escape. She wants to exist independently, not only from a husband and her family, but from everyone. She wants to always have choices and options to be who she wants to be without hindrances and to be able to seize the day without considerations. She wants to be loved without commitment and love without being subjugated.
This was heady stuff to be published in 1915.
Lydia submits to a marriage, but with her eyes wide open, and refuses to become what her husband wants her to be. Anna, in many ways spoiled with too much freedom, rebels and tries to break her husband, only to discover that the cost to both of them is too great. Her rebellion is short lived, and she gives herself over to her children, but in Ursula we can see the joining of her grandmother and mother in questioning the strictures of a society imposed submission to a man.
Why must she?
Lawrence considered this, rightly so, to be a feminist novel. Barbara Hardy, in the introduction, gives this thought an intriguing twist. ”Ursula is the first woman in English fiction who is imagined as having the need and courage for a sexual odyssey.” Ursula rails at one point, Why can’t I love a hundred men? Why must I choose one? The adventures of Ursula continue in Women in Love. I will, of course, be continuing my wrestling match with Lawrence. I would say, at this point, it might be a draw. I can only hope he is as spent as I am and will be content to lie a bit and stare at the sky and contemplate the odysseys of these women before we have to grapple once again.
”’You know what man really desires?’ inquired the doctor, grinning into the immobile face of the Baron. ‘One of two things: to find someone who is so ”’You know what man really desires?’ inquired the doctor, grinning into the immobile face of the Baron. ‘One of two things: to find someone who is so stupid that he can lie to her, or to love someone so much that she can lie to him.’”
Baron Felix is a man of pretenses. He is not really a baron at all, but his father had perpetrated the deception his whole life so Felix’s filial legacy is to carry on the social duplicity. ”He kept a valet and a cook; the one because he looked like Louis the Fourteenth and the other because she resembled Queen Victoria, Victoria in another cheaper material, cut to the poor man’s purse.” Notice there is no mention about how good a valet he is or how good a cook she is. It is all about how they look and, when looked upon, what value they convey to the people whom the “Baron” needs to impress.
I am left wondering if his Victoria is the young Victoria, more in the vein of Jenna Coleman from Masterpiece, or the older Victoria, as portrayed by Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown. Louis the Fourteenth, we can only hope, looks as dashing as George Blagden from the Ovation show Versailles.
The theatrical production of the Baron’s life is maintained by his own performances, but also by the supporting cast with which he chooses to surround himself.
Baron Felix becomes enamored with a beautiful American named Robin Vote. It is best that, if your life is a sham, you do not allow yourself the indulgence of love, exploitation yes, but love...never.
If Felix were observing more carefully and not blinded by the aurora borealis of infatuation, he may have noticed that Robin is not really interested in anything but having a good time. Raising children, being a supportive wife, or being faithful to a husband are, by definition, selfless acts, and she is incapable of performing any of those roles with any level of believability. Felix needs to make a new casting call.
Robin bounces from Felix’s bed into the arms of Nora Flood, who wants to take care of Robin, but Robin wants the world collectively to take care of Robin. Jenny Petherbridge, a woman incapable of creating her own happiness, has made a life of looting other’s happiness. She soon has Robin, at least temporarily, under her control.
Robin leaves in her wake not a satisfied audience, no tears brimming at the corners of their eyes, fond memories, or even brilliant soliloquies to explain her behavior. She follows the brightest star until it dims in comparison to another.
We could generalize that everyone in this novel is horrid to everyone else. Jenny stealing Robin from Nora could be seen as inducing unhappiness in another, but frankly can any of us steal someone from someone else? Doesn’t a foot, an elbow, quite possibly a heart already have to be out the door before a lover can be absconded with? Baron Felix is a charlatan who makes a living out of contrived theatrics. It is hard to feel sympathy for him, but at the same time he is left nearly shattered by Robin leaving him. It isn’t even so much that Robin leaves, but she just seems to drift away.
Robin is the truly destructive force in the novel, whose beauty is a ”sort of fluid blue under skin, as if the hide of time had been stripped from her, and with it, all transactions with knowledge.” She could be a stand in for any of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. That might be a job she could stick with.
And who is there to pick up the pieces of each of these fractured relationships? The doctor, Matthew O’Connor, a man uncomfortable in his own skin, but who seems to somehow induce trust in those around him. ”Why do they all tell me everything then expect it to lie hushed in me, like a rabbit gone home to die?”
One character refers to the doctor as a ”valuable liar,” but he does seem to be the most honest with himself of anyone in the novel. He has desires he can only indulge in private, but he doesn’t deny any revelations about himself. He is, almost universally, the most liked person in the novel. Even T. S. Eliot, in the forward, feels the novel drags until the appearance of the doctor. I admit there is no tale of any relevance without the doctor, but there are some fascinating passages in the early pages that, despite how discombobulated I felt with the plot, are still rife with intricate sentences I enjoyed reading and reading again.
Djuna Barnes has a discerning eye and a flair for bold sentences. Some critics have said that only poets can truly enjoy Nightwood. I think that what is required of the reader is some patience. If you are confused, it might be that Barnes has you right where she wants you. Read on; do not let her scare you away. You will experience some descriptions or thoughts that you have never read before. Do not indulge in cannabis or go beyond a two drink minimum while reading this book. You will need your wits about you; maybe this book is better served with a cuppa and a piece of dark comforting chocolate.
She is, considering the times, a wild child. It is the turn of a new century, and she is well ahead of her contemporaries and far removed from the Flappers of the 1920s, who were trying to be emancipated women. The headmistress of her school, Sergent, finds her nearly intolerable, not only because of her attitude, which is certainly rebellious, but also because she is jealous of her relationship with one Aimee Lanthenay.
”I talk to Mademoiselle Aimee. Our intimacy is progressing very fast. Her nature is like a demonstrative cat’s; she is delicate, acutely sensitive to cold, and incredibly caressing in her ways. I like looking at her nice pink face, like a fair-haired little girl’s, and at her golden eyes with their curled-up lashes. Lovely eyes that only ask to smile! They make the boys turn and look after when she goes out.”
Things have progressed to lingering kisses and some heavy petting when Aimee drops Claudine for Mademoiselle Sergent. It is, after all, in her best interest. What can Claudine offer, except passionate embraces, but the headmistress can litter her future with little presents and not to mention provide her a helping hand with her career.
How scandalous! The ”Heartless Little Thing” has handed Claudine her first taste of unrequited love.
Lanthenay’s little sister, Luce, is also attending the school, and she is head over heels in love with Claudine. Under different circumstances, Claudine might have welcomed the attentions of such a little dove, but given her state of mind over Luce’s sister, she is more interested in applying a steady stream of torture lightened by moments of paying some mild attention to her. She gives her hope and then dashes it unmercifully.
Claudine is also navigating the treacherous waters of the attentions of older males. Whenever the District Superintendent Dutertre visits, he is very attentive to her. ”Oh, you little thing, you charming little thing, why are you so frightened? You’re so wrong to be frightened of me! Do you think I’m a cad? You’ve absolutely nothing to fear...nothing. Oh, little Claudine, you’re so frightfully attractive with your warm brown eyes and your wild curls!”
How could he help himself? After all, she had ”naughty eyes”. She is just beginning to understand her appeal to men. After all, she may only be 15, but she has the curves of a grown woman. She is ripe for the plucking, as far as Dutertre is concerned. Claudine, in her pride, might have brushed it all off as just part of being an attractive woman, but this scene is a great example of the underlining, cynical theme of the novel that lends some understanding into why an attractive, intelligent girl, like Claudine, might rebel against a corrupt adult system.
At the same time, Claudine is not above using her beauty to get herself out of some tight spots. Like when she is late for her final exams before a panel of men.
”’I was in the garden over there. I was having a siesta.’ A pane of the open window showed me my dim reflection; I had mauve clematis petals in my hair, leaves on my frock, a little green insect and a lady-bird on my shoulder; my hair was in wild disarray...The general effect was not unattractive...At least, I could only presume so, for their Lordships considered me at length and Rouibaud asked me point-blank:
‘You don’t know a picture called Primavera, by Botticelli?’
Aha! I was expecting that.
‘Yes, I do, sir...I’ve been told that already.’
I had cut the compliment off short and he pinched his lips with annoyance.”
The interesting thing is they are so distracted by her appearance that she is forgiven, but she could have gained even more points if she had allowed Rouibaud to believe the compliment was not only well received, but original. In true Claudine fashion, she uses her advantages to titillate the men, but at the same time, she lets them know what a bunch of lecherous idiots they are.
Her father has over 3000 volumes of books in his library, of which Claudine takes full advantage, but he is an indifferent parent, more interested in studying slugs than paying attention to his daughter. She comes home and talks to him about the grand part she is playing in a school festival:
”’Ye gods! Am I going to have to show myself over there?’
‘Certainly not, Papa. You remain in the shadow!’
‘Then you really mean I haven’t got to bother about you?’
‘Really and truly not, Papa. Don’t change your usual ways!’”
I may identify with the father more than I’d like to admit.
I’ve noticed that some reviewers consider Claudine ruthless and are appalled by her behavior, but I had a completely different read on Claudine. She is the smartest girl in the school, and that gives her a wider margin of error with her numerous offenses because the headmistress knows she needs her final exam scores to increase the prestige of the school. Claudine pushs back against those who are impressing morality upon her without living moral lives themselves. Her father is as nice as they come, but knows absolutely nothing about parenting a young girl. Basically, she is raising herself. She is trying to come to terms with her attraction to women and the attention she is receiving from men. She acts like she despises all of her classmates, but in truth she knows she will miss them. Claudine is prideful, willful, and probably doomed once the outside world starts to exert pressure to conform her.
I didn’t like 15 year old girls when I was 15. In fact, I didn’t like myself very much, either. When I first started the book, I was fighting my own reluctance to become mired in the trials and tribulations of a teenage girl, but it wasn’t long before I started to notice aspects that I respected and, dare I say, liked about Claudine. This novel was published in 1900, but feels contemporary in style and theme. It is a strangely compelling and breezy read.
Originally, the book was published under Colette’s husband’s name, Henry Gauthier-Villars, known as Willy, who seemed to make a living off publishing other writers’ novels under his name. It was his idea for his wife to mine her experiences at school and mix in some titillating scenes of young girls with burgeoning sexual interests. Those scenes are mild by the standards of today, but at the same time, I could see how they would have been scandalous in the day. Henry was quite the libertine with a steady stream of steamy affairs, and he encouraged Colette to engage in lesbian dalliances, certainly more for his stimulation (my impression) than for any concern for her own pleasure. I plan to read a biography of Colette next, which should provide more insight into her novels as I steadily work my way through her body of work.
”In this state of rootless imagining, my mind seizes upon the most unexpected associations. Drops of fat suspended in my soup become the ocular device”In this state of rootless imagining, my mind seizes upon the most unexpected associations. Drops of fat suspended in my soup become the ocular devices of archons; a baneful spider stalking fleas exemplifies the pubic triangles of embalmed houris; a copple-crown turd warns of the Revolution’s collapse and the dawning of lethal systems of industry. Further to conjure anxiety I pretend that the lines of my palms are the river systems of dead planets; when that proves tedious, I examine the frayed threads of my sleeves. These suggest astrological signs indicating the day, month, and year of my release. Days pass, and the more I grapple with despair, the more stupefying are the systems I invent. To tell the truth, they are more irritating than entertaining! But then comes the thought that saves me from the perils of the insalubrious necromancy: I will dream a book!”
It is the French Revolution, and people are losing their heads (when I say that, I’m not referring to people having moments of temporary insanity, but people actually getting their heads cut off) for being a member of the aristocracy or for being deemed indecent in some arbitrary form or fashion.
The Marquis de Sade has led a very public life of indecency and, in the process, has made many, many powerful enemies. He has one particular enemy, a writer named Restif, who will say anything to further the case for de Sade’s demise.
”Restif blames Sade, as do so many others---and I cannot stress this enough: as do so many others enfevered by Restif’s lies---for what he calls Sade’s ‘aberrant and violently disordered imagination.’
‘And Sade?’
Sade says: ‘My imagination is aberrant, perhaps: but it is mine.’”
The thing about Restif is that he is as big a perv as de Sade. He has no moral ground to stand on. In fact, the word retifism for shoe fetishism is named after him. He is a keyhole wanker and is always trying to slip into bed with his nubile daughter. In my opinion, de Sade was at least more honest about his “depravities.” He was a seducer, not a rapist.
De Sade is languishing in prison, but at least he is still languishing and not watching his head bounce on the cobblestone from some astral plane. He is very much alive...dreaming of books.
He is only alive because they have lost track of him. With a third of Paris behind bars, he is merely a straw in a haystack.
The Fan-Maker, an artist capable of creating exquisite detail on the hand fans of the wealthy, is on trial for her association with the Marquis de Sade. She makes fans depicting erotic scenes, not only for de Sade but also for many of the leading aristocratic ladies of the city. Her fans are in high demand because they are beautiful and naughty if you so desired. She is facing an inquisition that can only lead to one horrid conclusion. The burden of proof for seditious behavior by this “citizen government” is very low. To complicate matters, she has written a tract with de Sade, exposing the despicable behavior of the Spanish bishop Diego de Landa.
The fan-maker’s lover, a woman, has already gone to the guillotine. The inquisition could be seen as due process, but really it is about finding out more about de Sade’s sadistic practices and his known associates than it is about determining whether she is innocent or guilty. She is guilty by association, and how could any woman who produced such filthy art be anything but a deviant who needs to be exorcised from France?
”A fan is like the thighs of a woman: It opens and closes. A good fan opens with a flick of the wrist. It produces its own weather---a breeze not so strong as to muss the hair.”
Of course, I love the fact that she is an artist, an irreverent artist. One who isn’t afraid to expose the horrible behavior of a priest against an indigenous culture. A woman who isn’t afraid to seek her pleasure between the succulent thighs of a woman. What I like most about her is her insatiable need for books. Most of her discussions with de Sade revolve around books.
”My father was a scholar who, having lost the little he had, was forced to deal in rags and---as luck would have it---old books, which, after all, are often the best. So even if we ate gruel, we had books to read for the price of a little lamp oil, and that is how we spent our evenings. Father’s books were green with mold; they smelled of cat piss, they smelled of smoke, they were stained with wine, ink, and rain, or spotted with the frass of insects.”
Books must be saved from philistines more frequently than you know. When I worked in the book business, one of my jobs at one point was to go out to people’s homes to view collections, usually now owned by a person who did not amass the books in the first place. Usually that person was already molding in his grave, hopefully in a happier place rereading all the great books he had read throughout his life. I remember one place I went to where the books had been removed to a leaky shed, as the descendants of the book collector had wanted to tear out all the beautiful, mahogany bookshelves to make room for what? I couldn’t ascertain. The books had been in the shed for several months; monsoon season had come and gone, and this wonderful 19th and early 20th century collection was ruined. It was painful. The owners were very angry with me when I told them what the collection had been worth, but now had become worthless.
I may have twisted the knife more than I should have, but I was actually pissed off and feeling sad and sanctimonious in equal measure.
One happy conclusion to the French Revolution is that Maximilien Robespierre, the leader of the rabble who took over Paris, met his own end at the very same guillotine to which he had sent so many other people.
The Marquis de Sade might not have lived a beautiful life, but Rikki Ducornet has written a beautiful book about the intersection of a talented fan-maker and the depraved seducer and their unfortunate encounter with the French Revolution. Vive les libres!! and the people who cherish them.
”I wondered if I hadn’t been so deeply affected by Throat Sprockets because it had given this unfinished something deep within me, after all these yea”I wondered if I hadn’t been so deeply affected by Throat Sprockets because it had given this unfinished something deep within me, after all these years, the teeth it needed to access a body-temperature flow of nourishment.”
Our unnamed narrator frequently escapes to the sticky floored darkness of his favorite pornographic theater to relax and eat his lunch. His trenchcoated companions are barely a distraction in the periphery of his vision. If we are trying to place him on the scale of perversity, he ranks a bit above average, but certainly not in the red zone. He is a garden variety, breast man.
Until he sees Throat Sprockets.
”The director had a thing for women’s throats.”
His wife, Paige, starts noticing some changes in his behavior. He has always liked to give her shoulder massages, which always culminated with him groping her breasts. She can count on the fact that he is a breast man, and she has the breasts to keep him happy, but then he starts giving her massages that end with a special fixation on her neck. Her breasts, ready to be offered as a reward,...are...ignored.
Puzzling, but not alarming.
He continues to watch the film at every opportunity. His behavior becomes even more strange, more emotional. ”Men cry, but we tend to be moved to tears quietly, as quietly as we masturbate. Men are raised to purge themselves in strictest secrecy…”
He knows this need is not natural. He is developing an unnatural appetite. It scares him and invigorates him. He begins listening to different music. ”It was all about throat music. He couldn’t have cared less about the content of the music, he was after the substance of it, the texture, the sex of it, the husky vibrato. He was burrowing, digging, chewing into sounds, completely unconcerned with melody, ignoring everything but the simple conceit that these sounds coming in moans and coos and wanton wails and soaring arias were an erotic discharge pouring into his ears from women’s throats.”
If Paige’s breasts had grown to the size of cantaloupes and had sprouted wings, he wouldn’t have cared less, nor would he have been moved to desire if she had grabbed his head and stuck his face in her cleavage . His eyes would have been locked on the pulse in her throat.
The marriage ends when she has to defend the silky contours of her neck with a kitchen knife keeping his brandished teeth away from her cervicibus. His admiration for women’s throats has grown into a full on erotic obsession.
He works as an advertising writer, and soon he starts to realize that all of his ideas are centered around his interest in the concepts expressed in Throat Sprockets. He starts to realize that his desires are not as unnatural as he thought. The term sprocketing is becoming a known term, and whole groups of young people are becoming chokers, offering their necks and their blood to those who have found a desire that exceeds their sexual lusts. It is on the verge of an epidemic.
His descent into madness continues to spiral downward; each spiral is tighter and moving faster. He seeks the well spring of the film. The director proves elusive, but he does find some people involved with the film. He pays exorbitant amounts of money for anything connected with the film that will give him a better understanding. The question is, can he save himself before…”I hear the sound of a garroted camera as my blood runs out of film.”
This isn’t a vampire book. It is actually a fascinating journey of erotic obsession. I happen to find women’s necks very attractive, but I have no interest in the blood that pulses beneath the skin. Beauty for me is best left unmarred...well...maybe mussed a bit. For our narrator, it isn’t enough to gaze upon say the beauty of a dark round mole on a lovely female neck. He wants to consume it. He wants to possess it. I’ve learned over the years that those things that most of us might find unnatural or even disgusting are the very things that turn other people on. Any perversity that you can conceive is something that someone else has turned into an obsession. To say it is unnatural or unique may not be as true as I would like to believe. As Google releases more and more information about our true online interests, which actually are a more honest representative of our true desires than we would ever reveal in a survey, we might discover that our neighbors are more kinky than we had previously thought.
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Oh my what nice hardware you have my dear.
Tim Lucas explores the dark side of desire. He does so with evocative sentence structures and dangles all kinds of threads for the discerning reader to pull on to open up the truth about your own obsessions. The book left me wondering if I have even found my kink. If the narrator had never seen Throat Sprockets, he would have lived out his life being perfectly fine venerating breasts. Is there a song or a movie or book that will reveal a desire I had no idea I possessed? Am I living a lie while unknown desires are dormant in some dark corner of my mind? Read this book at your own risk, my friends and followers.
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