It took me a while to get round to reading Hollywood by Bukowski.  I was afraid I wouldn’t like it, I enjoyed ‘Last Night Of The Earth’ poems much less than the other poetry books – more soft, unexciting, lacking rawness or humour.  All the poems seemed to be about betting on horses or agreeing with fans that his writing has lost it’s spark since he settled into a quiet life as a husband focusing on cats and gardening.  I thought perhaps maybe this was due to the success, less anger and resentment to be fuelled by, and seeing as Hollywood is written about Barfly being made, the screenplay he wrote, starring Micky Rouke (perhaps, oddly, I actually had no idea this film existed or anything about it until I started reading this book) – I assumed I’d be in for a bit more disappointment.  WRONG!  The first couple of pages already had me laughing with creative, imaginative, witty and dry observations I felt I could identify with.  It definatly isn’t all gardenening and cats.

Such were the rewards of the rewards of the Chosen in the land of the free

“we have just landed upon the outpost of death.  My soul is puking”

We were at the door.  I knocked.
It opened to this tall slim delicate type, you smelled artistry all over him.  You could see he had been born to Create, to Create grand things, totally unhindered, never bothered by such petty things as toothache, self-doubt, lousy luck.  He was one of those who looked like a genius.  I looked like a dishwasher so these types always pissed me just a bit.

“please, let’s leave, my mind is sliding away”

I felt something like a cold wind at the back of my neck.  Then I realized it was only a rush of fear.

I saw a deep pain in his eyes that I had never seen before.  For a man who wanted to be happy he looked like a man who had lost two pawns in the early rounds of a chess match without gaining an advantage.

He went crazy when watching the film being edited and saw a scene where Micky Rourke buys a woman a drink, she finishes, he then pushses his half empty bottle away and say’s that’s it, he’s broke.  Bukowski says any big drinker would never do that, he’d finish every last drop.  This is a major issue for him, already feeling the embarassment of alcoholics laughing in his face at this absurd, painfully unrealistic action and he demands a different take must be used for authenticity.  But towards the end of the book, he and Linda are at a party for the film, with a free bar, not liking the type of people at the party he demands they leave and just go home, regardless of the free booze.  Quite a turnaround there, showing how he’s changed.
Also he demanded there be a premier for the film and he had a white stretch limo with ‘a chauffeur, a stock of the best wine, color tv, car phone, cigars…’ ‘for laughs.  For bullshit’ but isn’t that why anybody would want it?  He is a changed man.  Or just showing a side we never thought he had.  Isn’t his whole ‘thing’ that he doesn’t care for ‘the American Dream’/a dull life of common expectations and materialism as a substitue for creativity and moving experiences.

A glossary of the characters pseudonyms and real names (and a couple of titles), which is frankly, hilarious:
Francois Racine (Steve Baes)
Wenner Zergog (Werner Herzog)
Lido Mamin (Idi Amin)
Tab Jones (Tom Jones)
Mack Derouac (Jack Kerouac)
Jon-Luc Modard (Jean-Luc Godard)
Francis Ford Lopalla (Francis Ford Coppola)
Karl Vossner (Carl Weissner)
Mack Austin (Dennis Hopper)
Tom Pell (Sean Penn)
Ramona (Madonna)
The Dance of Jim Beam (Barfly)
Jack Bledsoe (Mickey Rourke)
Lenny Fidelo (Frank Stallone)
Francine Bowers (Faye Dunaway)
Firepower Productions (Cannon Films)
Harry Friedman (Yoram Globus/Menahem Golan)
Nate Fischman (Yoram Globus/Menahem Golan)
Lippy Leo Durocher (Lefty Gomez)
Tim Ruddy (Tom Luddy)
Victor Norman (Norman Mailer)
Jim Serry (Timothy Leary)
Shipping Clerk (Post Office)
Hector Blackford (Taylor Hackford)
Hyans (Robby Müller)
Rick Talbot (Roger Ebert)
Kirby Hudson (Gene Siskel)
Sesteenov (Errol Morris)
Manz Loeb (David Lynch)
The Rat Man (The Elephant Man)
Pencilhead (Eraserhead)
Rosalind Bonelli (Isabella Rossellini)
Corbell Veeker (Helmut Newton)
Kay Bronstein (Eva Gardos)
Notes of a Neanderthal Man (Notes of a Dirty Old Man)

Also on the back of the book is a quote ‘Full of entertaining vignettes of celebrities’ The Times That has GOT to be a joke, right?  Or else who on earth chose / approved that!  I like to think it’s been chosen for a laugh to lure unsuspecting readers into the book.

Chapter 13 was possibly my favourite.

“I had other plans.  Huge ambitions: being a complete masochist.  I wanted a life full of perpetual failure and disappointment – so I chose the ‘art life!’”

La vida es una miseria (Life is a misery)

This book is about me!  Or rather, it could be.  It’s strikingly similar to my life, it must be a common rut to be in, seeing as there’s a popular book about it, though I have never met anyone similar myself before.  And neither has our man from The Losers Club.
Even his idea of meeting someone similar to himself by looking for Bukowski in a poetry section in a bookshop, this exact idea has crossed my mind before.  When he got there no one was about until a young lady approached and asked if he worked there, he replied no, but I may be able to help anyway? And she just guffawfed and dismissed him.  He assumed she was looking for some current best seller by some trendy poet everyone was currently reading and told her they were by the till.  And off she trotted.
He found a girl he connects with, with similar interest and a job she enjoys – which is something he admires, but he can’t have her.  She’s a lesbian.  I know who I want and I can’t have him either, because he is a lesbian! So many similarities!…  The character is just a year older than me too, though that’s where the similarities end, I still felt myself getting drawn in.  Feeling ashamed and embarassed and on edge just reading the bloody book, as if the events in it were actually happening to me.

The first page of the book is these two quotes:

People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life.  I don’t think that’s what we are really seeking… I think what we are seeking is an experience of being alive. – Joseph Campbell

We are here to laugh at the odds… – Charles Bukowski

The story is about a struggeling writer, whos time is eaten up in a crappy job / ‘life-wasting occupation’ as a shipping clerk, who’s resorted to finding romance and friendships through personal ads.  The character is of similar age to me, so it’s quite happiness enducing to read this blurb on the back

“A story of youth, very well told”

youth!  Ahh the pleasure of still being youthful.  So basically, if you read the back cover

“The Losers’ Club is a vibrant and hopeful anthem for all us ‘losers’ who choose not to wallow (for too long!) in our despair and who find the will to keep searching.” – Heather Lowcock

There are a couple of poems credited to Martin in the book, one is:

Tears

Sister…
What
might
soothe
those
saddened
cheeks?

Tears,
maybe
tears.

What
might
burn
away
those
parasitic
fears?

Tears,
sister,
maybe
tears.

What
might
fill
those
hollow
days,

those
vacant
weeks?

Tears,
sister,
maybe
tears.

And

what
might
wash
away
those
wasted
years?

Tears,
sister,
maybe
tears.

The
touch
of
tears
might
soothe
those
saddened
cheeks.
And
tears
might
burn
away
those
parasitic
fears.

Tears
might
fill
those
hollow
days,
those
vacant
weeks.

And
tears
might
wash
away
those
wasted
years.

But

what

might
dull
the
sharpened
pain?

which is followed with

By 2am Martin was so headstuffed and drunk he could barely manage to tear up his latest attempts at poetry.

Ha.  Identifiable.

Through personal ads Martin found Nikki, who is perfect for him, except she’s a lesbian.  Nikki has written a novel with the theme of how rarely-even people in love ever seem to connect.

It was again another opportunity for him to asses his feelings, to marvel at the weird progress of their relationship.  Whereas the first time he had met Nikki-especially upon first seeing her- he had felt more than a bit anxious, a tad insecure (thinking to himself, I’m way in over my head: she’s way to… way too…), he now had to admit he felt (for some unkown reason), an odd closeness: a peculiar ease in being next to her, almost as if he were waking to recall that they’d already known each other for years.  Somehow, almost at once it seemed, they’d struck a kind of resonace.  Call it chemistry, call it luck, it was the first time he’d been around someone so attractive and complex and not felt an overwhelming desire to hide.  Martin went with it, not even having to pretend, to “cover up”.  In fact, the truth was, it was no effort at all; that was the strange thing.  Already he felt he could be himself around her; and more importantly now, around her, he liked who he was.

They have a lot of interests and ideas in common and chat about:

“We can all get sanctamonius and say that most other people spend their lives pretending.  Living out deceptions.  But who’s to say we’re not all faking it, lying to ourselves, in one way or another?”

and how they dont ‘get’ artists with kids, assuming they just selfishly use them as material for their art like Nico recording her son’s heartbeat after an overdose so she could use it as a gimmick on a record (Martin’s Mother also having been a poet).  One of the women Martin dates that contacts him from a personal ad is a poet with a kid who lives with her aunt and uncle and for their first date arranges to meet him at her parents graves and immediatly kisses him.  Another is Lola, a painter who is a student living at her with her mother.  After an awkward date at a cafe where she reveals she thought her mum was trying to murder her after her dad left them, so she stopped eating and ended up in hospital, Martin quietly asked the waiter for the bill but ended up back at hers where he asked her to show him some of his paintings

His eyes widened in regarding the work: two canvasses-both portraying, in startling hyper-realistic detail, nightmarish scenes of intense psychopathic violence.
In the first entitled “Pig Party”, several NYPD officers were shown gruesomely dismembered, the amputated limbs of one cop brutally wedged up his own obscenely stretched rectum.  In the other, untitled, a white-haired girl in pigtails sat dreamily on a curb, sit of a horrific traffic accident, munching human entrails like raw link sausages.  In her lap, like a grinning moon, a severed head.  Carved on the forehead was a tiny cross and, just above it, the word, “Lolita”.
Both canvases were slathered in blood red from top to bottom.

All in all an enjoyable book, it was nice to be entertained and distracted characters with interests and opinions, and similar troubles.  But a bit depressing after realizing that this character which was created to depecit this rut is better off than me; has his own place to himself, lives in a city with a vast array of characters, creativity, interesting clubs and pubs, cafes and hangouts and has friends willing to hang out whenever he fancies and the frequent time and company of the person he adores.  This left a bad taste in my mouth.

My favourite quotes from the book:

One association led to another until at last, surfacing through a host of dim recollections, one memory took color and came into view.  Growing at one brighter and clearer…

Her dark eyes begging

Were it not for that rusted window guard, she might’ve fallen too.  Dropped down and down in slow motion, five full stories, arms flailing, legs kicking wildly-her head smacking the sidewalk and splitting open like a ripe watermelon-brains and bitterness splattering for yards!

and the best quote:

It was like some hallucinatory, adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasy with women cast as angels of mercy and understanding.

“I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1943.  When I was sixteen I started shooting amphetamine.  I shot with my friends everyday for three years and then left town but I’ve gone back through the years.  Once the needle goes in it never comes out.”

And so this is a book about drugs; specifically speed-freaks, who daily (even almost hourly) inject billion-volt charges of chemicles that blast their bodies into towering, God-rush highs (and which leaves the mind and body ultimately as hollow and used-up as a rusting roadside beer can)

Because this is my 30th post, WordPress treated me to this quote I have instantly fallen in love with:
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. — Gustave Flaubert

Amanda and her Cousin, Amy Valese, North Carolina, 1990

An image that embodies a favourite theme of hers: children acting like adults.

‘Sometimes pictures happen as you’re leaving a shoot,’ Mark says. She had been photographing a family for a story on violent children and was about to leave when the girl pulled out a cigarette and began to smoke it. ‘The mother was there, and didn’t mind.’ – Mark

Swamped as we are with a flood of images, films and products from the United States, it would seem that the American legend has been affecting us for a long time.
Each of us carries within them, however laughably or shamefully, their very own American dream.
An omen of the insidious fascination that America exercises upon us can be found in the Declaration of Independence: “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
The New World against the Old. Happiness as a right. One that everyone here seems to demand. Mary Ellen Mark has been crisscrossing the United States for more than 30 years, and everywhere we sense the same quest, be it latent or manifest, for legitimate happiness–at any price it would seem. Often, in her images, while the quest is palpable, actually acceding to the “American way of life” is something else entirely. The photographer transcribes little Tiny’s comments, “I want to be rich, very rich… to live on a ranch with lots of horses, my favorite animal… I’ll have at least three yachts… diamonds and jewelry, and lots of stuff like that”. Eighteen years later: five children by as many fathers, welfare… and she hasn’t stopped hoping. She still has the right to search, to repeat the offense, to make another attempt.
While Mary Ellen Mark’s photographs don’t probe the imposture of the American dream, they do expose it by unveiling the other side of the picture.
The American dream borders on the pathetic here. Poverty and distress mingle with the glitter. Like this little black girl, a carnival mermaid, whose illusions seem to be hopelessly confined to a flea-bitten bathroom, between a broomstick and a roll of toilet paper.
The abandoned, the prostitutes, the alienated, the gigolos, the bodybuilders are strewn throughout photographs that paint a fascinating composite portrait of a limping, disenchanted America. An obese woman in a ball-gown with a miniature dog licking her nose. Family photos proudly displayed in slum apartments. A provocative, overly made-up little girl in a bikini, smoking, while her feet dangle in a pool…
This American odyssey is more of a human adventure than an expedition.
When Mary Ellen Mark’s gaze rests upon someone, it obviously carries the respect that she manifests towards those who cross her path. Her images make no concessions, yet it is most certainly in their very crudeness that their delicacy lies. Pitiless (for all that, she never succumbs to gratuitous cynicism), this photographer is not without compassion. The time that she dedicated to little Tiny, to the prostitutes in Bombay, as to most of her subjects, betrays the profound humanity that animates her. Mary Ellen Mark is, without a doubt, a woman of images. As she herself says, it is because she is a woman that she can achieve this consent, this abandonment of self, this abdication of modesty, that would, incontestably, be refused to a man’s gaze. It is, too, through her capacity to blend in, integrate into and be accepted by the different milieus that she shoots. Neither moralist, nor partial, she knows how to create an effect without being overly sentimental.
Shooting photographs is always related to confrontation, to hostage-taking, to violence inflicted upon the other, for the one-and-one relationship is betrayed by the presence of the camera. This photographer feeds insatiably off the real, and yet, at no time does she behave like a predator. She says that she begins shooting as soon as she approaches her subjects. No stolen images. Those who agree to place themselves before her lens know that they are compromising themselves. No abuse, no illusions, no tricks.
For Mary Ellen Mark, the Indian whore is as important as the rich American. Humanity bursts out of and spills over from each of her images. Disturbing, off-putting, poignant, moving or ridiculous. That is the path she takes to make differences meet, to bridge gaps. Without ever falling into the trap of clichés or the picturesque. In a way, she demonstrates an immediate comprehension of the other, whatever their culture, lifestyle, religion, or condition… She knows how to capture and portray the expression of relentless determination to live in her subjects, whom she always apprehends in their social environment (circus, brothel, care facility…). And in her photographs, she knows how to reveal the instants of grace and discover the cruel paradoxes, to stigmatize laughable or pathetic social behavior, to show how everyone, through their attitude, tends to exist through the images they reflect. And, inexorably, what grabs and moves us is the other. The other is, for each of us, like another ephemeral self. And if Mary Ellen Mark’s images sometimes provoke unease, fascination, compassion or mockery, if they engender turmoil, it is because they are a mirror the photographer holds up to each of us. For in the end, Mary Ellen Mark’s photographic odyssey leads us to perceive a shred of the human condition. – Caroline Bénichou

Santa Claus at lunch, New York City, 1963

Pro-Vietnam War parade, New York City, 1968

Easter Parade, New York City, 1969

Mary Frances in the tub, Ward 81, Salem, Oregon, 1976

Older couple in a bar, New York City, 1977

“Rat” and Mike with a gun, Seattle, Washington, 1983

Aryan Nations, Hayden Lake, Idaho, 1986

Father and daughter, Aryan Nations, Hayden Lake, Idaho 1986

Dance Class, St. Petersburg, Florida, 1986

Jennifer, Tiffany, and Carrie, Portsmouth, Ohio, 1989

Leprosy Patient with her Nurse, National Hansen's Research Center, Carville, LA, 1990

Jeff Gilam and Stacy Spivey, McKee, Kentucky, 1990

Retired rodeo performers, Leakey, Texas, 1991

Vera Antinoro, Rhoda Camporato, and Murray Goldman, Luigi’s Italian American Club, Miami, Florida, 1993

Sherry Collins Eckert with Madame Butterfly, Afton, Missouri, 1995

National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, Big and Beautiful New Year's Eve party, Long Island, New York, 1996

Etta James and Strappy, Riverside, California, 1997

Gay Pride Parade, New York City, 1997

Gay Pride Parade, New York City, 1997

all along his difficult journey, he was inexpressibly tormented for some reason by the ubiquitous orchestra accompanying a heavy basso who sang of his love for Tatyana.

In chapter 4, as Ivan is ‘going crazy’, he hears this music everywhere and is taunted by it.

A brilliant detailed summary of the book can be found here if like me you suffer from a faulty memory and/or a ‘life’(/an existance) with little free time.  Also some interesting analysis’.  I’m not going to summarise it myself because I see it as one of those books that the pleasure comes from reading it, not the afterthoughts when you’re done, like those where you think ‘my brain has been upgraded now I have read that book! I see life differently and I can now make more productive decisions and informed choices! ah-ha!’ you know, one of those books… or is that just me that gets that… anyway…

These, are my favourite quotes I picked out from the book that made me laugh/ponder the most (in order of their appearance in the book):

I came in two weeks and was recieved by some girl whose eyes were crossed towards her nose from constant lying

Who the devil does he think he is?

I’m telling you he’s capricious as devil knows what!

I’ve been forcibly detailed here, they poke lamps into my eyes, question me for some reason

That quote seems to sum up some jobs quite comically

Just like a murderer jumps out of nowhere in an alley, love jumped out infront of us and struck us both at once

Love is mental suicide.

(she)began kissing me and saying that it would be easier to die than to leave me alone in such a state, but that she was expected, that she must bow to necessity, that she would come the next day

Some inventive, inspiring descriptions:

The sun had melted the crowd away

The sun had vanished before it reached the sea in which it drowned every evening. The storm cloud that had swallowed it rose steadily and menacingly from the west.

A sickly fig tree tried desperately to live, clutching at the heaven-cursed waterless earth.

The line behaved with much agitation.

The above quote is referring to a queue of people, as if it was a whole, living thing – where imagination has helped pick out a few words for something so simple to transform into something creative.

‘Nothing, nothing, nothing, my dears!’ she shouted, addressing no one knew whom.  ‘The jacket and trousers are there, but inside the jacket there’s nothing!’

This quote I enjoy having taken it completely out of context.  To me, it coincidentally happens to perfectly explain how appearances can be decieving, someone could look the part but have absolutly no substance to them, and they fool people, but not everyone, and the few who can see through the facade want to tell everyone else and hopefully find a kindred spirit who sees what they see.

Words from the Devil himself:

‘Altogether bad’ ‘there’s something not nice hidden in men who avoid wine, games, the society of charming women, table talk.  Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate everybody around them.  True, there maybe be exceptions.  Amoung persons sitting down with me at the banqueting table, there have been on occasion some extraordinary scoundrels!… And so, let me hear your business’

‘What’s the sense of dying in a ward to the groans and wheezes of the hopelessly ill?  Isn’t it better to give a banquet on the twenty-seven thousand, then take poison and move on to the other world to the sound of strings, surrounded by drunken beauties and dashing friends?’

Taking a closer look at him, the professor became convinced at once that this was no ordinary sparrow.  The obnoxious little sparrow dipped on its left leg, obviously clowning, dragging it, working it in syncopation – in short, it was dancing the foxtrot to the sounds of the gramaphone, like a drunkard in a bar, saucy as could be, casting impudent glances at the professor.

Also, I don’t know what kind of sick twisted seedy version I have, but I have noticed my chapter 14 is titled ‘Glory to the Cock!’ not ‘Hail to the Rooster!’ like it appears to be everywhere else… and in other versions it appears the aforementioned quote ends ‘staring at the professor as impudently and provokingly as it could.’  I understand Bulgakov died before completing this book, so someone else has either been meddeling with some of the words or it has been translated by multiple people?… ponder ponder…

BOOK TWO

Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar’s vile tongue be cut out!

But as soon as the dirty snow disappeared from the sidewalk and streets, as soon as the slightly rotten, disquieting spring breeze wafted through the window, Margarita Nikolaevna began to grieve more than in winter.  She often wept in secret, a long and bitter weeping.  She did not know who it was she loved: a living man or a dead one?  And the longer the desperate days went on, the more often, especially at twilight, did the thought come to her that she was bound to a dead man.
She had either to forget him or to die herself.  It was impossible to drag on with such a life.  Impossible!  Forget him, whatever the cost – but he would not be forgotten, that was the trouble.
‘Yes, yes, yes, the very same mistake!’ Margarita said, sitting by the stove and gazing into the fire lit in the memory of the fire that had burned while he was writing Pontius Pilate.  ‘Why did I leave him that night? Why? It was madness! I came back the next day, honestly, as I’d promised, but it was too late.’
‘Ridiculous!…’ we might exclaim, but we shall not do so before a woman driven to despair.

‘go from my memory, then I’ll be free…’

Ah, truly, I’d pawn my soul to the devil just to find out whether he’s alive or not…

Whole days would go by, and later their years,
while I thought of nothing but its darkness
drifting like a bridge against the sky.
Day after day I dreamily sought its melancholy,
its searchings, its soft banks enfolded me,
and upon my lengthening neck its kiss
was murmuring like a wound. My very life
became the inhalation of its weedy ponderings
and sometimes in the sunlight my eyes,
walled in water, would glimpse the pathway
to the green sea. For it was there I was being borne.
Then for a moment my strengthening arms
would cry out upon the leafy crest of air
like whitecaps, and lightning, swift as pain,
would go through me on its way to the forest,
and I’d sink back upon the brutal tenderness
that bore me on, that held me like a slave
in its liquid distances of eyes, and one day,
though weeping for my caresses, would abandon me,
moment of infinitely salty air! Sun fluttering
like a signal! Upon the open flesh of the world.

‘I was drawn to document these communities because the same issues have played a role in my own life. I grew up enjoying christmas lunches with relatives who were “let out” for the day from their various institutions, shuffling around in pyjamas, dull and subdued by their anti-psychotic medications or, in the case of those who were only partially mad, talking to imaginary parrots on their shoulders. One grandmother could not be contacted on Christmas because she lived out of her car with her cats, roaming remote Australia, never staying in one place long enough for anyone to get too close. I never felt that these problems were relevant to me as a child, as my immediate family was sane and happy, that is, until my father died of cancer and my mother fell into depression and alcoholism. Fortunately for me my formative years were a little eccentric but mostly stable and happy, but it begs the question, what if these family breakdowns had happened earlier in my life? Who would I be now? Would I have developed effective coping strategies or would I have learnt by example, turned to drugs and spiralled into psychosis?’ – Claire Martin

The following photos are a selection from her set ‘Downtown East Side’, which I think is some of the best social documentary photography ever.

Aparantly there is a trend going round the area of carrying around Chinese paper parasols and shooting up under them.  Also, you can buy crack pipes in local shops, and they get away with it by selling them as a novelty romantic trinket:

‘All my life many things have been the same.  When we stop by to see Virginia Carter, for whom our youngest daughter is named, we rock on her cool blue porch.  The man who walk by tip their hats, the women flap their hands languidly in our direction.  Or at the cabin: the rain comes to break the heat, fog obscuring the arborvitae on the cliffs across the river.  Some time ago I found a glass-plate negeative picturing the cliffs in the 1800s.  I printed it and held it up against the present reality, and the trees and caves and stains on the rock are identicle.  Even the deadwood, held in place by tenacious vines, has not slipped down.

There are some controversial shots, which Mann comments:

‘These are pictures of my children… Many of these pictures are intimate, some are fictions and some are fantastic, but most are of ordinary things every mother has seen.  I take pictures when they are bloodied or sick or naked or angry.  They dress up, they pout and posture, they paint their bodies, they dive like otters in the dark river.’

Personally I can see where both crtics and Mann are coming from.  I adore how photography can help capture a memory with a vivid visual aid.  I don’t think there is any particular time that taking a photograph in would be vulgar, they’re not just to record happy occassions or to prove you’ve been to certain landmarks.  But perhaps some of these photos should have been kept private, they’re her children, not the World’s.  A few of these photos are very maternal but the innocence is no doubt interpretated differently by some other adults.  Such as this disturbing interpretaion/review:

‘The sensuality in Mann’s work is unavoidable. She sees the innate sexuality of her children where others would shy away from it. She glorifies it. In the image entitled “Popsicle Drips”, we see a young, male torso, stained with liquid dripping down his lower abdomen to his thighs. His hips are sensually thrown to the side, and his arms are fully out of view. Upon first glance, it is an incredibly disturbing image, for two reasons. One, without the title, this liquid substance could be anything. My first impression of it was blood, and the second was feces. When reading the title, it makes a bit more sense, but one has to wonder, how did the popsicle drips get down there?

It opens up an entire line of questioning on how staged this image really was. Secondly, this image is the only one in the entire body of work that details male full-frontal nudity. This comes as a shock to those who were not expecting it, and it causes more of a discomfort than that of the full-frontal nude female. This image is highly provocative in its subject’s pose, and the added popsicle drips adds an element of touch and tangibility for the viewer. Gender is an issue that many people bring up when dealing with Mann’s work.’

I don’t want to focus on this aspect but I feel I should mention it, if I’m going to be writing a post about ‘Immediate Family’ instead of just leaving those pictures out and just glossing over all the controversy.  I’m not outraged, but I’ve not felt the need to really think about it or have to form an opinion.  But I do think you should not publish naked photographs of your children.  If it’s yourself as a child, fair enough, but even though it’s your child I don’t think you have any right to be doing it, it’s their choice.  Just put some clothes on them!  They’re not going to be young and innocent forever, they’re going to want modesty one day, or at least their own control over it.  Also there is a photo of one of her children sleeping naked and she’s wet the bed – that’s just too, too far.  Anyway, none of the following photos I am going to share are of that controversial kind.

Mann clearly does not care about what other people think or interpret her as.  Her father, she says was ‘quiet and unassuming in his persona and extravagant in his vision, his mannared and courtley behaviour improbably paired with unapologetic self-indulgence.’  He was an atheist and her and her brothers were the only children in the school required to sit in the hallway during Bible study.  Her family, she says were ‘simply, different.’ ‘Finally, we all came to believe what Rhett Butler told Scarlett: that reputation is something people with character can do without.’

Here is a small excerpt from her book:

Rank.  But you can see how her views have formed.  He had thirty acres of land with giant oaks, ponds and orchards.  She describes herself as ‘a feral child running around naked with the pack of boxers.’   Does she mean underwear from M&S someone gave her? Here put these on you poor child.

Mann:

‘Memory is the primary instrument, the inexhaustible nutrient source; these photographs open doors into the past but they also allow a look into the future.’

‘There’s the paradox: we see the beauty’ and we see the dark side of things.’ ‘The Japanese have a word for this dual perception: mono no aware.  It means something like ‘beauty tinged with sadness’.  How is it that we must hold what we love tight to us, against our very bones, knowing we must  also, when the time comes, let it go?’

I like them because they are haunting.

‘Candy Cigarette’

‘The New Mothers’

‘Squirrel Season’

‘Damaged Child’

‘Eyeless in Col Alto’

‘Drying Morels’

‘Jessie And The Deer’

‘Playing In The Pines’

Now I don’t really have any idea what exactly the storyling was in Wild Boys, but I viewed it as a collection of some nice prose.   Which is perfect for me at the moment because recently, instead of searching for peoples philosphies on life in books, I find myself in search of inspiration to write myself.

Tio Mate Smiles, the first chapter gave me the urge to write summaries of people I know’s personalities using imaginative metaphores and give them all Mexican pseudonyms so I don’t accidentally directly insult (or dangerously over-flatter) anyone.

One paragraph beginning ‘his magic consists in’ inspired this small interpretation of part of a companions personality

His magic exists from a hypnotic, inadvertant demand of attention as he interrupts the Parade of Death and takes the stage, to unashamedly seize the higher pleasures they fear to reach.
Dead and unborn onlookers wallow in their weakness, as the shame they emit fails to penetrate him and rebounds with force as he shoves it down their throats and they choke, vomiting up a jealous mess of many made up morals purely to justify their cowardliness and they sink back down to worthlessness.
Rats of sumbission gnaw on his ankles but they fail to make him buckle and bow to necessity.

Another chapter in the book offers what I apreciate as a good summary of how devoting your life to a job you don’t enjoy will kill you (or rather your soul, which is as good as being dead).  You will only eat and shit for necessity, and the latter is due to inevitable loneliness.

‘In the fields workers are planting maize seeds under the direction of an overseer with staff and headdress.  Close-up of a worker’s face.  Whatever it is that makes a man a man, all feeling and all soul has gone out in that face.  Nothing is left but body needs and body pleasures.  I have seen faces like that in the back wards of state hospitals for the insane.  Faces that live to eat, shit and masturbate.’

Another chapter, Le Gran Luxe describes some kind of haven where everything is available to satisfy all your consumable needs, be it food, paragliding, educational interests (the latter from which the following quote is taken) and strangely a discription of computers that have all the information for any question on any subhect you could possible be curious about… like the internet, the strange bit is that it was written in 1969.

‘an educational short showing how le gran luxe can be achieved on a modest income.’ : ‘you see it’s all so simple home is where your ass is and if you want to move you move your ass the first step is learning to change homes with someone else and have someone else’s ass.’

Le Gran Luxe has instilled a streak of inspiration inside me to want to either set up my own ‘Butlins’ (never been, only guessing) style camp but with a suitable economy where living there is a lifestyle, not just a holiday, or to stop reading and get outside and make the most of the available physical indulgences this world already has to offer me!

This next quote I found comical and comforting for us slow learners out there:

‘Before my father started using morphine again he sent me to a Japanese person to learn something called Karate.  I learn these things fast because I am blank inside, and I have no special way of moving or doing things so one way is the same to me as another. ‘

And this next one is just funny:

‘I felt a shiver in the back of my neck as if a small animal with a cold nose has just nuzzled me there.’

This one is funny when taken out of context (I wonder whether that was intentional…):

‘It reeked of treachery but we were blinded by the terrible Bor Bor they were putting in our food and drink.  Bor Bor is the drug of female illusion and it is said that he who takes Bor Bor cannot see a wild boy until it is too late.’

Well it turns out ‘The Wild Boys is a futuristic tale of global warfare in which a guerrila gang of boys dedicated to freedom battles the organized armies of repressive police states’.  This following quote I think sums that up, with an extreme, disturbing (and perhaps fascinating?) example, showing just what doing whatever the Hell you want for your own personal pleasure and/or experience with reckless regard and no consideration for others could lead to.

‘I saw the Colonel empty his revolver and go down under ten wild boys.  A moment later they tossed his bleeding head into the air and started a ball game.  Just at dusk the wild boys got up and padded away.  They left the bodies stripped to the skin many with genitals cut off.  The wild boys make little testicles in which they carry their hasish and khat.’