Andy Goldsworthy: In the Studio

TateShots explores how Goldsworthy uses materials to explore our connection with nature

If you like this, take a look at Rivers and Tides, a documentary about Andy Goldsworthy and his work.

Overbeck on Editing Samuel Beckett's Letters

Stefano Rosignoli asks Lois M. Overbeck about the ongoing four-volume edition

Samuel Beckett. Photograph: John Minihan

From Stefano Rosignoli (New Dublin Press):

At the end of a summer rich in events on Samuel Beckett, scattered largely between Dublin, Belfast and Enniskillen, academic research was encouraged in October with the publication by Cambridge University Press of the third volume of the writer’s correspondence. As in the previous volumes, Beckett’s statements about his own work, as well as the many intertextual references expanded on in the dense notes appended by the editors, demonstrate the scholarly value of the publication, which will become a primary resource especially for young researchers with no opportunity to explore public archives and private collections on both sides of the Atlantic. It is Beckett’s mocking depiction of intellectual life, however, rather than the crowded web of literary and artistic influences, that strikes the general reader and ensures that the letters are an enjoyable, rather than purely informative reading experience: “On m’a demandé un livret d’opéra bouffe! J’ai écrit une ligne – ‘J’ai pas envie de chanter ce soir’ – puis j’ai renoncé.” (“I have been asked for a libretto for a comic opera! I wrote one line: ‘I don’t feel like singing tonight’. Then I gave up.” SB to Jacoba Van Velde, 12.04.1958; in LSB III, 130-131). This trenchant tongue doesn’t appear to spare Beckett himself. In the same letter he declares, exhausted: “Il y a deux moments qui valent la peine, dans le travail, celui de la mise en route et celui de la mise en corbeille” (“There are two worthwhile moments in my work: the opening up and the basketing”; ibid.). This is just one of the many accounts of Beckett’s distress when facing the creation of new work, something that continues to spring at the author from the white page itself even during the years of his belated success.

I met Lois M. Overbeck, research associate at Emory University and general editor of The Letters of Samuel Beckett, to discuss the series, which is now approaching its conclusion. The interview took place just a few days after a public lecture given in Reading by Dan Gunn, professor at the American University of Paris and editor of the Cambridge collection, and before a reception at the Irish Embassy in London, which hosted a reading of the letters given by Barry McGovern.

Samuel Beckett was particularly reluctant to acknowledge that archival material could shed light upon his published works. In his later years, he authorised the publication only of those letters “having bearing upon my work” (LSB III, xviii), which became the principle guiding the selection and annotation of his vast correspondence. How would you summarise the editors’ interpretation of Beckett’s guidelines?

That’s a big question. It occupied us greatly, because it is different for each volume. In the first one, we had a very difficult time drawing a line between life and work. Especially in this volume, all of Beckett’s writing in his letters is also his work. And because he was generating unfinished work, his letters – especially those to Thomas MacGreevy – are directions toward finished writing, or comments on the writing he was struggling to do. But, as time goes on, the difficulty doesn’t come from the distinction between life and work, but from the large number of letters about the work. So the questions are: how are we going to choose the ones that are most useful to readers but also the most representative of the body of the letters that we cannot include? There are hundreds of invitations for a coffee at the PLM [the Petit Café PLM at the Hôtel Saint-Jacques on Boulevard Saint-Jacques, Paris]. Which of these do we use? You know, they are virtually the same letter, or card. But this is not a decision related to work and life. We realised that all we could publish was a sample. We wanted this to be as good, representative, and literary as possible. But that doesn’t close the door to all the other letters. We do say where all the letters are, so that people will know where they can go for more. I think we have judged it right.

The Cambridge University Press edition has published so far “60 percent of the total corpus for the years 1929-1940, […] 40 percent for 1941-1956”, and “a little over 20 percent” for 1957-1965” (LSB III, xvii). What has been considered irrelevant to Beckett’s work and consequently left out?

In the third volume, it’s pretty clear what the major correspondences are. Of course we don’t impose a narrative, but rather try to discover the narrative that Beckett’s own creative cycles establish. Our job is to think of: where was he at this point? Who were the key people? What letters will tell the stories of his work? Several important narrative patterns are given by the alternation of language, for example. It’s pretty clear, in volume three, that his plays were begun in English, but that he translated them fairly quickly afterwards. If you look at the chronology, you realise that he was working in some way with his plays in every language, every year. And this is also because he not only wrote a play, but he directed it or helped to direct it. Part of that was due to his worldwide exposure, and his worldwide audience. He might have been writing primarily in English, but Comment c’est, for example, was clearly a struggle in French, and French was the language of greatest discipline for him. So the bifurcation may be dramatic versus fictional, meaning that he found one language more suitable for the kind of very precise control that he desired in his prose. The stage instead gave him a sense of freedom – though he managed this freedom tightly, in terms of the rigours of the theatre. He loved the three-dimensional aspect of the stage; the absorption he had for the visual is critical to see in the drama. You will see in volume four, particularly as he interacted with other playwrights (and especially Pinter), how central the visual and the stage performance was to him. What he found in the work for the stage was a kind of three-dimensional sculpture, made up of light, sound and movement.

Several letters reveal Beckett’s recurrent concern with his own body, most of all when health issues are involved. What kind of self-portrait emerges from the author’s correspondence in the period covered by the third volume, and how does it differ from earlier or later stages of his life?

In 1957, Beckett was fifty-one years old, so he started creaking at the joints as we all do… but I think he was much more accepting of that. He complained, of course! He did have serious issues, such as the anticipation of cataract surgery, then more of an ordeal than it is today. His brother died of lung cancer, so whenever he got a bronchial infection… it worried him. He had an area in his jaw that was very badly infected, and of course that was on his mind. And people die, all through this volume. He mourned, but there is a matter-of-factness about death in the letters. I think he was growing more mature about these elements in life. It really depends to whom Beckett was writing. He wrote very personally about his health to his family in Ireland, where there were people who wanted to know about his health. He always wrote to the person. As readers we are outside of this correspondence, and we only know what we read, and perhaps what the footnotes suggest is also happening. It depends on the recipient, how much Beckett needed or wanted to express about something, including his health.

The involvement of Samuel Beckett, of several authors at Les Éditions de Minuit and of the publisher himself, Jérôme Lindon, with contemporary history resurfaces in more than one passage. How would you describe Beckett’s response to the Algerian struggle for independence and to the following turmoil in France?

Well, he was there. He was in the middle of it. In the letters, he wrote that he was listening, anxiously, to the radio, that there were explosions and rioting in the streets, etc. He was physically there at the time this was all occurring. Suzanne, of course, was also very involved, in terms of her strong sense of what was right or wrong in any of these political struggles. Beckett didn’t feel, for instance, that he could sign a petition on behalf of Jérôme Lindon, who was accused for his publications and for his political positions. But this was because he was not a French citizen, and not because he lacked passion about injustice. Indeed, he circulated a petition among his English friends and literary affiliates, and encouraged them to address the situation, to create an international response to the political problem. So, he was not a-political, but you’re not seeing it written about in letters as much as that he was living through it. It was part of the fabric of what was happening. We have these wonderful rose-coloured glasses of time, but he didn’t have them. I mean, he was aware of what was happening, but one doesn’t take a longer view of history in the middle of it. We cannot sense the ultimate shape of history until after it has been experienced. Sometimes our expectations as readers are not realistic or fair.

Many passages in Beckett’s letters refer to convivial gatherings with friends and colleagues, including Avigdor Arikha and Patrick Magee, and to a few trips abroad, such as the 1958 trip to Yugoslavia, also motivated by the need to spend his royalties locally. To what extent did Beckett’s quality of life improve during these years and how did this affect his writing?

He was always generous, and liked to be able to take people to dinner. Hospitality was part of his rapport with people, and he enjoyed doing that. So I don’t think that the trip to Yugoslavia is particularly a benchmark about lifestyle. He and Suzanne regularly took holidays, and they gravitated toward warm, dry climates, because Beckett needed, physically, to get out of Paris. All along, Suzanne tried to make sure that he got into a place where he could relax, without his energies being completely absorbed by people wanting to see him. You can see that very clearly in volume two as well, but in the period covered by volume three, it is more possible to afford regular travel. Beckett used the Nobel Prize funds to help others rather than enrich his lifestyle, as you will see in volume four. When he moved to the apartment over Rue Saint-Jacques in 1960, he was just around the corner from where the Arikhas lived, so he could walk over and have a drink, or listen to music with them… their apartment was a kind of second living room, in a way. With other people, of course, it was different. He liked and enjoyed the company of all his publishers: John Calder was a very congenial person, Barney Rosset was much the same but out of a different milieu completely. Both of them came to their full bearing in the Sixties, and they naturally gravitated to the radical fringe. Challenging censorship was at the core of their publishing values and ventures. He was very close to his Irish friends as well: Pat Magee was a wonderful person, full of stories… and very strong. Jack MacGowran, on the other hand, was talented and delightful but more fragile.

The large number of letters to contemporary writers testifies to Beckett’s growing international fame. This is also proven by the enthusiasm aroused in the younger generation, represented in volume three primarily by Harold Pinter and Aidan Higgins. Among his followers, the closest might have been Robert Pinget: how would you describe their friendship, leading to the adaptation of La Manivelle into English (The Old Tune)?

Pinget had difficulty with his publisher and so he moved to Les Éditions de Minuit. Beckett encouraged him, having him commissioned with the translation of Embers for the Italia prize, for example, and suggesting he write for the BBC. Beckett knew how important it was to be known to an English-speaking audience. Barbara Bray was instrumental in getting Pinget’s connection with the BBC worked through: she was very gifted both as a translator and as an adapter. She worked closely with Beckett on the translation of Pinget’s La Manivelle; although he did not always accept a suggestion, it freed him to know that he had a partnership going. Beckett and Aidan Higgins met through John Beckett. When Higgins asked Samuel Beckett for advice, Beckett suggested, rather, that he consult Arland Ussher “for wisdom”. There are wonderful letters at Trinity College Dublin, between Higgins and Ussher, both of them interested in Beckett’s work. Higgins for a time was in London, and so was John Beckett; they saw the plays and wrote to each other about them. Their corollary correspondence is very interesting, and very helpful. Sam’s friends were also friends with other friends, so if you did the sociological mapping, you would find a lot of interlocking circles, and that’s crucial to understand. As Martha Fehsenfeld and I began our research, we found a different kind of community in Dublin than in Paris and London. In Ireland, particularly, the circles were very tight. Beckett was willing to help Higgins, and arranged for the French translation of Langrishe, Go Down. Is it a coincidence that Harold Pinter decided to write the screenplay for Langrishe? Beckett suggested that Higgins work with Calder to publish his work in English [Felo de Se, issued by Grove Press in the US as Killachter Meadow; LSB II, 705]. Beckett was a mentor. I think the word “influence” is always a difficult word for writers: they don’t like to admit being influenced, but how can you help but be? [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett
• Editing Beckett's Letters: An Interview with Dan Gunn
• George Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters
• Blanchot and Beckett's Letters
• Gabriel Josipovici reviews Beckett Letters 1941-1956

CFP: Scale: Malta, 2015

European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts · Malta · 15-18 June 2015

A still from Terrence Malick's Tree of Life (2011)

From the European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSAeu):

This year’s conference is dedicated to the theme of Scale. In one way or another, scale is an issue deeply embedded in every discipline and every aspect of scholarly and scientific research. As the Call for Papers puts it, in the grand scheme of things Scale is the scheme of things itself. We do very much hope, therefore, that you will be as excited by the prospect of an interdisciplinary conference on Scale as we are. We are very pleased that the location of the conference will be Malta, an island in the middle of the Mediterranean with a rich history and culture, where effects of scale have exerted intriguing and complex energies for centuries, and which provides a particularly fitting and appealing venue for this year’s event.

The Call for Papers sets out a number of scale-related topics that cut across disciplines, with six threads identified that should themselves help to provide further prompts for thought. You will see that there is a distinguished group of keynote speakers – Bruce Clarke (Texas Tech), Marcus du Sautoy (Oxford) Gaetana Marrone-Puglia (Princeton), Tom McCarthy, Franco Moretti (Stanford) and Cary Wolfe (Rice) – which can only help to enrich intellectual and academic exchange when we meet in Malta in June. ‘Scale’ therefore promises to be an event that provides rich and rewarding interdisciplinary debate.

We very much look forward to receiving abstracts exploring scale and its various aspects and effects within and across disciplines. The conference will be particularly attractive to academics and researchers working in SLSA’s main areas of focus – literary studies, the sciences, the arts and the spaces (and scales …) in between, but we also hope to hear from delegates from other fields, who are most welcome to attend and participate.

This SLSAeu conference is organised in collaboration with the Humanities, Medicine and Sciences Programme at the University of Malta, and with the further support of the University’s Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Science and the Department of English, whose help is here warmly acknowledged.

Looking forward to scale-related conversations in June, in Malta. [Read More]

Stanley2 – A Photographic Exhibition by Helen Taylor

Stanley, County Durham · 14 March - 14 April 2015

Photograph: Helen Taylor

Press Release:

Stanley2 – a photographic exhibition by Helen Taylor 
Civic Hall Stanley, Front Street, Stanley, County Durham, DH9 0NA
14 March to 14 April 2015

Scenes of unreality and mind-bending perspectives will be on display next month at the first solo exhibition by North East photographer Helen Taylor.

Entitled Stanley2, the exhibition will feature a series of stunning ‘multiple exposures’ - achieved without using Photoshop or digital editing – and taken exclusively on Helen’s 35mm Holga 135BC analogue camera.

Multiple exposures, a technique used to superimpose two or more images into one, has been adopted by Helen to document her hometown of Stanley, County Durham, while presenting a beautifully atmospheric ‘ghost world’ where the lines between what is real and what is not are blurred.

Helen decided to study photography at Newcastle College in 2012 after a lifelong passion with the medium.

She says: “One of my favourite modules at college was working with 35mm film cameras and darkroom processes. After completing my diploma, I continued experimenting with analogue cameras and, in particular, the possibilities of double and multiple exposures. I took the series of photos for this exhibition in my home town of Stanley and in the surrounding area. I wanted to draw peoples’ attention to things that they may otherwise walk past without really noticing.”

In an era of digital photography, Helen is passionate about the unique qualities of film and the effects that it can be used to create.

“What excites me about film photography is the mechanical and chemical processes that have to take place in order to create your image,” Helen says. “We live in a world where photography is available on demand and has become, in a sense, quite a throwaway medium.

“Using a film camera means you don’t have a playback screen to review your images immediately and you have to take the time to compose your shot. Being restricted to 24 shots on a roll makes you more selective in choosing subjects and waiting for a film to develop brings anticipation and surprise back into photography.”

Helen, who owns a collection of more than 50 vintage cameras, both analogue and digital, adds: “I took these photos with a Holga 135BC camera which is a very basic plastic camera (even the lens is plastic). It’s sometimes called a ‘toy camera’. The key feature is that the film advance allows you to take multiple exposures.

“I find the results I get from this camera are dramatically different from anything digital. My technique is to take the first image the right way up and then without winding on the film advance, turn the camera upside down and take it again.

“The resulting photos have a delicate quality and the multiple exposures melt into each other with no distinct edges of where one ends and the other begins. There is no Photoshop or digital editing involved in any of these images, all of the effects are achieved in camera when the photo is taken.”

Helen Taylor’s first solo exhibition of her work – Stanley2 – takes place at Civic Hall Stanley, Front Street, Stanley, County Durham, DH9 0NA, from 14 March to 14 April 2015. Tel – 01207 299110

For more information go to: www.helentaylorphotos.com or www.civichallstanley.co.uk

Gerhard Richter's Desk

A still taken from Corinna Belz's documentary

Via Procured Design.

Find Gerhard Richter Painting on Amazon: US | UK

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Gerhard Richter, Tapestries Exhibition
• Tom McCarthy on Gerhard Richter
• Documentary: Gerhard Richter Painting
• Homes of German Philosophers
• Wittgenstein Day-to-Day

Blue Note: Uncompromising Expression: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

A beautiful, fully-illustrated history of the legendary jazz label

Blue Note: Uncompromising Vision: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

Blue Note: Uncompromising Vision: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

Blue Note: Uncompromising Vision: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

Blue Note: Uncompromising Vision: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

Blue Note: Uncompromising Vision: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

Blue Note: Uncompromising Vision: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

Blue Note: Uncompromising Vision: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

Blue Note: Uncompromising Vision: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

Blue Note: Uncompromising Vision: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

ABlue Note: Uncompromising Vision: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

Blue Note: Uncompromising Vision: The Finest in Jazz Since 1939

From Thames & Hudson, what promises to be a fantastic (and beautiful) new book celebrating the pioneering jazz label, Blue Note Records: 'Released to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the coolest and best- known label in jazz, this book celebrates over seven decades of extraordinary music from a company that has stayed true to its founders commitment to Uncompromising Expression. Tracing the evolution of jazz from the boogie- woogie and swing of the 1930s, through bebop, funk and fusion, to the eclectic mix Blue Note releases today, the book also narrates a complex social history from the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany to the developments in music and technology in the late 20th century. Blue Note is not only known as the purveyor of extraordinary jazz but is also famous as an arbiter of cool. The photography of co-founder Francis Wolff and the cover designs of Reid Miles were integral to the labels success and this highly illustrated, landmark publication featuring the very best photographs, covers, and ephemera from the archives, including never-before-published material commemorates Blue Notes momentous contribution to jazz, to art and design as well as to revolutionizing the music business.'

Find on Amazon: US | UK

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Horace Silver 1928-2014
• 50 Years of Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch!
• Sam Stephenson on Writing a Life of Coltrane
• One Down, One Up: A Jazz Website
• Don DeLillo on life, art and literature

Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks

Brad Dukes' volume offers an in-depth look into the making of the series

Brad Dukes, Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks

From Abigail Schaeffer (Chicago Literati):

Released just in time to coincide with the much anticipated Blu-Ray release of Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery and Missing Pieces, Brad Dukes’ new book, Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks sheds new light on the beloved cult TV series.

The book, which is done entirely in interview format, features cast and crew members speaking candidly about the filming of the show. With great nostalgia, writer Mark Frost rehashes the story of the show’s conception. Frost and auteur David Lynch originally met through their mutual agents and were in talks to do a biopic called Goddess about Marilyn Monroe. While that project never came to pass, Lynch and Frost nevertheless became friends. Legend has it, one unsuspecting day while sipping coffee at a diner, Frost and Lynch conceived Twin Peaks.

Originally titled Northwest Passage, Lynch and Frost were inspired by an old ghost story Frost had heard growing up. The character of Laura Palmer evolved from that story and allowed Lynch and Frost a way to, “peel back the onion” and go deeper within the layers of the seemingly innocent Pacific Northwest town. It should also be noted that Lynch and Frost, both huge fans of film noir, named the character of Laura Palmer after the 1944 Otto Preminger film, Laura. [Read More]

Find on Amazon: US | UK

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Filmmakers: David Lynch
• Twin Peaks: Behind the Scenes Photographs
• The Production Design of Lynch, Malick & Anderson
• Angelo Badalamenti on Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks
• David Lynch on Film vs. Television

Michael Stipe on Douglas Coupland and 9/11

Former REM frontman reflects on the images that haunt America

From Michael Stipe (The Guardian):

With a small, powerful set of images, Douglas Coupland actually manages to playfully (how did he pull that off?) remind us of our collective 9/11 moment – the act that unzippered the 21st century in most of the world, and changed my notion of home and safety forever. Coupland’s at first seemingly Op Art paintings are just black dots – abstract, weirdly familiar. But then you look at them on your iPhone (because you’re going to take a pic and post it … this is 2014, after all) and you have the ahhhhhhh moment when a chill runs down your spine and you realise that it’s them: the jumpers. It’s him: the boogeyman. Doug offers us the choice to either see or not see these deeply internalised images. Having that choice is what enables us to survive from day to day without going nuts.

His images also remind me that nobody really knows how to look downtown any more without feeling, in some way, conflicted. Every time I see the Freedom Tower, I think of “freedom fries” – the term coined when the US wanted to invade Iraq, and France objected. Anything attached to the word “French” in the US was then relabelled with the word “freedom”: freedom toast, freedom fries, freedom kiss, for fuck’s sake. French wine was banned, French people were spat upon, their heads in photographs replaced with heads of weasels. Forget the Statue of Liberty and where it came from. It was a disastrous response—a horrid turn on the formerly leftist act of boycotting as protest. I’ve never been more embarrassed by my country, (except when we re-elected George W Bush and Dick Cheney). I largely blame the media for this egregious abuse of power and influence.

Michael Stipe

The Freedom Tower was meant to inspire patriotism and instead embodies the darker sides of nationalism. The 9/11 attacks and the Bush administration’s response, buoyed by the media, and our shock at having finally been direct victims of terrorism, paved the way for a whole new take on “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” There was no longer any need to explain or publicly debate militaristic power, or the police state mindset. To do so was to be the opposite of a patriot. [Read More]

The Bleed 03: Launch at BALTIC book market

Magazine launch. 5 December – 6 December 2014

The Bleed (03)

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” – Ernest Hemingway

The new issue of The Bleed magazine will be launched at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art this week.

The independent magazine’s latest issue will be available for the first time at the two-day BALTIC Artists’ Book Market, which takes place at BALTIC in Newcastle-Gateshead on 5-6 December . Copies of The Bleed 03 will be free to visitors to the event with original artwork and signed copies of previous issues also on display. In 2011, BALTIC became the first UK venue outside of London to host the Turner Prize. It will be The Bleed’s first appearance at the prestigious gallery.

The Bleed 03, written by Daniel Thomson and designed by Jonny Speak, features photography by Helen Taylor and artwork by Tom Boyle, Abi Buchan, Meaghan Ralph, Karen Yumi Lusted and Helen Gorill, who has exhibited internationally and was included in the New York Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art archive. Previous issues have included work by artists such as Lauren Jane Forster, Mike Barnes and Nick Willis. The debut issue featured a cover by Eisner Award-winning comic creator Bryan Talbot.

“There is a great quote by Kurt Vonnegut, ‘we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be’ which I discovered after I had finished writing issue 03”, says writer Daniel Thomson. “At its heart, this is what the new story is about. A struggling actor is hired to impersonate his friend and starts to become someone else. As he loses himself, his entire world becomes a fiction.”

Since its launch three years ago, The Bleed has established a reputation for its ambitious, high-concept issues, which bring together diverse content, from prose and poetry to photography and illustration, into a single narrative to push the boundaries of how stories can be told.

The Bleed is an independent magazine based in Newcastle upon Tyne, with contributors from across the UK as well as from New York and Japan. It is open to any artist, working in any medium, from anywhere in the world and is dedicated to showcasing new, original talent. Follow The Bleed magazine on Twitter @thebleedmag and its editor Daniel Thomson @thebleededitor.

Read more at: www.thebleedmag.tumblr.com

To get a free copy of The Bleed 03 come to BALTIC Artists’ Book Market on 5-6 December . For more about BALTIC+ go to: http://balticplus.uk/

Adorno, Benjamin and Pop Culture

From Alex Ross (New Yorker)

Illustration: Patrick Bremer

From Alex Ross (New Yorker):

In Jonathan Franzen’s 2001 novel, “The Corrections,” a disgraced academic named Chip Lambert, who has abandoned Marxist theory in favor of screenwriting, goes to the Strand Bookstore, in downtown Manhattan, to sell off his library of dialectical tomes. The works of Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, Fredric Jameson, and various others cost Chip nearly four thousand dollars to acquire; their resale value is sixty-five. “He turned away from their reproachful spines, remembering how each of them had called out in a bookstore with a promise of a radical critique of late-capitalist society,” Franzen writes. After several more book-selling expeditions, Chip enters a high-end grocery store and walks out with an overpriced filet of wild Norwegian salmon.

Anyone who underwent a liberal-arts education in recent decades probably encountered the thorny theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research, better known as the Frankfurt School. Their minatory titles, filled with dark talk of “Negative Dialectics” and “One-Dimensional Man,” were once proudly displayed on college-dorm shelves, as markers of seriousness; now they are probably consigned to taped-up boxes in garages, if they have not been discarded altogether. Once in a while, the present-day Web designer or business editor may open the books and see in the margins the excited queries of a younger self, next to pronouncements on the order of “There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism” (Walter Benjamin) or “The whole is the false” (Adorno).

In the nineteen-nineties, the period in which “The Corrections” is set, such dire sentiments were unfashionable. With the fall of the Soviet Union, free-market capitalism had triumphed, and no one seemed badly hurt. In light of recent events, however, it may be time to unpack those texts again. Economic and environmental crisis, terrorism and counterterrorism, deepening inequality, unchecked tech and media monopolies, a withering away of intellectual institutions, an ostensibly liberating Internet culture in which we are constantly checking to see if we are being watched: none of this would have surprised the prophets of Frankfurt, who, upon reaching America, failed to experience the sensation of entering Paradise. Watching newsreels of the Second World War, Adorno wrote, “Men are reduced to walk-on parts in a monster documentary film which has no spectators, since the least of them has his bit to do on the screen.” He would not revise his remarks now.

The philosophers, sociologists, and critics in the Frankfurt School orbit, who are often gathered under the broader label of Critical Theory, are, indeed, having a modest resurgence. They are cited in brainy magazines like n+1, The Jacobin, and the latest iteration of The Baffler. Evgeny Morozov, in his critiques of Internet boosterism, has quoted Adorno’s early mentor Siegfried Kracauer, who registered the information and entertainment overload of the nineteen-twenties. The novelist Benjamin Kunkel, in his recent essay collection “Utopia or Bust,” extolls the criticism of Jameson, who has taught Marxist literary theory at Duke University for decades. (Kunkel also mentions “The Corrections,” noting that Chip gets his salmon at a shop winkingly named the Nightmare of Consumption.) The critic Astra Taylor, in “The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age,” argues that Adorno and Max Horkheimer, in their 1944 book “Dialectic of Enlightenment,” gave early warnings about corporations “drowning out democracy in pursuit of profit.” And Walter Benjamin, whose dizzyingly varied career skirted the edges of the Frankfurt collective, receives the grand treatment in “Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life” (Harvard), by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, who earlier edited Harvard’s four-volume edition of Benjamin’s writings.

The Frankfurt School, which arose in the early nineteen-twenties, never presented a united front; it was, after all, a gaggle of intellectuals. One zone in which they clashed was that of mass culture. Benjamin saw the popular arena as a potential site of resistance, from which left-leaning artists like Charlie Chaplin could transmit subversive signals. Adorno and Horkheimer, by contrast, viewed pop culture as an instrument of economic and political control, enforcing conformity behind a permissive screen. The “culture industry,” as they called it, offered the “freedom to choose what is always the same.” A similar split appeared in attitudes toward traditional forms of culture: classical music, painting, literature. Adorno tended to be protective of them, even as he exposed their ideological underpinnings. Benjamin, in his resonant sentence linking culture and barbarism, saw the treasures of bourgeois Europe as spoils in a victory procession, each work blemished by the suffering of nameless millions.

The debate reached its height in the wake of Benjamin’s 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” a masterpiece of contingent optimism that praises mass culture only insofar as mass culture advances radical politics. Many readers will sympathize with Benjamin, who managed to uphold a formidable critical tradition while opening himself to the modern world and writing in a sensuous voice. He furnishes a template for the pop-savvy intellectual, the preferred model in what remains of literary life. Yet Adorno, his dark-minded, infuriating brother, will not go away: his cross-examination of the “Work of Art” essay, his pinpointing of its moments of naïveté, strikes home. Between them, Adorno and Benjamin were pioneers in thinking critically about pop culture—in taking that culture seriously as an object of scrutiny, whether in tones of delight, dismay, or passionate ambivalence. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• The Life and Influence of Walter Benjamin
• Eli Friedlander, Walter Benjamin: A Philosophical Portrait
• Walter Benjamin's Paris Address Book
• Walter Benjamin, Early Writings 1910-1917
• Walter Benjamin's Library Card

I See Myself: David Lynch on Eraserhead

From interviews conducted by Chris Rodley

Working the night shift: Cast and crew members of David Lynch's Eraserhead

An excerpt from Chris Rodley's wonderful book, Lynch on Lynch, quoted by Criterion Collection:

Eraserhead took five years to complete. You must have been completely dedicated to the film to sustain both the project and your own enthusiasm over such an extended production period. What was it about the idea that you loved?

It was the world. In my mind, it was a world between a factory and a factory neighborhood. A little, unknown, twisted, almost silent lost spot where little details and little torments existed. And people were struggling in darkness. They’re living in those fringelands, and they’re the people I really love. Henry’s definitely one of those people. They kind of get lost in time. They’re either working in a factory or fiddling with something or other. It’s a world that’s neither here nor there. It came out of the air in Philadelphia. I always say it’s my Philadelphia Story. It just doesn’t have Jimmy Stewart in it!

I could be on the set at night, and I would imagine the whole world around it. I imagined walking out, and there were very few cars—there might be one far away, but in the shadows—and very few people. And the lights in the windows would be really dim, and there would be no movement in the window, and the coffee shop would be empty except for one person who didn’t speak properly. It was just like a mood. The life in that world . . . there was nothing like it. Things go so fast when you’re making a movie now that you’re not able to give the world enough—what it deserves. It wants to be lived in a little bit; it’s got so much to offer, and you’re going just a little too fast. It’s just sad.

When he reviewed Blue Velvet, novelist J. G. Ballard said that the film was “like The Wizard of Oz reshot with a script by Franz Kafka and decor by Francis Bacon.” Kafka certainly comes to mind in Eraserhead. Do you like his work?

Yeah. The one artist that I feel could be my brother—and I almost don’t like saying it, because the reaction is always, “Yeah, you and everybody else”—is Franz Kafka. I really dig him a lot. Some of his things are the most thrilling combos of words I have ever read. If Kafka wrote a crime picture, I’d be there. I’d like to direct that for sure.

In a way, Henry is akin to Josef K in Kafka’s The Trial—a man by turns bemused and alarmed by what is happening to him.

Henry is very sure that something is happening, but he doesn’t understand it at all. He watches things very, very carefully because he’s trying to figure them out. He might study the corner of that pie container just because it’s in his line of sight, and he might wonder why he sat where he did to have that be there like that. Everything is new. It might not be frightening to him, but it could be a key to something. Everything should be looked at. There could be clues in it.

There seems to be little differentiation between the outside and the inside in Eraserhead—something that becomes much more pronounced later in Twin Peaks. Views through windows are of brick walls, and although the sounds might be different, it’s mostly just as noisy inside Henry’s apartment block as it is in the world outside. The feeling is of no letting up. There’s a constant . . .

Pressure. Well, again, it’s industry and different things going on—a lot of it unseen but heard. But to me, even though there was plenty of ambiguous torment in Henry, his apartment—actually, his room—was, you know, fairly cozy. It was just this one little place he had to mull things over. The anxiety doesn’t let up, but it doesn’t really let up for anybody. Pressure is, you know, always building. In a way, I’d like to live in Henry’s apartment, and be around there. I love Hitchcock’s Rear Window because it has such a mood, and even though I know what’s going to happen, I love being in that room and feeling that time. It’s like I can smell it.

How did Eraserhead come about?

Well, fate stepped in again and was really smiling on me. The Center [the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies] was completely chaotic and disorganized, which was great. And you quickly learned that if you were going to get something done, you would have to do it yourself. They wanted to let people do their thing. If you could get it going, they would support it. They didn’t have any kind of real program. They ran films all day long, and you could look at them. And if there was something you wanted to see, or something somebody said you’d gotta see, you’d go up, and there it would be. It was an unbelievable screening room. Anything that was on film, they could show there. And people would get ahold of really rare prints. The chandelier would drift up into the ceiling and dim as it went. And they had the greatest projectionists!

My first year at the Center was spent rewriting a forty-five-page script I wrote called Gardenback. The whole thing unfolded from this painting I’d done. The script had a story, in my mind, and it had what some people could call a “monster” in it. When you look at a girl, something crosses from her to you. And in this story, that something is an insect.

Well, a couple of things happened. Caleb Deschanel read this script, and he called me up and said he loved it. He was a fellow at the Center and a director of photography. He said he wanted to shoot it. And that was really great with me. I’d worked with Caleb on a film he was shooting for a guy named Gil Dennis. They wanted a snake to crawl between the wall and the wallpaper in this thing, so I built this snake and this rig and did this thing for Gil. It didn’t work out real well, but it was okay. So Caleb was telling me about this producer over at Fox who was ready to do a series of low-budget horror films. This guy was a sort of friend of his, and he wanted my permission to show him Gardenback.

Frank Daniel—who was the dean of the Czechoslovakian film school—was by far the best teacher I ever had. Just a great, great teacher. Unbelievable! I never really liked teachers, but I liked Frank because he wasn’t a teacher, in a way. He just talked. And he loved cinema, and he knew everything about it. Frank was always trying to talk to me about Gardenback, but I wasn’t, you know, talking. So one day, Caleb and Frank and I went to see this guy at Fox. And this guy said, “Look, I want to give you fifty thousand dollars to make this movie. Caleb will shoot it, and it’ll be a labor of love—you’ll get everybody in there to do stuff for nothing.” But he said, “It’s only forty-five pages. You gotta make it 115 or 110 pages—it’s gotta be a feature script.” And this, like, hurt my head! “What does he mean?”

So Frank tried to explain to me. He said things like, “You have to have these scenes between the people. And they have to talk. You should think about some dialogue.” And I still didn’t know what he was really on about. “What are they gonna say?” I said. And so [laughs] we started having these weekly meetings that were like an experiment, because I really didn’t know what they were getting at. And I was curious to see what they were going to say to me. Eventually, a script got written. Gil Dennis was a writer and would come into the meetings. And Toni Vellani [codirector of the Center] would sit in on these meetings too. So they would all talk to me, and I’d go home and try to write these things.

What I wrote was pretty much worthless, but something happened inside me about structure, about scenes. And I don’t even know what it was, but it sort of percolated down and became part of me. But the script was pretty much worthless. I knew I’d just watered it down. It was way more normal to me. The bits I liked were there, but they were interspersed with all this other stuff. And now it was the end of the first year, and there I was with this thing.

On the first day of the second year, the old fellows came in and met the new fellows. And at the end of this meeting, they assigned different groups to different places to kick off the new year. And I was assigned to a first-year group. In my mind, this was a humiliating thing, and I didn’t understand it. So I got really, really upset. All this frustration came out, and I stormed up to Frank Daniel, and I screamed at him. I just barged in and told him, “I’m outta here. I quit.” I went and told Alan [Splet]. I said, “I’m outta here!” He says, “I’m going with you,” because he was fed up too, and we both stormed out of the place. We went down to Hamburger Hamlet and just sat there drinking coffee. It was over.

I finally went home, and Peggy [Lynch’s wife] said, “What the hell’s going on? They’ve been calling every ten minutes!” And I said, “I quit.” And she said, “Well, they want to see you.” So I calmed down, and the next day I went up, just basically to hear what they had to say. And Frank said, “We must be doing something wrong, because you’re one of our favorite people and you’re upset. What do you want to do?” And I said, “Well, I sure don’t wanna do this piece a shit Gardenback now—it’s wrecked!” And he said, “What do you want to do?” And I said, “I want to do Eraserhead.” And he said, “Okay, do Eraserhead then.”

So you already had the idea ready to go?

I had this twenty-one-page script. And they said, “It’s twenty-one pages,” and Toni or somebody said, “It’s a twenty-one-minute film.” And I said, “Well . . . er . . . I think it’s going to be longer than that.” So they elected it to be a forty-two-minute film. But the beautiful thing—because they were now feeling a little bit guilty—was that I was able to go to the equipment shed. My friend David Khasky was in charge of all the cameras and cables, lights, everything. And I had this Volkswagen with a four-by-eight wooden rack that held tons of stuff. Well, it was packed four or five feet tall with cables and lights. And the car was packed with camera equipment. And I’d drive down to these stables owned by the school, unload, and drive back up and get more.

The stables were down at the bottom of the mansion down Doheny Road. It was a little mansion in and of itself. It had a greenhouse and a garden shed, all made of brick, with these shingle roofs. But it was all getting old and funny. It had garages and a hayloft, a big L-shaped room above the garages. It had a maid’s quarters and places above for different people who worked for Doheny, kitchens, bathrooms, like a little hotel, with a lot of other stuff around. And I got four or five rooms and the hayloft and a couple of garages.

You just laid claim to them?

Yeah. No one wanted them anyway. They were empty. So we had a camera room, a greenroom, an editing room, rooms for sets, a food room, and a bathroom. We just sort of had the run of the place. I had those stables for many years.

They knew you were there, but they just left you alone?

Yes. They didn’t know I was living there—I got divorced in my second year, and I started living there. I also stayed at Jack Nance and Catherine Coulson’s house sometimes. And Al stayed at the stables a lot. That’s another thing I had: since Al was head of the sound department, I had access to the entire mixing room, the Nagras, microphones and cables, and all the rest. And the soundman. I had everything going for me. I was doing the thing I wanted to do most of all, making films. And I practically had my own little studio.

Did you get a grant to go to the Center, or did your parents have to pay?

You have to get there, and you have to take care of yourself. My father lent me money—me and Peggy and Jennifer [Lynch’s daughter]—and Peggy’s parents helped out too.

So how were you taking care of yourself during that time?

I can’t remember what year it was in Eraserhead, but I got this paper route, and I delivered the Wall Street Journal. That’s how I supported myself. We only shot at night, and my route was at night. So at a certain point, I’d have to stop the shoot and go do the route. But I had the route down so fast that I was only gone about an hour and eight minutes. Sometimes it would be fifty-nine minutes, but I was going flat out to make the hour.

Why were you only shooting at night?

Well, you know, because it was dark! And the park department was up there during the day, so it was noisy and there were people around. At night, no one was there. And it was a nighttime film. The mood was perfect, and that is critical.

Did you now regard yourself primarily as a filmmaker?

I didn’t really think about it; I was making this film. But I always felt there were these filmmakers out there, and I wasn’t part of that. I was separate from that. I never really considered myself in the system at all. [Read More]

Find on Amazon: US | UK

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Filmmakers: David Lynch
• Eraserhead: Original Soundtrack Recording (Deluxe Edition)
• David Lynch: Behind the Scenes on Eraserhead
• David Lynch: Eraserhead Interview (1979)
• David Lynch on Film vs. Television
• David Lynch on Meditation

Van Gogh and Mental Illness

Maria Popova looks at the painter's letters

Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait (1887)

From Maria Popova (Brain Pickings):

Around the time that Tolstoy was tussling with depression and his spiritual crisis, on the other side of Europe another creative icon was struggling with the darkness of his own psychoemotional landscape. As he was painting some of the most celebrated and influential art of all time, Vincent Van Gogh was combating his anguishing mental illness — frequent episodes of depression, paralyzing anxiety and, according to some accounts, the symptoms of bipolar disorder — which would eventually claim his life in 1890, shortly after his 37th birthday.

Van Gogh’s most direct and honest account of his psychoemotional turmoil comes from the letters to his brother Theo, originally published in 1937 as the hefty tome Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent van Gogh and later excerpted in My Life & Love Are One — the same wonderful 1976 gem that gave us his thoughts on love, tracing “the magic and melancholy of Vincent van Gogh.” The title comes from a specific letter written during one of the painter’s periods of respite from mental illness, in which he professes to his brother: “Life has become very dear to me, and I am very glad that I love. My life and my love are one.” [Read More]

Find on Amazon: US | UK

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Philosophy and Vincent van Gogh's Shoes
• Van Gogh: The Life
• David Lynch and the Big Fish
• Georgia O'Keeffe on her Life and Work
• Joan Mitchell Foundation

David Lynch's Industrial Symphony No. 1

Open Culture tracks down a copy of the 1989 musical play

From Open Culture:

It is time, I thought to myself just a couple weeks ago; time, I thought, to watch Twin Peaks again. How I had missed Leland Palmer’s crazed dancing/crying jags, Agent Cooper’s straight-shooting cornball savvy, Audrey Horne’s tongue-in-cheek slinkiness, and the absolute nightmare of Bob. How I had especially missed the haunting score of Angelo Badalamenti and the ethereal interludes of Julee Cruise. Immersed now in the second season, I already mourn the premature end. But you can imagine my delight when I discovered the film above, a Lynch musical play scored by Badalamenti and showcasing the otherworldly voice of Cruise, who appears as “The Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman.” Cast as the actual heartbroken woman is Lynch stalwart Laura Dern, whose heart is broken over the phone by then-young-heartbreaker Nicolas Cage. Rounding out the cast is another familiar face, Michael J. Anderson—Twin Peaks’ “Little Man From Another Place”—appearing here as “Woodsman/Twin A.” Logs are sawn, neon signs flicker, dancers writhe, and Badalamenti’s twisted cool jazz lulls us into bizarre Lynchian neo-noir terrain. [Read More]

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Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Filmmakers: David Lynch
• Lost Highway Screening: V&A, London
• Mulholland Drive Screening: Barbican, London
• David Lynch's Club Silencio
• David Lynch Artwork Retrospective

The Photography of Vivian Maier

An unknown artist who chronicled post-1945 America

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

Photograph: Vivian Maier

From Susanna Rustin (The Guardian):

"Honestly, my reaction when this process started was, oh, they're doing a movie on my crazy nanny who I never really liked," says Joe Matthews. The nanny's name was Vivian Maier, and she looked after Joe, his sister Sarah and brother Clark in the Chicago suburbs for three years in the 1980s.

The family knew that Maier was unusual and that she took a lot of photographs. Her attic bedroom was kept locked and packed full of boxes and newspapers. Joe's mother, Linda, says that she hired Maier, who was in her 50s, because she wanted someone she could respect as an equal: "I liked Viv because she spoke her mind so I knew what I was dealing with. We could disagree. I could say, 'No, I don't like doing things that way.' I thought she made a good partner."

But neither Linda Matthews nor any of the other families Maier worked for dreamed that soon after her death in 2009, their former nanny would be hailed as a key figure in 20th-century American photography. "The first time I saw her picture on television, I was stunned," says Linda. "I knew she was talented but it's astonishing what she made of it. Who could have imagined she could have left so much behind?" [Read More]

Find Vivian Maier on Amazon: US | UK

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• John Haynes' Photography
• A Love Supreme: Rare Photographs of John Coltrane
• Twin Peaks: Behind the Scenes Photographs
• Sharing the Met on Instagram
• Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Other Side of the Face