Pages from the Darger book are at the Museum of American Visionary art in Baltimore. Some really beautiful stuff there. I declared myself a fan of Darger to a friend and one point, and he showed me some more violent illustrations which turned my stomach. I had to cover them up with my hand in order to read the accompanying text, in which one of Darger's editors discussed his investigation into whether there were any disappearances or deaths of children that might have actually been Darger's doing.
There was a big Darger exhibition at the Warhol Museum, and Jessica Yu's documentary about him played in Pittsburgh as well (with one of the best closing-credits song choices I've heard - Tom Waits's "Innocent When You Dream").
Consensus now seems to be as said in the article, that Darger had never seen a girl's genitalia and assumed they were like his. This would exonerate him from suspicion in missing-persons cases.
In the Realms of the Unreal has been partially animated with voice work by Dakota Fanning.
I refuse to believe that Heebie has not heard of #4. I had actually heard of the massive diary before, and I'm not exactly grateful to have spent another 3 minutes of my life thinking about it.
Texas has it own Dargeresque character, Charles Dellschau.
4: Oh, I have a terrible memory for non-personal details. Maybe. It's new all over again to me.
Wait, they're numbered 6-1, so I meant #3. The fourth in the article.
Oh. Yes. I've heard of Finnegan's Wake.
Ah ho! This poor Glugg! It was so said of him about of his old frontmouther.Truly deplurabel! A dire, O Dire! And all the freightfullness whom he inhebited after his colline born janitor.
(AVAM is awesome, or was for day trips ten years ago when I lived in DC.)
Darger is unsettling and cool, and "Girls on the Run" is fantastic, but I can't help but feel that there are crazy artists out there whose stuff is just as unsettling and cool but don't happen to be renting from gallery owners.
Crazy book left out from the Cracked article: "Codex Seraphinianus".
When neb gets here I wouldn't be surprised if he mentions Wolgamot's "In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women" (starts on page 45 here). Discussed on Unfogged before.
A ... um .. representative sample:
In their very truly great manners of Jesus Christ very heroically Marie Rosalie Bonheur, Joseph Hergesheimer, Anne Louise Germaine Necker, James Branch Cabell, August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Frances Gertrude Fiedler had very ironically come amongst His very really grand men and women to James Fenimore Cooper very titanically
There's also Day by Kenneth Goldsmith.
Day doesn't reneg on Goldsmith's practice of extreme transcription. It consists of the New York Times for Friday, September 1, 2000, retyped-page by page, column by column, line by line-reducing multiple font sizes to 9-point Bookman Old Style and ignoring instructions to turn where stories continue.
I was expecting to see La Disparition on there, I believe another neb favorite.
I guess the whole Oulipo thing is kind of EXTREME WRITING. Today's WOD: 220 page novel, no use of the letter "e." GO!
I suggested the non-Oulipo "Albert Angelo" by B.S. Johnson to neb, and he countered with "Never Again" (which I hadn't even heard of). Matching wits with a Sicilian etc.
You'd never heard of it, eh, snarky?
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Huh, I've actually seen a Darger exhibit. I remembered the art and his biographical details but not the name. (It was back in 1998 or 1999.)
17: Quick, run an analysis on these comments and see if they resemble any commenter's style in the archives.
Incidentally, note snarkout's "which I hadn't even heard of" in 16. To me, it suggests a contrast with me and Albert Angelo (and the other Johsnon book snarkout mentioned). In fact, however, I had heard of neither. This is an example of the application of number eight of Neb Nosflow's Patented Techniques for Feigning Forbidding Facility, to wit:
8. When someone mentions an obscurity, simply mention another obscurity right back. Everyone involved will assume that you are familiar both with the obscurity you mentioned, and that which the first party mentioned.
Guess we know what neb thinks of heebie's writing projects.
Guess we know what neb thinks of heebie's writing projects.
I'm trying to recall some math book I linked (or maybe Sifu) here recently that was basically some massive set of calculated digits that no one would have ever needed. Something like that. There is, of course, Rand's A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates. Certainly not insane back in its day in 1955, but I'm not so sure about the 2001 edition. I particularly like that at Amazon it has "Search Inside" including the "Surprise Me!" feature.
Also I had not heard of the Nazi thing though I have heard of all the others. have never read any on the list.
Also I had not heard of the Nazi thing...
It was kind of a big deal in the 30s and early 40s.
21,22: With regard to Wolgamot in 12:
He had written two books, he told us, and was working on a third. "My first book was a complete failure." He had had the edition destroyed. "The second began to gallop." And then he murmured, "But wait till you see the next."
He had been working for thirty-odd years on his third book. I asked, hesitantly, if the third would have . . . for text . . . ? "Oh," he said, "same text, same text." But a brand new title page.
25: And TJ not even born then. Sheesh!
I am a fan of Darger. I had read/seen a lot in reproduction for many years before I saw some really substantial pieces at the Folk Art Museum and just burst into tears. It was embarrassing.
Huh. I listened to the Tilly and the Wall song "Lost Girls" quite a bit back in 2006, but I didn't know it was a Henry Darger reference: "Vivian, your life is told through nineteen thousand pages." It's kind of dark. "Room unfurnished, no light for nightfall. Just rugs for rolling you up. You know you can't get up.... No one will ever save you."
This interview with Keith Waldrop about Wolgamot is fascinating.
29: Yeah, I first saw his stuff at the Folk Art Museum as well. Was worried about that place, but it looks like they've moved and regrouped since last year.
Should have made that a link: "Lost Girls". (I was annoyed with myself for missing their show in Ithaca around that time. Then I forgot about them for years. They're playing near here soon, but I'll be somewhere in the midwest at the time.)
31 is partially quoted in 26, so I acknowledge my pwning master.
31: That is where the quotes in 26 came from (via neb).
Also:
All the rest he did fairly fast, but it took him ten years to write that one sentence. He said that it was so difficult "because, you know, it's very hard to find a sentence that doesn't say anything."
Ah, but then I handed the pwnership baton right back to you. Curses!
The epic sci-fi by the janitor reminds me of another sci-fi story, maybe "Coyote"? At any rate, on an intergalactic migration, someone wakes from the cryo sleep and is forced to spend the journey alone. He finds paint, eventually, and pretty much does what that janitor did. Almost down the details. Anyway.
I've always wanted to be an insane writer. Sigh.
I keep wanting Wolgamot to be a Harry Potter villain. (Tom Mawolo Rigdal?)
Who wants to sex Major Oblong Whatnot?
31 is wonderful. I love this bit:
Ashley had done a formal analysis of the book, and I had made an elaborate chart, claiming that the book is in four movements--there was no sign of this, no markings--of equal length. I thought, well, it helps him in composing his piece, but probably has nothing to do with it. But the first thing I remember Wolgamot saying was, "You realize, this is in four movements."
Fictional, and not even about writing, but "Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers" is online (for now).
He carried the idea into practice by painting the first picture in his new style. It was a gigantic canvas, covering several hundred square feet I have no doubt that Eupompus could have told you the exact area to an inch and upon it was represented an illimitable ocean covered, as far as the eye could reach in every direction, with a multitude of black swans. There were thirty-three thousand of these black swans, each, even though it might be but a speck on the horizon, distinctly limned.
All these references to me, wonderful me, only confirm what others have already said.
44: I thanked you in mine, too, you know.
You are thanked near a professor of my own on the page you linked.
44 That looks like an amazing book. As I'm not entirely afraid of being daft, I assume you, or someone else here, is to blame for it?
48: Yeah, actually, now that I'm looking at it, the introduction would be really useful in a course I'm teaching this semester. Hm!
As I'm not entirely afraid of being daft, I assume you, or someone else here, is to blame for it?
I would be very surprised to learn that its author is here.
… which is why I am willing to say that I think that the chapter on Nussbaum, though sharp (i.e. both intelligent and cutting), is not as good as it could be, and suffers in part from its choice of object.
I like the chapter on Plato, though.
(In each case I am actually only familiar with previously published alternative versions of the material in question. The Nussbaum chapter is the Chaucer one.)
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Fucking bats, how do they work manage to keep getting inside where the cat can catch them, necessitating late night bat removal kerfuffles and early morning trips to the vet?
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In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women
I have two tracks in my iTunes by that name -- one by Tortoise and one by Robert Ashley. I think one is from a mix by neb and one downloaded while reading And the Rest Is Noise? Or both from neb?
How does OJ's "fictional" confession not top this list?
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Voynich Manuscript, which surely qualifies as crazy by virtue of being in no known language.
37: Allen Steele's "Coyote" it is. He ends up not only writing a huge fantasy epic by hand but also covering all the bulkheads in fresco illustrations for it. Everyone else wakes up two hundred years later and is like WTF.
Oh. Yes. I've heard of Finnegan's Wake.
No you haven't. You've heard of Finnegans Wake. No apostrophe.
Pretty much everybody in Britain has taken a copy of The Young Visiters to a charity shop when their grandparents died, but I can see how it might not have crossed the ditch.
56: I know bats are important for various ecology reasons, but I don't think a trip to the vet will help them if the cat got them.
re: 59.1
Yeah, if someone ever works out what language it is in [if any] that'll be a massive thing.
61: he's a Vietnam vet. He is able to give the cat peer counselling for the guilt associated with having taken so many lives.
He's a Monty Python character. "a cat?" "no, a bat." Hilarity ensues.
59.1, 62
If nothing else it will give the manuscript librarians at the Beinecke cause to celebrate if they no longer have to deal with the constant stream of kooks and cranks each with their pet theory asking to see the damned thing. It's the perpetual motion machine of Renaissance studies.
Yeah. Where I work, we wanted to make some images public [20th century stuff] but one of the curators nixed it because apparently it attracts cranks and conspiracy theorists, and he'd rather not publicize it at all.
Joyce was irrefutably not crazy, functional, balanced, even heroic in his personal life. Only under very conformist and bourgeois standards does an asocial or anti-social act, if that is what you think FW is, demonstrate insanity.
Darger, on the other hand, was famously bonkers, and barely functional. I find amusing the unfounded assumption that this naif was ignorant of female anatomy. Most likely he simply didn't approve of female anatomy.
Perhaps Thomas Mann, in the particular way he used his sexuality as sublimation to inspiration might be considered crazy. Clumsy sentence. It was an ironic asceticism, a life lived as a critique of consciousness...never mind.
66: Watch that curator closely. They're clearly in on it!
When he entered his flat,
Mr. Paennim (Nat)
Saw a flittering bat.
But another saw that -
Mr. Natilo's cat.
The cat cut the bat,
and the bat bit the cat,
'twas an awful kerfuffle!
But Nat was not ruffled.
He was willing to bet
that the resident vet
had a vet kit for cats
and a bitten bat vat.
Yes, that was pretty awesome. I was going to do something with "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat" but now there is no point.
Most likely he simply didn't approve of female anatomy.
there's one for the quote archive.
how do you know you're on the Goth Internet? it's Monday morning Batblogging...
Most likely he simply didn't approve of female anatomy.
75: The mature female anatomy, anyway. Less clear on something like Darger's nymphs. [letter to Kate Greenaway with regard to her "girlies"]
Will you - (it's all for your own good - !) make her stand up and then draw her for me without a cap - and, without her shoes, - (because of the heels) and without her mittens, and without her - frock and frills? And let me see exactly how tall she is - and - how - round. It will be so good of and for you - And to and for me.
I have two tracks in my iTunes by that name -- one by Tortoise and one by Robert Ashley
No you don't. Check again.
"The pedantry is coming from inside your iPod. Get out now."
(The title of the Tortoise track ends "Women and Men".)
Well, $114 later, cat is fine. Bat is presumably still pissed, but hasn't come back to bite us.
Quick question. If Parent A registers a child for a different school without telling Parent B, is that a fixable marriage? Does it matter if the child is registered for both schools and will apparently attend the old school this year? There had been issues with the first school (a school that was selected primarily by Parent A), but Parent B did not find them worth switching schools over and Parent A did. This was a matter of frequent discussion but the second registration was not mentioned. Parent B learned of the second registration because the school called.
is that a fixable marriage
The world is a big place and nothing's impossible, but with that ridiculous story I'm going with both "no" and "the divorce won't be easy." Lawyer up now and try to get into counseling to smooth things over a bit.
81: Holy crap. I'd say it's fixable if Parent A can truly be made to understand what a monstrous dick move that was.
I mean unless I've misunderstood and it's totally not a big deal and a meaningless bureaucratic formality, like a "registration" necessary to keep the option of going to the new school alive but not foreclosing the possibility of staying at the old school.
One can imagine something like 84 not being monstrously dickish.
I don't know how you would categorize a bureaucratic formality as meaningless or not. I suppose that depends on Parent A's intent and I (Parent B, obvs) have not asked. The new school was mentioned as a possibility for the first time last weekend. In a conversation started by Parent A, I agreed to remain open to the possibility of switching schools before the end of the school year if there were problems. I didn't expect any problems as I have been generally happy. The new school was mentioned as a possibility and I asked how that would work. I know there is a lottery for enrollment. Parent A reported "knowing somebody."
Also:
#1 Parent A was just today at a community group meeting with an officer of the PTA for that school.
#2 At about the same time as Parent A would have had to have entered the lottery for this school (assuming no special connections), I inadvertently found out about an unsuccessful attempt to enroll in another school. I blew up and was given what I took as promises of more openness in the future.
Aside from the obvious conclusion (you can't tell a school to hang up the phone if your spouse answers the phone), I don't know what to make of it. It's clear enough that it isn't good and I'd better at least retain a lawyer. I'd bet that lawyers are pretty good at following instructions to not call the house.
There must be many other problems in the marriage? Otherwise it'd be odd for this dick move alone to prompt lawyer-talk.
87 gets it right. If the goal here is to ask us "Is this an appropriate 'last straw' for someone who thinks divorce is inevitable?" the answer seems to be "probably not".
This was a matter of frequent discussion but the second registration was not mentioned.
Eek. There are probably many more possible scenarios than I can think up, but that seems pretty fucked up at first glance.
How is parent B with shiftiness and impulse control in other parts of life? How old are the kids, and is there a lot of liquid money in savings or inheritance or whatever?
#2 At about the same time as Parent A would have had to have entered the lottery for this school (assuming no special connections), I inadvertently found out about an unsuccessful attempt to enroll in another school. I blew up and was given what I took as promises of more openness in the future.
Promises that somehow did not result in your being told right then about about the simultaneous registration at the other school? This is fucked up and you should definitely call a lawyer.
This sounds all kinds of messed up; not to be nosy, President B., but it sounds as if you were aware that your spouse was unhappy with the school. Did you think things were resolved and they were fine with the old school now; did you think things were resolved even though they weren't fine with the old school; or did you think the two of you were still exploring options? If the last of those possibilities, then maybe it's not that strange a thing to have done.
92: A new year comes with a new teacher and I'd thought we were waiting for that.
It really doesn't sound as if the two of you are communicating clearly at all. So, fixable, who knows, but you should be doing something to work on how you talk to each other so the hearer understands.
"Waiting for a new teacher" sounds odd to me, unless it means "We're pretty sure the problem is limited to this teacher, not the school generally." If you didn't have an agreement from your spouse that the school was fine, I can see "waiting for a new teacher" sounding like "we're not doing anything this year because disrupting the kid in the middle of the school year would be nuts; when the problem shows up again next year we'll end up waiting again; nothing will ever get fixed." Not that that excuses the stealth registration, but I could see this being a problem.
Concur with 91. The whole situation is bizarre and I am assuming there must be some weird disrespect going on here about your role as a parent.
81
... is that a fixable marriage? ...
Getting a divorce won't stop you from fighting about what school your kid should attend so what's the point? How's the rest of your marriage?
94: I'll try clear communication first. Couldn't hurt either way, I suppose.
96 has a point. This is exactly what divorced parents do to each other all the time, so why spend the money?
Why divorce at all, when you can be emotionally absent for the partner and sleep with other people without the partner's knowledge, and still be married?
Someone hurry up with the Mars programme or we'll run out of people who have ever set foot on a world not our own.
Yeah. Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon is one of my earliest childhood memories. My dad was an engineer for Grumman and he worked on the LEM. Yeah, I'm a little bit choked up.
Can't find that story "In the MSOB," where is it?
Oops wrong thread. I guess I oughta close some of these tabs.