Alphonse Allais: Cimetière parisien de Saint-Ouen #1

'Les gens qui ne rient jamais

ne sont pas des gens sérieux.'

 

'People who never laugh

aren't serious people.'

 

This is such a wonderful truism that I had to buy the postcard and, er, post it to my blog. This is from a newsagent opposite the Porte Lescot entrance to Les Halles, which for some years has had racks of such cards with quotations from authors all over the world, although I think maybe on a small number the point was lost in translation. Here, though, it can't be lost in my translation, and even though I have a ferocious allergy to most translations I have a feeling that Alphonse Allais (1854–1905) – absurdist, journalist, short story writer, etc – may translate fairly well into different languages. Although he was sometimes given to puns, which rarely translate at all. Maybe this is one of the reasons why he's not very well known in Anglophonia, although I note that Miles Kington did some translating of Allais's work.

 

I am a beginner to Allais's writing. However, by keying in "Flann O'Brien" and "Alphonse Allais" it's interesting to note that others like myself – but almost always French – have seen some similarity between the two writers. What struck me most was Allais's short story 'Les Petits cochons' ('The Little Pigs'), which could almost be a precursor of The Third Policeman: here, people are victims of 'delphacomanie' (yes, 'delphacomania'), which is manifested by a compulsion to create models of increasingly smaller little pigs out of breadcrumbs, until you need a magnifying glass to see them.

 

'ICI EST MORT

LE GRAND HUMORISTE

ALPHONSE ALLAIS

LE 23 OCTOBRE 1905'

 

This plaque on the building where Allais died is at 26 rue d'Amsterdam, 9th arrondissement, Paris.

 

Alphonse Allais was buried in the old cemetery at Saint-Ouen, although the original grave is no longer there.

 

'Alphonse ALLAIS

Érivain humoristique

1855 [sic] – 1905'

–––––––

 

'Sous cette dalle (en pente) a reposé Alphonse Allais,

écrivain humoriste.

Enterré le 28 octobre 1905.

Sublimé le 21 avril 1944 par une bombe de la R.A.F.

Transféré virtuellement à Montmartre le 24 octobre 2005.'

 

I'm sure – perhaps especially because he was an Anglophile – that Allais would have seen it as very funny (in an absurd way), his grave blown up by an RAF bomb. So far I've read only four short stories, but he's very rapidly growing on me.

Van Gogh and others in Auvers-sur-Oise, Val-d'Oise (95)

The distance from Pontoise to Auvers-sur-Oise to the east is only about four miles, although it is rich in the history of famous painters, the most famous of whom is Vincent van Gogh.

 'LE PEINTRE

VINCENT VAN GOGH

VÉCUT

DANS CETTE MAISON

ET Y MOURUT

LE 29 JUILLET 1890'

Van Gogh spent his last seventy days here, arriving at the Auberge Ravoux (sometimes now called the 'Maison de Van Gogh') on 20 May 1890 and dying here on 29 July of the same year after shooting himself in the chest.

The above photo was taken in 1890 and shows Adeline Ravoux, the thirteen-year-old daughter of the innkeeper, standing at the entrance to the auberge. In 1954 she still remembered 'Monsieur Vincent' regularly returning to the auberge at midday for the usual simple lunch of the time consisting of meat, vegetables, salad and dessert. She remembered that he never complained about any of the dishes.

Van Gogh's oil painting of Adeline.

The auberge wasn't open when we visited, although it has apparently not changed a great deal since Van Gogh's day. The auberge runs tours of the artist's room, of which the photo above is on display on the main street along with a number of other items. (The artist Anton Hirschig's room there is also preserved.)

Notre-Dame de L'Assomption at Auvers.

And Van Gogh's painting of the church.

The best shot of Docteur Gachet's house that I could get, as that too was closed.

One of Van Gogh's representations of the doctor.

Steps leading up to the house as seen through the bars of a side door.

I know nothing of the history of the painters' names engraved on the steps.

'LA TOMBE DE VAN GOGH

EST SITUÉE LE LONG DU MUR

ENTRE CETTE PORTE

ET CELLE DE DROIT'

Unfortunately we entered the cemetery via the gate on the right, which didn't have such a useful explanatory sign telling us exactly where the grave was located, although it's a small cemetery and not difficult to find.

Outside the cemetery a reporter from Le Parisien eagerly approached me about a biography of Van Gogh to be published the next day: it was the French translation of Steven Naifeh et Gregory White Smith's biography published in (American) English in 2011, which proposes a revised death: the painter was accidentally shot by two youths, one of whom was fond of brandishing a gun and obsessed by the Wild West. The article appears to be anonymous, and that's not us in the photo, but it quotes my views here. I would translate the title – 'La biographie de Van Gogh sème toujours le trouble' – as 'Van Gogh's Biography Is Still Stirring up Trouble'.

Vincent lies with his brother Théo in front of a large bed of ivy.

'ICI REPOSE

VINCENT VAN GOGH

––––––

1853 – 1890'

'ICI REPOSE

THÉODORE VAN GOGH

––––––

1857 – 1891'

I couldn't resist taking a shot of a lizard sunbathing on Van Gogh's gravestone.

Several other painters are buried in this cemetery, such as Eugène Murer (1846–1906), or Hyacinthe-Eugène Meunier.

There's also Léonide Bourges (1838–1909).

And Paul Adolphe Rajon (1843–1888).

And finally Émile Boggio (1857–1920).

Nearer towards the town is this impressive bust of Charles-François Daubigny (1817–78), whose museum is also in Auvers.

Yet another museum is the Musée de l'Absinthe. Van Gogh was a great lover of absinthe, the drink banned in France for many years, and which no doubt contributed to the painter's poor mental health.

This old advert seems to associate absinthe with youth, sex, and (almost) worship.

The back of the museum.

Ossip Zadkine's À Van Gogh.

Oh, and there's a castle, which was open, but we didn't bother to investigate as we had already seen so much in this charming little town.

Blaise Cendrars: Cimetière des Batignolles #4

'ÉMILE LAMBERJACK

1869 – 1912

–––––

BLAISE CENDRARS

1887 – 1961'

The novelist, poet and adventurer Blaise Cendrars was born Frédéric Louis Sausers in Switzerland. We had some problems finding his grave here, but then he is buried with the Lamberjack family. The reason for this is that he died without any money and so was buried in the grave of a friend.

Émile Lamberjack is interesting in his own right: in Auto Racing Comes of Age: A Transatlantic View of the Cars, Drivers and Speedways, 1900-1925 (2012), Robert Dick gives a little of his biography. Lamberjack had been a professional racing cyclist and exporter of Michelin products who married embroiderer Virginie Bossu. They divorced but continued to live together in the same household, until June 1912 when Lamberjack started moving his own furniture out and Bossu shot him dead. Surprisingly, she was acquitted due to the stresses of Parisian life, which caused a public outcry.

Benjamin Péret: Cimetière des Batignolles #3

Benjamin Péret was a much banned surrealist anarchist writer also known as Satyremont, Peralda and Peralta. Being thrown out of Brazil for 'communist agitation' was only one of the many events in his relatively short but very full life. He is buried not very far from the man he first met in 1920, and for whom he never lost his respect: André Breton.

 

 'BENJAMIN PÉRET

1899 – 1959

–––––––

JE NE MANGE PAS DE

CE PAIN-LÀ'

The collection of poems Je ne mange pas de ce pain-là  (1936) is Péret's expression of non-allegiance to bourgeois society.

Léon Dierx: Cimetière des Batignolles #2

 

Parnassian poet and painter Léon Dierx (1838–1912) was born in Saint-Denis in La Réunion, where there is a museum in the town of his birth.

 

 'LES LÈVRES CLOSES'

 

'LES AMANTS'

Philip James Bailey, Nottingham

A plaque on a building on the corner of Fletcher Gate and Middle Pavement, Nottingham, reveals that the writer Philip James Bailey once lived there. There is also a bust of Bailey by Albert Toft at the rear entrance to Nottingham Castle – both images are on another of my posts here.

I originally put a little piece of information about Bailey on the sidebar several years ago, which I reproduce below:

Bailey was born in Nottingham and educated in Glasgow, and is usually associated with the Spasmodic school of poetry along with J. W. Marston, S. T. Dobell, and Alexander Smith. He is most noted for Festus, a huge work to which Bailey was continually adding, and which was heavily influenced by Milton's Paradise Lost. Its most famous lines are:

'We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts not breaths;
In feeling, not in figures on a dial
We should count time by heart throbs; he most lives
Who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.'

Thanks to Dr Rowena Edlin-White for locating Bailey's grave in Rock (or Church) Cemetery, Mansfield Road, Nottingham, and for her transcript – which can't have been an easy thing to do – which I reproduce below:

'SACRED
TO THE CHERISHED MEMORY OF
ANNIE SOPHIA
FOR 33 YEARS THE DEVOTED WIFE OF
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
ENTERED INTO REST OCTOBER 27th 1896
“BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART FOR THEY
SHALL SEE GOD”

TO THE REVERED AND BELOVED MEMORY OF
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
(FESTUS)
WHO ENTERED INTO REST SEPTEMBER 6th 1902
AGED 86 YEARS

“DEATH IS ANOTHER LIFE. WE BOW OUR HEADS
AT GOING OUT, WE THINK, AND ENTER STRAIGHT
ANOTHER GOLDEN CHAMBER OF THE KING’S
LARGER THAN THIS WE LEAVE, AND LOVELIER.”*

PHILIP FESTUS JAMES BAILEY
ONLY SON OF PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
WHO DIED MARCH 9th 1904 AGED 62 YEARS.'

*From Festus.

Samuel Beckett: En Attendant Godot | Waiting for Godot (1952)

Beckett wrote En attendant Godot in a relatively very short time – between 9 October 1948 and 29 January 1949 – and it was intended as a form of relaxation, and unlike his novels not viewed with anything like the same seriousness. Beckett was much bemused not only by the play's success, but also by the many interpretations that have been made of it.

Put simply, the play concerns two men (Vladimir and Estragon) waiting (although they don't know why) for a person called Godot, and they are attached to each other, talk a great deal, but apparently about nothing in particular. Their activities, such as they are, are interrupted by a dictatorial man (Pozzo) with a slave (Lucky) on a rope lead. At the end of the act a boy comes on and announces that Godot will come the following day. The same events occur in the second (and final) act, although the words are different.

Beckett gave no explanations as to the meaning of Waiting for Godot. Even if he had I hope that they'd have been severely disputed: the real meaning of a work, once written, no longer belongs to the author but to the reader. Waiting for Godot is understood by many to be about the human condition, and there are certainly many examples in the play to suggest that. There has been much attention given to the word 'Godot' itself. God? Beckett denied this, but suggested 'godillon' or 'godasse', meaning shoe, to producer Roger Blin. A French cyclist of that name has been mentioned, and then there's the story of Beckett waiting for a bus on the corner of the rue Godot de Mauroy and being approached by a prostitute, and so on.

The relationship between Pozzo and Lucky has been put in a Marxist context – the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat; the bowler-hatted men have been seen in a vaudeville light, resembling Charlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy, and then their conversations have been seen as a mirror of the conversations Beckett himself had with his companion Suzanne. And then we can play further with the words used, the religious imagery, the way everything returns or repeats – such as the conversation continually returning to Godot, the second act returning to the first – not far removed, perhaps, from the song about the dog in the kitchen repeating itself ad infinitum.

There are a number of common elements, even themes if that's not too strong a word to use for such a sparse (but oddly extremely rich) play: boredom, waiting, suffering, habit/repetition, religion, attachment, memory, etc.

All of the above words could easily be used biographically to relate to Beckett, although is there a danger of reading too much into what Beckett intended as a mere amusement for himself? Certainly the list misses out how funny the play is, but then do we simply laugh because we see ourselves, indeed see life, in the same miserable condition?

To me it's a play that means nothing and yet means everything at the same time: to pin a specific meaning on it would limit it in the same way that the movements of the tied Lucky are limited, or in fact in the same way that all the characters are trapped in the same timeless, eventless world.

Waiting for Godot is possibly Beckett's idea of a game, but probably not, but then it's the lack of certainty about almost anything in it which is a part of its greatness.

My Samuel Beckett posts:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Anthony Cronin: Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist
Samuel Beckett: En Attendant Godot | Waiting for Godot
Francisco Pérez Navarro: Galería de moribundos
Deirdre Bair: Samuel Beckett: A Biography
Samuel Beckett, 14e arrondissement

Mariama Bâ: Une si longue lettre | So Long a Letter (1979)

The Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ (1929–81) was brought up by her grandparents and received a traditional and pious education. Her father, minister of health and a school director, later encouraged her to further her studies and go on to the École Normale. She taught for twelve years, divorced and remarried, and became a staunch feminist. Une si longue lettre is her first novel: her second – Le Chant écarlate (1982, translated as Scarlet Song) was written during an illness and published posthumously.

The novel, although written in numbered sections, is in the form of a letter begun by Ramatoulaye, who became a widow on the day of writing, to her friend Aïssatou, who had divorced on the previous day. There are strong religious images particluarly at the beginning – for instance she says that help for her husband (who was dying of a massive heart attack) such as massage and mouth-to-mouth ressusitation are no defences against the 'divine will', and sees herself as 'strange and crucified', and hangs on to her rosary.

Her marriage is to a professional man, and Ramatoulaye herself has a teaching job. Some women in her neighborhood go into raptures over the numerous gadgets she has in the home, but they don't realise it comes at a price:

'[G]as cooker, vegetable mill, sugar tongs. They forgot the source of this life of conveniences: up first, in bed last, always working...'

The old teaching was that a woman's best quality is docility, arranged marriages (perhaps with emotional blackmail attached) being common. Ramatoulaye's mother said that the secret of lasting happiness is for a woman to marry a man who loves her, not a man that she loves.

The word co-épouse (co-wife) immediately strikes an odd chord, and then the reader realises that polygamy is practiced. It is bigamy in this case, but comes after twenty-five years of being a loving wife, producing twelve children.

Ramatoulaye's husband Modou, whom she has deeply loved, after twenty-five years of marriage falls for his daughter Daba's schoolfriend Binetou. Ramatoulaye doesn't realise this at the time, although when Daba tells her that 'an old man' is buying her friend clothes, that Binetou's (considerably poorer) parents want to take her out of school and marry the old man, Ramatoulaye tells her daughter to tell Binetou to refuse, but the problem is that the old man has promised a villa, a visit to Mecca for the parents, a car, jewels, etc. But Binetou becomes the sacrificial lamb, and obviously the old man she marries is Modou. Five years later he is dead, hence this letter in Ramatoulaye's period of mourning.

After the funeral Tamsir, her husband's elderly brother, asks her to marry him, but she demolishes him with words, as in a very different way – almost, as she admits, as a 'frondeuse' – she demolishes the proposal of (the already married) Daouda Dieng, a former suitor and politician who to some extent appreciates her feminist spunkiness.

A change is taking place in Senegal, though, and it can be seen in Daba's marriage in which her husband cooks (and better than his wife), and that he openly says that she isn't a servant or a slave: they are the image of the couple Ramatoulaye has dreamed of. But although Daba believes in divorce, she still sees politics as a man's game, and has no interest in it.

Ramatoulaye also, against tradition, goes against the strictures of the past and her religion. She accepts that her daughter (also named Aïssatou) is pregnant by Ibrahima, and accepts Ibu and that he and Aïssatou will continue their education as husband and wife.

Une si longue lettre is an important work in the history of Senegalese literature, particularly in relation to the position of women in Senegalese society.

Abdellah Taïa: Le Rouge du Tarbouche (2004)

Abdellah Taïa's Le Rouge du tarbouche (literally 'The Red of the Fez') is a collection of short, largely autobiographical stories set in Barbès in north Paris and in the author's native Morocco. Many of them are strangely haunting, having an almost surreal quality.

'Massaouda et le serpent' is about Taïa's aunt Massaouda, for whom it was torture to get up and sit down, but was a comical spectacle for the family as she was playing and exaggerating her ills. He ironises: 'Almost paralysed and still very active', and calls her 'deliciously talkative'. At the end of the month, when everyone is broke and the fridge is bare, she lifts up her djellaba and tells her nephew to bring Saïd the fishmonger '[S]o he can fuck me. [...] I'll open my legs for him for five dirhams! Anyway, it won't be the first time.' She was a great laugh, and it was especially funny as she didn't realise that Saïd was gay. She prepared Taïa and his brother – who were both young at the time – for the future, for life. She never married and was tri-colored: the blue of her tatoos, red hair, and yellow clothes. Some said she was mad, some that she was from another world.

In 'De Jenih à Genet' the author speaks of his mother's cousin Malika in Larache, but especially of her son Ali, with whom he seemed to be in love – certainly fascinated by. It's Ali who takes him to the grave of 'Saint Jehih' and whose exoticism increases when he speaks a strange language: French. But 'Saint Jehih' is in reality Jean Genet, called 'Saint Genet' in Sartre's book about him: Mohamed Al-Katrani lived in Larache and died in a car crash, and Genet insisted on being buried near him. Ali is moved to tears and hugs Taïa, and this is the last time they will meet.

'Le Maître' – partly concerning studying Maupassant's Bel-Ami and his character Georges Duroy – establishes Taïa's enchantment with the world of books as it does with his fascination for mustaches: George's 'confirmed his virility and revealed his beauty', and we remember the man with the mustache in 'Invitations' with whom Taïa shared his complimentary cinema ticket to see Angel Heart, a man who invites him to tea in a café after as a kind of return for the favor, and has something to say but daren't say it, perhaps Taïa is too young. The short story is also about Taïa's teacher, M. Kilito, who also has a mustache, who writes an autobiographical third person narrated book titled La Querelle des images, in which the protagonist is called Abdallah, and thus Kilito unwittingly becomes Taïa's authorial mentor.

'Voyeur à la rue de Clignacourt' describes the early days of Taïa in Paris, in an appartment in the 18th arrondissement, seriously interested in cinema, and the story starts with a mention of Hitchcock's Rear Window, moving to the narrator as a voyeur, watching out of the window the people who live in the building he's in, taking photos of them, imagining names for them, imagining their lives. He concludes that we can't live entirely alone, that we need people in some way, that even if we are in exile we need the Other, as he has exiled himself from his family but found another special 'family' with which he communicates in silence through his window.

Specific references to homosexuality appear in 'Une nuit avec Amr', in which Amr describes his Egyptian family's reaction to his 'femininity' hounding him and eventually confessing to them that he likes men: he leaves his family to their prejudices.

The title of the book comes from a short story of the same title when Taïa is meeting Alain near the Barbès-Rochechouart métro, and in order to be recognised by him he's wearing a fez. An old man – a Moroccan Arab – asks him if his fez is a from Fès or Marrakech. Taïa tells him it was bought in Rabat, whereupon the man tells him it's just a cheap industrial red made in Casablanca. When the narrator shrugs him off, he vows he'll never grow old, as old people like the rude man only destroy others' dreams. When Taïa briefly returns home after two years he discovers the eternal cliché – that you can't go home again: he must return to Paris in hopes of fulfilling his dreams.

Nina Bouraoui: Avant les hommes (2007)

Jérémie is a young man who lives with his mother as he has since she split up from her husband shortly after his birth because, his father told him, she didn't think 'he had enough life in him'. Jérémie doesn't get on with his mother (who – like his father – isn't given a name). His friend Sami – who may also have been his sexual partner, but that may be one of Jérémie's many fantasies – has disappeared, but is later seen in a supermarket with a girlfriend.

Partly to fill the emptiness of his life, to overcome his depression, Jérémie smokes a lot of dope, which he buys from Ralph, another young guy he fantasises about. His mother spends her time in the clouds too, but then she's an air hostess, but although a deal of her time is away from her son, on her returns he still finds dope is the best way of mentallly sending her back into the clouds: in fact he needs dope as he needs air.

His mother also has various lovers, although we see her spending a great deal of time with Alex, who has a good body and whom Jérémie also fantasises about.

The language is often dreamlike, as if borne away on a cloud a psychotropic smoke, and below is an example of the long sentences used, usually only punctuated by commas. This is a description of the first time Jérémie sees Alex, although he may have known him as a child years before and forgotten – memory is one of the themes of the book:

'I was naked to the waist because of the heat, he looked at me too, then told me I'd changed a lot, but I have no memory of him, nothing, zero, so I told myself he was lying but I really liked that, I made as if I didn't understand, he went into the house, he looked at a photo of my mother in uniform, then he drank from the kitchen tap and I found it sexy because he had a big mouth, then he put his whole face under the water and I thought of Sami when he used to dive into the town swimming pool, leaving behind him a white stream like cotton wool.'

Insanity is a minor theme, and his maternal grandmother went mad after the death of her husband, and Jérémie's mother also worries that it may affect her. It's difficult to say if Jérémie is affected or if it's just the dope, although he too is frightened of insanity. This is another example sentence:

'Day breaks, I'm in our garden, right in the middle, as if UFOs had come to seek me out and take me to a world where you don't need to have love to exist.'

When Jérémie takes the train to see his father at his seaside home he sees his gestures of affection as acting, and such is his alienation that he doesn't feel the son of anyone. Later, he seems to be working towards a more optimistic, post-Sami resolution – and this doesn't seem to be just the dope that's affecting him.

(The translations are my own.)

My other posts on Nina Bouraoui:

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Nina Bouraoui: Garçon manqué |Tomboy
Nina Bouraoui: Mes mauvaises pensées

Five Leaves Bookshop, Nottingham (with many extensive self-indulgent preliminary digressions)

When I was studying for my MA in Literature a fellow student told me that he'd been to Waterstones in Oxford and that an American assistant had expressed interest that he'd purchased a book on the second generation Romantics, and remarked that she was studying for a PhD on 'Shelley and Music'. My friend slunk away in tongue-tied ignorance of how to react to that announcement. Although equally ignorant of Shelley and music I doubt if I'd have reacted in the same way, but then in my experience of Waterstones I've never experienced such a response to buying a book.

About ten years ago – when studying for my own PhD on the working-class anarchist novelist and playwright Lionel Britton, I ordered Melba Cuddy-Keane's Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual and the Public Sphere from Waterstones in Nottingham, as it was important for my chapter on working-class modernism, arguing that mainstream modernism has never been the elitism that some critics claim. Cuddy-Keane's book was a pretty obscure work and as the assistant handed it to me and I fished in my wallet for my credit card, he almost whispered the price of this very slim CUP book – '£27' – adding 'That's the price of education.'

Well, as a former working-class kid from a virtually bookless family – to my knowledge my father only bought one novel in his life, which was Lady Chatterley's Lover, and that was only to discover just how 'terrible', as he put it, the 'language' was – I know it's impossible to put a price on education. At the time, the arcane nature of libraries – an arcaneness protected by snooty librarians and assistants determined (I imagined) to prevent people (particularly members of the working class) from gaining access to knowledge – was a very difficult barrier to breech, although I made it through, albeit very late in the day but still (post-PhD) have a determinedly Foucauldian view of some librarians, plus an inexplicable residual fear of them.

Enter, then, independent bookshops in Nottingham in my intellectual foraging. Bux was a wonderful shop before the Broad Marsh bulldozers moved in on Drury Hill, which could have been a fine example of Nottingham's quaint past. There, I could (as a budding hippie) stock up on the latest issues of such 'underground' magazines as IT (International Times) and Oz (some time before the (harmless but considered provocative) Schoolkids issue), as well as buy, for instance, (as my interests broadened) a book called McLuhan: Hot and Cool, which influenced me in a number of ways. Unfortunately – towards Bux's end, long after its move to Lincoln Street – they found it necessary to employ a highly obvious young female store detective twirling about on a stool in the center. It felt like the end had already come.

Later – thoroughly pissed off by the library-like snootiness of the main Nottingham bookstore on Wheeler Gate, Sisson & Parker – I decided to order books from Concord Books on Woodborough Road, run by the vegetarian, pacifist, Friend of the Earth and (I seem to remember) teetotaller David Lane.

My first conversation with David was about Theodore Roszak, as David had met him, and I came to order a few of Roszak's books through Concord. Whiling away my time in Nottingham before moving on to university, I was forced at the time – in order to gain independent student status – to work for three years.

And I worked at Nottingham Central Library (then on south Sherwood Street) for eighteen months in order to acquire that status, developing all kinds of psychosomatic illnesses in the process. Some lunchtimes – maybe twice a week – I visited Concord Books and ate my sandwiches there washed down with David's crazy sanity.

On one of the last times I visited him before I left the country for a few months touring Provence in its healing sunshine, and before I began at Leicester University to study single-subject French, David was frantically trying to get through to the French Embassy to protest about some ecological catastrophe or other. I couldn't help thinking that all the phone calls wouldn't necessarily help his business's declining finances.

All this is to say that independent bookshops are vital: where, other than Concord Books, would I have bought all those books about the population explosion, the evils of Concorde (the plane), a signed copy of Richard St. Barbe Baker's My Life, My Trees, a book on the Tuparmaros of Uruguay (even though David was to some extent apolitical and saw 'left' and 'right' as largely irrelevant terms), etc.

I have little memory of Mushroom – I believe that much of the time I was living elsewhere – although I remember finding a cherished copy of Linton Kwesi Johnson's poems there.

But now – after thirteen years of independent bookshop drought – there is a new one in Nottingham: Five Leaves Bookshop, in an alley at the side of The Works (or Primark), Long Row. Created by Ross Bradshaw of Five Leaves Publications, this is a bold venture in these times, and the above publicity card lists the bookshop's specialities:

'History and landscape, politics, fiction and poetry, lesbian and gay, counterculture, psychology, weird and wonderful, international writing, magazines and journals.

Specialising in independent publishers'.

Children's books and Roma were added after this was printed (plus there's a section on the Beats). The rationale seems to be no royal family (hurrah!), no military history (hurrah!), no Jamie (hurrah!), and no celebrity biographies – ditto, although the wonderful new Mozzer book is to be stocked: see below for my coverage of it, or click on this for the same (although I'd pass on it if you're a Daily Mail reader): Morrissey's Autobiography.

I have hardly any time for venturing into Nottingham city center (like Moz, I prefer the more logical American orthography) these days, but Penny and I managed a flying visit: Penny – a very late convert to growling Leonard Cohen – was interested in the material on her ageing hero, whereas I was amazed to see a copy of Susheila Nasta's Wasifiri, a magazine that I know from years of experience can lure you into its literary web and just leave you there to fight your way out of.

I was very pleased to see several books by B. S. Johnson, one the few experimental writers so different from the usual largely boring mess of English – as opposed to British – literature (yawns such as Amis, McEwan, Mantel, etc). But missing was Jonathan Coe's Like A Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson: surely his best work and far more interesting than his fictional efforts?

I could go on and on, rambling, but I'll just say support British independent bookshops such as the highly commendable Five Leaves or they'll die: use somewhere else for showrooming – these kinds of places can and should educate you as they educated (and continue to educate) me.

Morrissey: Autobiography (2013)

ADDENDUM: As a result of Morrissey's recent support for an extreme right-wing political party, and the obviously racist comments that he has made, I no longer find it possible to support Morrissey. I have given all my Smiths and Morrissey CDs to a charity shop. I have no objection to anyone commenting on this post, any comments (if not racist) will be added, although I certainly shall not be answering any questions or making any comments. Morrissey, brilliant and original though he was, is unfortunately now part of my cultural history.

 

I doubt if the rock star Morrissey – born Stephen Patrick Morrissey in 1959 – would welcome any comparison between himself and the film director Woody Allen, yet he is a similarly brilliant, highly amusing mixture of egocentricity and self-denigration. Interestingly, although Morrissey was born in Manchester (UK) and spent his youth there, throughout Autobiography he uses American spelling and expressions, such as 'parking lot' and 'cell phone'.

Some reviews of the extended treatment Moz gives to the (in)famous court case of 1996 – in which drummer Mike Joyce successfully sues for (allegedly) unfair distribution of profits dating back to when he was in the Smiths – have called it tedious, but it reads brilliantly as a farcical, Kafkaseque onslaught, a determined hounding of Morrissey to extract as much financial blood as possible from him. The judge, John Weeks – later described as a 'fuckhead' by REM's Michael Stipe – has not even heard of Top of the Pops. This shows as much knowledge of how people in England (and by extension people on Earth?) then lived as chief prosecutor Mervyn ('Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?) Griffith-Jones displayed in 1960 during the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial. In this section, Morrissey delivers one of his many dismissive put-downs: '[Joyce] is not the quarry. He is not even qualified to be a nonentity.'

(I suspect that Joyce laughed at Moz's insults in the book in the same way as he laughed at the song 'Sorrow Will Come in the End' on Moz's solo album Maladjusted, in which the singer speaks of 'A man who slits throats [...] And I'm gonna get you'. Although – fearing legal repercussions – the pusillanimous Island Records pulled the track from the UK version, Joyce remarked that he thought it funny, but joked that he would have been worried if Lemmy (the fearsome Motörhead singer) had written it.)

Coming from a working-class Irish background like his bandmates – who nevertheless were grammar school educated whilst Moz went to a secondary modern school – he is painfully aware of class divisions, and doesn't need an Owen Jones to point out the discrepancy between the huge media attention given to the Madeleine McCann case as opposed to that of Keith Bennett, the working-class child murdered by Brady and Hindley whose remains on Saddleworth Moor have still not been found.

L'esprit de l'escalier rules in this book as Morrissey looks back and fires salvo after salvo at – the reader is given to think – anyone who has ever harmed him in any way throughout his life. This book is the perfect opportunity to settle old scores. As expected, much venom is hurled at Geoff Travis, the Rough Trade record company creator Morrissey attacked years before in his song 'Frankly, Mr Shankly' as 'a flatulent pain in the arse': Travis is criticised here for everything from poor management to flying the band across the Atlantic in 'cattle class'. Less seriously, Moz is never a man to resist the offer of a slice of toast, although he remarks that the 'Dagenham Doll' Sandie Shaw hands him a cold toasted exhibit of one of the smallest pieces of bread he's ever seen.

In his sarcasm and his biting howls of hatred, Morrissey seems to spare no one and nothing: the NME (at one time nicknamed 'New Morrissey Express'¹) was sued by Morrissey for calling him a racist; John Peel, once the rebel uncle (or grandfather) millions would have loved to have, justifiably comes out badly here for accepting the OBE from the UK's, er, gracious queen, and for half-believing the NME's senseless 'racist' slur; but how's this for really nasty bitchery – 'Manchester Man' Tony Wilson 'managed a lengthy and slow decline which some thought was actually an ongoing career'; and of Julie Burchill he says 'she will one day be found dead [...] having been burned and hanged and stuffed on the legitimate grounds of having been an irritable woman'.

Exaggeration, of course, is this man's favored weapon. And Moz can be as coruscating when attacking institutional shibboleths: he aims at the judicial system, the royal family, the education system, big business, the political establishment, and so on.

The importance of Autobiography would have been considerably lessened if it were merely a hate rant, but it is far more, and a serious love of music and literature shines throughout the book. The (original) New York Dolls seem to remain his all-time favorites – one of the major attractions here undoubtedly being their androgynous appeal, and Mozzer – a man who is not a homosexual but a 'humasexual' – delights in the sexually ambivalent: the camp not only of the Dolls but also Jobriath, Marc Bolan and David Bowie, and the spunkiness of Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde and Kristeen Young. A number of the authors he mentions are homosexual or (occasionally) sexually ambivalent: for instance, A. E. Housman, Oscar Wilde, W. H. Auden, Stevie Smith, and he shows his appreciation for a homo-social verse by Patrick MacGill.

There are three photos of important friends from younger days, each jokingly labeled 'trouble': James Maker of Raymonde and RPLA, who (in similar joking mood) told biographer Pat Reid he knew Morrissey would either become an international pop star or a notorious mass murderer; feminist photographer Linder Sterling of Ludus, who shot Morrissey (she loved that expression) for the album Your Arsenal (1992); and Jake Owen Walker – also a photographer – who did the album cover for Years of Refusal (2009), and who lived with Morrissey for two years many years before the cover shoot; there appears to be almost no information on the Iranian Tina Dehghani, with whom Morrissey says he discussed 'the unthinkable act of producing a mewling miniature monster'.

It comes as quite a surprise to realise how some of Moz's song titles must have come across as quite provocative: 'The Queen Is Dead' (as an album title to boot); 'Shoplifters of the World Unite and Take Over'; and 'Margaret on the Guillotine', which earned him an hour-long grilling from Special Branch, the farcical nature of which is underlined when at the end one of them asked him to sign a photo 'for a neighbor'.

Morrissey is many things but he is no hypocrite, and his beliefs are consistent: he has always hated Thatcher and shortly after her death said:

'Thatcher was not a strong or formidable leader. She simply did not give a shit about people, and this coarseness has been neatly transformed into bravery by the British press who are attempting to re-write history in order to protect patriotism.'

How absolutely true, and how spiritedly different this is from the unbelievable bullshit eulogies that came from the weak-as-water Ed Miliband* on reacting to Thatcher's death.

It is sad, then, that during a criticism of Geoff Travis, Morrissey should write in such a dismissive way of Robert Wyatt and his version of Elvis Costello's 'Shipbuilding', particularly as it is one of the great anti-Thatcher songs, far superior to Morrissey's 'Margaret on the Guillotine'. Morrissey, in his eagerness to pour vitriol on Travis, seems to have forgotten the strength of 'Shipbuilding', if in fact he knew what the song is about, if he knew that Robert Wyatt's politics in general are in fact probably not so very different from Morrissey's own. For instance, how about Wyatt's 'The United States of Amnesia'?

There are some minor schoolboy howlers of the 'between you and I' nature in Autobiography, I don't like the italicized direct speech and track (as opposed to album) titles. Those who don't know Manchester and area will find a few parts a little hard-going, and those who don't have a love of rock history will find parts incomprehensible, but then why would they be reading it in the first place?

This is a book to treasure, a generally very well written, very funny, and highly commendable work by one of the greatest popular lyricists of all time, certainly one of the most literate lead singers of all time. My favorite comment is on p. 196 about James Baldwin:

'[H]is honesty ignited irrational fear in an America where men were draped with medals for killing other men yet imprisoned for loving one another.'

Beautiful.

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¹ NME recently nominated The Queen Is Dead as all-time best album, and they also gave this book a very favorable review.

² For those who are unaware – and there must be a great number even in his own country – Ed Miliband is supposedly the UK opposition leader, although in reality he's incapable of leading a church jumble sale. (That sentence is an example of the effect that reading Moz can have on you – only he'd have done it much better.)

Below is an earlier post of mine of Morrissey sites in Manchester:

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Morrissey in Manchester