Tuesday 29 October 2019

Empire Of The Senseless - Kathy Acker

EMPIRE OF THE SENSELESS – KATHY ACKER

There is a scene in Lars von Trier's film Anti-Christ where Willem Dafoe is in the woods and he pulls back some undergrowth to reveal a fox disembowelling itself. In slow motion the fox then lifts its head and in a guttural voice says to Dafoe “Chaos reigns”. This one scene, essentially, sums up Kathy Acker's Empire Of The Senseless.


Kathy Acker ended up living in England and being the partner of writer Charles Sharr Murray before passing away in 1997 from cancer. Before this she had gained the reputation of being the enfant terrible of the New York art set and being feted by various critics for pushing the envelope of post-modern experimental writing. Kathy Acker's books were – and remain to be – shocking in terms of explicit sex and violence. The sex she wrote about being perverse and taboo, often concerning father/daughter incest and sadomasochism. The twist and consequently the turn of the screw was that it was all written by a woman and from a woman's point of view, though not in the voice of woman as victim but of a woman who enjoys and is even empowered by such things.

Empire Of The Senseless is – as it says in the title – senseless. It's a whirlpool of extreme thoughts that have no apparent connection to each other. It's a picture of delirium captured in words and flung down onto the page where those words refuse to sit still and instead wriggle and squirm around almost as if in a bid to break free from that same page. Or even as something trying to break free from the words. There is no discernible narrative, no normal grammar, and no lineage. It's an alphabet collage. A riot of words.

The obvious influence, of course, is William Burroughs, of whom Acker was once a self-confessed acolyte, and that's all well and good but it must be said that Burroughs did it better. At least in his books there was sometimes a semblance of a storyline and from his cut-ups there would often appear beautiful and even poetic descriptions and phrases. Empire Of The Senseless has none of these things though that's not to dismiss it out of hand because the best art often initially repels and confuses and often takes time for it to be understood.

There is something obviously going on within these pages that Acker was trying to capture and reveal. Something beyond words and beyond language. Whether or not she fully succeeded, however, is the question. Her words are like brambles that need to be cut through to see what lies behind. Burroughs on the other hand was of such genius that he revealed the hidden meaning of language to the reader without them even realising. In Lars von Trier's Anti-Christ, Willem Dafoe simply pulled back the undergrowth. Perhaps all that Acker was trying to reveal was the chaos? To show that behind everything is nothing but chaos? That everything indeed is chaos? An empire of the senseless? Perhaps it's all really that simple?
I don't know. I'm just curious of mind and just because I read Kathy Acker it doesn't mean I understand her. But at least I try.
John Serpico

Tuesday 22 October 2019

What We Say Goes - Noam Chomsky

WHAT WE SAY GOES – NOAM CHOMSKY

Does anybody still read Chomsky nowadays, or are we all meant to have moved on? Have the neo-conservatives finally wiped the board of everything and now totally own common sense values as once highlighted by Gramsci as being of necessity if social change is ever to occur?
What We Say Goes is another one of those books comprised of interviews with Noam Chomsky conducted by David Barsamian, this time published by Penguin rather than AK Books. It's from 2006 which means a fair bit of it is now out of date due to the world having moved on – arguably for the worse. We now, of course, have a shitbag, fucking scumbag, lying, narcissistic fucking bastard in the White House. ISIS have superseded Al-Queda, Brexit has happened, and climate destruction is fully on the agenda.


So what has Chomsky got to say this time round? Well, right from the start I'm reprimanded and put to rights for heaping abuse upon an American President. “If you want to contribute to the success of the ultra-right, then you should make fun of George Bush's accent and engage in other forms of ridicule,” he says “But that rhetoric is destructive and childish. And the same holds true of everyone else's rhetoric. What's important is the content.

I appreciate this and I acknowledge it. Rhetoric is what nowadays makes the world go round. 90% of the news these days is rhetoric. The Daily Mail front page headlines being an obvious example. Those headlines and accompanying articles aren't news – it's rhetoric. Social media – rhetoric. Trump's midnight tweets that gets everyone hot under the collar – just rhetoric. Calling Trump a shitbag, fucking scumbag, lying, narcissistic fucking bastard – just rhetoric.
I should know better, I know, but I'm only human of flesh and blood am I. What's their excuse, I wonder? All those who are better educated and more privileged than me? Those who are paid to know better? Are they just being extremely clever, I wonder, and simply using rhetoric to disguise the content? Is Trump really an intellectual? He'd probably say so. Is Paul Dacre an intellectual? Nigel Farage? Boris Johnson?

Well, Chomsky has something to say about this as well: “People are called intellectuals because they're privileged. It's not because they're smart or they know a lot. There are plenty of people who know more and are smarter but aren't intellectuals because they don't have the privilege. The people called intellectuals are privileged. They have resources and opportunities.
Privilege, of course, means power and you're either subordinate to it or not but according to Chomsky, in the West there's really no excuse and anyone displaying subordination to power is essentially displaying cowardice. “Why do we want to get behind the President if he's carrying out murderous, violent criminal acts?” Indeed, the great are only great because we are on our knees, as Irish republican James Larkin once said. Let us rise.

There's very little to disagree with when it comes to Noam Chomsky. Rather than the senile old pervert who wets himself all the time, Chomsky is like your ideal granddad sitting in the corner of the room at Christmas time, a pointy party hat on his head and sipping from a glass of Old Malt but declining to join in the party games. He's the wisest old bird in the family with an encyclopedic knowledge of everything and when asked a question he'll tell you straight. Everybody loves him and it's to him everyone will turn to for advice.
When 9/11 happened, everyone wanted to know what Chomsky had to say about it. The same for when Trump was elected. In his typical fashion, Chomsky responded very calmly and methodically, not resorting to knee-jerk reaction but using only the facts that were at hand.

The Afghan war was a major war crime,” Chomsky tell David Barsamian, and this is as good a litmus test as any to gauge whether you agree with Chomsky or not. If you agree with this statement then it suggests you might just have a mind of your own and there is hope for you and the world yet. If you take umbrage and profoundly so then there's nothing for you here and we can bid you farewell as you skip merrily into your future of – as Orwell put it – a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

John Serpico

Sunday 13 October 2019

Songs They Never Play On The Radio - James Young

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO – 
JAMES YOUNG

As you go through life and the more books that you read, the more you will find that the plaudits and the quotes from reviewers as displayed on the covers are more often than not mere hype, baloney and product endorsement dressed up as literary criticism. You will find that though they may well be genuine quotes, they are mostly written by either acquaintances of the author or by critics with a vested interest in delivering positive feedback be it from simply following 'guidance' as laid down by their employers (their editor), or to simply ensure they remain on book publishers lists of favoured reviewers so as to continue being sent free books. You will even find more often than not that the reviewer whose quote adorns the cover seems to have read a completely different book to the one you're holding in your hands – as if they've not actually read it at all?

This may come as no great revelation to those employed within the book selling/publishing industry but to many others it might well be something they've never really considered. No matter how passionate you might feel about books, at the end of the day the publishing and the selling of them is a business just like any other particularly when you get to the Waterstones mass retail level. There, a book is a product just like a tin of baked beans, nothing more and nothing less than just another unit to shift.
It comes, therefore, as something of a surprise when the plaudits and the quotes on the cover of Songs They Never Play On The Radio by James Young for once ring absolutely true because it is indeed an incredibly well-written book. It may even possibly be one of the best music books ever written? Possibly.


'A coolly literary masterpiece' – Greil Marcus. 'The greatest rock and roll book' – Tony Wilson. 'Sad, funny, brilliant' – Tony Parsons. 'Anyone who reads this book will be moved by the lyrical poignancy, intimate detail and near mythic quality the author captures' – Danny Sugarman. 'A work of comic ingenuity' – David Sinclair.
Praise indeed.

James Young was the piano player in Nico's backing band during the 1980s and Songs They Never Play On The Radio is his memoir of those years. There are so many anecdotes within its pages that it's nigh on impossible to pick out any particular ones as highlights or as examples of the quality of the writing. It is quite simply a funny, rollicking, rolling train of quips, quotes, anecdotes, vignettes, observations and asides that capture Nico and the world around her during her Manchester heroin years in all its debauched, sordid and comic glory.
Nico's personality and the array of characters who gravitate toward her is a gift that keeps on giving, so much so that the story could almost have written itself but it's the fact that it's been captured by someone who actually knows how to write that takes it to a whole other level.


Nico, of course, once sang with the Velvet Underground before being unceremoniously thrown out, and that in itself grants her legendary status. By the time of the 1980s, however, she had washed up in Manchester of all places, virtually penniless and alone apart from a healthy heroin habit to support. Though she had suffered tragedies in her life, Nico was never a tragic figure as such and isn't depicted as one in the book. She was too singular, too selfish, too Germanic for that.
Throughout the book she instead comes across at times like a German version of Margot (as played by Penelope Keith) from the BBC comedy series The Good Life but without the etiquette and without the snobbery. Rather than floral skirts she is dressed instead in leather jacket and biker boots, armed with a foghorn voice – and on heroin. Stuffing packages of it up her backside every time she approaches the border of a new country when on tour and has to go through customs. Declaring very loudly to one and all that it wasn't the only thing she put up there: "My father was Turkish... you know what that means, don't you? I like it the Turkish way..."
Nico might well have been gullible and at the mercy of being used by those around her but one thing all her hangers-on knew was that she was their meal ticket, and without her they didn't really have a hope. Her heroin dependency was obviously a major issue to continuously contend with but it was also the thin spider's web that they all hung by and the fuel that kept everything going.

Into the book James Young weaves appearances by such characters as John Cooper Clarke, linking up with Nico purely through their shared special interest. Gregory Corso shares the same interest but whilst John Cooper Clarke is likeable, Corso comes across as a diminutive junky hoodlum. Then there's John Cale, brought in to produce Nico's new album and introducing a level of professionalism only matched by his paranoia but eclipsed by his utter, complete and total meanness. Allen Ginsberg disappoints Nico by failing to get naked though his own personal special interest in anything anal remains undiminished. Towering over all of them, however, is Nico's erstwhile manager, Dr Demetrius, otherwise known as Alan Wise, the legendary mover and shaker in the Manchester music scene. Dr Demetrius' behaviour is often shocking yet other times touching, his love for Nico remaining forever unrequited apart from an incident involving a sleeping Nico on the bunk of an Intercity train. 'Naturally, I wiped it off afterwards.' he's quoted as saying 'Wouldn't wish to leave a stain on her character.'


Whether or not Nico was likeable as a person is besides the point - because she was a legend, a muse of both Federico Fellini and Andy Warhol who had fallen from grace and ended up as a drug addict in Manchester. As James Young puts it in his preface: 'She influenced us all. It may sound absurd but, despite the monstrous egotism and the sordid scenes, there was something almost pure about her. A kind of concentrated will. Not pretty, sweet or socially acceptable, certainly, but intense, uncompromising and disarmingly frank.'
There is indeed a lot in Young's book that is sordid, not pretty, not sweet and certainly not socially acceptable but there are also moments of genuine loveliness such as when Nico's paddling along the shoreline on a beach in Australia, singing 'Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,' swishing her feet in the water, happy in the sunset.
Yes, Nico was indeed a legend. And this is indeed a very good book.
John Serpico