Monthly Archives: January 2025

Performativizing Papyrocentricity #79

by in Book Reviews, Clark Ashton Smith and tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Papyrocentric Performativity Presents…

• Sky-Fi – The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke (1979)
• Ars Gratia Martis – The Klarkash-Ton Cycle: Clark Ashton Smith’s Cthulhu Mythos Fiction, edited by Robert M. Price (Chaosium 2008)
• The Oy of Voy – Theseus 34, Rory Hughes (Incunabula Books 2024)
• Fog on a Blog – The Fog Prince: Interrogating Core Themes around Positive Orality and Negative Textuality In Terms Of Evelyn Waugh’s Put Out More Flags (1942)
• Hyp Parade – Hellfire: Evelyn Waugh and the Hypocrites Club, David Fleming (2022)
• Kamala vs KKKockroach – an interview with Dr Nigel M. Goldbaum
• Maximally. Morbid. Magazine. – saluting the sizzling scopophilia of Love It Journal

Or simply…

• Read a Review at Random

Pro’ with the Flow

by in Literature, Poetry, Translation and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

• From Parallinear: 16 European Poets in Prose Translation (Symban Press 1977)

Jorisz Prokata, born Nembutå, Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1901; died Paris, 1943 […]

’Ndra ven ožedigō tranvu
Istahe zesfusna vo kōb
G’va: svas moe’, oxoaz, hežbu
Vem mižurt qocrsiūjy aplouxōb
Veń ġucij doīv.

L’gefq tsiži, xveby, qa indreza:
Kipidi, aūcu mdvo, lkåd’vud
Utcuzu, veń gomfōj’t vgeza
Vqežefq keflozu ven užud
Odzub’za lkåtū sxoīv.

It’s raining and I walk by the river
Watching gulls on the opposite bank.
Then: two ducks, mergansers, I think,
And I take off my glasses to wipe them
And take a closer look.

It’s now I see what the rain has done:
The small drops, pearl-patterns, constellating
The lenses, and so beautiful beneath the dull sky
That I cannot touch them and walk on
My panes full of stars.

Translator’s notes

[…] The paronomasia in the final line rests on the ambiguity of the contracted odzub’za, which could mean either odzubaza, “my pains, my sufferings” or odzupeza, “my lookers, my specs” (otsupa, “look, observe”), with sandhi of p to b before z.

Translation © Caroline Dawkins 1956

DavId and Ego

by in Über-Transgression..., Guardianistas, Keyly Committed Core Components of the Counter-Cultural Community, Surrealism, Transgression... and tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

David Lynch has died and, just as with David Bowie in 2016, my mind flies irresistibly to the ever-fascinating and ever-important topic of myself his artistic genius and how much I have it has meant to me down the years. I can barely remember as clear as day the first of the three countless times I saw Eraserhead. I was 18 15 and working in a chip-shop as a rent-boy to fund my sweet tooth heroin addiction during my History of Art degree at Bath tortured adolescence in Aberdeen. The brand-new ancient cinema smelt pleasantly of floor-polish stank of piss and my seat was so comfortable that I fell asleep twice rats scuttled around my feet beneath the splinter-filled seat. But I barely noticed, transfixed by the sheer weirdness taking place on the over-bright stained screen before me. As I left the cinema I was yawning my head teemed with the visceral visions I had just witnessed and wondering what to have for tea I marvelled at this surreal new super-luminary who had soared above my aesthetic horizon. In the years that followed I… Blue Velvet… I… me… Wild at Heart… I… my… Twin Peaks… my… I… Eraserhead… I… I… my… Eraserhead… Eraserhead… I… me… mine… Eraserhead… David, for your darkness, your deviance, your depravity, I salute me you!

© 2025 Multi-Millions of Mega-Mavericks in the Hardcore Hyper-Heretical Hive-Mind Community

Post-Performative Post-Scriptum

As for someone whose opinion on David Lynch really does matter – namely, mega-me, the omniscient Overlord of the Über-Feral – well, I didn’t have one. I didn’t think he was crap like Cormac McCarthy, I had no opinion at all. As the great (no, seriously) Public Enemy once said: “Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me.” The only thing I’ve ever marvelled at in terms of core issues around David Lynch is the loudness of the buzzing in terms of with which the Hardcore Hyper-Heretical Hive-Mind has greeted his departure. If film is more important to you than literature, then you’re like the vast majority of the human race. Wow. Etc.

Elsewhere Other-Accessible…

• King Cormac – my thoughts on Cormac McCarthy, another visceral visionary whose departure elicited loud buzzing in the Hardcore Hyper-Heretical Hive-Mind (but less so)

• The Cruddiness of Cormac (continued) – further thoughts on visceral visionary Cormac McCarthy

Graham’s Sumber

by in Mathematics, Reciprocals and tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

77

Every number greater than 77 is the sum of integers, the sum of whose reciprocals is 1.

For example, 78 = 2 + 6 + 8 + 10 + 12 + 40 and 1/2 + 1/6 + 1/8 + 1/10 + 1/12 + 1/40 = 1.

R.L. Graham, “A Theorem on Partitions”, Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society, 1963; quoted in Le Lionnais, 1983.

• From David Wells’ Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Mathematics (1986)

Post-Performative Post-Scriptum…

The title of this post is a pun on the gargantuan Graham’s number, described by the same American mathematician and famous among math-fans for its mindboggling size. “Le Lionnais, 1983” must refer to a book called Les Nombres remarquables by the French mathematician François Le Lionnais (1901-84).