Tag Archives: Dr Miriam B. Stimbers

Mavericks in a Metropolis of Millions…

by in 2SLGBTQ+ Community Issues, Aesthetics, Art, Über-Transgression..., Keyly Committed Core Components of the Counter-Cultural Community, Literature, Politics, Post-Transgressive Fiction and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump has won again.

I can’t believe I’ve just written those words.

I don’t wanna believe I’ve just written those words.

But I hafta.

’Coz they’re true.

Toxically, traumatizingly, tear-tappingly true.

So how’m I gonna respond to the toxic truth of tyrannical Trump’s triumph?

Welp… how better than by publishing some fiercely unbowed words of anti-fascist resistance from one of the core counter-cultural components at one of the world’s leading anti-racist publishing houses?

Yes indeedy, this Papyrocentric Performativizer is positively pulsating with pride and passion to present an exclusive antifa extract from arguably the best interview in Titans of Transgression: Incendiary Interviews with Eleven Ultra-Icons of Über-Extremity (TransVisceral Books 2024), which has just seen its third edition.

Please raise your revolutionary fists for Jay Guinness, Artistic Director and Ipsissimic Aesthetician at Manchester-locused Savoy Books, long hailed as England’s most transgressive publishing company…

Readers’ Advisory: Interview extract contains strong language and uncompromising counter-cultural contrarianism. Proceed at your own risk.

[…]

Miriam Stimbers: Manchester was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons in 2017 [editor’s note: Miriam is referring to the murder of twenty-two people by the homophobic and misogynist Islamist suicide-bomber Salman Abedi at the Manchester Arena].

Jay Guinness: It was, yes. Sadly it was.

Miriam Stimbers: How did you react at Savoy?

Jay Guinness: We in the Savoy community were badly affected. Clearly, we’ve engaged fictionally, artistically, aesthetically with issues around fascism, hatred, intolerance throughout our professional lives, but to have those issues strike on your own doorstep, as it were, strike for real, well, it’s something you could never be prepared for.

Miriam Stimbers: So you think what he did was fascism?

Jay Guinness: I think it was echt fascism, fascism pur sang. Pun not intended. Let’s not beat about the bush. It was fascism.

Miriam Stimbers: Much has been made of the fact that the terrorist––

Jay Guinness: I don’t think “terrorist” is the mot juste. Not at all. For me, he’s just a criminal with a diseased mind. And I don’t mean that as a compliment!

Steve Bell of The Guardian excoriates the Manchester Arena Bomber

Miriam Stimbers: Okay. Much has been made of the fact that the criminal was born and brought up in Manchester. Have you any thoughts on that?

Jay Guinness: You’re right, much has been made of it. But for me and my colleagues at Savoy what he did merely underlined the fact that Manchester is a state of mind far more than it is a physical and temporal Sitz im Leben. It’s about a locus of values, not about geography. I mean, I was born in Huddersfield myself, but I felt that I was Mancunian from the moment I first hung my hat here, because I subscribe to Mancunian values. People who were born here but don’t subscribe to those values aren’t part of the city. Not for me, not for the Savoy community, not ever. I think Dave [Britton] put it best when we were processing the news of what he’d done. Dave’s words have stayed with me: “He’s not a fucking Manc, he’s a fucking cunt. The fucker should be fucking strung up.”

Miriam Stimbers: Metaphorically speaking?

Jay Guinness: No, not metaphorically. Literally. We in the Savoy community are a pretty progressive bunch. We’re not instinctive supporters of the death penalty, to put it mildly. But if you took a vote at Savoy in terms of whether people who do things like that should be hanged, it would be a unanimous yes. No dissenters.

Miriam Stimbers: I’m taken aback. It seems a little extreme. A lot extreme, to be honest.

Jay Guinness: The Savoy community might be progressive, but we’re not bleeding-heart liberals. As Dave said, the fucker should be fucking strung up.

Miriam Stimbers: But what could you hope to achieve by it?

Jay Guinness: Well, for one thing it would be a deterrent to others. Just as importantly, it would ensure he doesn’t do it again.

Miriam Stimbers: But he won’t be doing it again. How could he?

Jay Guinness: Very easily. And he will do it again. We in the Savoy community are confident of that. Leopards don’t change their spots.

Miriam Stimbers: But how could he do it again? He’s dead.

Jay Guinness: I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. Who’s dead?

Miriam Stimbers: Salman Abedi, of course. The suicide-bomber at the Manchester Arena. Who else?

Much More Mucking Maverick Than You, Monkeyfunker!

Jay Guinness: Oh no, no, no, you’ve got entirely the wrong end of the stick. I wasn’t talking about that poor British-Muslim boy. He was quite possibly the biggest victim in that unfortunate business at the Arena.

Miriam Stimbers: Then who were you talking about?

Jay Guinness: That despicable creature Morrissey, of course. Those comments of his about immigration and Salman’s background were utterly unforgivable. Utterly. But no more than one would expect. As Dave went on to say: “That fucking crypto-fascist cunt’s just a fucking attention-seeker, always fucking has been, always fucking will be. String the fucker up!”

Miriam Stimbers: And you really think there’d be a majority at Savoy in favour of executing Morrissey?

Jay Guinness: I don’t think it, I know it. But it wouldn’t just be a majority, it would a unanimous vote, nem. con. What has Morrissey ever done but bring Manchester into disrepute with his dire music, his shitty fashion sense and his toxic racist agenda? As Michael Moorcock once said: “Fascism never sleeps and nor must the anti-fascist community.” In terms of saying it all, it does. Definitively.

[…]

Interview extract © Jay Guinness, Dr Miriam Stimbers, TransVisceral Books 2024

• Jay Guinness is a Huddersfield-born artist and aesthetician, and the subject of Dr Joan Jay Jefferson’s incisive and exhaustive biography Art-Bandit: Interrogating the Outlaw Aesthetics of Über-Maverick Gay Atelierista Jay Guinness (University of Salford Press 2012). See reviews of Art-Bandit at: Pink News, The Guardian, London Review of Books, Quietus, and Huffington Post. Visit Jay’s website for news of his latest projects.

• Miriam Stimbers is a Glasgow-born psychoanalyst, literary scholar and cultural commentatrix whose most recent book is the updated edition of Morbidly Miriam: The Mephitic Memoirs of Miriam B. Stimbers (TransVisceral Books 2023). See a review of Morbidly Miriam at Papyrocentric Performativity. Visit Miriam’s website for news of her latest projects.

Previously pre-posted on Papyrocentric Performativity…

• Il Nano e il Necrofilo… – an earlier exclusive extract from Titans of Transgression…

• The Hurt Shocker – an even earlier exclusive extract from Titans of Transgression…

A Poof in a Porker

by in A.E. Housman, Parodies, Poetry and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The great literary scholar and expert psychoanalyst Dr Miriam B. Stimbers has detected castration, clitoridolatry and communal cannibalism in the novels of Jane Austen. I’m not so ambitious. I merely want to detect a poof in a porker’s poetry. Or rather, I want to detect a poof in the poetry of a peer closely associated with a porker.

The porker is Bill Bunter, the fat, lazy and greedy public schoolboy whose misadventures at Greyfriars School were chronicled, under the pseudonym Frank Richards, by the highly prolific Charles Hamilton (1876-1961). One of Bunter’s schoolfellows was the languid and apparently effete peer Lord Mauleverer, who contributed this poem to The Greyfriars Holiday Annual for 1928:

“The Song of the Slacker”, by Lord Mauleverer

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life was meant for toil and hustle;
It was meant for soothing slumbers,
Which relax both mind and muscle.

Life is lovely! Life is topping!
When you lie beneath the shade,
With the ginger-beer corks popping,
And a glorious spread arrayed.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to put off till to-morrow
Work that should be done today!

In the world’s broad field of battle
All wise soldiers take their ease;
And they lie asleep, like cattle,
Underneath the shady trees.

Trust no Future, trust no Present,
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
The only prospect nice and pleasant
Is that of “forty winks” in bed!

“Life is short!” the bards are bawling,
Let’s enjoy it while we may;
On our study sofas sprawling,
Sleeping sixteen hours a day!

Lives of slackers all remind us
We should also rest our limbs;
And, departing, leave behind us,
“Helpful Hints for Tired Tims!”

Helpful hints, at which another
Will, perhaps, just take a peep;
Some exhausted, born-tired brother––
They will send him off to sleep!

While the hustlers are pursuing
Outdoor sports, on land and lake;
Let us, then, be up and doing––
There are several beds to make. – The Greyfriars Holiday Annual for 1928 (1927), Howard Baker abridged edition 1971

I liked the poem when I first read it, but I didn’t spot the parody as soon as I should. It was unexpected, you see, but then it dawned on me that “The Song of the Slacker” must be a parody of a famous poem by the poof-poet A.E. Housman (1859-1936):

REVEILLE

Wake: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.

Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,
Trampled to the floor it spanned,
And the tent of night in tatters
Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

Up, lad, up, ’tis late for lying;
Hear the drums of morning play;
Hark, the empty highways crying
“Who’ll beyond the hills away?”

Towns and countries woo together,
Forelands beacon, belfries call;
Never lad that trod on leather
Lived to feast his heart with all.

Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
Sunlit pallets never thrive;
Morns abed and daylight slumber
Were not meant for man alive.

Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;
Breath’s a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey’s over
There’ll be time enough to sleep. – A Shropshire Lad (1896), Poem IV

The meter of the two poems is the same, the period is right, and the sentiments of Housman’s call to energy and effort are turned neatly on their heads in Lord Mauleverer’s call to sleep and slackness. And it’s a clever parody, although it’s a little too long. I’m glad to have come across “The Song of the Slacker”, which the second-best parody of Housman I’ve read. Here’s the best:

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean, upstanding chap like you?
Sure, if your throat ’tis hard to slit,
Slit your girl’s, and swing for it.

Like enough, you won’t be glad,
When they come to hang you, lad:
But bacon’s not the only thing
That’s cured by hanging from a string.

So, when the spilt ink of the night
Spreads o’er the blotting-pad of light,
Lads whose job is still to do
Shall whet their knives, and think of you.

• Hugh Kingsmill’s famous parody of A.E. Housman

Performativizing Papyrocentricity #14

by in Art, Über-Transgression..., Book Reviews, Philosophy, Politics, Post-Transgressive Fiction and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:

Scheming Demon – The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis (1942)

Ai Wei to Hell – How to Read Contemporary Art, Michael Wilson (Thames & Hudson, 2013)

Toxic Twosome – Doll, Peter Sotos and James Havoc (TransVisceral Books, 2013)

Know Your Limaçons – The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry, David Wells (1991) (posted @ Overlord of the Über-Feral)

Pestilent, Pustulent and Pox-Pocked – various books by Dr Miriam B. Stimbers (@ O.o.t.Ü.-F.)

Or Read a Review at Random: RaRaR

Pestilent, Pustulent and Pox-Pocked

by in Keyly Committed Core Components of the Counter-Cultural Community, Music, Post-Weird and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

I’m sorry, but let’s face facts: you cannot consider yourself a keyly committed core component of the counter-cultural community unless you own at least three copies — a reading copy, a prominent-shelf-of-the-bookcase copy and a wrap-carefully-in-brown-paper-put-away-in-a-cupboard-and-never-touch-or-look-at-again copy — of each of these toxic’n’tenebrose titles:

• Can the Cannibal? Aspects of Angst, Abjection and Anthropophagy in the Music of Suzi Quatro, 1974-1986 (University of Nebraska Press 2004)

• Doubled Slaughter: Barbarism, Brutalism and Bestial Bloodlust in the Music of Simon and Garfunkel, 1965-2010 (Serpent’s Tail 2007)

• Re-Light My Führer: Nausea, Noxiousness and Neo-Nazism in the Music of Take That, 1988-2007 (U.N.P. 2013)

• Base Citizens Raping: Revulsion, Repulsion and Rabidity in the Music of the Bay City Rollers, 1972-2002 (U.N.P. 2014)

• Underground, Jehovahground: Ferality, Fetidity and Fundamentalist Phantasmality in the Music of the Wombles, August 1974-January 1975 (forthcoming)

• Jane in Blood: Castration, Clitoridolatry and Communal Cannibalism in the Novels of Jane Austen (U.N.P. 2018)

All are by Dr Miriam B. Stimbers, of course. And what can I say about them? Simply this: these books hold an uncompromising mirror up before the pestilent, pustulent and pox-pocked features of so-called Western so-called society and say: “Look. That’s you, that is.” Dr Stimbers’ ruthlessly radical research and sizzlingly psychoanalytic scholarship will overturn your preconceptions so hard that, in some cases, they won’t appear to change at all.

Performativizing Papyrocentricity #7

by in Book Reviews and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:

Gábor, Gábor, Hej! — Paradoxes in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics, Gábor J. Székely (1986)

Hit and Mist — The Lost World and Other Stories, Arthur Conan Doyle (various dates)

Pride and Precipice — The Monk, Matthew Lewis (1796)

Mocking Manning — Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey (1918)

Mind the Gap — Lytton Strachey: A Biography, Michael Holroyd (1967)

H8-Factory — Re-Light My Führer: Nausea, Noxiousness and Neo-Nazism in the Music(k) of Take That, 1988-2007, Dr Miriam B. Stimbers (2013)

Or Read a Review at Random: RaRaR