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Post by andydecker on Jun 10, 2020 20:58:21 GMT
Even more intriguing, Andreas! I may have to shove this book firmly to the front of my queue. As a big fan of obscure film culture (a highlight of a couple of years ago was getting a private screening of the only known print of a 1957 movie that was the debut of cult actress Grayson Hall and late comedian Jerry Stiller, at a local film archive), it sounds as if it really has my name all over it. Not to mention the whole counter culture thing. All the best, Steve You will like it. Even if it is a bit long.
Ah, Jerry Stiller. I was so sad to read about his passing. Frank Costanzo. Happy Festivus. Serenity now. Unforgettable.
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Post by bluetomb on Jun 10, 2020 21:42:34 GMT
I did see a copy priced at 5 bucks, including shipping, so I grabbed it. No idea when I'll get around to reading it. Was the author a best seller during the period? I have never heard of him. cheers, Steve No best seller. A former friend recommended the novel sometimes in the 90s to me. According to the back text Roszak was a academic who was famous in the first place for a non-fiction called The Making of a Counter Culture in 69. I was tempted to read it, but back then it was pretty expensive and I was not that tempted. I gathered that his half a dozen novels were not that sucessful. I read his sci fi horror Bugs a long time ago and remember being disappointed that it was more counter culture than gore, but I did still finish it so it must have gone down reasonanly easy. Probably I'd like it more nowadays.
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Post by humgoo on Jun 26, 2020 14:28:15 GMT
Wow. This book sounds a lot more sophisticated than most of these fat horror/crime paperbacks of the era. I don't know about sophisticated, but it's certainly hugely entertaining, as you must've found out by now! The characterisation, as Dem has already noted, is pretty amazing. I've been "nursing" the book, reading only a bit every day, and still have quite some pages to go. The surest indicator of a good book, I suppose: You're afraid it'll end too soon!
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Post by helrunar on Jun 26, 2020 17:29:42 GMT
Cheong, I have to say the book is very much holding my interest. It's unusual to find material this esoteric in one of these fat paperbacks of the period, the kind of thing that I always imagine being found on a revolving rack near the luncheonette counter in a Rite Aide drugstore, back when some drugstores had luncheonette counters (I think very few are left now--if any).
I just finished chapter 2; this is a characteristic paragraph:
A major part of what Clare taught me about film I learned in bed--and I don't mean in relaxed postcoital conversation, but in active process. At first, until I grasped that this was Clare's preferred style of instruction, I found myself dumbfounded. When, in the act of love, she began to murmur a stream-of-consciousness lecture on Russian Formalism in my ear, I felt certain I should pause and take respectful note. But no. With a pelvic shove and a slap to my buttocks, she bullied me on, almost angrily. I continued; I accelerated the rhythm of our intercourse; her words flowed more rapidly, her voice grew stronger. Spread luxuriously beneath me, with eyes closed, sweat beaded across her upper lip, she became more articulate by the moment, even as her breath caught and raced. That was the first session in what would become a frenzied cerebral-genital curriculum. In the nights that followed, the theories of Arnheim, Munsterberg, Mitry lathered from her like prepared lectures. What was more surprising--I was taking it all in! The ideas were registering vividly. It was as if my body, totally preoccupied with pouring its libidinous energy into Clare, transformed my brain into a tabula rasa on which every word could be imprinted.
Earlier on in the chapter, there's a passage where another intellectually advanced lady informs the entranced young narrator that Sartre "has a whole philosophy about seeing things. He calls it 'violation by sight.' He says, 'What is seen is possessed; to see is to deflower.' It's all very phenomenological. ... 'The unknown object is given as virgin. It has not delivered up its secret; man must snatch its secret away from it.' ... Going to the movies. It's a kind of visual rape."
Completely on target is the narrator's comment to this avant-garde French woolgathering: "I'm sure what Jean-Paul Sartre had in mind as visual rape was very deep indeed. What I had in mind was Nylana the Jungle Girl hanging from the trees."
Again, I'm quite grateful to Andreas for recommending this book to me!
cheers, Steve
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Post by andydecker on Jun 26, 2020 19:16:39 GMT
. I just finished chapter 2; this is a characteristic paragraph: A major part of what Clare taught me about film I learned in bed--and I don't mean in relaxed postcoital conversation, but in active process.
It is an unforgettable scene. I have forgotten much of the novel, especially of the last quarter, but this is one I will always remember. It is so over the top, laugh out funny, but still you ask yourself if it could actually work. :-) Another thing I so like about the novel is the atmosphere of not only intellectual discovery, that the discovery of pop and other culture is fun. The difference to todays everything is (seemingly) avaiable at a click to consume is so striking. I vividly remember seeing one of Lex Barker's last movies, the German horror movie The Snake Pit and the Pendulum at some small film festival at a community hall, sometime in the early 80s. My opinion of the movie mellowed with age, back then I hated it. But the point is it was a bit like visiting Clare's cinema, it took some effort to watch a movie which never had run on tv at the time, which was 10 years or more unavaiable for the public. It was a discovery I didn't knew how to cherish. This is part of the charme of Flicker. Not to mention Nylana the Jungle Girl. :-) Glad you like it, Steve.
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Post by helrunar on Jun 26, 2020 19:30:57 GMT
Hi Andreas,
Interesting and funny you mention Snake-Pit and Pendulum--it's one of my favorite films, in fact. It aired on US TV starting in the early 70s under the title The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism, which really has not all that much to do with the story. Part of what made it better than one might have expected is that Lee and Lex Barker both looped their own dialogue for the English version (and Karin Dor, who was so beautiful and striking, may have done so as well). It was low budget but I love the phantasmagoric art direction with hints of Hieronymus Bosch on acid in the castle and dungeon sets.
The movie is also known as Blood Demon in English language markets.
I think I read that there was going to be a new home video edition of this film last year or this but have not kept up with that, if it did happen.
Fun to remember the old days. I still remember going to a horror movie night at the Maryland Institute of Art in the mid 70s. They presented Vadim's Blood and Roses, Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers, and one of the Hammer Dracula films (might have been Risen from the Grave). I also remember a grad student film club I attended several times during that period. It was a lot like the set-up of the Classic as described in the book. One night I saw Alexander Nevsky there and another night, the entire D. W. Griffith Intolerance, screened in total silence as Roszak recalls the screenings at the Classic. On another occasion, some grad students arranged for a screening of Fassbinder's Chinesische Roulette, the only time I've ever been able to see that film and I still remember certain shots and bits of dialogue... it might have been the best of any I have seen of his work. It was twisted but had a coherent narrative unlike some of his more florid outings.
cheers, Steve
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Post by humgoo on Jun 27, 2020 6:27:40 GMT
Completely on target is the narrator's comment to this avant-garde French woolgathering: "I'm sure what Jean-Paul Sartre had in mind as visual rape was very deep indeed. What I had in mind was Nylana the Jungle Girl hanging from the trees." There'll be more digs at the French intellectual types, and Nylana the Jungle Girl ... oh my goodness ... she'll save the day!
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Post by helrunar on Jun 27, 2020 13:00:12 GMT
Nylana is clearly based on Nyoka the Jungle Girl. Lorna Gray as the evil Vultura of the fabulous gams, swami turban and pet gorilla bodyguard Satan steals the show. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP34SD6FY8kH.
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Post by helrunar on Jun 28, 2020 21:00:13 GMT
Another characteristic passage; the main characters react to their initial screening of the only known copy of Max Castle's suppressed film Judas Everyman:
... it was clear that the film, just as we had seen it, worked. It had left us all with exactly the same experience of absolute, numbing horror. Not the horror of fear, but of revulsion. We'd been touched by an obscenity deliberately pressed to the limits of tolerance--and then held there in a risky balance for almost too long to bear, but not quite. Less artfully handled, the raw morbidity of the film might have driven us to stop the projector or leave the theater. But the experience had been so cleverly shaped and controlled that we stayed, we watched. We were held in spite of ourselves.
But by what? Curiosity? Or by some deeper aesthetic pleasure we would shudder to admit?
Our fascination had been so ingeniously captured that, for a long while afterward, everything Clare and Sharkey and I said about the film was shot through with an undertone of resentment. None of us wanted to admit that our sensibilities could be manipulated with such calculated skill.
........
After some fashion we couldn't yet understand, this film had captured the essence of being Judas. Hence the title, Judas Everyman, the Judas in all of us. ... I doubt that any of us had ever pondered the crime of Judas before this. For us, it was part of a defunct religious mythology. Yet the film we'd just watched had brought that ancient act of treachery, the betrayal of a living god, to life within us. It had passed into our consciousness like swallowed filth.
H.
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Post by helrunar on Jun 29, 2020 23:21:39 GMT
I noticed today on a popular retail site that there is now an electronic ("kindle") edition of this book available, but priced fairly high at $19.99. I've only paid that kind of price for an "e-book" a couple of times; the one I remember was 2 years ago when a new edition of D. Carrington's letters came out, but was only available in N. America initially as an electronic book. Print publication did eventually follow over here.
H.
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Post by andydecker on Jun 30, 2020 17:22:37 GMT
I noticed today on a popular retail site that there is now an electronic ("kindle") edition of this book available, but priced fairly high at $19.99. I've only paid that kind of price for an "e-book" a couple of times; the one I remember was 2 years ago when a new edition of D. Carrington's letters came out Thanks for the tip. This has not made the international markets yet. But for a glorified file this is indeed fairly high priced.
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Post by helrunar on Jul 16, 2020 4:24:46 GMT
I just finished reading the novel... it's hard to know what to say, beyond it has to be one of the oddest books I have ever read.
The author definitely prophesied the steamroller effect in how "reality TV" wound up taking up nearly every element of culture... immediately after the 2016 election here in the US, I commented to a few people that we were all about to become extras in the latest reality series debuting in January with our new Chump of State in the starring role. And so it has continued.
The ending surprised me at several points. The author's views on various subjects are quite intriguing and I may have to seek out more of his work.
Thanks again for recommending it!
H.
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Post by humgoo on Jul 16, 2020 17:56:28 GMT
[...]it has to be one of the oddest books I have ever read. Certainly one of the funniest! And Don Sharkey easily one of the most likable characters I've come across! Just want to add author's photo from the dust jacket of my copy:
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Post by andydecker on Jul 16, 2020 18:34:51 GMT
Glad you liked it.
One of the many scenes which stayed with me is the Orson Welles one. What if he really had directed Heart of Darkness?
Considering Welles' influence and legacy it is strange that he wasn't more often fictionalized. Only Kim Newman comes to mind in his Anno Dracula.
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