Death of a True Maverick

Yesterday a brief internet trawl yielded a shocking bit of information. One of my favorite writers, James Purdy, died in March in Englewood, NJ, after breaking his hip. He was 94.

I can't really speak about Purdy without plundering some of the quotes put forth by his contemporaries. "An authentic American genius," hailed Gore Vidal. He was notably championed by Dorothy Parker and Dame Edith Sitwell, who claimed that her life would never be the same after having read Purdy's debut collection of short stories, 63: Dream Palace.

His fiction was hard to classify, as the characters and dialogue often seemed to be beamed from outer space. Having lived for a time amongst jazz and opera musicians in Harlem in the early 20th century, Purdy was one of the first white authors to realistically portray black America. In fact,his ear for black cadences was so acute that many of his publishers and editors (and James Baldwin) thought upon first reading him that he was indeed African-American. Purdy's other two favorite themes were innocence corrupted and duplicity in small town America.

The language he utilized was a strange bag indeed, and has been a huge influence on my own style. Lurching from midwestern vernacular to bombastic apostrophe, often in the course of the same line, his characters sound like Biblical street prophets oraculating wildly. They seem to be motivated by vanity, poverty or revenge, however, underneath this they lie on either side of that Wildean catch 22: the problem of yearning for love, and the problem of getting it. In fact, if his novels are about anything, they are about how love can distort the human spirit.

The crown jewel of Purdy's oeuvre, the novel Eustace Chisholm and the Works, is set in depression-era Chicago, and features a cast of characters so destitute and emotionally impoverished that one can feel the desperation oozing off the pages. Fortunately the book is also witty and absurd, with a distinctive gallows humor which could only be ascribed to Purdy. But this doesn't preclude empathy. To elicit empathy for such unsympathetic characters is Purdy's tightrope walk. Furthermore it contains all the elements of a great novel: doomed, operatic characters, catty dialogue, sexually-repressed-and-sublimating-wildly military officers, Shakespearean and biblical allusions including overly symbolic scenes of foot-washing and crucifixion, and a gruesome late-term abortion which may have you reaching for the smelling salts. It all culminates in a scene of S&M martydom so extreme it should by rights redeem all the characters. But of course it doesn't. The sense of release, as pointed out in Purdy's New York Times obituary, is infinitesimal, though the book could definitely be seen as one long primal scream.

Chisolm set the stage for later works such as Cabot Wright Begins, a "rape epic" featuring a titular protagonist at the top of his game, conquering huge numbers of victims and cutting a swathe through Wall street and various American grotesques with ruthless abandon.

Purdy was also a poet and playwright. His first novel Malcolm was adopted unsuccessfully for the stage by Edward Albee. This apparently threw his publishing rights into a tailspin, and years of obscurity followed. Further works included, Narrow Rooms, which was banned in Germany and featured shenanigans in an Appalachian prison, and The Nephew, the tale of a woman who, while preparing a memory book about the life of the titular nephew, discovers that he isn't quite the all-American clean-cut soldier boy he's been hitherto cracked up to be.

You can hear an interview with Purdy, in which he also reads a fantastic poem, at the Don Swaim author interviews page.

Here is the link to the great man's New York Times obituary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/books/14purdy.html

Towering Disco Inferno

A friend groused that I have been doing much social commentary and not giving updates as to what I've actually been doing. So I suppose I should insert some more episodic journal type of entries to please the masses. I've also toyed with the idea of changing the name of the blog, since it seems to have morphed into something not strictly about Berlin per se.

But I am here, and I am seeing things through a "Berlin lens", so there you go. Currently its a very fuzzy one, what with all the pollen from the lime trees covering everything like snow. It's quite magical and surreal. Yesterday I was noshing a burger at Burgermeister (go figure), a burger place under the UBahn tracks at Schlesiches Tor, and one of the fluffy little things flew into my throat. Aaack.

Last night my roommate Jan and I sallied out to GMX at Weekend Club. He had free passes, so Jan was Carrie and I was the "Plus One". The weekly fete is held every Sunday in the 12th and 16th floors of a skyscraper at Alexanderplatz. In fact, it's the same building where I did my teacher training for Arenalingua, so upon entering the building I had a slightly officious feeling. This feeling was soon assuaged by the huge murder of fags milling about the premises. The promoters commandeered the entire 2 floors for this night, the 12th pumping out R and B and the likes of Britney and Lady Gaga. The 16th floor is much darker and druggier, with really good melodic electro music. You could tell the DJ was a real connoisseur.

As Jan and I repaired to a place at the back of the bar, a mincing, grimacing queen came flouncing over, face twitching, and said something to Jan in German. He pointed at me and said "Huebscher Mann" and did the same to Jan and then drew his hands together, indicating that since we were both "hot", "aber natuerlich" we should be hooking up, which is a stupid conclusion in itself. He reminded me of the creepy old queen in the ship disembarkment scene in Death in Venice, the one who augurs Aschenbach's terrible demise, but this guy was younger than I and actually quite good-looking. Pity he was so strident and yodelling and mugging like Lindsey Kemp on a bender. He then pulled up our shirts and pointed out oh-so-cleverly that since I was hairy and Jan was smooth that we would make a perfect polar-opposite kind of couple.

We then decamped to the dancefloor, where I was accosted by what looked like a very slight 12-year old, who asked if I was a certain "Schauspieler". (This happens quite often, as I have been told I have a "theatrical" face). After I assured him I was not an actor, that I was really playing only myself, he declined to divulge the name of the actor in question (hopefully it wasn't Abe Vigoda or something). Anyway, he's quite a cute Aryan type, at University in Hamburg. We resolved to keep in contact, though I felt a bit like the cradle-robber. Although, May-December courtships are all the rage these days, what with Madonna and Jesus and all.

After a harrowing descent with 30 tweakers in a lift with a capacity of 20, we emerged into the damp warm air and sped away in Berd's smart car. Beats church any Sunday...

A Tortured Essay

Many years ago I read an interview with the singer Jim Foetus. In it he was forced to defend the writing of such song lyrics as "Every woman's place is on my face." He said, "I consider myself a feminist but I don't act like one." Now that's my kind of feminist, one with a firm grasp of irony . I believe the same could be said for Mary Gaitskill (though she doesn't show it so much here) Here is she is reading hypnotically, as per ushe, from one of her essays for a Harper's anniversary celebration, way back in the stone age, the early 90's.

Temp-to-Permanent

I recently discovered the work of an author I never knew about before, Mary Gaitskill. She apparently made a big splash in the late '80's with her debut collection of sort stories, Bad Behavior. She has been far from prolific, but one of the short stories from BB was co-opted by Hollywood sometime in the early noughties as the film Secretary. She was a bit chilly about the film's translation to the screen, claiming they had filmed a "nice...Pretty Woman version" of her story. One of her main contentions was they tried to make it into a PC version of S and M, so that practitioners could feel good about themselves. Gaitskill found it a bit silly that at the end of the film the characters say, in effect, "Hey, we like this...in fact, we like this so much, let's do it all the time. In fact, let's get married!" When in reality, Gaitskill said, anyone attempting to exert that much control over their erotic life would be too riddled with issues to sustain something rooted in reality over the long term.

This got me thinking (there I go sounding like an ersatz Carrie from Sex and the City again) about the social dynamics which play out in the S and M subculture, between both male/male couples and male/female couples. The bedroom (alley, toilet, etc) is sort of a mirror image of what occurs in the greater culture, to the extent that the power imbalances between men and women in the workplace, for example, as well as physical and psychological differences, play a role. With a heterosexual couple, these games many well not translate into a conjugal setting because of the power-dignity relationship already germane to male-female relationships in society. The male, in other words, usually has the upper hand, due to physical, financial and social hierarchal circumstances.

Because there is a level playing ground between men in society, however, I think gay male roles in the sexual subculture play out a little bit differently. Men are used to negotiating power differently, and are quite naturally competitive. There's less of a stigma attached to dominance and submission between consensual males, and in some cases less lingering traumatic aftereffects. For example, when I first saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison, I really wasn't all that disturbed, because the first thing that came into my mind was, wow, gay porn! The themes and motifs therein were to me very similar to what many gay men take for granted in their erotic lives. Of course, for an Islamic heterosexual man, with the consensual aspect removed, this would be the ultimate degradation, being magnified into full-blown emotional violence. But for a number of gay man, this kind of abuse of power and heinous transgression, within the context of sexual fantasy and the very fluid power structures contained therein, would be a powderkeg of eroticism.

Gaitskill also touches at one point on gay marriage, stating that she had once believed that assimilation and the disappearance of gay culture was a good thing, because it signalled the waning of a mentality of difference. She has now altered her original opinion by saying that she that maybe the outlaw culture was necessary for some people, to hang onto an outsider identity. I interpret this as an alignment of the "outsider" culture (also necessary to the creation of art, but that's another essay) with the type of behaviors she ascribes to her characters, not necessarily homosexual, but also sex workers, disenfranchised people and psychologically dislocated miscreants.

I would argue that because of their very flexibility with respect to the acting out of power structures in the bedroom, reflected in the level social playing field between men and compounded by the easy social mobility within the gay diaspora, that some gay men, unlike Gaitskill's characters in their original incarnations, would be better equipped to maintain such a master-slave relationship within a serious long-term committed partnership. While feminism has been unable to completely confound socially prescribed roles for women, contemporary definitions of masculinity allow a great versatility in male roles. As James Baldwin said, "This (American ideal of masculinity) has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white."

By extension one could add, "bottom and top", "master and slave", "dominant-submissive." I have good straight male friends in the US who do things like enforced strangulation, farting on each other, bondage and tickle torture, precisely because it's so degrading, in fact, free from religious proscription and feminine power differentials, it imparts a sort of dignity the more control the male has over his compadre, the more he is able to "punk" his counterpart. Look at "Jackass" for Christ sakes. It's only natural, then, that these roles be acted out not only in a social crucible, but on the playground that exists within a man-on-man union (and in every gay man's imagination). Who said "to love, honor and obey?"

Minstrelsy of Victimhood

A few words about Elizabeth Edwards: what a cow. Really. Sure, she’s as terminal as a kiosk at Heathrow, but frankly it’s quite difficult to have empathy for the old gal and her one woman traveling pity party. She's giving victims everywhere a bad name. Have you ever seen someone in such denial? It was nigh-on unbearable how that gloating proxy for the American public, Oprah, rubbernecking her way into their creepily huge/empty basketball court (a metaphor for their barren marriage?), stood by while her husband submitted to one final humiliation in the klieg lights, their conjungal misery laid bare. Oh, the humanity. Ms. Edwards’ gambit reeks of desperation: a feeble attempt at character assassination, punishment of her husband for his transgression and validation of her relationship with a man who doesn’t deserve her love. All in one swell foop, and under the rubric of “getting the truth out there” and “inspiring others” with her struggle and "grace under pressure".

It is obvious Ms. Edwards is a smart woman making a stupid choice here, unlike her husband, who is obviously a man who has been making stupid choices since he could unzip his pants on the campaign trail. There will be a special place at the urinal of political ignominy for him, next to Larry Craig.

This Rielle Hunter – her name so assiduously avoided in the press at Edwards’ request -- is quite plainly trash. Just look at her – she reminds me of every full-of-it, perky peroxide bitch I ever worked with. Those roots! The lipstick! That hair rag! The quasi-spiritual jibberjabber! She looks like she queefs a lot. One can't imagine her delivering the ultimate bowel movement, the "it" that Ms. Edwards so gingerly dances around, the elephant in the room she clearly cannot face.

But Ms. Edwards’ victim game is backfiring, and putting this observer on the side of the other woman. Why? She has put out a self-serving and mendacious tome and commenced a degrading (think of the Children!) press junket, under the guise of concern for the welfare of the US. Where was her concern back when this mess began? When she declared to the audience that she had insisted Edwards run because of their shared “vision for this country” one was induced to gagging. Her mercenary motives are at the zenith of their transparency.

As far as getting at the root of the truth of her struggles, let’s face it: Ms. Edwards is still dissimulating, and is fooling no one. Although there is at the moment no direct proof that her husband has sired a love child with Hunter, or that her husband misappropriated campaign funds, the circumstantial evidence is mounting, no pun intended. Ms. Edwards’ walk-and-talk-show tour has squashed the turd underfoot, but the shit streaks remain indelibly caked on the heel.

The other fallacy she is propagating is that the affair was one-sided, that her husband was merely a fallen angel, a weak man whose knees buckled at the deployment of those three little words, echoing off the walls of a campaign hotel lobby: "You are so hot." How above-it-all she seems in her rarefied North Carolina air, but her words are an affront to Other Women and Single Mothers of Bastard Children everywhere. Sure her husband has absorbed some of the blame, but only in terms of her reaction to it. Her own martyrdom, compounded by illness and infidelity, has ensured that the legacy of their relationship, according to her own tortured and deluded logic, remains intact despite everything.

But the language she uses reveals the chinks in the armor of their much-ballyhooed relationship. When she snarkily speaks of “putting in the time” or “doing the work” – pointedly contrasted with the unnamed Miss Hunter’s “bargain basement” and cheap “hotel room” assignations -- little does Ms. Edwards know that she makes it sound like clocking in and out. This is all too common in today’s therapeutic palaver. Many self-righteous new age couples speak of their relationships in terms of a convoluted manifestation of a Puritan work ethic in order to justify mediocrity or settling for less-than. I knew one couple who justified their love by claiming that a relationship was like being trapped in an office building. You keep going and every once and a while you hit a wall, they insisted, which you then have to break down, in order to proceed to the next level. Then you keep going until you hit the next wall, which must also be broken down, and so on, ad infinitum. I guess the deeper your walls went, the more profound the relationship. I’m not sure if they ever hit the roof (would seem a bit difficult if they were ploughing horizontally through parallel walls -- you'd come out the side, more like) but I had never heard such Balderdash in my life. The only way they could rationalize being an unhappy "unit" was to make it sound like drywall installation or being trapped in some horrible existential labyrinth. If this is the model for modern marriage, better to simply play the whore. I’m not sure Ms. Hunter knows what role she is in, the Madonna or the Whore, but it’s glaringly apparent that she and the heir apparent are waiting in the wings for Ms. Edwards’ final act.

Spring Style

A sun-blanched grey formica tabletop with a faint 1950's style cross-hatch pattern, against which a sole sprig of lilac is silhouetted, sets the scene. The phenomenal acoustics of the Berlin streets allow every nuance of every conversation in every mother tongue to be heard individually or as a wall of sound, replete with the dreaded accordion player and children shrieking playfully auf Deutsch. The cafe's proprietress emerges with a custom made order of French toast, without syrup, fashioned from that morning's croissants. "Especially for you!" she chimes in musical second-language English. I tuck in to its rich eggy delights, not so bothered by the lack of syrup, normally ladled on with such abandon by those dicke Amerikaners. She beats a retreat to the rear of the cafe, fittingly dubbed "Schoenes Cafe", to her American partner and their son, who swings from Deutsch to English with preternatural ease.

There's a third language in which Berliners are fluent, and that's fashion on a budget. It may be a poor city, but (most) people have a way of looking impossibly glam in whatever they deign to turn themselves out in. (Clothes almost seem to be an afterthought, especially in summer, when nudity is default mode). It's a certain carriage perhaps, or the way mismatched items seem to work in a sort of clothing Gestalt. Zum Beispiel, the woman sitting chatting directly in front of me is wearing a puffy blue frock, jeans, bright yellow flats, glittery striped socks (they were called "disco socks" in my youth) topped off with a form-fitting white cardigan and creamy, buttery string paisley pashmina. Now that takes some goddamn guts. This potentially tragic ensemble is more than the sum of its -- when taken individually, admittedly goofy -- parts. But it's not about the look, it's all about the deconstruction, dahling.

Germans test the limits of fashion's versatility in so many ways. Take the simple scarf, for example. Not content to drape it around one's neck, the German turns the classic Schal into a craft of cloth Origami which would do fashion icon Little Edie of Grey Gardens fame proud. They create novel twists out of the scarves: bows, knots, curtains and head-kerchieves (sort of a Little Edie in reverse). I saw a woman just today who had fashioned hers lopsidedly into a makeshift tent to keep out the sun. So pragmatic. Who needs Sonnenbrille? The most shocking example of this phenom was when a woman walked down the street with a male companion wearing a thick wool knitted scarf wrapped completely around and obfuscating her face. Whether she had recently been disfigured or was simply a misanthropic eccentric remains a mystery.

The most exciting thing about Berlin fashion is the risk. And risk goes skipping hand in hand with what? The flaw. The appropriation of the well-placed flaw is an earmark of good fashion sense, humanizing the whole enterprise while at the same time putting an individual stamp on the product, a kind of self-branding. The best style moments occur when something is just slightly off. For example, a pair of silly boxer shorts riding up one's crack, revealing an ample amount of male backside cleavage while riding a bicycle, could be carried off in Berlin, provided the wearer was also wearing a suit.

By way of counterexample, when the flaw becomes near universal, and the personal tic removed, it is therefore neutralized. Such as the case with the ubiquitous low-riding pants now worn by every b-boy and his brother -- you know the ones, that look like they are constructed to support a diaper and it's contents (I've dubbed it the poop pouch or poop droop). I was riding the UBahn with a young male companion last summer, who was sporting such droopy trousers, without a belt, that they began, as he gripped the safety bar, to slide off of his skeletal frame. Still flying from from the previous evening's shenanigans, a kernel of telltale crystalline snot clinging to the outer rim of his right nostril, the lad kept yammering on obliviously, much to the entertainment of an elderly couple, who sat agog, eventually collapsing into gales of laughter, for about ten stops.

And so we must establish the rule that when the flaw becomes a) too common or b) the object of ridicule, or both, then it ceases to be stylish. See also: heads shaved into countless loops, swirls, curlicues and punctuation marks (more on hair care later). This is this antithesis of style, though it makes rather ham-handed overtures towards it. This is the exception to the rule of organic Euro-cool. Style never tries too hard. Like a temporary tattoo, these "hair statements" (and I include Verlaengurungen, or hair extensions in this) are gauche and timid at the same time.

Mainstream media takes the deployment of the flaw theory to another level. Take Deutschland Superstar, for example -- the German counterpart to American Idol. In spite of the campily glitzy garb, I have never seen so much bad lighting, orange makeup, flyaway hair and obvious Pickeln (zits). It is a triumph of the flaw conflated with trash/kitsch national sensibility.

Mental illness is also a heavily stylized imperfection, but again tics are highly individualized. Better that they take the form of a mild personal eccentricity (think of the mysterious Isabelle Adjani constantly covering one side of her face: a bout with Kaposi's sarcoma? Or is she just weirdly stylish/nuts in an actressy way?) When you see hundreds of people twitching along to their Ipods or talking apparently to themselves but actually using the Bluetooth, we realize there is scant difference superficially between the widespread embrace of technology and collective schizophrenia.

When diversity and a fashion attitude is once again flattened by the monoculture, we must turn once more to the body and grooming for the origination of style statements. Lack of effort, as outlined before, is of paramount importance in this case. Filth, or its illusion, is always stylish (see Robert Pattinson of the Twilight film). Unfortunately for US residents, an epidemic of manscaping has taken over that great nation, and you can hold the hair- and dirt-phobic Queer-eye-style metrosexuals accountable. Thankfully Berlin sits on the shadow side of the hair spectrum -- it's not how you groom it, it's how you grow it (twist it, curl it, braid it -- yes, I'm referring to body hair). One admirer of the fur tugged at my chest growth, importuning, "Es ist so kurz!" (it's too short!)

Regarding hair in the upper hemisphere, for both woman and men, virtually anything goes. For women, my favorite is the classic wedge cut or the German version of the chunky bang. There does seem to be a disproportionate number of whites of both genders wearing dreadlocks, sometimes with half the hair shaved off, and straight women with butch lesbian haircuts. One does see the odd giant Afro as well. Additionally, the ponytail never died here. The German version can be sleek, but still reeks of Robert Palmer video. (There is a high co-occurrence of the ponytail with attache cases.)

In another inversion of the American model, Berlin men are also notable for their lack of muscle. Tattoos are fine, as long as they rest on a chicken chest or a negligible lump of bicep. Any form of exertion, is again a no-go area, simply the opposite of modisch. No accomplishment should ever signify a modicum of effort, simply the wearer's (chicly indifferent) personality. But the rules here are finely nuanced. The first exception is if you are a member of the Schoeneberg muscle/leather scene. A fetish is always an excuse for something uncool, because we have no control over our proclivities. Enough said. Though in this case the funny little waddle caused by too much sportmachen is definitely uncool, especially in a country where a willowy elegance is prized even by men.

Going to the Fitness Center is definitely demode, but a finely toned frame as the result of "sportmachen", i.e. actual athletics, it's perfectly fine. This is the second exception. The Deutsche are an active people, and, like clockwork, never seem to stop moving, the gears always turning. Especially in the summer months, the parks are bulging with bikers, joggers and the like, and the Badminton halls are booked solid through August. Triumph of the Will and all that.

I mustn't forget the exception-within-the-exception of these rules of corporeal comportment. The Bauchfett, or beer belly. German men of all walks of life wear these protuberances proudly as their one mark of hedonistic indulgence, and it's one collective flaw that's quite endearing. You'll see the most scarecrow thin Kerl walk into a room, and nine times out of ten you look down and it's as if he's got a bun in the oven! I find this little mark of reprobate slobbery endearing.

These days I say I am anti-fashion, but still, a thing cannot exist without its opposite, and one often bleeds into the other, such as when non-conformity starts to resemble a conformist phenomenon (see again droopy pants, "artfully" shaven heads). I keep thinking of porno-hating radical feminists who end up looking not unlike their evangelical Christian nemeses.

I am attempting to rationalize this fashion dialectic -- all or nothing, all at the same time -- in light of my own lack of fashion savvy. The positive symbol also represents its negative. The appearance of effort, and the absence of it. Aesthetic follows form, or lack thereof. But I know my friends would see right through it, because they know I wear practically the same thing every day (this is a sure way to garner compliments, because when you do finally wear something new, it really pops!) . Fortunately I think they are looking at me as a person and nicht die Klamotten. And well, what's depressing me today is, they're seeing an American in aspect, if not fashion. And we're not exactly renowned for our innate sense of style, are we?. Something tells me a pair of gold Turnschue (trainers)would be an ill-advised investment. (It's called trying too hard!) But, I am here, and as long as I sit steeping in the atmosphere, watching the beautiful Leute going by with their Brot und Zeitungen, I can hope against hope that some of the soignee and Euro-hauteur will rub off on me...

Author Author

"That's not writing, that's typing!" -- Truman Capote in reference to the literary output of Jack Kerouac

Lately i've been checking out these author interviews from the 80's and 90's by New York radio host Don Swaim. The guy swings pendulously from obsequious to bold in his interview questions, but most of the authors seem to warm to his informal style. I recommend William Burroughs talking about addiction and the creative process, Patricia Highsmith waxing about Europe and her days at Yaddo, James Purdy and his peripatetic early life, Nathianel Branden talking about life with a vulpine Ayn Rand, to name but a few...

http://wiredforbooks.org/swaim/