Narcissists, Nerds and Nutters

NARCISSISTS, NERDS AND NUTTERS

What has the internet ever done for us? The other day I was surfing a poetry site when I came upon this extraordinary passage of purple prose posted in the comments section:

‘Blood only longs for two assholes
To experience the double pleasure
Of dual sodomy and heaven’s golden ladder
Of pee pee filling his pink bag.’

That’s the trouble with the internet. It’s often hard to tell whether you’re on a poetry or a porn site. Speaking of which, when we first went online in 1999, curiosity got the better of me and I wandered onto a couple of porn sites. My wife soon found out and I never did it again, but those two visits supplied me with enough shocking images to haunt my days and nights for years to come. What amazes me is the participating women with their big toes tucked seductively behind their ears who make no attempt to hide their faces. (Even prostitutes preserve a certain privacy and anonymity). Someone must know them: their family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, neighbours. I’ve been scanning the faces of the check-out girls in our local Tesco’s but I haven’t recognized anybody yet, probably because most of this stuff comes from America. It is estimated that there are around a million women staffing the sex industry in the United States. A vast proportion of the World Wide Web is now given over to pornography, perversion and paedophilia. Sir Tim Berners Lee, the British inventor of the internet must be spinning in his swivel chair.

Then there are the so-called suicide sites. Last year in Bridgend, Wales, near to where we live in Swansea, about two dozen young people hanged themselves. Bridgend is an absolutely typical Welsh town. The only thing they had in common was that they were almost all members of social networking sites like Bebo. They even had their own slang for suicide such as ‘checking out’ or ‘catching the bus’. The Bridgend police have tried hard to persuade the public that there is no correlation between the deaths but they are fooling no one. A number of people around the world have even killed themselves whilst actually online, their personal webcams solemnly recording their last moments on planet earth. The extent to which the internet contributes to this phenomenon remains a moot point.

On the positive side, the World Wide Web allows artists, writers and poets (like me) to get our work into the public domain. Given that these days, British publishers only publish people who are already famous, this advantage is not to be underestimated. I’ll never forget a female poetry editor who once rejected my work on the grounds that I ‘wasn’t famous enough.’ If you never publish unknown writers then they never get the chance to become famous. This simple thought is way too sophisticated for most British publishers. Does having your work online help you to become published in other media? I would have to answer in the negative although it certainly helps you to become plagiarised. The struggling writer or poet basically has two choices: give your work away on the internet or keep it in the drawer. Scylla and Charybdis; The devil or the deep blue sea.

The same day I unearthed the bizarre quote about the pink bag, I also took a look at a teenage girl’s poetry blog. The poetry was dire but what struck me more was the total absence of grammar, syntax, spelling and punctuation. That is the thing about the internet. It is almost too democratic. On the credit side, it allows struggling artists, writers and poets to get their work online. On the debit side it attracts hopeless illiterates from every continent like a magnet.

I noticed that Sir Tim Berners Lee recently chaired a conference on the future of the World Wide Web. My response is that ‘It’s far too late, mate. Pandora’s box is wide open and her jar is well and truly broken.’ I personally think that much more work needs to be done on the global impact of the internet. It is the most profound social change for a century and we still haven’t even begun properly to understand it.

Copyright Simon R. Gladdish 2009

ENNEMIS PUBLICS: A Literary Review by Simon R Gladdish

ENNEMIS  PUBLICS  (Correspondance Janvier-Juillet 2008)

By MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ & BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Pub:  Flammarion Grasset 2008   pp 333   price 20 euros

 

 

Where to begin? I think it was Shaw who said that you should spend hours getting your first paragraph exactly right and then delete it. I suppose it all began in Carrefour. My wife and I are staying in France for a couple of months and although our nearest shop is Shopi, the nearest shop worth shopping in is Carrefour. On our first visit I made a beeline for the books table and there I saw it: Ennemis Publics by Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Levy. I was immediately struck by the cover which shows photographs of both protagonists. Houellebecq looks genuinely unhappy, grimacing and smoking a melancholy cigarette whereas Levy just looks smug. You can almost smell his aftershave. Bernard-Henri Levy or BHL as he is known here in France is one of France’s leading intellectuals or ‘intello’s’. He was born in 1948 into enormous wealth and has led a charmed life ever since. His daughter Justine Levy is a leading French novelist and his third wife, the actress and model, Arielle Dombasle , is one of the most beautiful women in France. When his father died in 1995, Levy sold the family company for 750 million francs (around 75 million pounds.) Like our own Martin Amis, Levy is at a loss to understand why so many people actively dislike him.  It is no great mystery to me. It is called Jealousy and Envy. Levy is a novelist and journalist and although he keeps popping up in war zones he never quite escapes the sulphurous whiff of being a spoilt dandy. His narcissism is legendary and he often appears on French TV in designer suits with his expensive shirts unbuttoned to the navel.

 

Michel Houellebecq is more my kind of guy. He seems to be a genuine misanthrope in the tradition of Sartre and Camus. His literary heroes are Dostoyevsky, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche who also happen to be my literary heroes. His own mother wrote a book recently in which she described him as a little prick and a talentless social climber and said that if he dared to write about her again, she would use her walking stick to smash his teeth in. Houellebecq first came to my attention with his novel Les Particules Elementaires(1998) translated into English as Atomised. I loved reading this book but all I now really remember is the comic obsession with sex and the world weariness. Houellebecq got into serious trouble with his next novel Plateforme (2001) which is essentially the reminiscences of a sex tourist but also contains some trenchant criticisms of Islam.

 

He was taken to court by a number of Islamic organisations and narrowly escaped being found guilty of inciting racial and religious hatred. He fled to Ireland to escape the possibility of terrorist reprisals. (I kid you not.)

 

Ennemis Publics, their joint book is a kind of literary duel. Each takes it in turn to write a letter of several pages to the other. The tone is set when Houellebecq writes ‘A certaines personnes, peut-etre, il est arrive de faire l’amour dans un etat de pleine lucidite; je ne les envie pas. Tout ce que je suis, moi, arrive a faire dans un etat de pleine lucidite, ce sont mes comptes ; ou ma valise.’ (Other people perhaps, have been able to make love whilst completely sober. I don’t envy them. All I have been able to accomplish while completely sober is to do my accounts or pack my bags.) Levy responds ‘Je peux faire toutes les mises au point possibles et imaginables: je ne ferai qu’aggraver mon cas de salaud de bourgeois qui ne connait rien a la question sociale et qui ne s’interesse aux damnes de la terre que pour mieux faire sa publicite.’ (I can give every possible and imaginable explanation of my work. All I do is is worsen my reputation as a bourgeois swine who has no grasp of social realities and only pretends to be concerned about the world’s oppressed in order to generate headlines.)

 

Together they discuss life, literature, their favourite authors, who they like and dislike in the French media, their families, childhoods and why they are both so disliked by so many people. One of the first questions Bernard puts to Michel is ‘Pourquoi tant de haine?’ (Why so much hatred?)  Houellebecq responds by discussing the possibility of suicide. ‘La longue pente qui constitue la deuxieme partie de la vie: les degradations successives du vieillissement, puis la mort. L’idee m’est venue a plusieurs reprises, par suggestions breves, insistantes, que rien ne m’obligeait a vivre cette deuxieme partie ; que j’avais parfaitement le droit de secher.’  (The long slope that constitutes the second part of life : the successive degradations then death. The idea has occurred to me several times in brief, insistent suggestions that I wasn’t actually obliged to endure the second part; that I had a perfect right to skip it.) Levy doesn’t entertain the possibility of suicide. He could hardly be so lucky next time round.

 

The duo are initially rather wary of each other. Levy is a champagne socialist and Houellebecq a right-wing nihilist. However, by the end of the book they seem almost to have become friends. There is a very useful table of contents at the back which actually tells you what to expect in each chapter/letter. On page 260 for example:

‘On apprend que Michel Houellebecq considere que le roman est ‘un genre mineur’ par rapport a la poesie. Le ‘halo radioactif’ de la poesie ; le ‘pouvoir des mots’.   (One learns that Houellebecq considers the novel ‘a minor genre’ in comparison with poetry. The ‘radioactive halo’ of poetry; the ‘power of words’.)  Michel is a poet and Bernard-Henri is not.

 

I have A Level French and read Houellebecq’s contributions without difficulty. I had more trouble with Levy’s and often found myself reaching for the dictionary. On page 39 for example, there is a typical Levy sentence that lasts for fourteen lines. It is hard to imagine a comparable volume being published in Britain although a literary duel between say, Salman Rushdie and Will Self might generate some interest. Even so one can’t easily imagine an initial print run of 100,000 copies. In the land of Sartre and Derrida, the tradition of intellectualism or (some would argue) pseudo-intellectualism is alive and kicking.

 

Simon R. Gladdish   Copyright  2009

The Sloth in France: Stranger than Fiction by Rusty Gladdish

December 2008

                           

The Sloth Diaries:

 Here in Les Hesdin it is bitterly cold with blustery winds that send the remainder of the leaves flying into the air; only to flutter down to earth and form bronze, papery piles in the lost corners of the garden. We even had a sprinkling of wintry snow.  It’s very rural here with sodden green fields dotted with curious Friesian cows that come rushing expectantly to the fence. I think they’re quite jealous of Piccolo, the pony we visit every day. Piccolo is the dun coloured pony that lives in the field opposite the house and belongs to a very indifferent notary’s wife. The expats in this little hamlet don’t take kindly to animal neglect and seem to have arranged a feeding rota between them.  Every afternoon at 4pm, when the sun drops down into a bowl of red liquid fire, I go down to the fence and call him. Even if he’s on the other side of the hill he still comes running down to me snickering and rolling his eyes. He gets through quite a lot of carrots and apples and has been thoroughly spoilt by the kindness of the village folk.
 

I don’t know when I last felt so cold. The bitter wind lifted the hem of my sweater and spread its icy fingers across my back, making me shudder as I walked along the narrow strip of frost hardened grass that passed for a footpath. The mud was iron hard and glazed with frozen puddles. The sunny morning had long faded into a grey, bleak afternoon. The scruffy little pony that everyone took treats to had been taken away by his owners so I had been on a false errand.

Piccolo had led a solitary and rather boring life, grazing poor pasture in a sodden field surrounded by barbed wire, like a forgotten prisoner of war. Well meaning expats made regular visits bearing gifts of apples and carrots to take the edge off his hunger and loneliness. Our French neighbours were bemused by these errands of mercy. (Well they eat horses don’t they?) They were sympathetic but pragmatic. 

 

By the time I had reached the house my hands were numb and I struggled to drag open the tall, wrought iron gates.  The garage door was open and I could see the Sloth doing his bit to save the planet by emptying a sack of wine bottles into the green wheelie bin.  He glanced guiltily over his shoulder as he hastily shovelled the remnants of the latest revels into the bin. 

‘Your back early’, he murmured.

‘Yes, just as well by the looks of it.  Did you and the boys really drink all that wine the other night?’

‘Well I suppose we must have.’ He said innocently. ‘ Michel, Didier and Dominique all drink like fishes!’

‘Like whales more like!’

‘So does Dickie Crabbe. He always brings the cheapest and naffest of the wines round here and drinks all our good stuff. A nifty little tactic if you ask me.  Don’t you remember when we went round to their house I took a bottle and ended up drinking my own wine?  He didn’t serve any of his. He’s got it off to a fine art’.

‘What do you mean?’

‘In Louis’ bar when it’s his round he’s suddenly nowhere to be seen. He goes to the gents then slips through the back kitchen door and he’s off!’

‘What a cheek!!’

Sloth stretched and yawned hugely. ‘God! I’m so tired. I just couldn’t get to sleep last night. Did you hear that tapping and scratching in the loft? ’

‘Yes, I definitely heard something. It’s probably mice. Everybody’s got them round here. It must be all the chickens and livestock. It could be rats of course.’

Sloth rubbed his chin thoughtfully; ’Well perhaps I’d better get up in the loft and lay some traps.’

‘Oh! The poor things! We can’t do that it’s so cruel. They’re just little field mice!!’

He held up his hands in a protective gesture. ‘Okay, okay! You can’t have it both ways though. Anyway, if they breed things will really get out of hand. There’ll be dozens of the little beggars swarming all over the place before you can say Jacque Chirac!’

‘Jacque who ?’

‘Oh never mind! We’re going to have to do something though!! He muttered.

 Then without warning, a rogue gust of wind whipped round our ears and sent us scuttling indoors.

 

 *                        *                                    *                                      *                                         *

In mid winter darkness falls early here in the Nord Pas de Calais region. Street lighting is sparse and is turned off at 10pm. After that you’re on your own. Woe betide you if when taking your leave of your hosts after a soiree, you find you’ve forgotten your torch. Village pavements have a nasty habit of suddenly petering out and leaving you to the tender mercies of passing motorists who roar up and down these country roads like maniacs. Most of them are souped up on Claret and cognac.  Last night we had a little dinner party for the immediate neighbours. The stars hung down so low you could have plucked Orion out of the sky with you bare hands. The first to arrive was Mathilde our hardy little next door neighbour.  She is the size of a ten year old child and with the sharp, intelligent features of an enquiring bird. She doesn’t speak any English so we communicated in my awful beginner’s French until Sloth rescued her and they began to gossip fluently in her language. The others were English settlers and came in with faces scarlet from the cold, rubbing their hands and trying to kiss us on both cheeks at the same time. All arrived laden with delicious puddings and bottles of the thick, ruby wine from around these parts. Thankfully I passed the test when Mathilde, who sat in pride of place, gave the thumbs up to my version of Coq au Vin in half a bottle of red wine. But I failed the next part miserably when I served the cheese after the pudding instead of at the end of the main course. However, a good time was had by all and some people stayed on till late, anxious to relay their experiences until the wine got the better of them and they staggered out into the Obsidian dark.  

 

After the last guest had gone we put on some jolly French music and started on the washing up. The Sloth, teacloth over his shoulder, took me in his arms and we waltzed unsteadily around the room until we fell in an untidy heap on the sofa. ‘Look out! You’ll knock the Christmas tree. It’s shedding its needles already.’ I said.

‘Well it is dead mon petite choux’ he mumbled into my ear. We both collapsed into ridiculous laughter. Through the French windows, I could see large snowflakes drifting down and settling on the terrace.  Just then, we heard a loud thump and a dragging sound overhead. We stopped and stared at each other, ‘What on earth was that?’ I said.

‘It must have been the central heating. It’s probably just the beams expanding.’ We both stared up at the ceiling waiting for the next bump, but it never came.

 

 

*                                     *                                                   *                                               *                                             *

 

This morning we were woken by someone pounding frantically on the door. The Sloth slumbered on under the duvet oblivious to the commotion.  A skilfully practised strategy perfected over many years. I jumped out of bed, struggling into my dressing gown as I ran to answer the door. A man stood on the doorstep and began babbling in French as soon as he saw me.  He seemed very agitated and was pointing to a neighbour’s house some distance down the road. ‘Regarde Madame, regarde!  La incendie!  Le Cheminee!!’ he shouted. My eye followed his trembling finger and I saw that the chimney was on fire. Flames leapt high into the air and black smoke belched out poisoning the atmosphere. Black ash stained the fresh now.

 I could see two small figures in the distance running backwards and forwards helplessly in their soot covered garden, stopping every now and then to look up at the fire, throwing up their hands in despair. Harriet and her husband Ernie, two English settlers recently relocated from Kent in search of a better life!  For a few vital seconds we were both rooted to the spot, unable to break the black spell of tragedy that was being played out in front of us. Then the Frenchman spoke.  

‘ Le Pompiers Madame! You ‘ave the phone? We phone Le Pompiers’. I stared stupidly at him for a few seconds then ushered him inside. I indicated the phone on the hall table and left him to work out the complicated telephone pad while I got dressed and roused the Sloth.  By the time we got to the house the flames were spectacular but still confined to the chimney. It was all too much for Ernie. He was a small but compact man in his early seventies, recovering from a heart attack.  Harriet, who was ten years younger had inherited from her father and had used the money to buy a beautiful house with land here in the village. A natural linguist, she was already well integrated into the close little community. Ernie had never been able to grasp even the most rudimentary concept of the language and wouldn’t even answer the phone for fear it was a French person needing to speak to Harriet. He was the one that had hung back from move to France believing it to be a bad idea. Now, all his worst fears were confirmed in this terrible tide of events that swept over them, and he simply couldn’t bear it. He sat on the bench under the front window with his head in his hands sobbing like a lost boy. ‘I told you we never should ‘ave come ‘ere’, he sobbed. Harriet looked at him . ‘Oh for heaven’s sake Ernie! Get a grip! This gentleman has rung the firemen, they’ll be here in a minute.’ She turned to the rescuer standing by. ‘Merci Monsieur er….. He nodded courteously, ‘Monsieur Mistral. ‘Enchante Madame! ’ Ernie took down his hands and shot his saviour a look.  ‘Where’s them bloody firemen? We called ‘em 15 minutes ago’, he snarled. Monsieur Mistral pressed his mobile to his ear and began murmuring into it urgently. His voice became angry. He looked at the Sloth and said in French, ‘They went to the wrong house in another street, but they know the correct address now. All will be well.’  ‘What’s e’ sayin?’ asked Ernie. ‘They went to the wrong house but they’re on their way now’ said Sloth imprudently. Ernie leapt up from his bench and began hopping around in the snow.  ‘The bloody fools! The idiots!  The friggin’ house’ll burn down if they don’t get here soon!!’ he howled.

 

‘Ernie! Ernie!  Is Dougie with you?’ asked Harriet.

‘I thought he was with you’ said Ernie momentarily distracted from his wrath.

‘Who’s Dougie?’, I asked, expecting some small boy to suddenly emerge from the bushes.

‘It’s our Daschund. E’s fourteen. E’ should have been put down years ago but Harriet gets sentimental about ‘im.’

The Sloth looked pointedly at the bench where Ernie sat. ‘Perhaps he’s under there’ and ducked under the bench but came up empty handed. ‘Dougie!! Dougie! Come to mummy this minute’, called Harriet frantically. At that moment, high pitched barking sounded from somewhere inside the house.  ‘Oh my God!!!  Dougie’s in there. He’s too scared to come out!’ Harriet started to run towards the house. Suddenly, there was an explosion in the house. The force of it sent Harriet sprawling in the sooty snow. As we watched in horrified fascination rockets shot up from the chimney, and the sound of bangs and whistles of fireworks came from inside the house. 

‘What on earth is that? Have you been making bombs in there?’ asked Sloth from his recovery position on the bench.

‘Must ‘ave been them fireworks I got for New Year’s Eve. I put em’ in the cupboard’. Dougie’s frenzied barking finally broke through the Sloth’s fear barrier and he ran headlong into the house. Harriet, a rather portly lady remained inert in the snow and had set up a low moaning. Ernie and Monsieur Mistral went over to her. She was very distraught and they helped her to her feet just as the Sloth appeared in the doorway. His ginger hair was streaked with soot and he was   clutching a struggling and very overweight Dachshund.  Harriet rushed towards her pet almost knocking the two men down. ‘Come to mummy my darling’, she crooned. ‘Everything is going to be alright’. She gathered the dog up in her arms and an artful  Dougie laid his head on her ample bosom and rolled up his eyes in attitude of suffering. She turned to the Sloth who was convulsed with coughing and trying to clear his lungs of smoke. Poor old Sloth! ‘Thank you so much for saving my darling.’

‘Oh! Well….it was nothing really’ wheezed Sloth. His next words were drowned out by the sound of the fire engine’s emergency horn as it batted down the road. Once in the drive, the men leapt out

and set about putting out the fire. Ernie however, was not grateful. ‘About bloody time ‘an all! You lot took yer time’ he growled at them. They gave him friendly, uncomprehending nods and shy, hesitant smiles. I turned to speak to Monsieur Mistral but he was already a small figure in the distance walking round a bend in the rutted snow.  Harriet and Ernie suddenly became pre-occupied with restoring order to their home so a soot covered Sloth and I crunched back up the road to the house leaning heavily on each other for support.  Suddenly he stopped and looked down at me. ‘Hey, you know what it is tonight don’t you?’ he asked. ‘Yes’ I grinned. ‘It’s Christmas Eve!’  Poor old Sloth!   

 

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons alive or dead is purely coincidental.

 

Rusty Gladdish wishes to assert her rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Patents, Desin and Copyright Act 1988.