An update on yearly doings, for those who have noticed a significant absence of me-ity in classrooms across Berklee, netherworldly nonsense salons, and tippling stations throughout Camberville. I’ve been on Leave this year, working on a new edition of Alan Watts’ book Nonsense (1967) with glabrous Watts scholar Peter Columbus, with support from Mark Watts and Jeff Berner (original publisher, OULIPO poet, and nonsensical soul). In addition, I’ve done artist residencies on Cape Cod (Truro Center for the Arts), in Skagaströnd, Iceland (NES Artist Residency), and on the tiny uninhabited island (except for scroobious snakes) of Källskär, in the Åland Islands (Åland Arts Council Residency). I’ve written poems and stories, created soundscapes, performed didgeridoo with organ in an Icelandic church, and created an original performance poem (with throat singing), which can now be seen HERE. I also breezed through Malta, at the Child and the Book conference, where my talk on BreakBeat poetry for children (written with Joseph Thomas) was AI-translated into nonsensical subtitles. I’ll be back in the classroom in January, maskless and ready to rumble.
Sandip Roy gives us an excellent article in The Hindu (June 19, 2021), on the genius of Sukumar Ray’s nonsense and the new volume called Three Rays, which collects Satyajit’s translations of his father and grandfather, Sukumar and Upendrakishore, in addition to his own work. We, the collective Nonsensical Norns (for which I speak occasionally on the Abstemious Ass’s Authority), are delighted also to hear that Sukumar Ray continues to break into the typically conservative Literature canon bubble in Indian Universities and Colleges (or at least those in West Bengal). Satyajit’s translations, by the way, are not exactly translations. In the volume Nonsense Rhymes (1970), the first set of Sukumar Ray “translations,” Satyajit calls them “transcreations,” as they tend to take more liberties than a conventional translation, in the spirit of making them relevant, melodious, and playful–and also as a response to the difficulty of translation when dealing with his father’s nonsense, which is so language-dependent. On the title pages below, we see both the word “translated” and “transcreated,” in addition to a Very Serious portrait of the transcreator, “anno aetatis six months.”
Can it be so long, so soon, so often? Or as the ticket agent in Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories states, “So far? So early? So soon?”
Welcome to the GARQ #6, now with extra Q, and Q is for Quarantine, Q-bert, and the Quangle Wanquel Qweeque! A bit of a shame that it took the horrors of a deadly virus, an incoherent, ignorant, and malicious President, self-isolation, and a spring monsoon to bring us back to Gromboolia, but perhaps this is just what the planet ordered. I’ve always argued that nonsense would save the world, and I’m sticking to my buns! I mean, I’m bricking to my guns! I mean, I’m glicking to my suns!
I haven’t added to the Gromboolia Anthology of Nonsense in a while, but a little sample from my last additions should be edifactory to one and all.
Of note on the music front is Bill Wurtz, an American songwriter and videographer. I first found him via his popular “history of the entire world, i guess,” but only later learned that he wrote music. Silly music. Nonsensical music. You might check out this one on Sexy Pants. There are also many short videos, bibs and bobs of bizarre ideas, wee narratives, with micro-song clips, like this one on soap, or this one about tomato anxiety. See the Gromboolia Anthology for a few more choice choices, Chauncey! His website links to the many, many songs and videos.
On the literary front, we’ll feature one of those unfortunately rare beings, a female writer of nonsense. Oh, you say, there’s Anushka Ravishankar! Pawp, you say, there is Laura E. Richards! Spink, you say, there’s Doris Sanders (because, Clever Claudette, you’ve studied up on your Gromboolia Anthology)! Spadge, you say, there’s… oh have you run out? It’s not surprising. I have some ideas about why this might be, but that’s for another day. Meanwhile, to celebrate Margaret Mahy (1936-2012), prolific and crowned (with purplitude, as seen in this photo) writer for children. She’s a Kiwi, a treasure of New Zealand, but unfortunately not so well known outside of the antipodes. You might check out her book, Nonstop Nonsense, if you were so inclined. On the Gromboolia Anthology, I’ve posted a link to a short but fluffy documentary on her work.
To all pataphysical pastries out there, I bring you the Recent Quackisition, No. 4, with extra creme. There are quite a few new things thrown into the Anthology and website, including some secondary and primary sources in the growing bibliographies. But this installation of the GARQ will, as usual, give you the creme-de-la-crempet.
First off is a recent discovery for me, though it’s been around for quite a long time: “What’s the New Mary Jane,” which appears on Anthology 3 (and this demo version). You might also benefit from the Rolling Stone article that gives some context for many of these rough 4-track recordings done pre-White album. It’s trippy, certainly, but the music itself may not rise above that; the lyrics, however (coupled with the music), make up a nice pot of cookie spaghetti. It’s not quite as “goony” as “You Know My Name (Look Up The Number),’ but it’s at least gony, dropping the second (or perhaps the first) ‘o’ somewhere along the way. It’s real gone, man.
On the literary side of things, we have a foundational text: Alfred Jarry’s Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll. Jarry (1873-1907) is known for his Ubu plays, full of merdre, which shocked the late-nineteenth century in nihilistic nincompoopery (with extra poop). But Faustroll is something different–so different that nobody would publish it, and even now, Roger Shattuck states that “it falls into no genre, not even that of the picaresque novel or the marvel tale” (Taylor edition, 1996, xvii). And yet, Shattuck concedes that “beneath the highly congested surface, and in spite of its desultory structure, one senses in Faustroll the search for a new reality, a stupendous effort to create out of the ruins Ubu had left behind a new system of values–the world of pataphysics. (ix).
Of course, Pataphysics are a nonsensical science, in the vein of Flann O’Brien’s De Selby… placing Jarry’s book, we might say, in the genre of nonsense–or something approaching it. The dance of destruction and creation again, but of course the latter part is logical smoke and imaginative mirrors.
You can find a copy here, on Archive.org, though you’ll have to register. Another copy, unrestricted and probably not entirely legal, might be here.
Click above, and then the little arrow to hear. This interview was conducted when I was the Resident Artist at the Eckerö Post and Customs House, on the Åland Islands, in May 2017. We talk about what brought me to Eckerö and some very basic definitions of nonsense. Make sure to ask Google to translate the page to English and you will discover that I am (and proudly so), a “mum infant.”
In the spirit of new things, new years, and the Official Second Update to the Gromboolia Anthology of Nonsense (soon to box the ears of Star Wars at the box office), I present to you Recent Quackisitions. There have been several addition of late, but here are a few highlights:
“Nonsense is the Fourth Dimension of Literature”
You don’t have to believe me…but I’m afraid you do have to believe Gelett Burgess, peripatetic discoverer of dubious dimensions and author of The Burgess Nonsense Book, noble addition to our Anthology.
As you can see from the title page, not everything in this book is meant to be nonsense, and even some that claims to be may not, in our fusty dustiness of nonsense definition, fit–but nonsense there is within, as seen in Burgess’s theoretical physics, not to mention his spotting the Muse of Nonsense.
“a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine”
Next is Algernon Charles Swinburn, whose literary excess is famous–and yet how fortunate he saw through his own bluster. His poem “Nephelidia” goes all-in on the all-inness of allinity.
“The Cause of Gauze”
Lastly, another must-hear from Of Montreal’s masterpiece album, Coquelicot
I shall occasionally be posting on this blog some highlights from The Gromboolia Anthology of Nonsense, the online anthology I’m building on nonsenseliterature.com. Considering the website is only a couple of months old, I suppose I could be posting quite a lot of recent acquisitions and features, but I’ll limit this post to the most recent, which included, in the category of literature, Alastair Reid; in music, the band Cardiacs; and in scholarship, my article from 2001, “The Original Interactive Game: Edward Lear’s Literary Nonsense” (The Five Owls).
In the study of nonsense, one rarely comes across Alastair Reid, but I hope to rectify that a little by putting him in Gromboolia. His book Ounce Dice Trice (1958) is in The New York Review Children’s Collection, a series that, since 2003, has brought certain worthy books out of their out-of-print status and back to the world, including works by Ruth Krauss, James Thurber, Eleanor Farjeon, and T. H. White. Reid’s book is a stunning dive into the sound and texture of words, guiding us on ways to construct our own words, on words as names, as numbers, and other constructions that are shown to be quite arbitrary. It gives us the power to create our own words and beyond that, systems of word-usage. It starts off rather tamely, with categories of words, such as those that have “bug” in them “to be said when grumpy,” including: “humbug, bugbear, bugaboo, bugbane, ladybug, bogybug, bugseed.” Even here, Reid begins to veer off into nonsense. Next, he begins to create words for familiar (or seemingly so) things:
Several pages are devoted to the possibility of names:
And he moves on to question why we should count in the old boring ways, suggesting new words for the numbers one to ten:
He creates what he calls “Garlands” which are loops of definition that include sense and nonsense, and also some “Curiosities,” where the picture-text incongruity is particularly strong.
The ongoing series put out by Dave Eggers, oops—I mean, Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey–resembles some of the pseudo-scientific jibjab you’ll find here. Overall, Reid’s book is not only excellent nonsense, but also a guide to empowering children and adults to become their own Humpty-Dumpty, a supreme arbitrator and controller of words!
In the category of music, I’ve just added the band Cardiacs, and the songs “Tarred and Feathered” and “Loosefish Scapegrace.” In both songs, there is some chaos, of course, and certain manifest mechanics of nonsense, such as arbitrariness in melody, harmony, and musical structure (not to mention lyrics). The nonsense is balanced by various kinds of sense. That is, the music is crazy in certain ways, but it’s not so crazy as to be atonal or even “experimental” in most definitions of it. The lyrics, likewise, often do make sense, especially for “Tarred” (while “Loosefish” takes a few more nonsensical lyrical turns). The former also has a video, and when you look at the whole package (music, lyrics, video performance), there is, I would argue, a nonsense effect, a tension between meaning and non-meaning (thank you Wim Tigges). It’s also crazy fun poppunkprogskunk!
Lastly, I revived an article long-deceased, “The Original Interactive Multimedia Game: Edward Lear’s Literary Nonsense,” published in the now-defunct journal The Five Owls (in 2001). This somewhat informal article analyzes Edward Lear’s literary nonsense from the perspective of interactivity and reader-response theory, taking into account the combination of text and illustration. It is a beginner’s guide to how Lear’s nonsense functions, its pedagogical value, and the sometimes subversive results.
Until next time, watch out for the whales (conveniently named by Reid), Hugh, Blodge, Barnaby, Hamish, Chumley, Murdo, Cham, Okum, and Sump.
For all of you who happen to be in the Åland Islands, please do drop by this lecture/performance! I will be talking about nonsense, poetry, nonsense poetry, poetic nonsense, nonsensical poetasting, and pudding. I will also be whollopping the wilds with sound poetry, and tales of my study of the Kalevala and Ålandish lichen. This will top off my writing residency here, and afterwards, there shall be much gnashing of teeth and beating of mournful mungbuckets.
Click here for the Eckerö Post & Tullhus Facebook event site.
Nonsens at Eckerö Post & Tullhus: Poetry, Sound and Strangeness
