Inspirations: Zabriskie Point by Michelangelo Antonioni

The rest of the film is very badly dated (and is therefore not worth explaining here), but this final sequence, seen in isolation, is perhaps the best music video of all time, even though Pink Floyd's 'Come in Number 51, Your Time is Up' doesn't actually start until about two minutes in. That's okay, because the preceding section is taken up by multiple camera views of an actual exploding house (you would make the most of that footage too, if you had blown up an actual house).

The title chapter of Pistols! Treason! Murder! could be seen as a homage to this sequence.

Inspirations: The Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton (1955)

Charles Laughton's film The Night of the Hunter (1955) has thematic concerns in common with another of my inspirations: Ray Bradbury's novel Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962).





To fully appreciate the second clip above, you have to know from the outset that Mitchum is the villain, from whom Lillian Gish is protecting the orphaned children sheltering in her house by means of the shotgun cradled across her lap. Laughton represents the conflict between these two characters (or rather, archetypes, who are defined in part by their opposed notions of God) by having them harmonise with each other while singing the same hymn, which they obviously understand in radically different ways. It is a brilliantly counter-intuitive dramatic strategy.

Simon Callow's book on The Night of the Hunter is an excellent introduction to this unique film, the only one directed by Laughton. On the film's tone and aesthetic, Callow explains (pp. 43-44):

From the beginning, Laughton had been insistent on conveying to all his collaborators the essential fairytale-like quality of the story. Everything, he told [art director Hilyard] Brown, should be seen from the boy's point of view. He accordingly designed the sets 'from the position that only children see certain things.' .... There was little pretence that a real world was being filmed, the shapely lines and symbolic details creating a highly stylised environment in which expressive power was achieved by painterly or sculptural means ....

On Mitchum as the villainous Preacher, Callow has this to say (pp. 65-66):

The performance is almost two-dimensional; both the actor and the character seem to be giving conscious performances, which lends a highly original dimension. At the risk of introducing an over-used and devalued tag, this is a Brechtian performance in the technical sense of the word - it is a demonstration of a certain kind of behaviour which promotes an analytical and critical attitude from the audience. .... Character becomes a kind of conjuring trick: the fascination comes from watching the way in which Preacher works his effects. The more naked the contradictions, the more chilling the effect.

Truffaut's initial review described the film as being like 'a horrifying news item retold by small children.' All of this recalls to me the following comment by Will Self on the worlds created in the fiction of Roald Dahl (quotation from The Guardian, 17 October 2009):

[T]here are big white spaces in Dahl-world where any realistic detailing might well be shaded in by a lesser writer; and again, in common with [Quentin] Blake’s vision, Dahl-world is at once lurid and curiously ill-defined. The passions are strong and clear – fear, hatred, avarice, love, greed (especially for sugar) – but they are played out against a backdrop that is only wonkily apprehended.

Dahl mimicked to perfection a believable child’s-eye view, that, looking up from below, sees the adult realm as foreshortened, and adult foibles as grossly elongated.

IT'S A HARD WORLD FOR LITTLE THINGS.

Inspirations: Townes Van Zandt

YOU FEEL LIKE MUDD, YOU'LL END UP GOLD.

Bernard Caleo on Montage in Comics

Check out the video above from Readings Bookshop in Melbourne, hosted by Oz comics impresario Bernard Caleo, who is talking about montage in film and comics (some - maybe all - of the featured art is by Michael Camilleri, who also appears). The first of a series of events on comics run by Bernard for Readings.

Inspirations: Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders

NIEN.

Guest Post at The Spectator Book Blog

I have a guest post up at The Spectator book blog, which is about the influence of the King James Bible (published 400 years ago this month) on the design of Five Wounds. 

Here's an extract: 

 The modern paperback is not a natural object. The advent of e-books has made this painfully obvious. In the current state of confusion as to what a book is or should be, it might be an opportune moment to review the sacred prehistory of the novel. Five Wounds reaffirms the relevance of the King James Bible to modern storytelling, but it also draws on medieval traditions that were erased in 1611, just as the novel erased its own sacred origins.

Five Wounds: Discussion at 'Caustic Cover Critic'

James Morrison of the book design blog Caustic Cover Critic (he is also the publisher of Whisky Priest Books) has posted a short discussion of Five Wounds, including some photos of page layouts. Have a look!

Five Wounds: Review at 'Shelf Abuse'

Following on from my guest post at the Shelf Abuse site, Carl Doherty has posted a review of Five Wounds there. A quotation is below:

Five Wounds' story would stand proud in any format, but the combination of Walker’s rich cityscape and Hallett’s spidery imagery results in something beyond a conventional book with superfluous pictures. Text and imagery feed off one another like Siamese twins, to the extent that it’s difficult to imagine either element surviving if separated.

The Influence of Comic Books on Five Wounds

A short article I wrote on this topic has now been posted at the Shelf Abuse site. Thanks to Carl Doherty for arranging this. An extract is below:

Long decried as reductive and simplistic, comic books are actually, as Douglas Wolk has recently suggested, a vehicle peculiarly suited to allegory: that is, to the representation of abstract ideas through narrative. Wolk argues that superhero comics in particular ‘provide bold metaphors for discussing ideas or reifying abstractions into narrative fiction. They’re the closest thing that exists right now to the “novel of ideas.”’ (Wolk, Reading Comics, p. 92) All superhero characters and plots are, in some sense, allegorical, but this in no way detracts from their integrity as stories.

Release of Five Wounds!

Five Wounds is released today in the UK. The official US release will follow shortly, although it is already available to buy in both countries (links are on the right). It is published by Allen & Unwin. Five Wounds is fantasy noir, and is presented in a unique 'illuminated' format with many original illustrations created by Dan Hallett (see the video below for more information on the format). 

Here is the publisher's synopsis of the story:  

In a cruel and arbitrary world, where disturbing lapses in logic are commonplace, five orphans must face their traumatic origins. Gabriella is a crippled angel, haunted by her inability to interpret prophecies. Cur is the rabid leader of a sect of dogs, desperate to escape his inheritance. Cuckoo is a gambler with a wax face determined to find a fixed identity before his luck runs out. Magpie is a thief in search of the perfect photographic subject, but terrified of going blind. Crow is a leper trying to distil the essence of death as an antidote to dying. 

Each of them is deformed; each has a special ability; each is connected to all of the others. And each gets exactly what they deserve. Or do they? 

Here are some quotations about the book:  

In a world of increasing vacuity and self-concern, this beautiful illustrated edition of Five Wounds is like a medication - a mystical, elegant treatise on empathy that is at once also a novel and an anti-novel. It’s a turning-point book, but one that can live on a coffee-table like a beating heart. I’ve seen nothing so rare, curious and beautiful in a long time. – DBC Pierre, author of Vernon God Little and Lights Out in Wonderland 

If I say this fable is peculiar, it’s a compliment. Not so much steampunk as, what? Canalpunk? This elaborate macabre book plays games, runs riddles, leaps in flights of fancy and dives down chasms of nightmare with Tarot, murder, jokes, and angels thrown in for good measure. The illustrations are Goya meets comic-book, the text is Perfume and Pan’s Labyrinth, Gogol, Calvino and Casanova’s memoirs of Venice all in one. Extraordinary. – Kate Holden, author of In My Skin and The Romantic  

The template suggests an old-fashioned children’s classic: handsome proportions, elegant print, fancy chapter headings, centre plates on shiny paper. But a virus has gotten in there: the illustrations are nightmarish and hermetic, calling on the Tarot, Escher, psychotic heraldry, and the text here and there is scribbled through, the nice fonts mocked by scrawled block capitals. And the story likewise takes the blackness that underpins traditional fairytales and brings it front and centre. .... [T]he book takes you places, and the illustrations are wonderful. - Owen Richardson, review in The Age 

Think back to your first trip with Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, or how it felt to enter the Matrix after Neo takes the red pill. Five Wounds: An Illuminated Novel takes you down a similarly twisting path and leaves you pondering the journey well afterwards. .... a thought-provoking and beautifully presented work. - Aliese Millington, review in Transnational Literature 

The five senses are a common theme in Five Wounds and it seems fitting then, that it appeals to the senses in such detail. I have literally tried everything short of licking the book. The hardcover, thoughtful selection of paper stock and red ribbon page-marker makes the book seem like an artefact; it is a privilege to hold it. .... The scribblings peppered through out the book add to its mystery. I feel as if I am reading a diary, a draft, a spell book; something personal that was not meant for the eyes of others. .... [They] lend the book a desperate sense of urgency. - Dave Drayton, review at Vibewire 

Here is a video interview (courtesy of the Wheeler Centre) about the unique format of Five Wounds:

I'll be posting some additional discussion about Five Wounds here over the next couple of months. I'll also be doing some guest posts on other blogs and sites, which I'll link to from here.

Let Us Burn the Gondolas: Venice as a Modern City in 'Rethinking History'

My photoessay entitled 'Let Us Burn the Gondolas: Venice as a Modern City' has just been published in the Routledge journal Rethinking History, with which I have a long-standing relationship. It is part of an issue (vol, 15, no. 1, 2011) edited by James Goodman on 'History as creative writing', which includes contributions in various formats (including poetry) by historians and writers such as Martha Hodes and Gregory Downs. There is additional discussion and more photographs from the project on this blog. Buying articles from academic journals is always prohibitively expensive for individuals, but if you have any kind of university affiliation, try accessing it through your library, who may have an online subscription to Rethinking History.

Video about the production of 'Tree of Codes' by Jonathan Safran Foer

More information from the publisher, Visual Editions.

Appearance at 'Penguin Plays Rough' Night in Newtown this Saturday

This Saturday I shall be giving a short reading as part of the 'Penguin Plays Rough' night, which is a regular feature of Newtown's cultural life. Below is the notice by organiser Pip Smith from the PPR site:

Saturday April 9 8pm

Behold! The next PPR is at hand! I know it’s been longer than a month, but what with irritating book hiccups, I’ve been shackled to my laptop and unable to service your live fiction needs as regularly as I’d like to. But, after a hearty meal of spinach and liver, I have been able to burst free of my chains just in time to deliver you the most diverse sample of short stories this side of the 1970s. Check this out for diversity:

Miles Merrill: is the Artistic Director/ Creator/ CEO/ reigning monarch/king shit/ Godfather of The Australian Poetry Slam. He’s also a spoken-word artist in his own right and has opened for Saul Williams, wrote and co-directed a show in the Sydney Festival and performed solo at the Sydney Opera House. He’s the real deal, so be sure to see him in the flesh.

Jonathan Walker: is not only an expert on Venetian spies and diplomats (Cambridge University certified), but he is also the author of an “illuminated novel”, Five Wounds (see his website for details: www.jonathanwalkervenice.com). Jonathan will be reading from his novel, accompanied by projected illuminations.

Mark Sutton: Sydney University Story Club regular, one time liquor store employee, and current crossword compiler for ladies gossip magazines, Mark Sutton is very funny. I have witnessed his hilariousness, and it is indeed both wry and giggle-worthy.

Megan Garret-Jones: is a performance artist who has collaborated with Team Mess, and is one of the coordinators of Monthly Friend. She has performed her works at the Melbourne Fringe Festival and the Red Rattler. She once read a story about an octopus at Penguin Plays Rough. I remember, because there is a photo of her on our website with her hand perched on her head in the way an octopus might.

Ramon Glazov: not only has an excellent name, but is also the author of a very particular and Kafka-esque (yes, I just used that adjective) story that I STILL remember (even though I read it years ago) from the Cutwater Anthology. He’s going to read a story called “A Dispatch from the Golden Triangle” about a gambling town in Burma. Can’t get much more far-reaching than that, my peoples.

See you on Saturday. I am going to bake something edible you all can eat, too. God knows what yet, but it will be a tasty surprise.

The event will be held at the usual venue, which is at 4 Lackey Street, St Peters; time 8-10.30ish. I believe that there is a cover charge of $5 to enter, and that there will also be open mic readings in between the programmed entries listed above. Sounds like good value to me!

2010 Aurealis Awards Shortlist

Five Wounds is one of the shortlisted titles in the 'Best Illustrated Book / Graphic Novel' category in the 2010 Aurealis Awards for Australian Speculative Fiction. The other shortlisted candidates for this category include Nicki Greenberg and Justin Randall (fellow guests on 3CR's The Comic Spot). Good luck to all the other authors shortlisted for all the various categories, some of whom I met recently at the Worldcon in Melbourne or the Sydney Freecon.

Five Wounds: Review at 'Literary Minded'

A very nice review by guest writer Lyndon Riggall at Literary Minded. An excerpt is below:

The story itself is a beautifully written and illustrated journey, but for me what made the novel truly ‘illuminated’ was the way in which the book refused to settle. Five Wounds is no summer beach distraction, it’s an intensely involved reading experience. .... For me the journey of reading the book was one of active problem-solving and code-breaking, and not only is this no bad thing; judging by the novel’s curious annotations, edits, and conflicting final chapters, I think it is also absolutely the intention of its authors.

Podcast of session on 'Modern Dystopia' at the Melbourne Writers Festival

Back in August, I appeared with DBC Pierre at the Melbourne Writers Festival in a discussion on 'Modern Dystopia'. This session was recorded by Radio National, and an edited version was broadcast on Monday 17 January as part of their 'Best of the fests' programming. The discussion moderator was Justin Clemens. 

UPDATE: You can now download a podcast of the programme. I have also uploaded the relevant section of the audio below. 

SECOND UPDATE: There is now further discussion of the ideas raised in our discussion here.

  

N.B. I am actually talking about Five Wounds in the session, even though the presenter mentions Pistols! Treason! Murder! in the introduction.

Digital Editing, Digital Humanities: A Symposium at the University of Sydney

I shall be one of the participants in the symposium Digital Editing, Digital Humanities, which takes place in the Woolley Common Room, Woolley Building, University of Sydney, tomorrow (Friday 10 Dececmber 2010), from 9.30-5.00ish. The symposium has been organised by Mark Byron and William Christie. Further information is available on Mark Byron's blog. I'm on in the afternoon as part of a group presentation.

Plenary Speaker: Bethany Nowviskie, University of Virginia

This event brings together scholars, artists, and archivists working within the digital domain, both in Sydney and further afield. A primary focus of the symposium is to raise awareness of the variety of digital projects currently in progress in the Digital Humanities, and to discuss the kinds of digital resources available to scholars.

The symposium aims to showcase projects across the humanities, and to foster discussion of potential collaboration, funding, and the best use of available and potential resources. Three sessions will follow the plenary:

1. scholarly editing of medieval and modern literary texts;

2. projects in the visual arts, Buddhist Studies, history, the culture of robotics;

3. a roundtable concerning resources on campus, including SETIS, Heurist and Fisher e-Scholarship.

Typographic Design in Jean-Luc Godard's Films

The talk above is by Laura Forde. For more on the same topic, see this blog post by Andrea Hyde.

I have been watching the Godard films under discussion recently as part of the preparation / research for a new graphic project I am working on with Dan Hallett.

'Little Dorrit' by Christine Edzard (1987)

[Originally posted on Literary Minded:]



In the Summer of 1989, I left my father’s home, which was never my home, not after my mother died. I couldn’t stand it there, in my father’s home, in the dark there, with the recessed windows and the ceilings, so low I used to bang my head on the doorjambs. The smell was what really used to get to me, as if it had seeped into the stone floors.

Child of an unfortunate father.

In the Summer of 1989, I left my father’s home, which was no longer my home. I left for Liverpool, knowing that I would only be there a few months, until I went north to university in October. I had no job and no money, but an older friend had just bought a gutted house that he was planning to renovate. I could stay there in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

A delicate appeal for a small temporary accommodation.

There was a streetlamp directly outside my window, which had no curtains. I turned the bare lightbulb off before I undressed, and I slept under the orange glow of sodium, on the floor, in a sleeping bag, on cushions I borrowed from the sofa downstairs. I took the cushions back downstairs every morning.

I shared the house with three other young men: two mechanics and a binman, who were in the habit of lying around watching television and eating takeaway food when they got home, in their workclothes, lying on the same sofa I used for my bedding. So the cushions were never especially clean.

Shabby.

Some things in the house worked. The toilet in the bathroom flushed, and there was an electric shower mounted over the bath that emitted a thin, feeble stream, which alternated between scalding hot and lukewarm as the circuit breaker kicked in and out. The cold tap in the kitchen also worked. But that was it for water. You had to boil it on the gas stove if you wanted it really hot, and most of the washing took place in the kitchen sink.

Faculties evidently decaying.

The boards on the kitchen floor had been ripped up in preparation for redoing the plumbing, exposing the gas pipes feeding the cooker, and the only heat source in the house was a fire in the living room, the same room with the sofa and the television. The electricity was supplied by a meter system, into which coins had to be fed regularly.

Tuppence please.

Nobody had figured out the local council’s garbage collection system, but there was a backyard, so whenever a garbage bag filled up, one of us tied it off and threw it out the back door. No-one dared to go out in the yard after dark.

The flies trouble you, don’t they me dear?

It was entertaining enough for a couple of months. I was glad to get away in October, but it was still the only available place to stay when I came back to Liverpool after my first term at university. I didn’t want to go to my father’s home. I couldn’t go back there. He wasn’t speaking to me. So I was back sleeping on the smelly sofa cushions. Still, it wasn’t so bad. It’s never bad with people who care about you.

I’m a friend. Remember?

A film version of Charles Dickens’ novel Little Dorrit was part of the Christmas television schedule that year. It was a six-hour adaptation, shown in two separate three-hour parts.

I decide to give it a go. Thirty minutes later, I’m hooked, but there’s hardly any credit left on the electricity meter, and there are no fifty-pence coins anywhere in the house.

Nobody’s to blame. Noise, fatigue, a moment’s inattention.

‘Turn everything off except the television’, I say. ‘All the lights, the fridge, don’t take a shower, don’t use the microwave, don’t wash your clothes, don’t dry your hair, don’t listen to music. If the power cuts before the film ends, I’m going to go crazy’.

Paid to squeeze. Squeeze to pay.

I haven’t read the novel, so I can’t even guess how it’s going to end – except that probably somebody is going to get married, and probably somebody else is going to die.

‘What are you watching?’
‘Little Dorrit’.
‘How long?’
‘Three hours’.
‘Three hours? Bloody hell’.
‘Six, actually. Two parts’.
‘Are you mad?’
‘Humour me. I want to know what happens’.

Pancks the gypsy. Fortune-telling.

Another thirty minutes later, I’m shivering in the twilight glow of the television when the doorbell rings.

‘Can you get that?’
‘Merry Christmas!’, someone outside says. ‘What’s up?’
‘Sssh! We’re watching Little Dorrit!’
‘What’s Little Dorrit?’
‘Come in. I’ll explain’.

We watch Little Dorrit, together.

The meter turns, infinitesimally slowly.

How can you speak of forever to a maimed creature like me?

The story advances, faster.

[All phrases in Arial are excerpts of dialogue taken from the film version of Little Dorrit, dir. Christine Edzard (1987).]

Santa Maria Formosa, Venice, 2002

I had about forty-five minutes inside the church of Santa Maria Formosa before the light went. I shot eight frames (I think), of which this is the best – though that's not saying much. What was I looking at? I remember noting the following (in no particular order):

1) The light in the window on the right shining through the columns of the altar.

2) The red of the carpet, the green on the front of the altar and the mottled, pinkish organ booth. If a space is not articulated by contrasts in the distribution of colour, then there’s no point in using colour film.

3) The two prominent hanging lamps, which represented a problem that I was unable to solve to my complete satisfaction (so that their current positions within the frame were a compromise).

4) The golden angels, and in particular the fact that one of them is being ‘stabbed’ in the head by a partially-visible statue on the altar behind.

5) The position of the column at the left in the foreground relative to the pediment of the doorway in the background.

6) The four objects covered in white cloths on the left side of the frame. (What exactly is the tilted object on the floor? I don’t know and it bothers me.)

7) The difference in the source and intensity (and hence the colour) of the light through the doorway on the left. I was less aware of the patch of cold light at the bottom right and I didn’t notice the colour shift in the column on the left at all. The latter effects are stronger on the film than they appeared to the naked eye.

8) The red thread running around the benches, which is a more delicate but more absolute boundary of the space within than the benches themselves. And it is somehow important that the thread is red. (N.B. The thread may not be visible in the miniatruzed version above.)

9) The figure in the painting through the door on the left. It was important to show all of it. (The figure is also difficult to see in the version here.)

The list could be extended – but never to the point where it includes everything in the frame.

'Tree of Codes' by Jonathan Safran Foer

Tree of Codes is Jonathan Safran Foer's new book, which is a 'treated' edition of The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, in the spirit of Tom Phillips' A Humument. It is published by Visual Editions. There's a good interview with Safran Foer in the NYT (extract below).

Q.Where did this strong affinity for graphic design come from?

A.Where would the lack of interest in design come from? Why wouldn’t — how couldn’t — an author care about how his or her books look? I’ve never met an artist who wasn’t interested in the visual arts, yet we’ve drawn a deep line in the sand around what we consider the novel to be, and what we’re supposed to care about. So we’re in the strange position of having much to say about what hangs on gallery walls and little about what hangs on the pages of our books. Literature doesn’t need a visual component — my favorite books are all black words on white pages — but it would be well served to lower the drawbridge.

Podcast on the Design of Five Wounds

The podcast of my talk on the design of Five Wounds, originally delivered to the Centre for the Book at Monash University on 20 Oct., is now available to download if anyone wants to listen to it at home. Alternatively, I have also uploaded and embedded the audio below.

The original talk was of course accompanied by illustrations. I have posted the most important of these below. The numerical headings are time cues, which refer to the point in the audio file at which I discuss the image in question. Anyone who wants to get a sense of what the book looks like before listening to the talk can check out these short videos, in which I flip through a copy and explain the various elements.

4:55: Freud Caricature

6:40 : Synaesthetic Paradise Diptych [I can't get this double image to work in the audio, and I waste a couple of minutes fiddling about with it]:

10:55: Plate 6: Cuckoo's reflection.

12:00: Alternative Representation of Cuckoo's Face

13:50: Gabriella's Shield

13:57: Magpie's Shield

15:00: Heraldry Sketches

15:15: Heraldry Grid

15:40: Sample Page Layout [see also 18:30 for discussion of the illustration included within this sample page]

17:00: Running Head [N.B. The pages above and below are two sides of the same layout, and thus the running head below serves as a title card for the illustration on the page above.]

24:55: Geneva Bible Page Layout (1560)

25:00: King James Bible Page Layout (1611)

25:30: Modern Bible Page Layout

40:00: Plate 15: Cut me

[All illustrations except the Freud caricature, the heraldry sketches and the page layouts are by Dan Hallett.]

Sydney Freecon, 19-21 November 2010

This weekend I shall be participating in the Sydney Freecon, organised by Garry Dalrymple of the Sydney Futurians. There will be several events featuring local science-fiction / fantasy / horror writers, all taking place in Bankstown public library or nearby. As the name implies, there is no charge for attendance.

I shall be there on Friday evening (when I shall be giving a short reading) and Saturday afternoon (when I might possibly be available for a 'kaffeeklatsch' open discussion with other attendees, depending on interest).

The current draft programme is here.

Five Wounds: Review at 'Transnational Literature'

The latest issue of the academic e-journal Transnational Literature includes a review of Five Wounds, written by Aliese Millington. An extract is below: Think back to your first trip with Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, or how it felt to enter the Matrix after Neo takes the red pill. Five Wounds: An Illuminated Novel takes you down a similarly twisting path and leaves you pondering the journey well afterwards. Pooling influences trans-national, trans-cultural, trans-temporal and transart form, authors Jonathan Walker and Dan Hallett spin the story of ‘five wounded orphans [who] must face their traumatic origins’ (blurb). These tales are told through the fascinating combination of Walker’s proclamatory prose, Hallett’s Goya and comic-book influenced illustrations, a Bible-like layout and handwritten notations. Described as ‘cruel and arbitrary’ (blurb) by the authors, the world of Five Wounds looks and feels at once early renaissance, modern and apocalyptic. I am particularly pleased to see a review in a journal on transnational literature, since many of the sources for Five Wounds are Italian: notably, Italo Calvino and Tintoretto. Below is a selection of transnational sources taken from a detail of an illustration (by Dan Hallett) on p. 100 of the novel.

Video Interview for The Wheeler Centre

 

This is an interview I did recently for the Wheeler Centre on Five Wounds. Thanks to George Dunford for setting it up.