Richard Foreman's Blog, page 9
June 20, 2016
Working for the DC Dollar - Part 3: The Orchid Flies
Working for the DC DollarPart 3: The Orchid Flies
Chocks away! With the editorially modified outline agreed, scripts meet artwork, letters and colours - and in due course Black Orchid goes on sale.
The artist assigned to draw Black Orchid was an American, Jill Thompson. I felt very fortunate to be working with her. She’d done some fine work in Sandman and elsewhere and I particularly liked her clear line style. She seemed enthusiastic. I still treasure a watercolour sketch she sent me of the character in repose. The first few issues of Black Orchid looked fabulous, Jill’s artwork a distinct change from the painterly style of Dave McKean, whose visuals graced the Neil Gaiman mini-series. Though it should be added that I was doubly fortunate in that McKean designed the new Black Orchid covers, and did so consistently for the entire series.
Water colour sketch by Jill Thompson(apologies for the flash reflection above centre on right)
There is no buzz like the buzz you get when the Fed-Ex man turns up at your door with a box of first issues of a comic you've written, with a cover by Dave McKean and 24 pages of fabulous artwork inside. I was walking on air. For days. All the blisters, man, they just fell away...
It looked good and it sold pretty well. For its entire run, I was told that it sold in appreciably greater quantities than most of the other new Vertigo titles. That said, I’m not sure I can claim credit. The selling factors were more likely the artwork, the covers, the Neil Gaiman connection and perhaps, as Tom Peyer and/or Karen Berger had figured, the fact that it was more like a regular super hero comic than its stable-mates. I think that, artistically, if I’d worked to my original outline the comic would have been better, but I can’t be sure that it would have sold.
Ah, but it was an exciting time. I’d convinced myself that I could make the new outline work (and I did so with freely given guidance from some very expert hands). Four figure cheques were rolling in from DC and suddenly I was earning more money than I ever had in my life before, or – as it turned out – ever have since. There were regular trips to London to wine and dine with visiting American editors, as a second project – a 12 issue mini-series that never saw the light of day – was also in development. Expenses paid hotel rooms when I attended comics conventions. Meeting other writers and artists whose work I had admired for years. Some of them even talked to me. One night I got to set foot in the Groucho Club. You might think you’d made it when stuff like that happens to you.
But I never quite lost that skin-of-my-teeth feeling. Looking back and very broadly speaking I think there were two kinds of people who were ‘making it’ in the comics biz in those days. On the one hand there were hard workers with a genuine commitment to the art form, the best of whom were buzzing with fresh and vital new ideas. On the other there were the ones who progressed by strength of personality, the ability to convince people that they were special and worthy of attention. Their writing tended to be cool and flashy, saturated with whatever was fashionable at the time, but ultimately made for rather empty, soulless reading. Somewhat shy and awkward in social situations, I had no chance of becoming one of the latter. My concern was to establish myself amongst the former. Well, I could work hard and I did. Now and again, I had some good ideas too, but probably not quite enough of them. Or so I felt. On my own terms, ‘making it’ was a touch and go prospect.
Was I ‘cool’? I very much doubt it. I remember looking forward to meeting Jill Thompson when she was flown to the UK for some comic convention or other. I think we chatted pleasantly for an hour or so and I can’t remember a great deal about it except that she expressed surprise that I didn’t have a beard. That was, she told me, how she’d visualised me – along with, I suspect, a bit of a paunch and a Batman T-shirt with relish stains from gobbled hamburgers. (Think ‘Comics Guy’ from the Simpsons.) Truth was, I think, she was already about to jump ship. She’d been spending time with one of the writers in my second category above, one who had aspirations to challenge Alan Moore’s supremacy, and he’d clearly charmed her. In the ensuing months she began to struggle with Black Orchid deadlines, and pretty soon she was off the project. No hard feelings. She did a great job on Black Orchid. Whatever she’s doing now, I wish her well. And I still treasure that watercolour.
I never got to meet the artist who was next assigned to the comic, which is a great shame because I developed a lot of respect for Rebecca Guay. Her work perhaps lacked the stylishness of Thompson’s art and some of her panels looked a little rushed to me at first. But she stayed with Black Orchid for the rest of its run, as far as I remember she was a reliable collaborator who never missed deadlines, and her artwork grew in both skill and confidence throughout the period. I guess I learned to write for and to her skills, and she learned to pick up on the aspects of the story I wanted to be told without words. It felt like a good working relationship and I enjoyed it.
(I've just had a look online at some of her more recent work. Beautiful. She just gets better!)
A pre-colours/overlay page from Black Orchid #10, pencils by Rebecca, inks by Stan Woch, lettering by Clem Robins.
Next time, Vertigo goes 'crossover' with 'The Children's Crusade', and I buy a black beret in New York in the deluded belief that it will make me look as cool as Alan Vega out of Suicide.
I probably should have gone for the Batman T-shirt...
'Til then, take it easy, take it smooth, or - at the very least - take it!
Chocks away! With the editorially modified outline agreed, scripts meet artwork, letters and colours - and in due course Black Orchid goes on sale.
The artist assigned to draw Black Orchid was an American, Jill Thompson. I felt very fortunate to be working with her. She’d done some fine work in Sandman and elsewhere and I particularly liked her clear line style. She seemed enthusiastic. I still treasure a watercolour sketch she sent me of the character in repose. The first few issues of Black Orchid looked fabulous, Jill’s artwork a distinct change from the painterly style of Dave McKean, whose visuals graced the Neil Gaiman mini-series. Though it should be added that I was doubly fortunate in that McKean designed the new Black Orchid covers, and did so consistently for the entire series.
Water colour sketch by Jill Thompson(apologies for the flash reflection above centre on right)There is no buzz like the buzz you get when the Fed-Ex man turns up at your door with a box of first issues of a comic you've written, with a cover by Dave McKean and 24 pages of fabulous artwork inside. I was walking on air. For days. All the blisters, man, they just fell away...
It looked good and it sold pretty well. For its entire run, I was told that it sold in appreciably greater quantities than most of the other new Vertigo titles. That said, I’m not sure I can claim credit. The selling factors were more likely the artwork, the covers, the Neil Gaiman connection and perhaps, as Tom Peyer and/or Karen Berger had figured, the fact that it was more like a regular super hero comic than its stable-mates. I think that, artistically, if I’d worked to my original outline the comic would have been better, but I can’t be sure that it would have sold.
Ah, but it was an exciting time. I’d convinced myself that I could make the new outline work (and I did so with freely given guidance from some very expert hands). Four figure cheques were rolling in from DC and suddenly I was earning more money than I ever had in my life before, or – as it turned out – ever have since. There were regular trips to London to wine and dine with visiting American editors, as a second project – a 12 issue mini-series that never saw the light of day – was also in development. Expenses paid hotel rooms when I attended comics conventions. Meeting other writers and artists whose work I had admired for years. Some of them even talked to me. One night I got to set foot in the Groucho Club. You might think you’d made it when stuff like that happens to you.
But I never quite lost that skin-of-my-teeth feeling. Looking back and very broadly speaking I think there were two kinds of people who were ‘making it’ in the comics biz in those days. On the one hand there were hard workers with a genuine commitment to the art form, the best of whom were buzzing with fresh and vital new ideas. On the other there were the ones who progressed by strength of personality, the ability to convince people that they were special and worthy of attention. Their writing tended to be cool and flashy, saturated with whatever was fashionable at the time, but ultimately made for rather empty, soulless reading. Somewhat shy and awkward in social situations, I had no chance of becoming one of the latter. My concern was to establish myself amongst the former. Well, I could work hard and I did. Now and again, I had some good ideas too, but probably not quite enough of them. Or so I felt. On my own terms, ‘making it’ was a touch and go prospect.
Was I ‘cool’? I very much doubt it. I remember looking forward to meeting Jill Thompson when she was flown to the UK for some comic convention or other. I think we chatted pleasantly for an hour or so and I can’t remember a great deal about it except that she expressed surprise that I didn’t have a beard. That was, she told me, how she’d visualised me – along with, I suspect, a bit of a paunch and a Batman T-shirt with relish stains from gobbled hamburgers. (Think ‘Comics Guy’ from the Simpsons.) Truth was, I think, she was already about to jump ship. She’d been spending time with one of the writers in my second category above, one who had aspirations to challenge Alan Moore’s supremacy, and he’d clearly charmed her. In the ensuing months she began to struggle with Black Orchid deadlines, and pretty soon she was off the project. No hard feelings. She did a great job on Black Orchid. Whatever she’s doing now, I wish her well. And I still treasure that watercolour.
I never got to meet the artist who was next assigned to the comic, which is a great shame because I developed a lot of respect for Rebecca Guay. Her work perhaps lacked the stylishness of Thompson’s art and some of her panels looked a little rushed to me at first. But she stayed with Black Orchid for the rest of its run, as far as I remember she was a reliable collaborator who never missed deadlines, and her artwork grew in both skill and confidence throughout the period. I guess I learned to write for and to her skills, and she learned to pick up on the aspects of the story I wanted to be told without words. It felt like a good working relationship and I enjoyed it.
(I've just had a look online at some of her more recent work. Beautiful. She just gets better!)
A pre-colours/overlay page from Black Orchid #10, pencils by Rebecca, inks by Stan Woch, lettering by Clem Robins.Next time, Vertigo goes 'crossover' with 'The Children's Crusade', and I buy a black beret in New York in the deluded belief that it will make me look as cool as Alan Vega out of Suicide.
I probably should have gone for the Batman T-shirt...
'Til then, take it easy, take it smooth, or - at the very least - take it!
June 13, 2016
Working for the DC Dollar - Part 2: A Dodgy Take-Off
Working for the DC DollarPart 2: A Dodgy Take-Off
Last time I wrote about being offered Black Orchid by DC Comics and, despite some misgivings, deciding it was my best (perhaps only) chance to break into comics writing on a regular basis.
It was my intention to be a professional scriptwriter. Okay, I told myself, to meet that description I ought to be able to take on this challenge. I re-read the miniseries and also at least some of the original Black Orchid stories from the 70s or whenever they’d appeared. Essentially, I felt, Neil Gaiman had followed a template established by Alan Moore with Swamp Thing – to take a somewhat vaguely conceived minor comic character and re-package them with a more convincing, better thought out conceptual framework. Since he’d only intended it as a one off mini series, Gaiman brought less rigour to the process of working this out and – significantly for me – sewed in a lot less in the way of potential threads to develop in a continuing series.
Black Orchid was both a product of pseudo-science – a human/orchid hybrid – and a mystical being, an ‘elemental’, like Swamp Thing and, by then, other members of that comic’s cast. My opening proposal to DC was centred chiefly on the latter aspect of her nature. The Orchid was a force of nature, barely glimpsed in bodily form by human beings and largely incomprehensible. Like the tale of the blind men and the elephant, those who encountered the Orchid would conceive of her only in the form of the part of the whole that they had personally encountered. But those encounters would change their lives in some significant way. For the first twelve issues at least, these people would be the focus of self-contained stories, in the style of so-called urban myths. The linking device for all this would be the reporter character I introduced, who has some information regarding the origin story and is trying to track down what has become of the being who once manifested as the super-heroine, Black Orchid. Eventually, by issue 12, he would have his own devastating first encounter with her – which would constitute her first real-time appearance in the comic. How I’d follow that, I probably had little idea, but it is the way of a continuous comic series that you build in threads that will lead to new possibilities as you go along.
Looking back, I still think that was a pretty damn cool approach to a character who, let’s face it, was never going to be that easy to write. I could have had a lot of fun with those human characters and their self-contained stories – some humorous, some thrilling, some just starkly awesome. Sadly, it was not to be.
The editor to whom I was assigned for the series was Tom Peyer. Tom is sharp, politically suss and a really nice guy. I liked him a lot and felt comfortable with him at all times. I’m not sure to this day what he really felt about that original proposal. What I remember of what he told me was that he liked it, could see the potential, but…
And the ‘but’ was that Vertigo, for all its pizzazz about creating comics with adult themes for adult readers, was not quite confident enough to boldly go into this new territory wholesale. There was still a need, either felt by Tom (who was still a bit of a super hero buff himself) or by those above him, for some sort of super-heroic element - and that had to be manifest in Black Orchid. You could make it mad, post-modernist and surrealistic, as Grant Morrison and Peter Milligan had already done by then, but you still had to have people in costumes visible on the pages. 12 issues of a comic in which the title character appeared only fleetingly as a character or purely as a force of nature in other people’s stories was a no-no. Could I not condense that idea I’d had into a single first issue, and then develop a story arc in which the Orchid figured as a character that readers saw and could relate to?
Once again, my own lack of confidence undermined me. These editorial people knew their business. Maybe they were right. Especially one of them that I liked and respected. Again, with hindsight, I feel I should have told him that if I couldn’t do what I felt was right, I’d rather walk away from the project. Vertigo itself pretty quickly realised that if it was to succeed on its own terms, it would have to sever far more of its connections with the super-hero mainstream. And it did. One quite early Vertigo title, Matt Wagner’s Sandman Mystery Theatre was not a million miles from my concept, as far as I can remember. And increasingly, as it struggled to maintain sales, the imprint experimented more and more with a variety of different story formats.
But me, I did my best to comply with the stipulations that had been laid down. Bad guys were needed and would have to be fought. Gun play would occur. Cliff-hanger endings were required. You get the picture. The comic about a human/orchid hybrid became a hybrid between two styles of comic, and as such it was not entirely successful at being either.
Next: Well, I said last time I'd get on to the Orchid's first few flights, but this chunk of the story was a bit longer than I thought and the next chunk will work better as a complete and separate entry. So next time: how she flew, how she fared, and some words about the artists with whom I was fortunate to work. Stay tuned!
Last time I wrote about being offered Black Orchid by DC Comics and, despite some misgivings, deciding it was my best (perhaps only) chance to break into comics writing on a regular basis.
It was my intention to be a professional scriptwriter. Okay, I told myself, to meet that description I ought to be able to take on this challenge. I re-read the miniseries and also at least some of the original Black Orchid stories from the 70s or whenever they’d appeared. Essentially, I felt, Neil Gaiman had followed a template established by Alan Moore with Swamp Thing – to take a somewhat vaguely conceived minor comic character and re-package them with a more convincing, better thought out conceptual framework. Since he’d only intended it as a one off mini series, Gaiman brought less rigour to the process of working this out and – significantly for me – sewed in a lot less in the way of potential threads to develop in a continuing series.
Black Orchid was both a product of pseudo-science – a human/orchid hybrid – and a mystical being, an ‘elemental’, like Swamp Thing and, by then, other members of that comic’s cast. My opening proposal to DC was centred chiefly on the latter aspect of her nature. The Orchid was a force of nature, barely glimpsed in bodily form by human beings and largely incomprehensible. Like the tale of the blind men and the elephant, those who encountered the Orchid would conceive of her only in the form of the part of the whole that they had personally encountered. But those encounters would change their lives in some significant way. For the first twelve issues at least, these people would be the focus of self-contained stories, in the style of so-called urban myths. The linking device for all this would be the reporter character I introduced, who has some information regarding the origin story and is trying to track down what has become of the being who once manifested as the super-heroine, Black Orchid. Eventually, by issue 12, he would have his own devastating first encounter with her – which would constitute her first real-time appearance in the comic. How I’d follow that, I probably had little idea, but it is the way of a continuous comic series that you build in threads that will lead to new possibilities as you go along.
Looking back, I still think that was a pretty damn cool approach to a character who, let’s face it, was never going to be that easy to write. I could have had a lot of fun with those human characters and their self-contained stories – some humorous, some thrilling, some just starkly awesome. Sadly, it was not to be.
The editor to whom I was assigned for the series was Tom Peyer. Tom is sharp, politically suss and a really nice guy. I liked him a lot and felt comfortable with him at all times. I’m not sure to this day what he really felt about that original proposal. What I remember of what he told me was that he liked it, could see the potential, but…
And the ‘but’ was that Vertigo, for all its pizzazz about creating comics with adult themes for adult readers, was not quite confident enough to boldly go into this new territory wholesale. There was still a need, either felt by Tom (who was still a bit of a super hero buff himself) or by those above him, for some sort of super-heroic element - and that had to be manifest in Black Orchid. You could make it mad, post-modernist and surrealistic, as Grant Morrison and Peter Milligan had already done by then, but you still had to have people in costumes visible on the pages. 12 issues of a comic in which the title character appeared only fleetingly as a character or purely as a force of nature in other people’s stories was a no-no. Could I not condense that idea I’d had into a single first issue, and then develop a story arc in which the Orchid figured as a character that readers saw and could relate to?
Once again, my own lack of confidence undermined me. These editorial people knew their business. Maybe they were right. Especially one of them that I liked and respected. Again, with hindsight, I feel I should have told him that if I couldn’t do what I felt was right, I’d rather walk away from the project. Vertigo itself pretty quickly realised that if it was to succeed on its own terms, it would have to sever far more of its connections with the super-hero mainstream. And it did. One quite early Vertigo title, Matt Wagner’s Sandman Mystery Theatre was not a million miles from my concept, as far as I can remember. And increasingly, as it struggled to maintain sales, the imprint experimented more and more with a variety of different story formats.
But me, I did my best to comply with the stipulations that had been laid down. Bad guys were needed and would have to be fought. Gun play would occur. Cliff-hanger endings were required. You get the picture. The comic about a human/orchid hybrid became a hybrid between two styles of comic, and as such it was not entirely successful at being either.
Next: Well, I said last time I'd get on to the Orchid's first few flights, but this chunk of the story was a bit longer than I thought and the next chunk will work better as a complete and separate entry. So next time: how she flew, how she fared, and some words about the artists with whom I was fortunate to work. Stay tuned!
June 6, 2016
Working for the DC Dollar - Part 1: How I Got There
Working for the DC DollarPart 1: How I Got There
First off, I’d like to thank any of you who are regularly reading this blog for giving attention to my words and occasional images. There have been no more than 600 ‘hits’ so far, so I’m not exactly in the major league and of course I’ve no idea how many of those are just glances and how many represent a reading of one or more entries. But it feels like a substantial number to me, and – as I say – those of you who actually do read these words are appreciated. (Even those of you who haven’t got round to buying a copy of ‘Wilful Misunderstandings’ yet. Tch tch.)
If you’ve got here via my website or through Goodreads, you may be wondering about my former incarnation as Dick Foreman, writer of ‘Black Orchid’ and a scattering of additional work for DC and other comics publishers back in the 1990s. I generally describe myself, to anyone who asks, as a small footnote in the history of comics – but even footnotes can be of interest to some. So I thought I’d share a few reminiscences from those times over the next few weeks, and wrap it up with some sort of how I got from there to here summary. Here goes…
(I’m working purely from memory. If I started going through diaries and records from that time, I’d take far too long to get this out. Maybe one day, if it seemed worth the effort…)
The Comics Boom
A little bit of scene setting to start with. The late 80s and early 90s were, I think, a rather exciting time to be reading and making comics in the UK and the US. There was a sense that the market for them could be opened as wide as that for books and films. Comic strip art wasn’t just for children and adolescents. The term ‘graphic novel’ was being bandied about for the first time, and boy did that sport a bunch more gravitas than ‘comic’. Or so it seemed.
You can find the history of all this elsewhere. Threads that led us into this situation at the time included the radical influence of ‘underground’ comics during the late 60s and 70s; the stunning savvy of the UK’s ‘2000AD’ comic; the impact of the Alan Moore’s innovative writing as it began to emerge and that of those who followed, spearheaded by Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller. New possibilities seemed to be opening on every front.
I’d been working as community artist for a good few years, and much as I enjoyed that work, felt a growing desire to concentrate on my own projects. I’d been a lover of comics since my childhood and encouraged and greatly assisted by friends already in the business decided to try my hand at scriptwriting. In due course, as is the way of these things, my work appeared in various small, independent publications. A 2000AD ‘Future Shock’ (one off short story) followed, but I made no further headway with them.
It was about this time that US publishers DC Comics were preparing to launch their Vertigo series of comics, in the hopes of cashing in on the perceived ‘adult’ comics boom. Editor at the helm was Karen Berger, who had worked with Alan Moore on his US breakthrough series ‘Swamp Thing’ and subsequently signed up a number of UK writers who appeared to be following in his footsteps, among them Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano and Peter Milligan. (For the sake of brevity, I’m leaving artists largely out of this account, essential as they were and brilliant as many turned out to be.) As regards my nascent ‘career’, Vertigo seemed a likely target at which to aim.
The route to regular work with DC was via ‘fill-in’ issues, one off stories for ongoing titles to be used when a regular writer needed a break or had fallen behind with deadlines. With a little bit of help from my friends, I managed to blag three of these, starting with a Swamp Thing story (‘The Growing Season’) of which I am still proud. Whatever the merits of this and the other two, they proved sufficient to put me in line for more work. Coming up to the same level around this time were another wave of UK writers, including Garth Ennis, Mark Millar and, possibly a little later, Warren Ellis.
Are you noticing a gender bias in all this? Some things weren’t changing so fast. But to Karen Berger’s credit, on the US writer roster for upcoming Vertigo titles were Nancy Collins, Ann Nocenti and Rachel Pollack.
Black Orchid
My opportunity came with Black Orchid. I wouldn’t have chosen it myself. I’d read Gaiman and Dave McKean’s three issue ‘deluxe miniseries’ as I think I recollect it was termed. It was a well enough done revamp of an obscure old DC character, with lush, sophisticated artwork, but it did not hold my interest or excite me in the way that the best of Gaiman’s work on his breakthrough comic series, Sandman, had. In retrospect, when I was told that an ongoing series was planned for the character and invited to submit a proposal, I should probably have let this reaction guide me and said: “No, thanks.”
But hey, whaddya gonna do? You jockey along in the hope of getting regular work. When the offer comes – you turn it down? I don’t think so.
A more confident writer than I was at that time might have. But I had the feeling I’d got where I was by the skin of my teeth. Any faith that the DC editorial team placed in me was shaky at best (and perhaps rightly so). My track record was thin, and I recall at least a single one-to-one meeting with Karen Berger, which felt awkward and difficult – I suspect for both of us. With no sense of certainty that I would be offered anything else, no ‘gift of the gab’ and no readily marketable alternatives to offer, this seemed like the one opportunity I had to prove my worth.
Next: After a difficult genesis, the new Black Orchid series takes off and, for a short while, flies.
First off, I’d like to thank any of you who are regularly reading this blog for giving attention to my words and occasional images. There have been no more than 600 ‘hits’ so far, so I’m not exactly in the major league and of course I’ve no idea how many of those are just glances and how many represent a reading of one or more entries. But it feels like a substantial number to me, and – as I say – those of you who actually do read these words are appreciated. (Even those of you who haven’t got round to buying a copy of ‘Wilful Misunderstandings’ yet. Tch tch.)
If you’ve got here via my website or through Goodreads, you may be wondering about my former incarnation as Dick Foreman, writer of ‘Black Orchid’ and a scattering of additional work for DC and other comics publishers back in the 1990s. I generally describe myself, to anyone who asks, as a small footnote in the history of comics – but even footnotes can be of interest to some. So I thought I’d share a few reminiscences from those times over the next few weeks, and wrap it up with some sort of how I got from there to here summary. Here goes…
(I’m working purely from memory. If I started going through diaries and records from that time, I’d take far too long to get this out. Maybe one day, if it seemed worth the effort…)
The Comics Boom
A little bit of scene setting to start with. The late 80s and early 90s were, I think, a rather exciting time to be reading and making comics in the UK and the US. There was a sense that the market for them could be opened as wide as that for books and films. Comic strip art wasn’t just for children and adolescents. The term ‘graphic novel’ was being bandied about for the first time, and boy did that sport a bunch more gravitas than ‘comic’. Or so it seemed.
You can find the history of all this elsewhere. Threads that led us into this situation at the time included the radical influence of ‘underground’ comics during the late 60s and 70s; the stunning savvy of the UK’s ‘2000AD’ comic; the impact of the Alan Moore’s innovative writing as it began to emerge and that of those who followed, spearheaded by Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller. New possibilities seemed to be opening on every front.
I’d been working as community artist for a good few years, and much as I enjoyed that work, felt a growing desire to concentrate on my own projects. I’d been a lover of comics since my childhood and encouraged and greatly assisted by friends already in the business decided to try my hand at scriptwriting. In due course, as is the way of these things, my work appeared in various small, independent publications. A 2000AD ‘Future Shock’ (one off short story) followed, but I made no further headway with them.
It was about this time that US publishers DC Comics were preparing to launch their Vertigo series of comics, in the hopes of cashing in on the perceived ‘adult’ comics boom. Editor at the helm was Karen Berger, who had worked with Alan Moore on his US breakthrough series ‘Swamp Thing’ and subsequently signed up a number of UK writers who appeared to be following in his footsteps, among them Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano and Peter Milligan. (For the sake of brevity, I’m leaving artists largely out of this account, essential as they were and brilliant as many turned out to be.) As regards my nascent ‘career’, Vertigo seemed a likely target at which to aim.
The route to regular work with DC was via ‘fill-in’ issues, one off stories for ongoing titles to be used when a regular writer needed a break or had fallen behind with deadlines. With a little bit of help from my friends, I managed to blag three of these, starting with a Swamp Thing story (‘The Growing Season’) of which I am still proud. Whatever the merits of this and the other two, they proved sufficient to put me in line for more work. Coming up to the same level around this time were another wave of UK writers, including Garth Ennis, Mark Millar and, possibly a little later, Warren Ellis.
Are you noticing a gender bias in all this? Some things weren’t changing so fast. But to Karen Berger’s credit, on the US writer roster for upcoming Vertigo titles were Nancy Collins, Ann Nocenti and Rachel Pollack.
Black Orchid
My opportunity came with Black Orchid. I wouldn’t have chosen it myself. I’d read Gaiman and Dave McKean’s three issue ‘deluxe miniseries’ as I think I recollect it was termed. It was a well enough done revamp of an obscure old DC character, with lush, sophisticated artwork, but it did not hold my interest or excite me in the way that the best of Gaiman’s work on his breakthrough comic series, Sandman, had. In retrospect, when I was told that an ongoing series was planned for the character and invited to submit a proposal, I should probably have let this reaction guide me and said: “No, thanks.”
But hey, whaddya gonna do? You jockey along in the hope of getting regular work. When the offer comes – you turn it down? I don’t think so.
A more confident writer than I was at that time might have. But I had the feeling I’d got where I was by the skin of my teeth. Any faith that the DC editorial team placed in me was shaky at best (and perhaps rightly so). My track record was thin, and I recall at least a single one-to-one meeting with Karen Berger, which felt awkward and difficult – I suspect for both of us. With no sense of certainty that I would be offered anything else, no ‘gift of the gab’ and no readily marketable alternatives to offer, this seemed like the one opportunity I had to prove my worth.
Next: After a difficult genesis, the new Black Orchid series takes off and, for a short while, flies.
May 30, 2016
Those mean ol' Brexit Blues
23rd of June Blues
I’ve got the Brexit Blues,I’m sick of all the fuss –All they ever say is:Hey, what’s in it for us?
Are we safe in our homes?Will we be more secure?They dangle statisticsLike fish bait to allure.
Are we being ripped offBy the fat beaurocrats?But on each side they wearThe same grey suits and hats.
Can we make more moneyAnd keep the migrants out?It’s marketing bullshitIs what they’re all about.
And the EconomyThey all say it will thriveBut they’ll need our vote orIt’ll take a nosedive
Out come the insults:Election time again!All got vested interests -Those women and those men.
I’ve got the Brexit Blues.My question’s simply hurled:You live in one nation?Or live in one sweet world?
That’s all there is to it.Those self interested crews –Those jerks they just give meThe mean ol’ Brexit Blues.
Yeah, those jerks just give meThe mean ol' Brexit Blues.
It was my plan to just run this, this week. However, a few thoughts need to be added.
First is, if you’re reading this from outside the UK it is conceivable that you might not have a clue what I’m talking about. So some explanation is required. UK media are currently swamped with debate, propaganda and arguments about the election on 23rd June as to whether or not Britain should remain in the European Economic Union (hopefully I don’t have to explain what that is – life’s too short – Google it!). The inelegant term ‘Brexit’ has been coined by our media as a shorthand for this.
My contention, as outlined in the poem, is that nationalistic self-interest vastly outweighs principle on both sides of the argument. As far as I’m concerned the principle is simple. Do you believe we should still have nations and that they should be separate (then vote go)? Are you an internationalist and of the opinion that we live in one world and the sooner we stop having nations at all the sooner we might become capable of finding world peace, tackling global warming etc. (then vote stay)? Whatever the disadvantages really are, vote according to the principle – not ‘what’s best for us’ – and then WORK towards changing things for the better.
You can probably guess from stanza 7 of the poem or from the paragraph above which way I'm intending to vote. However for me there is a complicating factor. TTIP. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement.
If you don’t know about TTIP, PLEASE Google it! It is as far as I can see, a totally pernicious development. Amongst its many, sleazy, utterly anti-democratic measures, it will enable big corporations to sue national governments if they make any legislation that limits so-called free trade – no matter how environmentally sound, ethical and in accordance with the will of the electorate that legislation may be.
Bad news. And last night, in a conversation with a friend whose views and political awareness I respect, it was put to me that its imposition upon us will be inevitable if we remain in the EU. I questioned this, was it not possible – particularly if we remain under Conservative rule – that they would be eager to sign up to it whichever way the vote goes? Her opinion was that we would be in a better position to resist it within a single nation, than to try to tackle the ‘European Superstate’. She might have a point there.
I will stick to my principle, but it will be galling to think that a vote to remain could equate with a result favouring TTIP. I just hope that, in or out, a way can be found to stop it. Check it out and if you agree, sign a petition, donate to a campaign, join a march, tell your friends etc. etc.
Damnit! None of this is going to help me sell my bloody book. Here’s an advert to make up for it…
_________________________________________________________________________________
The Cult Book of 2016 is picking up steam!Don’t be the last one to know – get it now!
Comments are coming in from readers of Wilful Misunderstandings, and so far they've been well positive. Here's a sample:
Just to say I'm so enjoying your book. I've just finished 'Moon Bar Night'. It's mind expanding. How did you come up with that? Amazing. Loved the language, characters, everything about it. Your stories are like dreams half remembered, tapping into a seam (or seeming) of the unconscious mind. (TJ Alderson - novelist)
I'm really enjoying reading Wilful Misunderstandings! I love the feeling throughout the stories of shifting, malleable realities, it is so much fun and encourages thinking in new ways about the world. Love it! (Emily Hinshelwood - poet, climate change activist)
Quite fascinating reading. I'm sure Alan Moore fans will enjoy his stories. (Flavio Pessanha - Alan Moore scholar)
And speaking of Alan Moore, if you've missed it so far, here's what he had to say about Wilful Misunderstandings:
With an unusual oulipo toolkit and a feigned bewilderment at the English language, Richard Foreman strikes a previously undiscovered seam of literary inspiration in this oddly charming compilation of deliberately misconstrued everyday phraseology. Words are the essential wallpaper of our lives and our reality, and when even the word ‘wallpaper’ can suddenly become a thing of eerie, alien beauty we are made uncomfortably aware of the peculiar worlds of possibility that lurk beneath the skin of our vocabulary. A passport to a parallel planet where nothing means quite what you thought it did, this book offers an excursion to a strangely familiar place that you have never previously dreamed of. Get your shots and book your ticket today.
So there we are. Click on this link to Lepus Books (or go to Amazon etc. if you need to economise) and buy it. You won't have any regrets.
http://lepusbooks.co.uk/wilful-misunderstandings/
I’ve got the Brexit Blues,I’m sick of all the fuss –All they ever say is:Hey, what’s in it for us?
Are we safe in our homes?Will we be more secure?They dangle statisticsLike fish bait to allure.
Are we being ripped offBy the fat beaurocrats?But on each side they wearThe same grey suits and hats.
Can we make more moneyAnd keep the migrants out?It’s marketing bullshitIs what they’re all about.
And the EconomyThey all say it will thriveBut they’ll need our vote orIt’ll take a nosedive
Out come the insults:Election time again!All got vested interests -Those women and those men.
I’ve got the Brexit Blues.My question’s simply hurled:You live in one nation?Or live in one sweet world?
That’s all there is to it.Those self interested crews –Those jerks they just give meThe mean ol’ Brexit Blues.
Yeah, those jerks just give meThe mean ol' Brexit Blues.
It was my plan to just run this, this week. However, a few thoughts need to be added.
First is, if you’re reading this from outside the UK it is conceivable that you might not have a clue what I’m talking about. So some explanation is required. UK media are currently swamped with debate, propaganda and arguments about the election on 23rd June as to whether or not Britain should remain in the European Economic Union (hopefully I don’t have to explain what that is – life’s too short – Google it!). The inelegant term ‘Brexit’ has been coined by our media as a shorthand for this.
My contention, as outlined in the poem, is that nationalistic self-interest vastly outweighs principle on both sides of the argument. As far as I’m concerned the principle is simple. Do you believe we should still have nations and that they should be separate (then vote go)? Are you an internationalist and of the opinion that we live in one world and the sooner we stop having nations at all the sooner we might become capable of finding world peace, tackling global warming etc. (then vote stay)? Whatever the disadvantages really are, vote according to the principle – not ‘what’s best for us’ – and then WORK towards changing things for the better.
You can probably guess from stanza 7 of the poem or from the paragraph above which way I'm intending to vote. However for me there is a complicating factor. TTIP. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement.
If you don’t know about TTIP, PLEASE Google it! It is as far as I can see, a totally pernicious development. Amongst its many, sleazy, utterly anti-democratic measures, it will enable big corporations to sue national governments if they make any legislation that limits so-called free trade – no matter how environmentally sound, ethical and in accordance with the will of the electorate that legislation may be.
Bad news. And last night, in a conversation with a friend whose views and political awareness I respect, it was put to me that its imposition upon us will be inevitable if we remain in the EU. I questioned this, was it not possible – particularly if we remain under Conservative rule – that they would be eager to sign up to it whichever way the vote goes? Her opinion was that we would be in a better position to resist it within a single nation, than to try to tackle the ‘European Superstate’. She might have a point there.
I will stick to my principle, but it will be galling to think that a vote to remain could equate with a result favouring TTIP. I just hope that, in or out, a way can be found to stop it. Check it out and if you agree, sign a petition, donate to a campaign, join a march, tell your friends etc. etc.
Damnit! None of this is going to help me sell my bloody book. Here’s an advert to make up for it…
_________________________________________________________________________________
The Cult Book of 2016 is picking up steam!Don’t be the last one to know – get it now!
Comments are coming in from readers of Wilful Misunderstandings, and so far they've been well positive. Here's a sample:
Just to say I'm so enjoying your book. I've just finished 'Moon Bar Night'. It's mind expanding. How did you come up with that? Amazing. Loved the language, characters, everything about it. Your stories are like dreams half remembered, tapping into a seam (or seeming) of the unconscious mind. (TJ Alderson - novelist)
I'm really enjoying reading Wilful Misunderstandings! I love the feeling throughout the stories of shifting, malleable realities, it is so much fun and encourages thinking in new ways about the world. Love it! (Emily Hinshelwood - poet, climate change activist)
Quite fascinating reading. I'm sure Alan Moore fans will enjoy his stories. (Flavio Pessanha - Alan Moore scholar)
And speaking of Alan Moore, if you've missed it so far, here's what he had to say about Wilful Misunderstandings:
With an unusual oulipo toolkit and a feigned bewilderment at the English language, Richard Foreman strikes a previously undiscovered seam of literary inspiration in this oddly charming compilation of deliberately misconstrued everyday phraseology. Words are the essential wallpaper of our lives and our reality, and when even the word ‘wallpaper’ can suddenly become a thing of eerie, alien beauty we are made uncomfortably aware of the peculiar worlds of possibility that lurk beneath the skin of our vocabulary. A passport to a parallel planet where nothing means quite what you thought it did, this book offers an excursion to a strangely familiar place that you have never previously dreamed of. Get your shots and book your ticket today.
So there we are. Click on this link to Lepus Books (or go to Amazon etc. if you need to economise) and buy it. You won't have any regrets.
http://lepusbooks.co.uk/wilful-misunderstandings/
May 23, 2016
He Bought Nothing
He Bought Nothing
If it hadn’t been for her appointment at the surgery that morning, she’d have gone to the market herself. Of course he’d reassured her that finding bargains was not beyond him, after all it wasn’t exactly rocket science, was it? She’d swallowed several curt retorts, even as they’d occurred to her in rapid succession.
Now he was back, and she had to admit he hadn’t done too badly with the veg, apart from three already browning caulis which he’d bought for pennies but which would have to be used pronto or composted. It was when she asked him what was left of the cash he’d taken and he looked rather uncomfortable that red lights began flashing somewhere in her brain.
“Oh, well, I… Um, I spent the rest.”
“What on?”
He flushed. “Nothing.”
She lowered her eyebrows and looked at him levelly. “You didn’t spend it on anything, but you managed to spend it?”
“That’s right,” he said, “I bought nothing. There was this bloke, down on the edge of the car park, and there were loads of people there, and that’s what he was selling.”
Her frown deepened. “What? What was he actually selling?”
“Nothing.”
“You mean, he wasn’t selling anything?”
“That’s right.” His eyes were now beginning to shine with enthusiasm. “He wasn’t selling anything. He was selling nothing. And do you know, he made it sound absolutely amazing! I mean, you don’t normally spend money on nothing, do you? But once I’d heard what he had to say, I was thinking: ‘We could use some of that, we really could.’”
She folded her arms. “I’m not really following you. Was this some sort of gambling thing? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
He shook his head vigorously. “No! Certainly not. I’m trying to explain to you. He demonstrated it, you see. What nothing can do – right there, before our very eyes. It was incredible. I just had no idea what nothing could do. It’s endless. I mean, there is literally an infinite range of things that nothing can do.”
She could feel a headache coming on. “Okay, okay… Let’s look at this another way. How much of… it did you buy and where is it?”
He returned her gaze with a look of pity. “Don’t be silly. I mean, you can’t keep nothing in a shopping bag. It would just be an empty bag. No. Look, let me show you…” He placed his hands, palms together, then moved them apart by about six inches. “What’s between my hands?”
She realised what he was expecting her to say and stopped herself. “There isn’t anything between your hands except air.”
He would not be thrown. “Air, I grant you. But if there isn’t anything else, there’s nothing. Okay, now watch.” He moved his hands until there was about a foot between them. “See? Twice as much.” Enthused, he continued to move them apart. “Three times as much… Four times… You see? Now I’ve bought it, I can have as much of it as I want. There’s no end to it.”
A possible fallacy occurred to her. “Hang on, though. If you’d done that yesterday, before you spent our money, the same thing would have been true.”
He was unperturbed. “Would it? Would you say that anything was missing yesterday?”
“N-no.”
“Well, there you are. Nothing was missing. But today… Today we have as much as we need.”
She felt a growing urge to scream at him, but resisted it. "Look, I fail to see its value. I mean, if it benefits us to have this, what does it actually do?”
“Well, if it’s endurance you want, nothing lasts forever. If it’s help with something you’re doing, well then nothing works properly all the time. Whatever it is, nothing does the job better than anything else can! You just can’t go wrong with it really.”
She leaned towards him and sniffed. “How come I can’t smell it?”
“What? Nothing? You wouldn’t be able to, would you?”
“No. The alcohol on your breath. You sound like you’ve been drinking, but I can’t smell it.”
He sighed. “He did say it would be difficult. Explaining, I mean.”
Hands on hips, scowling, she said: “Oh he did, did he? Well I hope he also told you how you could take this ‘nothing’ back and get our money refunded.”
“Easily. ‘There’s nothing to it,’ he said. Except he won’t be there, of course. He only comes the once and when he’s gone he’s gone for good.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Well, there we are. Anyway, now I’m back, what’s for lunch?”
She took a deep breath. The answer, when it came, was inevitable.
If it hadn’t been for her appointment at the surgery that morning, she’d have gone to the market herself. Of course he’d reassured her that finding bargains was not beyond him, after all it wasn’t exactly rocket science, was it? She’d swallowed several curt retorts, even as they’d occurred to her in rapid succession.
Now he was back, and she had to admit he hadn’t done too badly with the veg, apart from three already browning caulis which he’d bought for pennies but which would have to be used pronto or composted. It was when she asked him what was left of the cash he’d taken and he looked rather uncomfortable that red lights began flashing somewhere in her brain.
“Oh, well, I… Um, I spent the rest.”
“What on?”
He flushed. “Nothing.”
She lowered her eyebrows and looked at him levelly. “You didn’t spend it on anything, but you managed to spend it?”
“That’s right,” he said, “I bought nothing. There was this bloke, down on the edge of the car park, and there were loads of people there, and that’s what he was selling.”
Her frown deepened. “What? What was he actually selling?”
“Nothing.”
“You mean, he wasn’t selling anything?”
“That’s right.” His eyes were now beginning to shine with enthusiasm. “He wasn’t selling anything. He was selling nothing. And do you know, he made it sound absolutely amazing! I mean, you don’t normally spend money on nothing, do you? But once I’d heard what he had to say, I was thinking: ‘We could use some of that, we really could.’”
She folded her arms. “I’m not really following you. Was this some sort of gambling thing? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
He shook his head vigorously. “No! Certainly not. I’m trying to explain to you. He demonstrated it, you see. What nothing can do – right there, before our very eyes. It was incredible. I just had no idea what nothing could do. It’s endless. I mean, there is literally an infinite range of things that nothing can do.”
She could feel a headache coming on. “Okay, okay… Let’s look at this another way. How much of… it did you buy and where is it?”
He returned her gaze with a look of pity. “Don’t be silly. I mean, you can’t keep nothing in a shopping bag. It would just be an empty bag. No. Look, let me show you…” He placed his hands, palms together, then moved them apart by about six inches. “What’s between my hands?”
She realised what he was expecting her to say and stopped herself. “There isn’t anything between your hands except air.”
He would not be thrown. “Air, I grant you. But if there isn’t anything else, there’s nothing. Okay, now watch.” He moved his hands until there was about a foot between them. “See? Twice as much.” Enthused, he continued to move them apart. “Three times as much… Four times… You see? Now I’ve bought it, I can have as much of it as I want. There’s no end to it.”
A possible fallacy occurred to her. “Hang on, though. If you’d done that yesterday, before you spent our money, the same thing would have been true.”
He was unperturbed. “Would it? Would you say that anything was missing yesterday?”
“N-no.”
“Well, there you are. Nothing was missing. But today… Today we have as much as we need.”
She felt a growing urge to scream at him, but resisted it. "Look, I fail to see its value. I mean, if it benefits us to have this, what does it actually do?”
“Well, if it’s endurance you want, nothing lasts forever. If it’s help with something you’re doing, well then nothing works properly all the time. Whatever it is, nothing does the job better than anything else can! You just can’t go wrong with it really.”
She leaned towards him and sniffed. “How come I can’t smell it?”
“What? Nothing? You wouldn’t be able to, would you?”
“No. The alcohol on your breath. You sound like you’ve been drinking, but I can’t smell it.”
He sighed. “He did say it would be difficult. Explaining, I mean.”
Hands on hips, scowling, she said: “Oh he did, did he? Well I hope he also told you how you could take this ‘nothing’ back and get our money refunded.”
“Easily. ‘There’s nothing to it,’ he said. Except he won’t be there, of course. He only comes the once and when he’s gone he’s gone for good.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Well, there we are. Anyway, now I’m back, what’s for lunch?”
She took a deep breath. The answer, when it came, was inevitable.
May 16, 2016
Nothing
“Ladies and gentlemen, when you hear the words: ‘chance of a lifetime’, what do you do? Shrug your shoulders and say to yourself: “Here we go again.” Because, ladies and gentlemen, I know full well that you have heard it all before, and hear it all again you probably will. But listen. Listen carefully, because I guarantee you that what you are about to hear from me, you will never hear again. Do I have your interest? I do hope so. Because, ladies and gentlemen, you will never see me again. I come just the once. And when I’m gone, I’m gone for good.
“Ooh. Do I detect a little bit of interest? One or two of you thinking: “Well, I haven’t heard that part before.” One or two of you there at the back of the crowd, thought you might quietly slip away and see what anyone else has to offer. But now you’re wondering. And so you should be. The chance of a lifetime doesn’t come your way that often. You don’t want to turn your back on it, do you?
“’Snake oil’? Is that what you’re expecting? Waiting to find out what the ‘catch’ is… But even there the story’s not so simple. Recent scientific studies have revealed that the original snake oil, which was used by Chinese labourers on American railroads in the 1800s for the relief of joint pains, was in fact rich in Omega 3 – known for its anti-inflammatory properties. So, ladies and gentlemen, deride with care. All is not always as it seems.
“So what am I offering? Well you may ask. Eternal life, perhaps? The secret means of locating your perfect partner? Or perfection for yourself – a body that is the envy of all who see it? Or maybe you have illness or some other travail in your family, your circle of friends, for which you seek a cure? These, ladies and gentlemen, are the kinds of things you might expect from me. But I have come here, once and for once only, to offer you something more valuable than any mere remedy, pick-me-up, charm or tincture. I have come to offer you something infinitely more valuable and, moreover, something that requires your innate intelligence to appreciate…
“Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you… nothing!
“Yes. Nothing! Nothing at all. But before you turn away, give it a little thought. For nothing can provide you with eternal life! Nothing can really give you that perfect partner you seek! Nothing can shape you into that impossibly perfect form! Nothing can cure all illnesses, solve all problems! Nothing, ladies and gentlemen, can do anything! Just how wonderful is that? Just how much would you be prepared to pay for such a substance? Something. Of that, I am sure.
“Ah, now some of you are turning away. I hear a few hoots of derision, a few jeers. This is all to be expected, friends, for some will never have the capacity to perceive the true and eternal value of what I have to offer. The rest of you, those who remain – you are the elite, you are the discerning, you are the ones who are reaching out for that chance of a lifetime. Step closer. Closer. Closer still…
“Allow me to demonstrate its properties…”
“Ooh. Do I detect a little bit of interest? One or two of you thinking: “Well, I haven’t heard that part before.” One or two of you there at the back of the crowd, thought you might quietly slip away and see what anyone else has to offer. But now you’re wondering. And so you should be. The chance of a lifetime doesn’t come your way that often. You don’t want to turn your back on it, do you?
“’Snake oil’? Is that what you’re expecting? Waiting to find out what the ‘catch’ is… But even there the story’s not so simple. Recent scientific studies have revealed that the original snake oil, which was used by Chinese labourers on American railroads in the 1800s for the relief of joint pains, was in fact rich in Omega 3 – known for its anti-inflammatory properties. So, ladies and gentlemen, deride with care. All is not always as it seems.
“So what am I offering? Well you may ask. Eternal life, perhaps? The secret means of locating your perfect partner? Or perfection for yourself – a body that is the envy of all who see it? Or maybe you have illness or some other travail in your family, your circle of friends, for which you seek a cure? These, ladies and gentlemen, are the kinds of things you might expect from me. But I have come here, once and for once only, to offer you something more valuable than any mere remedy, pick-me-up, charm or tincture. I have come to offer you something infinitely more valuable and, moreover, something that requires your innate intelligence to appreciate…
“Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you… nothing!
“Yes. Nothing! Nothing at all. But before you turn away, give it a little thought. For nothing can provide you with eternal life! Nothing can really give you that perfect partner you seek! Nothing can shape you into that impossibly perfect form! Nothing can cure all illnesses, solve all problems! Nothing, ladies and gentlemen, can do anything! Just how wonderful is that? Just how much would you be prepared to pay for such a substance? Something. Of that, I am sure.
“Ah, now some of you are turning away. I hear a few hoots of derision, a few jeers. This is all to be expected, friends, for some will never have the capacity to perceive the true and eternal value of what I have to offer. The rest of you, those who remain – you are the elite, you are the discerning, you are the ones who are reaching out for that chance of a lifetime. Step closer. Closer. Closer still…
“Allow me to demonstrate its properties…”
May 9, 2016
The Creditors of Crinkle and Myxoma - Oulipo Enlarged, part 4
A last dip into N+7 (for now) as we wrap up this brief survey of Oulipo thought and activity, with a look at some offshoots and a tentative evaluation.
The Creditors of Crinkle and Myxoma - the Oulipo Enlarged, part 4
Ou-X-Po
By now, it should be clear that the application of constraints/restrictions to stimulate creativity need not be confined to literature. Hence ‘Ou-X-Po’, where X = an abbreviation standing for a form of media, as a blanket title for a slew of groups, each dedicated to developing methods of creativity within its field.
One major group is the Oulipopo (Ouvroir de Littērature Policiēre Potentielle), consisting of the creators of crime and mystery stories. It is their pleasure to convert the plots of Agatha Christie stories into complex mathematical formulae and they are devisors of the ‘Cartes Noir’, a series of 36 playing cards ‘which allow the player to construct complex plots for detective fiction in only a few hours’.
Another is the Oupeinpo (derived from peinture/painting) which covers visual, graphic and plastic arts. Codes, matrices, isomorphisms, rotations, superimpositions -–these and many more are amongst the constraints they have explored & developed since their foundation in 1980.
Then we have the Ouarchipo (architecture), the Oubapo (band dessinēe/comic strips), the Oucuipo (cuisine), and the self-explanatory Ouhistpo, Oumathpo and Oumupo…
You probably get the idea by now.
But What Does It All Mean?
So? A bunch of intellectual types and a bunch of curious word games. Aren’t there a few steps between the potential and the literature? Have any of these guys written best sellers? Queneau’s sonnets are pretty darn clever, but do any of them – permutated or otherwise – have the depth and resonance of a sonnet by Shakespeare or Shelley? Can any kind of ‘workshop’ spawn profound and emotionally powerful pieces of art?
Critics of the Oulipo will tend to fire questions of this nature their way and doubtless Oulipians have answers ready to fire back. Myself, I wouldn’t have written this piece if I didn’t think they were on to something worthwhile. For a start, they don’t take themselves too seriously and their stated interest is in technique – so what they do is pretty much free of pretension and psychobabble.
The value in Oulipian techniques, I think, is that they open up possibilities. As we’ve seen, they enable discoveries to be made. When you write with a constraint, it can take you in new directions, free you from habitual patterns. (This would also be the case in any other art form – hence the diversification of Ou-x-Po.) As for what’s done with those discoveries, that’s up to the writer. The writer needs both a burning urge to say something worth saying and the patience to craft a piece of work from tentative beginnings to polished product. There might just be a bit of Oulipo in anything you read, literature or otherwise.
So making value judgements on their creations is beside the point. As ‘the Oulipo’, they provide a service (developing techniques) and they produce writing to explore and illustrate those techniques. As writers, assess them on the entire body of their work, not on their Oulipian membership. There will be more to them than that.
Oulipians appear to eat and drink very well at those monthly meetings, and they appear to have a lot of fun. You may or may not be a writer, but I hope that what I’ve got across here is some of the fun.
So now you know. Google Oulipo for plenty more where all this came from. I'd like to thank the writer Joe ('Submarine') Dunthorne for bringing the Oulipo to my attention at a reading he did in Swansea a few years back. A recent user of the 'univocalism' constraint who I thought tackled the task with flair, venom and passion, is Essex poet Luke Wright. Check out his piece on Iain Duncan Smith on https://soundcloud.com/lukewrightpoet... - a little outdated since IDS' opportunistic resignation recently, but still a fine piece of work.
What next? Have I mentioned that I've been trying to sell you a book? I may possibly mention it next time. Then again, I may not. And on that nail-biting cliffhanger, I leave you for now.
May you make it somehow on the dreams you still believe in.
The Creditors of Crinkle and Myxoma - the Oulipo Enlarged, part 4
Ou-X-Po
By now, it should be clear that the application of constraints/restrictions to stimulate creativity need not be confined to literature. Hence ‘Ou-X-Po’, where X = an abbreviation standing for a form of media, as a blanket title for a slew of groups, each dedicated to developing methods of creativity within its field.
One major group is the Oulipopo (Ouvroir de Littērature Policiēre Potentielle), consisting of the creators of crime and mystery stories. It is their pleasure to convert the plots of Agatha Christie stories into complex mathematical formulae and they are devisors of the ‘Cartes Noir’, a series of 36 playing cards ‘which allow the player to construct complex plots for detective fiction in only a few hours’.
Another is the Oupeinpo (derived from peinture/painting) which covers visual, graphic and plastic arts. Codes, matrices, isomorphisms, rotations, superimpositions -–these and many more are amongst the constraints they have explored & developed since their foundation in 1980.
Then we have the Ouarchipo (architecture), the Oubapo (band dessinēe/comic strips), the Oucuipo (cuisine), and the self-explanatory Ouhistpo, Oumathpo and Oumupo…
You probably get the idea by now.
But What Does It All Mean?
So? A bunch of intellectual types and a bunch of curious word games. Aren’t there a few steps between the potential and the literature? Have any of these guys written best sellers? Queneau’s sonnets are pretty darn clever, but do any of them – permutated or otherwise – have the depth and resonance of a sonnet by Shakespeare or Shelley? Can any kind of ‘workshop’ spawn profound and emotionally powerful pieces of art?
Critics of the Oulipo will tend to fire questions of this nature their way and doubtless Oulipians have answers ready to fire back. Myself, I wouldn’t have written this piece if I didn’t think they were on to something worthwhile. For a start, they don’t take themselves too seriously and their stated interest is in technique – so what they do is pretty much free of pretension and psychobabble.
The value in Oulipian techniques, I think, is that they open up possibilities. As we’ve seen, they enable discoveries to be made. When you write with a constraint, it can take you in new directions, free you from habitual patterns. (This would also be the case in any other art form – hence the diversification of Ou-x-Po.) As for what’s done with those discoveries, that’s up to the writer. The writer needs both a burning urge to say something worth saying and the patience to craft a piece of work from tentative beginnings to polished product. There might just be a bit of Oulipo in anything you read, literature or otherwise.
So making value judgements on their creations is beside the point. As ‘the Oulipo’, they provide a service (developing techniques) and they produce writing to explore and illustrate those techniques. As writers, assess them on the entire body of their work, not on their Oulipian membership. There will be more to them than that.
Oulipians appear to eat and drink very well at those monthly meetings, and they appear to have a lot of fun. You may or may not be a writer, but I hope that what I’ve got across here is some of the fun.
So now you know. Google Oulipo for plenty more where all this came from. I'd like to thank the writer Joe ('Submarine') Dunthorne for bringing the Oulipo to my attention at a reading he did in Swansea a few years back. A recent user of the 'univocalism' constraint who I thought tackled the task with flair, venom and passion, is Essex poet Luke Wright. Check out his piece on Iain Duncan Smith on https://soundcloud.com/lukewrightpoet... - a little outdated since IDS' opportunistic resignation recently, but still a fine piece of work.
What next? Have I mentioned that I've been trying to sell you a book? I may possibly mention it next time. Then again, I may not. And on that nail-biting cliffhanger, I leave you for now.
May you make it somehow on the dreams you still believe in.
May 2, 2016
One Izzard Always Appears on the Agiotage - Oulipo Enlarged, part 3
N+7 time again as I sub-head a further exploration of the Oulipian concept of the 'constraint'.
One Izzard Always Appears on the Agiotage - the Oulipo Enlarged, part 3
One item always appears on the agenda for the Oulipo’s monthly meetings. It is ‘Creation’, and at this point participants are invited to present and discuss new constraints. Remember they’ve been doing this for 56 years. There are a lot of constraints, some of near-perverse complexity, others of elegant simplicity. Some existed long before the Oulipians – rhymes and verse forms, such as sonnets or sestinas are, of course, constraints. The Oulipians have a profound respect for these, and a corresponding disdain for free verse. More playful forms have also been devised over the centuries, & where they are attributable to known writers, they are charmingly referred to by the Oulipo as ‘anticipatory plagiarists’. They include Lewis Carroll and, inevitably, Alfred Jarry.
We’ve already encountered some constraints. Here are a few more. If you find them interesting and appealing, I urge you to check out the ‘Compendium’ or the Oulipo website where you will find as many as you can handle. My selections tend to be amongst the easier to grasp constraints. Many, particularly those that involve manipulations of existing texts and or mathematical/geometric procedures, require careful study. Others are even more challenging variants on constraints we’ve already seen, such as ‘univocalism’, an adaptation of the lipogram in which a text is constructed using words containing only one vowel.
Ten, else even eleven, men met, entered tents, then merely regressed. The event engendered excess, yet even here elements erred. They detected the elect, then recessed. The end.
Well, it nearly makes sense. Perec’s follow-up to ‘A Void’, by the way, was an entire novel constructed of words in which e was the only vowel. Strict Oulipians claim he cheated here and there, but whatever… these guys are in it for the long haul.
Another constraint that tempted me to try my hand was the ‘snowball’. This is a poem, one word to a line, which begins with a single letter word (generally a vowel). The second line is a two-letter word, the third three, and so on.
Iamnothereuntillightsglistenbrightly,brilliantexplosions,divertinglymultipliableilluminations…
Variants on this procedure include the ‘melting snowball’ in which the procedure is reversed – it starts with the longest word and dwindles down to a single letter word at the end. Combine the two and you have a ‘diamond snowball’, beginning and ending with a single letter word.
Constraints that involve manipulation of text can be complex, but there are also simpler ones such as ‘perverbs’ – which involve taking pairs of existing proverbs and switching phrases from one to the other, thus:
A chain is only as strong as its best friend.A dog is a man’s weakest link.
Accidents must pass.All things will happen.
And the somewhat scary:
Absolute power is a joy forever.A thing of beauty corrupts absolutely.
There’s a parlour game element to this kind of wordplay and that’s not a bad thing, but – you might be wondering – ‘potential literature’? Oulipian writer Harry Mathews has developed the idea, incorporating first or second segments of perverbs repeatedly and rhythmically in stanzas of poems. There are also narrative possibilities in exploring the new meanings created by these juxtapositions.
The ‘beautiful in-law’ is another way of restricting the letters of the alphabet that are available for use – this time to those that appear in a person’s name. Obviously, you’re going to struggle a bit if you go for ‘Joe’ or ‘Eva’, but taking a forename/surname combo of reasonable length can provide interesting results. Here, I’ve used my own full name:
I am no rich man,No finder of fame,No form of a fan,No more of a name.
For I am more rare,I reach for a charm –I’m fine, dear, and fair;A force for no harm.
Whilst I make no claim to depth or richness of meaning (it’s a work-in-progress, dammit!), what struck me was the way it led me into rhythm, rhyme and alliteration that I might not otherwise have found – constraint as a path to discovery.
I’ll wind up this section with a briefer trawl through one or two more. The ‘cento’ (also known as ‘patchwork verse’ or ‘mosaic’) is a way of making a piece of writing by combining lines of poetry, or sentences of prose, from other writers to make a new poem or narrative. The process known as ‘larding’ also works by using sentences from an existing piece as a starting point. Here, the aim is to insert sentences of one’s own devising in the intervals between the existing ones. These ‘must either enrich the existing narrative or create a new narrative continuity’. The writer then proceeds to insert further sentences at the intervals created in the new piece. It is necessary only to start with two or three existing sentences. Gradually, an original piece of writing evolves, extending or digressing from the opening fragment.
The Oulipians were pioneers of the concept of the ‘multiple choice narrative’, in which alternatives are created by the writer, from which the reader is free to choose, thus charting his or her own path through the narrative. They looked at the possibility of how this could be done as theatre. Even with just a two-fold branching system, they calculated that by the 5th scene, 32 alternative and playable scenes would be required in addition to the 31 preceding ones. Not a practical proposition, thus they devised a system which provided an illusion of repeated choice, whilst restricting the scenes to a manageable number.
Oulipian explorations foreshadowed possibilities thrown up by computers and the internet, where many forms of multiple choice narrative are now currently available. With the mathematical element in their approach, their own works are well suited to onscreen presentation. A programme has been devised for
Queneau’s ‘100,000,000,000,000 Poems’, for example, which presumably makes for easier manipulation than 10 pages cut into 14 strips.
Finally, a couple of additional concepts which can be applied to the constraints… The first is that of the ‘clinamen’ – where the writer may deviate from the strict consequences of a constraint on aesthetic grounds. However, the writer must be able to demonstrate that following the initial rule is still possible. So the clinamen can only be used if it isn’t needed. (The concept goes right back to Alfred Jarry and his ‘science of exceptions’.) Secondly, we have the concept of ‘combining restrictions’, where the writer may chose to operate two or more constraints simultaneously.
Clearly an entertaining method by which to drive oneself to the brink of insanity.
And should you not have descended into the depths of madness (or climbed onto the mountains thereof), join me again next blog, when we look at some Oulipian offshoots and conclude with a query or two as what the hell it all means. How can you miss it? Until then, may you find youself dancing to the finest of tunes...
One Izzard Always Appears on the Agiotage - the Oulipo Enlarged, part 3
One item always appears on the agenda for the Oulipo’s monthly meetings. It is ‘Creation’, and at this point participants are invited to present and discuss new constraints. Remember they’ve been doing this for 56 years. There are a lot of constraints, some of near-perverse complexity, others of elegant simplicity. Some existed long before the Oulipians – rhymes and verse forms, such as sonnets or sestinas are, of course, constraints. The Oulipians have a profound respect for these, and a corresponding disdain for free verse. More playful forms have also been devised over the centuries, & where they are attributable to known writers, they are charmingly referred to by the Oulipo as ‘anticipatory plagiarists’. They include Lewis Carroll and, inevitably, Alfred Jarry.
We’ve already encountered some constraints. Here are a few more. If you find them interesting and appealing, I urge you to check out the ‘Compendium’ or the Oulipo website where you will find as many as you can handle. My selections tend to be amongst the easier to grasp constraints. Many, particularly those that involve manipulations of existing texts and or mathematical/geometric procedures, require careful study. Others are even more challenging variants on constraints we’ve already seen, such as ‘univocalism’, an adaptation of the lipogram in which a text is constructed using words containing only one vowel.
Ten, else even eleven, men met, entered tents, then merely regressed. The event engendered excess, yet even here elements erred. They detected the elect, then recessed. The end.
Well, it nearly makes sense. Perec’s follow-up to ‘A Void’, by the way, was an entire novel constructed of words in which e was the only vowel. Strict Oulipians claim he cheated here and there, but whatever… these guys are in it for the long haul.
Another constraint that tempted me to try my hand was the ‘snowball’. This is a poem, one word to a line, which begins with a single letter word (generally a vowel). The second line is a two-letter word, the third three, and so on.
Iamnothereuntillightsglistenbrightly,brilliantexplosions,divertinglymultipliableilluminations…
Variants on this procedure include the ‘melting snowball’ in which the procedure is reversed – it starts with the longest word and dwindles down to a single letter word at the end. Combine the two and you have a ‘diamond snowball’, beginning and ending with a single letter word.
Constraints that involve manipulation of text can be complex, but there are also simpler ones such as ‘perverbs’ – which involve taking pairs of existing proverbs and switching phrases from one to the other, thus:
A chain is only as strong as its best friend.A dog is a man’s weakest link.
Accidents must pass.All things will happen.
And the somewhat scary:
Absolute power is a joy forever.A thing of beauty corrupts absolutely.
There’s a parlour game element to this kind of wordplay and that’s not a bad thing, but – you might be wondering – ‘potential literature’? Oulipian writer Harry Mathews has developed the idea, incorporating first or second segments of perverbs repeatedly and rhythmically in stanzas of poems. There are also narrative possibilities in exploring the new meanings created by these juxtapositions.
The ‘beautiful in-law’ is another way of restricting the letters of the alphabet that are available for use – this time to those that appear in a person’s name. Obviously, you’re going to struggle a bit if you go for ‘Joe’ or ‘Eva’, but taking a forename/surname combo of reasonable length can provide interesting results. Here, I’ve used my own full name:
I am no rich man,No finder of fame,No form of a fan,No more of a name.
For I am more rare,I reach for a charm –I’m fine, dear, and fair;A force for no harm.
Whilst I make no claim to depth or richness of meaning (it’s a work-in-progress, dammit!), what struck me was the way it led me into rhythm, rhyme and alliteration that I might not otherwise have found – constraint as a path to discovery.
I’ll wind up this section with a briefer trawl through one or two more. The ‘cento’ (also known as ‘patchwork verse’ or ‘mosaic’) is a way of making a piece of writing by combining lines of poetry, or sentences of prose, from other writers to make a new poem or narrative. The process known as ‘larding’ also works by using sentences from an existing piece as a starting point. Here, the aim is to insert sentences of one’s own devising in the intervals between the existing ones. These ‘must either enrich the existing narrative or create a new narrative continuity’. The writer then proceeds to insert further sentences at the intervals created in the new piece. It is necessary only to start with two or three existing sentences. Gradually, an original piece of writing evolves, extending or digressing from the opening fragment.
The Oulipians were pioneers of the concept of the ‘multiple choice narrative’, in which alternatives are created by the writer, from which the reader is free to choose, thus charting his or her own path through the narrative. They looked at the possibility of how this could be done as theatre. Even with just a two-fold branching system, they calculated that by the 5th scene, 32 alternative and playable scenes would be required in addition to the 31 preceding ones. Not a practical proposition, thus they devised a system which provided an illusion of repeated choice, whilst restricting the scenes to a manageable number.
Oulipian explorations foreshadowed possibilities thrown up by computers and the internet, where many forms of multiple choice narrative are now currently available. With the mathematical element in their approach, their own works are well suited to onscreen presentation. A programme has been devised for
Queneau’s ‘100,000,000,000,000 Poems’, for example, which presumably makes for easier manipulation than 10 pages cut into 14 strips.
Finally, a couple of additional concepts which can be applied to the constraints… The first is that of the ‘clinamen’ – where the writer may deviate from the strict consequences of a constraint on aesthetic grounds. However, the writer must be able to demonstrate that following the initial rule is still possible. So the clinamen can only be used if it isn’t needed. (The concept goes right back to Alfred Jarry and his ‘science of exceptions’.) Secondly, we have the concept of ‘combining restrictions’, where the writer may chose to operate two or more constraints simultaneously.
Clearly an entertaining method by which to drive oneself to the brink of insanity.
And should you not have descended into the depths of madness (or climbed onto the mountains thereof), join me again next blog, when we look at some Oulipian offshoots and conclude with a query or two as what the hell it all means. How can you miss it? Until then, may you find youself dancing to the finest of tunes...
April 25, 2016
Retakes of a Formal Nautilus - Oulipo Enlarged, part 2
More on the Oulipo, as promised. A closer look at the concept of 'constraints' and their potential benefits to the writer and a look at one or two key works. As before I've used 'N+7' to derive my title from a phrase in the first paragraph that follows it.
Last time we reached the point where we discover the derivation of the term 'Oulipo' from the official title of the movement: ‘Ouvroir de Littērature Potentielle’
Retakes of a Formal Nautilus - the Oulipo Enlarged, part 2
‘Potential literature’? In essence the group is concerned “not with literary works but with the procedures and structures capable of producing them.” Oulipo’s aim is “to invent (or reinvent) restrictions of a formal nature (constraints) and propose them to enthusiasts interested in composing literature.”
“Describable, definable, available to everyone, Oulipian constraints provide the rules of a language game whose ‘innings’ (texts composed according to its rules) are virtually unlimited and represent linguistic combinations developed from a small number of necessarily interdependent elements.”
“The Oulipo’s work is collaborative, and its products – proposed constraints and their illustrations – are attributed to the group, even if certain constraints are invented by individuals.”
“Oulipian writing – that is, writing with constraints – endeavours to rediscover another way in which to practise artistic freedom, one that is at work in all (or nearly all) the literatures and poetic enterprises of the past: the freedom of difficulty mastered.”
“An Oulipian author is a rat who himself builds the maze from which he sets out to escape.” (All above quotes from Jacques Roubard: ‘The Oulipo and Combinatorial Art’ – 1991.)
Oulipo membership is international, these days, although it remains predominantly French. But in considering these individuals one should bear in mind another quote from Jacques Roubard: “the members of the Oulipo are characters in an unwritten novel by Raymond Queneau”.
In keeping with its origin as a sub-committee of the College of ‘Pataphysics, the group has an intentionally absurd beaurocratic structure. Yet it has remained sustainable. They have met on a monthly basis throughout the 56 years of the Oulipo’s existence, and have attempted meticulously to record the minutes of each meeting. There are two secretaries: the provisionally definitive secretary and the definitively provisional secretary. New members may be co-opted by the group, and no one can be expelled, or resign, or stop belonging, whether living or dead. However, according to the rules:
“One may relinquish membership of the Oulipo under the following circumstances: suicide may be committed in the presence of an officer of the court, who then ascertains that, according to the Oulipian’s explicit last wishes, his suicide was intended to release him from the Oulipo and restore his freedom of manoeuvre for the rest of eternity.”
So, fortunately, there is a way out.
Oulipian Works
Given its commitment to working collaboratively, one could be forgiven for thinking that no Oulipian work of literature should be known by the name of its author. But hey, if you don’t put your name about…
Two of the most highly regarded works by Oulipian writers illustrate different ‘constraints’.
Georges Perec’s ‘A Void’ (original French title: ‘La Disparition’) is a novel written entirely without using the vowel e. Its characters’ inability to name the missing letter leads to their deaths, thus adding the constraint as a kind of meta-fictional device in addition to its mechanical function in the text. It includes extracts from well-known poems and classic novels rewritten to exclude the letter e. It’s an example of what the Oulipians call a ‘lipogram’ – a text that excludes one or more letters of the alphabet.
Probably not sustainable for the length of a novel are some of the fiendish variants on the lipogram, such as ‘the prisoner’s restriction’ in which we are asked to imagine we are prisoners with extremely restricted supplies of paper. To maximise its use, we eschew the letters of the alphabet that go above or below the line and confine ourselves to the letters a c e I m n o r s u v w & x, as we can see now in one wee excursion…
Raymond Queneau’s ‘A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems’ was the product of an amazingly challenging constraint. Queneau set himself the task of writing 10 14-line sonnets, each with an identical rhyme scheme and grammatical construction. In the original edition of the book, each of them is printed on a page cut into 14 strips, thus making any line of any of the sonnets interchangeable with any of the 10 corresponding lines from any of the other sonnets. Whatever the resultant combination, the grammar and rhyme remain intact.
Queneau calculated that this created 1014 different possible combinations, each readable as an admittedly somewhat bizarre sonnet, the ‘100,000,000,000,000 Poems’ of the title. Its translation into English was greeted by its author with “admiring stupefaction” and is the work of one Stanley Chapman, a member of the Oulipo since 1961 and attainer of the rank: ‘Regent of Epideictic Oratories and Displays’ in the College of ‘Pataphysics. Clearly a man of considerable accomplishment.
The work of Oulipian writers has been published since 1974 in ‘La Bibliothēque Oulipienne’, a numbered series of pamphlets written by one or more Oulipians, and appearing almost invariably in limited editions of 150. Some of these have been translated into English, published by Atlas Press. An extremely useful introduction can be found in the same publishing house’s ‘Oulipo Compendium’, edited by Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie, and my main source for this piece.
Next time, I have a go at trying out a 'snowball', some 'perverbs' and a 'beautiful in-law', as we continue to explore the world of Oulipian 'constraints'. 'Til then, may the long time sun shine upon you.
Last time we reached the point where we discover the derivation of the term 'Oulipo' from the official title of the movement: ‘Ouvroir de Littērature Potentielle’
Retakes of a Formal Nautilus - the Oulipo Enlarged, part 2
‘Potential literature’? In essence the group is concerned “not with literary works but with the procedures and structures capable of producing them.” Oulipo’s aim is “to invent (or reinvent) restrictions of a formal nature (constraints) and propose them to enthusiasts interested in composing literature.”
“Describable, definable, available to everyone, Oulipian constraints provide the rules of a language game whose ‘innings’ (texts composed according to its rules) are virtually unlimited and represent linguistic combinations developed from a small number of necessarily interdependent elements.”
“The Oulipo’s work is collaborative, and its products – proposed constraints and their illustrations – are attributed to the group, even if certain constraints are invented by individuals.”
“Oulipian writing – that is, writing with constraints – endeavours to rediscover another way in which to practise artistic freedom, one that is at work in all (or nearly all) the literatures and poetic enterprises of the past: the freedom of difficulty mastered.”
“An Oulipian author is a rat who himself builds the maze from which he sets out to escape.” (All above quotes from Jacques Roubard: ‘The Oulipo and Combinatorial Art’ – 1991.)
Oulipo membership is international, these days, although it remains predominantly French. But in considering these individuals one should bear in mind another quote from Jacques Roubard: “the members of the Oulipo are characters in an unwritten novel by Raymond Queneau”.
In keeping with its origin as a sub-committee of the College of ‘Pataphysics, the group has an intentionally absurd beaurocratic structure. Yet it has remained sustainable. They have met on a monthly basis throughout the 56 years of the Oulipo’s existence, and have attempted meticulously to record the minutes of each meeting. There are two secretaries: the provisionally definitive secretary and the definitively provisional secretary. New members may be co-opted by the group, and no one can be expelled, or resign, or stop belonging, whether living or dead. However, according to the rules:
“One may relinquish membership of the Oulipo under the following circumstances: suicide may be committed in the presence of an officer of the court, who then ascertains that, according to the Oulipian’s explicit last wishes, his suicide was intended to release him from the Oulipo and restore his freedom of manoeuvre for the rest of eternity.”
So, fortunately, there is a way out.
Oulipian Works
Given its commitment to working collaboratively, one could be forgiven for thinking that no Oulipian work of literature should be known by the name of its author. But hey, if you don’t put your name about…
Two of the most highly regarded works by Oulipian writers illustrate different ‘constraints’.
Georges Perec’s ‘A Void’ (original French title: ‘La Disparition’) is a novel written entirely without using the vowel e. Its characters’ inability to name the missing letter leads to their deaths, thus adding the constraint as a kind of meta-fictional device in addition to its mechanical function in the text. It includes extracts from well-known poems and classic novels rewritten to exclude the letter e. It’s an example of what the Oulipians call a ‘lipogram’ – a text that excludes one or more letters of the alphabet.
Probably not sustainable for the length of a novel are some of the fiendish variants on the lipogram, such as ‘the prisoner’s restriction’ in which we are asked to imagine we are prisoners with extremely restricted supplies of paper. To maximise its use, we eschew the letters of the alphabet that go above or below the line and confine ourselves to the letters a c e I m n o r s u v w & x, as we can see now in one wee excursion…
Raymond Queneau’s ‘A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems’ was the product of an amazingly challenging constraint. Queneau set himself the task of writing 10 14-line sonnets, each with an identical rhyme scheme and grammatical construction. In the original edition of the book, each of them is printed on a page cut into 14 strips, thus making any line of any of the sonnets interchangeable with any of the 10 corresponding lines from any of the other sonnets. Whatever the resultant combination, the grammar and rhyme remain intact.
Queneau calculated that this created 1014 different possible combinations, each readable as an admittedly somewhat bizarre sonnet, the ‘100,000,000,000,000 Poems’ of the title. Its translation into English was greeted by its author with “admiring stupefaction” and is the work of one Stanley Chapman, a member of the Oulipo since 1961 and attainer of the rank: ‘Regent of Epideictic Oratories and Displays’ in the College of ‘Pataphysics. Clearly a man of considerable accomplishment.
The work of Oulipian writers has been published since 1974 in ‘La Bibliothēque Oulipienne’, a numbered series of pamphlets written by one or more Oulipians, and appearing almost invariably in limited editions of 150. Some of these have been translated into English, published by Atlas Press. An extremely useful introduction can be found in the same publishing house’s ‘Oulipo Compendium’, edited by Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie, and my main source for this piece.
Next time, I have a go at trying out a 'snowball', some 'perverbs' and a 'beautiful in-law', as we continue to explore the world of Oulipian 'constraints'. 'Til then, may the long time sun shine upon you.
April 14, 2016
A Moya Based in Frangipane - Oulipo Enlarged, part 1
Hi all
Alan Moore, in his generous and characteristically insightful recommendation for my book 'Wilful Misunderstandings' (the one I'm now trying to sell, remember?), spoke of the 'oulipo toolkit' which he felt I had employed. Since the book has become available, a number of people have already asked me smart and well-informed questions like: "What's this 'oulipo' then?" The short answer is that they (the 'Oulipo') are a group of writers mainly but not exclusively based in France, who hold some wonderfully challenging ideas about the art of writing. Over the next few weeks, I shall attempt to provide some idea of what the Oulipo are about.
Needless to say, there is perfectly good description of the Oulipo and their activities on Wikipedia. They have their own web pages, and there are some other fine pieces about them that turn up on a Google search. So this is just my take on them, in which I attempt to take on some of the smaller challenges they present. These take the form of 'constraints', a concept which will be explained more fully later on.
We start with some introductory comments and then go on to a brief digression regarding their antecedents, the pataphysicians...
A Moya Based in Frangipane - the Oulipo Enlarged, part 1.This is not the first, nor the most definitive piece of writing to concern itself with ‘Oulipo’, a literary movement based in France, whose foundation took place in 1960.
I will now apply one of the Oulipo’s ‘constraints’, known as ‘N + 7’ amongst other names, to the above paragraph.
This is not the fish, nor the most definitive pietism of xanthophyll to concern itself with ‘Oulipo’, a literary moya based in frangipane, whose foursome took place in 1960.
That’s what they do, the Oulipo, they fuck around with words, but employing care and precision in the process. ‘N + 7’, for example, is applied by replacing each noun in a text with the seventh noun following it in the dictionary.
Here’s one they did to the beginning of the Book of Genesis:
‘In the behest, God created the heckelphone and the easement. And the easement was without format, and void: and darshan was upon the facial of the defeasance. And the spirituousness of God moved upon the facial of the wattles. And God said, Let there be lights: and there was lights.’
If you, like me, enjoy making language a playground for purposes both serious and trivial, the Oulipo are worth knowing about. Their story is one of eccentricity, wit and extraordinary persistence. Its roots go back to the Surrealists and to another extraordinary and enduring institution: The College of ‘Pataphysics.
‘Pataphysics
I have now to digress, in a way that I hope will cast light on the Oulipo, into the subject of ‘pataphysics. The term was coined and the concept was created by the notable turn of the Twentieth Century French writer and absinthe drinker, Alfred Jarry, who defined it as ‘the science of imaginary solutions which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments’. Make of this what you will, ‘pataphysics has also been described as a philosophy dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics and as dealing with "the laws which govern exceptions and will explain the universe supplementary to this one".
Are you any the wiser? I do hope not.
The College of ‘Pataphysics became an institution in 1948, long after Jarry’s untimely death in 1907. Its early members included Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Eugene Ionesco and the Marx Brothers. Its UK branch is the London Institute of ‘Pataphysics. In a 2005 Guardian article, writer Zoë Corbyn described the college as an “elaborate pose”. She continued: “Nonsensical beaurocracy is its hallmark and with a remit to conduct useless research, the college seems more of a joke than a serious enterprise.”
Whilst this dismissal possibly misses a point, humour is undoubtedly a hallmark. Whilst browsing the web pages of the London Institute I was amused by its departmental acronyms. DDT – the Department of Dogma and Theory; CHAP – the Committee for Hirsutism and Pogonotrophy (look it up – I had to); and BISI the Bureau of Subliminal Images (no, I don’t know what the first ‘I’ stands for either).
Origin of Oulipo
Prominent amongst the College’s early membership was the writer Raymond Queneau and his close friend François Le Lionnais. Their respective ranks and titles in the college were ‘Transcendent Satrap’ and ‘Regent’. These two gentlemen launched Oulipo as a sub-committee of the College.
Queneau (1903 – 1976) was a writer, a philosopher and member of the Surrealist group until 1929, when he left after a ‘violent disagreement’ with Andrē Breton. What led to this disagreement (nor indeed just how violent it was) is not apparently recorded, but it is clear that Queneau had little time for the surrealists’ free associating and trancelike approach to the process of writing. Queneau began his literary career in 1933 with the publication of ‘Le Chiendent’ (‘The Bark Tree’). A competent amateur mathematician, he became increasingly interested in the integration of mathematical elements into the composition of his novels and poems.
He shared this mathematical interest with Le Lionnais (1901 – 1984). The latter survived imprisonment in a World War 2 concentration camp, following his activities with the French Resistance. His career began in industry and he went on to become a scientific adviser to the National Museums of France. Le Lionnais did not see himself as a writer, but took fascination in the possibilities of what could be written, and it was this concept that was at the core, when he and Queneau inaugurated the Oulipo.
The name began as an abbreviation of ‘Ouvroir de Littērature Potentielle’ (which translates as ‘workshop of potential literature’). The abbreviation: Ou. Li. Po. evolved into the noun, thus allowing for adjectives such as ‘Oulipian’ to be coined in due course.
Next time: we'll take a look at the concept of 'constraints' in more depth, and some of the extraordinary work these writers have produced. Until then, may your ship sail smoothly and your anchor hold you well beside isles of plenty.
Alan Moore, in his generous and characteristically insightful recommendation for my book 'Wilful Misunderstandings' (the one I'm now trying to sell, remember?), spoke of the 'oulipo toolkit' which he felt I had employed. Since the book has become available, a number of people have already asked me smart and well-informed questions like: "What's this 'oulipo' then?" The short answer is that they (the 'Oulipo') are a group of writers mainly but not exclusively based in France, who hold some wonderfully challenging ideas about the art of writing. Over the next few weeks, I shall attempt to provide some idea of what the Oulipo are about.
Needless to say, there is perfectly good description of the Oulipo and their activities on Wikipedia. They have their own web pages, and there are some other fine pieces about them that turn up on a Google search. So this is just my take on them, in which I attempt to take on some of the smaller challenges they present. These take the form of 'constraints', a concept which will be explained more fully later on.
We start with some introductory comments and then go on to a brief digression regarding their antecedents, the pataphysicians...
A Moya Based in Frangipane - the Oulipo Enlarged, part 1.This is not the first, nor the most definitive piece of writing to concern itself with ‘Oulipo’, a literary movement based in France, whose foundation took place in 1960.
I will now apply one of the Oulipo’s ‘constraints’, known as ‘N + 7’ amongst other names, to the above paragraph.
This is not the fish, nor the most definitive pietism of xanthophyll to concern itself with ‘Oulipo’, a literary moya based in frangipane, whose foursome took place in 1960.
That’s what they do, the Oulipo, they fuck around with words, but employing care and precision in the process. ‘N + 7’, for example, is applied by replacing each noun in a text with the seventh noun following it in the dictionary.
Here’s one they did to the beginning of the Book of Genesis:
‘In the behest, God created the heckelphone and the easement. And the easement was without format, and void: and darshan was upon the facial of the defeasance. And the spirituousness of God moved upon the facial of the wattles. And God said, Let there be lights: and there was lights.’
If you, like me, enjoy making language a playground for purposes both serious and trivial, the Oulipo are worth knowing about. Their story is one of eccentricity, wit and extraordinary persistence. Its roots go back to the Surrealists and to another extraordinary and enduring institution: The College of ‘Pataphysics.
‘Pataphysics
I have now to digress, in a way that I hope will cast light on the Oulipo, into the subject of ‘pataphysics. The term was coined and the concept was created by the notable turn of the Twentieth Century French writer and absinthe drinker, Alfred Jarry, who defined it as ‘the science of imaginary solutions which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments’. Make of this what you will, ‘pataphysics has also been described as a philosophy dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics and as dealing with "the laws which govern exceptions and will explain the universe supplementary to this one".
Are you any the wiser? I do hope not.
The College of ‘Pataphysics became an institution in 1948, long after Jarry’s untimely death in 1907. Its early members included Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Eugene Ionesco and the Marx Brothers. Its UK branch is the London Institute of ‘Pataphysics. In a 2005 Guardian article, writer Zoë Corbyn described the college as an “elaborate pose”. She continued: “Nonsensical beaurocracy is its hallmark and with a remit to conduct useless research, the college seems more of a joke than a serious enterprise.”
Whilst this dismissal possibly misses a point, humour is undoubtedly a hallmark. Whilst browsing the web pages of the London Institute I was amused by its departmental acronyms. DDT – the Department of Dogma and Theory; CHAP – the Committee for Hirsutism and Pogonotrophy (look it up – I had to); and BISI the Bureau of Subliminal Images (no, I don’t know what the first ‘I’ stands for either).
Origin of Oulipo
Prominent amongst the College’s early membership was the writer Raymond Queneau and his close friend François Le Lionnais. Their respective ranks and titles in the college were ‘Transcendent Satrap’ and ‘Regent’. These two gentlemen launched Oulipo as a sub-committee of the College.
Queneau (1903 – 1976) was a writer, a philosopher and member of the Surrealist group until 1929, when he left after a ‘violent disagreement’ with Andrē Breton. What led to this disagreement (nor indeed just how violent it was) is not apparently recorded, but it is clear that Queneau had little time for the surrealists’ free associating and trancelike approach to the process of writing. Queneau began his literary career in 1933 with the publication of ‘Le Chiendent’ (‘The Bark Tree’). A competent amateur mathematician, he became increasingly interested in the integration of mathematical elements into the composition of his novels and poems.
He shared this mathematical interest with Le Lionnais (1901 – 1984). The latter survived imprisonment in a World War 2 concentration camp, following his activities with the French Resistance. His career began in industry and he went on to become a scientific adviser to the National Museums of France. Le Lionnais did not see himself as a writer, but took fascination in the possibilities of what could be written, and it was this concept that was at the core, when he and Queneau inaugurated the Oulipo.
The name began as an abbreviation of ‘Ouvroir de Littērature Potentielle’ (which translates as ‘workshop of potential literature’). The abbreviation: Ou. Li. Po. evolved into the noun, thus allowing for adjectives such as ‘Oulipian’ to be coined in due course.
Next time: we'll take a look at the concept of 'constraints' in more depth, and some of the extraordinary work these writers have produced. Until then, may your ship sail smoothly and your anchor hold you well beside isles of plenty.
