Robert Guffey: LIVE FROM SANTA MONICA!!!

Back on Saturday, June 8, impresario Gerry Fialka interviewed me about Cryptoscatology and related matters for a little over two hours at The UnUrban Cafe, a coffee shop/art gallery in Santa Monica.  You can hear the unexpurgated recording of that fateful encounter by clicking HERE.

Non-conspiracy Cryptoscatology (Part 2)

In the past, as part of my on-going study of the nascent field known as “Cryptoscatology,” I’ve reviewed books that I believe could be included in the category of “Non-conspiracy Cryptoscatology” (e.g., THE PERILS OF MOVIEGOING IN AMERICA by Gary D. Rhodes and TEEN ANGELS & NEW MUTANTS by Stephen R. Bissette).  My first book, CRYPTOSCATOLOGY, focuses primarily on conspiracy theories, but the word “cryptoscatology” simply means “the study of secret shit,” and in our society “shit” (i.e., that which is considered illegitimate by mainstream culture) can take many, many forms.   

Basically, any field of endeavor that is far removed from the “value grid” of mainstream society is more than capable of winning an honored seat in the hallowed halls of the Academy of Cryptoscatology.  This means that Cryptoscatology must, of course, include pornography within its capacious parameters.  

Today, students, we’ll be studying the field of pornography in the form of two new books by Harlan Ellison:  PULLING A TRAIN and GETTING IN THE WIND, both recently published by the very hip new publishing house, Kicks Books in New York.   

If, after reading this review, you’re interested in purchasing the books and meeting Mr. Ellison in person, you might want to keep this date in mind (the following information is excerpted from a recent Kicks Books press release):

Saturday, July 13, 2 – 5 pm An Afternoon Reading, Signing and Haircut Party with Author Harlan Ellison La Luz de Jesus Gallery**and Soap Plant 4633 Hollywood Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90027 Sweeney Todd’s Barber Shop 4639 Hollywood Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90027

Join the greatest living author of Juvenile Delinquent street fiction Harlan Ellison for this rare event as he arrives at in grand style at La Luz de Jesus’ neighboring vintage clip joint, Sweeny Todd’s Barber Shop, for a specially designed trim by shop curator Sween Lahman and is then escorted to the gallery for a reading, and signing of his Kicks Books blockbusters, Pulling a Train and Getting in the Wind. Limited edition 11 x 17 posters of the book covers will be available at this event. It will be an afternoon of pizzazz and vinegar with a true living legend! [END OF EXCERPT]

What follows is my review of Ellison’s two most recent collections….

Still Pulling This Train:  Harlan Ellison’s Pulling a Train and Getting in the Wind

by Robert Guffey

  

Bearing titles with deliciously lascivious double entendres, Harlan Ellison’s latest story collections—Pulling a Train:  Violent Stories of Naked Passions and Getting in the Wind:  More Stories By a Very Young Harlan Ellison—are dark twins linked by the common themes of erotic violence and violent eroticism. 

Though well-known for having written such classic short stories as “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965), “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967), “Grail” (1981), and “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” (1992), Ellison began his career in the late 1950s churning out penny-a-word pulp stories for men’s magazines such as Guilty, Manhunt and Trapped.  Considered pornographic upon their original 1959 paperback release, under the title Sex Gang, the stories featured in Pulling a Train and Getting in the Wind have been resurrected by Brooklyn-based Kicks Books publisher Miriam Linna (a former musician who once performed with such punk bands as The Cramps and Nervous Rex).  Intended as nothing more than space-filler for long-deceased “he-man publications” such as Knave, Rogue and Caper, these tales have risen like a perverted phoenix from the puritanical ashes of 1950s moral strictures.  Both books are fascinating time capsules.  What must have seemed like standard softcore porn in 1959 now emerge in the 21^st century as historical records of the cultural mores of midcentury America and the ever-shifting borders between what’s considered decency and degeneracy in mainstream culture. 

If titillation alone had been the main impetus of these stories, then reprinting them now would be a waste of time.  But Harlan Ellison, even in his early 20s, was too talented to take the easy way out of any assignment no matter how perfunctory it may have seemed at the time.  In his entertaining introduction to Pulling a Train (entitled “Inescapable Cemeteries”), Ellison calls these “zilch” stories “crude,” and of course they are.  And yet the overall  tone of the stories are permeated with an offbeat world weariness, genuine schadenfreude, unusual for a young writer fresh out of Ohio who somehow found himself in the 1950s Big Apple cranking out one-handed reads to make ends meet.  It’s this curiously dark tone that lifts the material above its utilitarian roots. 

The centerpiece of Pulling a Train is a lurid novella entitled “Sex Gang,” a hardboiled crime story about an eighteen-year-old thug named Deek Cullen who seems to be at the end of his rope when we’re first introduced to him and quickly descends—inch by painful inch—deeper into darkness as the tale progresses.  Cullen’s desperation is palatable and effectively conveyed through Ellison’s staccato, stripped-down prose as the protagonist becomes unwillingly involved with an all-girl gang who spend their empty days stalking the mean streets of New York and raping virile young men like Deek in their spare time.  Though the novella was “written for a buck” (as Ellison says in his intro) at lightning speed, nonetheless one can’t help but feel for Cullen’s confusion and his utter inability to escape the tragic fate that awaits him.  Ostensibly aimed at male readers, from the perspective of the present day one might nonetheless interpret this quasi-noir tale of sudden and near-inexplicable violence as a proto-feminist manifesto, Valerie-Solanas-style, almost ten years ahead of its time.  Its blood-spattered plot twists, interspersed with tough-talking knockout Amazons, prefigure the self-aware, self-mocking tone of Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 film, Death Proof.  Indeed, while reading “Sex Gang,” I couldn’t help but think that this is the stuff Quentin Tarantino probably dreams about writing.  (I also couldn’t help but think that “Sex Gang” would make a fascinating 21^st century film, if adapted properly—or perhaps “improperly” would be the apt word in this context.)

The most intriguing stories in both Pulling a Train and Getting in the Wind are those that merge pornography with noir strains:  the aforementioned “Sex Gang,” “A Girl Named Poison,” “Dead Wives Don’t Cheat,” and “Carrion Flesh.”  All four of these pessimistic tales have not been in print since their original appearance in 1959 and are worth the price of admission alone. 

After finishing these two books at a fast clip, I pulled out my copy of Leslie Swigart’s exhaustive (and now very rare) 1973 bibliography of Ellison’s works entitled Harlan Ellison:  A Bibliographical Checklist, and uncovered references to many other early Ellison tales that—to my knowledge—have never been reprinted since their original publication in the 1950s pulp magazines that spawned them.  These stories bear such wonderfully over-the-top titles as “Psycho at Midpoint,” “Homicidal Maniac,” “Scum Town,” “Glug,” “Satan Is My Ally,” “Only Death Can Stop It,” and “A Corpse Can Hate.”  One can only hope that the release of Pulling a Train and Getting in the Wind might soon lead to the resurrection of these other lost gems from America’s pop cultural past. 

To order either Pulling a Train or Getting in the Wind, visit the publisher’s website by clicking HERE. 

Note:  This review appeared originally, in somewhat different form, in the March 2013 issue of THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION (#295).  

Michael Hastings R.I.P. (1980-2013)

Brief excerpts from Eric W. Dolan's 6-18-13 article entitled "Journalist Michael Hastings Dies in Car Crash":

"The journalist and author Michael Hastings died at the age of 33 on Tuesday morning [6-18-13]. According to his employer BuzzFeed, Hastings was killed in a car crash in Los Angeles [...].

"Hastings gained national attention in 2010 after exposing inflammatory comments made by Gen. Stanley McChrystal about President Barack Obama and the civilian leadership of the military [...].

"A person who witnessed the crash early Tuesday morning said he saw Hastings speeding down the road in his car when it suddenly jackknifed, slammed into a tree, and burst into flames."

Michael Hastings' most recent book was the New York Times bestseller The Operators:  The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan (Blue Rider Press, 2012).

To read Dolan's entire article, click HERE.

Thanks, NSA!

An excerpt from Iain Thomson's 6-12-13 Register article entitled "Thanks, NSA:  Amazon Sales of Orwell's 1984 Rise 9,500 %":

"A glance at the 'Movers and Shakers' page of Amazon shows there's been an unusual reaction to the current NSA spying scandal: sales of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four are up 9,538 per cent.

"It was somewhat ironic that the news of the NSA's systematic slurping of phone records and the subsequent revelations about the PRISM spying system were revealed in the same week as the 64th anniversary of the publication of Orwell's dark masterpiece.  Now it seems people are buying it up either to learn about what could be, or simply because recent events reminded them to read the classic.

"There are certainly parallels with the current situation to be found in the book, although we don't yet have clocks that strike thirteen. Certainly Orwell's imagined telescreen that monitors the populace in their living room could be seen as potentially very similar to Microsoft's Xbox One, which comes with a Kinect system that can monitor your heartbeat.

"One might also draw parallels with the tale of a state locked in perpetual war. The US military has officially been in combat for over half of the years since the book was first published in 1949 (Korea 1950-53, Vietnam 1959-1975, Grenada 1983, Panama 1989-90, Kuwait 1991, Bosnia 1995, and Afghanistan ongoing since 2001) and that's not including 'police actions' and 'wars' against drugs and terror."

Read the rest of the article HERE.

 

Cryptoscatology at The Unurban

 

ANNOUNCEMENT!

I'm being interviewed about Cryptoscatology this Saturday by media ecologist Gerry Fialka at The Unurban in Santa Monica.  Here's the necessary info:

June 8, SAT, 4pm-6pm:  Media Ecology Soul Salon -- Author ROBERT GUFFEY (Cryptoscatology: Conspiracy Theory as Art Form) interview http://www.laughtears.com/mess.html Unurban 3301 Pico Blvd. Santa Monica CA 90401 310-315-0056.  Admission price:  FREE!

Perhaps I'll see you there.  Copies of Cryptoscatology will be available, and of course I'll sign them if you wish....