Of Love And Hunger (Julian MacLaren-Ross)

I gotout my dem book to look up the old girl’s name.


    Always address the prospect by name: it pays.  Makes ‘em feel at home, see?  The personal touch.


    This one was called Miss Tuke, 49, TheCrescent.  Small house, two storeys, villa-type; small dark drawing-roomfull of knick-knacks, thick old-fashioned hangings full of dust.  No maid,no cleaner, woman in once a week.  A cert, if I played it right.

    Miss Tuke didn’t seem a bad old girleither.  Bit jumpy:  kept looking up at the ceiling as if expectingit might fall on her any moment.  Couldn’t believe her eyes when she sawwhat I got out of her carpet.


    ‘But I don’t understand. I had the carpetcleaned.  Two days ago.  I had a woman in.’


   ‘This dirt didn’taccumulate in two days, Miss Tuke,’ I told her.  ‘It’s been in your carpetfor years.  The ordinary methods of cleaning won’t remove it.’

 

    ‘Then what can I do?’


     ‘There’s only one thing,’ I said, pointing to the cleaner.  Miss Tuke looked at it andswallowed.  I wanted to let the idea sink in.  It was too soon tostart on her yet, but I felt in my pocket to make sure I’d an order-form readywhen the time came.  It was there all right.


     Miss Tuke said: ‘Andhow much did you say the price . . .’


            ‘A pound down,  a pound a month.’


     ‘Oh, I wouldn’tdream.  I don’t hold with hire-purchase.’

  

    ‘It’s much the best way, Miss Tuke.  We never advise buying one of these machines outright.  Think ofthe advantages you become eligible for under our instalment-system.  Freeservice every six months.  A thorough overhaul of your cleanertwice-yearly free of charge.  After all, you wouldn’t pay your maid ayear’s wages in advance, would you?’ 


    ‘Of course not.’


          ‘Well we look on this cleaning system as amechanical maid.  More efficient, naturally, as this dirt goes to show.'

    Always bring ‘em back to the dirt.  Iswitched on again and pushed the cleaner to-and-fro across the carpet.  Iwas a No. 1 model, the biggest sort and the one that costs the mostmoney.  Kicks up a terrific row, but you get round that by saying you canonly silence the machine at the price of efficiency.




NOTE: 



     Several years ago or more (or more, I think), my friend GerryHoward introduced me to Julian MacLaren-Ross’s writing.  Gerry hadacquired Memoirsof the Forties (I don’trecall why) and liked the book for reasons that would quickly become apparent to anyfirst-time reader.  Gerry’s enthusiasms (any ofthem) and recommendations (ditto) mean a lot to me, so I bought and read the book. 


     I think Gerry fell in shallow; I fell in deep, but at the righttime because the Julian MacLaren-Ross revival -- a series of republicationsthrough Black Spring Press, Paul Willets’ remarkable biography Fear  And Loathing InFitzrovia, internet chatterand other enthusiasms (including the attention paid by many dedicated readers to Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time; MacLaren-Ross was the model for the novelist character, X. Trapnel) was afoot and picking up steam.


     I’ve previously postedother examples of this author’s work -- short story and memoirexcerpts, as well as a haunting snippet from his autobiographical novel, The Weeping and theLaughter, concerning a World War I zeppelin raid on Ramsgate, MacLaren-Ross's childhood home before his family decamped for a life on the Côted’Azur, an event that turned out to be a mixed blessing in terms of the author's personal and professional future.  The passage above, taken from the first chapter of Of Love And Hunger, his great novel, is new here. Set in cusp-of-World War II Brighton, the book is based on MacLaren-Ross’s experiences selling vacuums door-to-door.  As he told GrahamGreene, it was Depression-era labor, the best he could find after losing, through no fault of his own, his private, family income, fortune, i.e.,  he wasn’t just collecting material to write about in anovel.  


     Of Love And Hunger is a fully-accomplished, deeply moving work of art, the  summation and apotheosis of J M-R's great work of the 1940s, which included the publication of his best and most popular short stories.   All his subsequent writing (journalism, bookand film reviews, radio plays, memoirs, astonishing literary parodies, other novels), whether superb or somewhat less so,never matched this novel’s perfect,sustained emotional pitch and style subsumed, immersed, in every single sentence and scene.


     Re-telling Julian MacLaren-Ross anecdotes (they are as outlandish and improbable as any stories about intense, esoteric literary or artistic eccentrics maintaining  24-hour schedules until inevitably checking out too early) all night is an entertainingthing to do to delight old friendsand new companions.  One can still do so today, standing in J M-R's usual spot at the Wheatsheafbar in Rathbone Place, Fitzrovia.  What I find really difficult to fathom,however, is the degree to which my life has come to resemble aspects of Richard Fanshawe’s life in Of Love And Hunger.

No-Man's Land

5:55 am, Signal Hill

Tryingto tie my feelings for this book to unexpressed, unresolved,wrestling thoughts about the Mexico City abduction. Puzzling whether any of these offer purchase outof no-man’s land.


Keyproblem with no-man’sland : no human audience.


ThankGod for cats.  Rose says : “Don’tworry so much.”

Begins and Ends (A Gun For Sale)

I.                    

     Murder didn’t mean much to Raven.  It was just a new job.  You had to be careful.  You had to use your brains.  It was not a question of hatred.  He had only seen the minister once:  he had been pointed out to Raven as he walkeddown the new housing estate between the little lit Christmas trees – an old, rathergrubby man without any friends, who was said to love humanity.

     The cold wind cuthis face in the wide Continental street. It was a good excuse for turning the collar of his coat well up abovehis mouth.  A harelip was a serioushandicap in his profession.  It had beenbadly sewn in infancy, so that now the upper lip was twisted and scarred.  When you carried about you so easy anidentification you couldn’t help becoming ruthless in your methods.  

II.

     “You haven’tfailed,” he said.

     London had itsroots in her heart;  she saw nothing inthe dark countryside.  She looked awayfrom it to Mather’s happy face.  “You don’tunderstand,” she said, sheltering the ghost for a very short while longer.  “I did fail.” But she forgot it herself completelywhen the train drew into London over a great viaduct under which the small,bright shabby streets ran off like the rays of a star with their sweet shops,their Methodist chapels, their messages chalked on the paving stones.  

Our Man In Havana

The time has come to give our man in Havana some help.  This is altogether too big for an untrainedagent with no assistance.  

Actual Value

  

 

Roman coin showing Emperor Caligula (ruled AD 37 -- AD 41) on face with figure of Vesta on reverse.

        ‘They are still selling.’

        ‘Then we must go on buying.’

         ‘There’s a limit, Mr Krogh.’

          ‘No limit.’

          ‘Where’s the money to come from?’

           ‘I’ve arranged that.  The A.C.U. will lend the money.’

Frozen Stockholm

          ‘We shall need every penny they’ve got.’

           ‘You can have it.’

          “But the A.C.U.  They’ll have to pass their dividend.  It’ll start a panic.  This won’t be a single break.  It’ll be like a sieve.  You’ll have holes sprung in Berlin, Warsaw, Paris, everywhere.’

          ‘No, no,’ Krogh said, ‘you exaggerate.  You live too much in the centre of things, Hall.  I’m right out of it here.  When once we’ve started the American company next week, we can do what we like with the market.’

          ‘But the A.C.U.?”

Earliest existing stock certificate, Sweden, 1288 

          ‘We’re selling it.  Batterson’s are buying.  A million pounds down.  That will fill any holes for a week, Hall.  You’ve just got to go on buying.’

           ‘But the A.C.U. won’t have a farthing.’  He could hear the thin whistle of Hall’s breath far away in his room in Amsterdam.

          ‘They’ll be exactly what they are worth now.  Only it’ll be in the form of shares in the Amsterdam company.’
 

The 28th page of Patrick Breen's diary (Donner Party member; departed Illinois for California, April 14, 1846), recording his observations in late February 1847, including 'Mrs Murphy said here yesterday that thought she would Commence on Milt & eat him.  I dont that she has done so yet, it is distressing.'

          ‘But you know we aren’t worth the money we’re spending.’  Krogh had no need of television when he spoke to Hall;  they had been together so long he could associate every inflection with its accompanying action; the reproachful swinging leg, the doubting dangle of watch chain.

          ‘Yes, you are, Fred,’ Krogh said.  He was quite happy again because he was dealing with figures, there was nothing he couldn’t do with them, there was nothing human about them.  ‘You are worth everything.  Our credit’s bound up with you.  The A.C.U. is nothing.  It has nothing to do with the main business. It’s an investment we are willing to sell.  If you go, the I.G.S. goes.’

          ‘Yes, but in actual value…’

Frozen Amsterdam


          'Three minutes are up,’ a voice said in German.

          'There is no such thing,’ Krogh said, 'as actual value.’  He took up an ashtray and put it down again: E.K.

          ‘There’s only the price people are willing to pay.’

Francisco Goya, "The Shootings of May 3, 1808," 1814, Oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid 

Text excerpted from Graham Greene, England Made Me. London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1935

Literary Gossip, January 25, 1956 (Christopher Isherwood Diaries)

Christopher Isherwood


January 25*

         Today I had a drink with John Lehmann, Graham Greene and Henry Yorke.**  They told me about Evelyn Waugh's nervous breakdown.  He went into a bar in Cairo, and the bartender said, "Good afternoon, Sir," and Waugh just grunted.  And a voice said to Waugh: "You'd have spoken to him if he'd been a Lord."  Graham looked quite sleek and handsome -- much younger than in his photographs.  He said this was because he is always photographed when he has a hangover.

        Much talk about Cyril Connolly's famous marital troubles, which he broadcasts all over Europe.

Graham Greene

Henry Yorke

John Lehmann photographed at Ham Spray seated between Rosamond Lehmann (l) and Lytton Strachey (r)

Excerpt from:  Christopher Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, 1939-1960). London, Methuen, 1996.

* According to Wikipedia, there are no other notable world events that occurred on January 25, 1956. Therefore, I believe this London meeting of three important masters of 20th century British literatrue and a key British publisher held for purposes of cutting up prominent members of their circle constitutes something of a historical "discovery." 

** Henry Yorke wrote novels under the pen name Henry Green.  To help sort out the gossip, players and scorecard, you may possibly be interested in seeing this, this,  this, and this  for Henry Green, and here, here,  here and here for more Graham Greene.

Twice Foretold: The Bride Stripped Bare and The End Of The Affair

I. 

Given: 

        1. The Waterfall, 

        2. The Illuminating Gas

(Étant donnés: 

        1. La chute d’eau, 

        2. Le gaz d’éclairage)

        -- Marcel Duchamp, from The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (La Mariee Mise A Nu Par Ses Celibataires, Meme), 1915-23

II.

A story has no beginning or end:  arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.  I say 'one chooses' with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer  who -- when he has been seriously noted at all -- has been praised for his technical ability, but do I in fact of my own free will choose that wet black January night on the Common, in 1946, the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain, or did these images choose me?  It is convenient, it is correct according to the rules of my craft to begin just there, but if I had believed then in a God, I could also have believed in a hand, plucking at my elbow, a suggestion, 'Speak to him:  he hasn't seen you yet.'

        For why should I have spoken to him?  If hate is not too large a term to use in relation to any human being, I hated Henry -- I hated his wife Sarah too.  And he, I suppose, came soon after the events of that evening to hate me: as he had surely must have hated his wife and that other, in whom in those days we were lucky enough not to believe.  So this is a record of hate far more than of love, and if I come to say anything in favour of Henry and Sarah, I can be trusted:  I am writing against the bias because it is my professional pride to prefer the near-truth, even to the expression of my near-hate.

        -- Graham Greene, The End Of The Affair, 1951

Juan Gris Opens The Door To The Future

          A few days ago I came across a Graham Green quotation from The Power And The Glory (a novel I liked better when I reread it two summers ago than I did the first time through in high school), which apparently appears frequently in “wise thoughts” lists.

          It reads: "There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in."

 Juan Gris

          I wouldn't presume to speak for other people in this regard, but the statement definitely applies to me.  In my case, the moment occurred in the fall of 1968, when I pulled the book Juan Gris by James Thrall Soby from the library shelf at The Gunnery in Washington, Connecticut.  I have no idea why I decided to look at the book and I definitely hadn't planned on the encounter.  Probably, I was just taking a study break and wandering around in the stacks.

          But from the moment I began to look at the picture plates in the book and then to read Soby's text, things began to come into focus for me in ways they hadn’t previously.

Juan Gris, Portrait of Picasso, 1912

          I began to consider Cubist painting (which I was aware of but hadn't previously thought about a lot) very seriously, from its beginnings through the development of the Analytical and Synthetic phases.  Its multi-valent visual and textural viewpoints and rich and appealing subject matter (to a young teenager, studio and café life seemed unbelievably appealing; descriptions of Cubist subjects as “restricted” seem as false to me now as they did then) made the world seem to me strong, logical, and lively -- a place of infinite possibility.

Juan Gris, The Open Window, 1921

          Quickly and sequentially I made entrée into artistic movements related and unrelated to Cubism: contemporary ones like Cubist poetry (Apollinaire, Reverdy, Jacob) and successor ones like Dada, Surrealism (especially Marcel Duchamp's work), opening out into the rest of 20^th century avant-garde visual art, music and dance. In fairly short order, I thought it was crucial to learn all about world art history from the beginning of recorded time to the present and what might be imagined beyond that.

Juan Gris, Jar, Bottle and Glass, 1911

          Duchamp’s disciple John Cage taught me (in his writings) Ananda K. Coomaraswamy's maxim “the function of Art is to imitate Nature in her manner of operation”, which I adopted as a mental and aesthetic touchstone. That and Cage's “silent” piano composition  4’3", as well as Duchamp’s deceptive “career disappearing act” all provided an aesthetic viewpoint implying that art was both a physically “present” thing and event and a transcendent experience and that it was better for artists to be modest and as invisible as possible in their work.

John Cage, 4'33", 1952

 

          This came to mind again this week when a friend posed the question whether it was possible “to express the absence of affect” in a work of art. 

          Trying to cope and deal with such an abstract thought (I’m a lawyer, not a philosopher), initially I found I needed to decide:

               a)  what, if any, difference there might be between “affectless”, which by all dictionary definitions suggests a psychological disorder, and the “absence of affect”;

               b)  how to recognize or at least give examples of the “invisible” quality I just alluded to; and

               c)  whether or not the simple volitional action of “expressing” something nullified the logical possibility of achieving “an absence of affect”. 

          (Thank heavens I am doing this outside an academic and/or commercial publishing context where I’m sure I’d be eviscerated for sloppy thinking, magical thinking, using incorrect terminology or all of the above, undoubtedly in violation of some political canon or social interdiction I’ve somehow missed or neglected to observe.)

          All of which brought me back to Juan Gris, the pseudonym adopted by Jose Vittoriano Gonzales (1887-1927), the Spanish painter who along with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque is rightly considered one of the three greatest masters of Cubism.  One of the things that immediately  attracted me to Gris (apart from the fact that he is clearly a painter of genius) is his absence of affect.  I see this quality in each of the works posted here and it is not a quality, incidentally, that I see in the work of his great friend Picasso, whose work, brilliant and rigorous as it can be, is much “hotter” and more gestural and expressionistic. Personally, I tended to gravitate toward the sort of cerebral quality I found in Gris, whose invented name, which translates as “John Grey” (reminding me of Henry Vincent Yorke’s similar adoption of the very plain “Henry Green” as a nom-de-plume) emphasizes that
 “non-affect” effect.

Juan Gris, Tablero de Ajedrez, 1917

          Going backwards and forward in time, I detect and am attracted to this quality, which I tend to associate with honesty and piercing intelligence, in works by the Netherlandish  painter Hans Memling (1430-94),  the Spanish master Francisco Goya (1746-1828), the great French painter Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (1699-1779), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), the Dutch Neo-Plasticist, the brilliant surrealist Yves Tanguy (1900-55), and surprisingly (some would probably say), in the more recent art (especially the portraiture) of Andy Warhol (1928-87).

Hans Memling, Portrait of A Man, 1470

Francisco Goya, Self-Portrait In Studio, 1795

Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, La Brioche, 1763

          Naturally,  as I developed,  learned new things and saw more art, my so-called “focus” waxed and waned and things alternately made more and less sense depending on myriad factors.   As my ability to look closely, and possibly see deeply, increased (I had some professional training; I spent time on this and made a real commitment for a while), I began increasingly to notice definite gestural, expressionist aspects in the “absence of affect” works I liked so much and thought were my favorites, as well as moments of intense focus and cerebral stillness in works that formerly seemed seemed wildly active.

Yves Tanguy, The Ribbon of Excess, 1932

Fernand Leger, The City, 1919

Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 1, 1938-9 

           Consequently, what had previously been black-and-white antonyms adopted shades of gray coloring and I fell in love with all kinds of art my original aesthetic lens didn’t allow me to appreciate sufficiently, including the brilliant art of two of Gris' great friends, the unclassifiable (to me) Fernand Leger (1881-1955) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954), who from his earliest Fauvist days was hardly “gris” in his approach.

 

           I relate all this because the Graham Greene quote that opened the piece really affected me when I re-encountered it and made me recall the moment when my personal door to the future opened.  I wound up doing something professionally very different for a living than I ever thought I would, but I think I am still roughly the same person who was formed out of  Juan Gris by James Thrall Soby.

Thank you for listening

Andy Warhol, Portrait of Tina Chow, 1985

Andy Warhol, Screen Test (Mary Woronov), 1966

Juan Gris, Pierrot, 1921

Juan Gris by James Thrall Soby (New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1958)

John Cale, OBE; Henry Graham Greene OM CH

 

"I'm stunned. It makes you think 'well maybe I did something right’? and now I've got to figure out what that was. I thought I was too much of a tearaway."

-- John Cale, OBE

Just yesterday I mentioned my out-of-control Google News Alert habit, but it seems that it’s more moderate and modest than I had thought because I completely missed the news about HRH Queen Elizabeth II's selection of John Cale to receive the Order of the British Empire (OBE) citation in her June 12th Birthday List Honors announcements. 

Awards like this are a turn-on to some, but a turn-off to others because, among other things, they focus our attention on the institution of monarchy, which for many people (and certainly for  Americans) is a legitimate source of objection and vexation.   Still, it’s very nice to see John Cale recognized in this way because his achievements are so impressive and the granting of the award, as he himself -- the composer of The Gift, Guts and Fear, among other disruptive classics, and a man who used to perform concerts wearing a menacing "Michael Meyers"-type hockey mask -- clearly recognizes, is so unexpected and incongruous.

I had actually been planning to post something about Cale’s song Graham Greene, from the 1973 Paris, 1919 lp, for some time, but had hesitated because I couldn’t find a good performance of the song on Youtube to include as a link.  I’ve always liked the song without getting under the surface of it or thinking there was much under the surface. Although enjoyable, it seemed like one of the slighter efforts on that great record.  Recently however, I’ve come to think that it paints an acute, multi-faceted, almost cubist picture of the author of Brighton Rock, A Gun For Sale and The End of The Affair (and recipient of the high royal honors, Order of Merit and Companion of Honour) and his Worlds, which is both impressive and augments beautifully the themes, embroidered language, imagery and music of Paris, 1919, one of the few rock albums written with an intention toward discerning history.

Like many Youtube devotees, I have come to expect too much from it at times.  I think that I should be able to instantly dial up live footage of artists I admire performing material I would like to to see, either because I’ve never seen it or I wish to relive it.   Unfortunately, that’s not always possible.   

Therefore, while I was able to content myself yesterday (not nearly a strong enough term of approbation) with some fantastic Pretty Things footage, Youtube is almost vacant of key John Cale solo career footage from the “amazing” performance years of 1975-1979.   During that time I saw Cale on many occasions in and around New York City performing a range of material extending from his Velvet Underground days to his then-most recent record Helen of Troy. There simply wasn’t anyone like him (with the possible exceptions of Iggy Pop, Television and The Ramones, each of them originals but, I would say, John Cale disciples all) for bringing total commitment to live performance.  

 

This period also coincided with Cale’s stripping away most of the “literary” and musically "arty" references from his work (both of which had formed part of his artistic toolkit since his debut solo album, Vintage Violence) and choosing instead starkly to confront humanity face-to-face in the trilogy of records that includes Fear, Slow Dazzle and Helen of Troy, his best album. 

What I most wanted to find on Youtube were performances of the song Helen Of Troy (Cale's unforgettable, gripping set opener) and Leaving It Up To You, the explosive rumination on the implications and consequences of passivity that  got Cale into so much trouble that Island Records even excised it from the Helen of Troy album for a period until the advent of the CD with its acres of available space compared to the vinyl lp and the song's "banned in Boston" reputation caused them to restore it.  Cale's crazed performances of Leaving It Up To You definitely caused some people to believe that he was actually crazy, that it wasn't a performance.  I can personally say that they changed my life and perspective on things.

 
Instead, Youtube presents Cale’s solo career mostly as a series of pleasant, well-performed, but less intense clips, mirroring the less full-blooded music he eventually settled into making as the 1980s progressed and he himself settled down considerably in his personal life.  A notable exception is the marvelous Dead Or Alive from the 1981’s Honi Soit lp, which can be heard here. It's a beautiful and unique piece of music and lyric that also might change your life and your impression about what "pop" music can achieve.

This decline (or possibly simply a shift of focus) to other types of material and performances is of no great importance.  What John Cale accomplished during his "punk" period, i.e., the period when the younger punk and the "new wave" bands were in their ascendancy, was extraordinary and it’s great that he is still alive, healthy, musically active and here with us to receive his OBE honors from Her Majesty. 

 

The lyrics to Graham Greene follow.  It’s a sprightly, sardonic, slightly sinister song that hints, I think, at the dark, deeply pained heart and view of humanity that Greene carried inside him and described so well in the character descriptions and incidents in his novels.  It is even evident in some of his apparently lighter works like Our Man In Havana. 

 

Graham Greene

You’re having tea with Graham Greene

in a colored costume of your choice.

And you’ll be held in high esteem,

if you’re seen in between.

Stiffly holding umbrellas,

catching the fellows, making the toast,

to the civil servant Carruthers

making the others worser than most.

You’re making small talk now with the Queen

and the elegant ladies in waiting.

You’re very nervous, they can all tell,

pretty well they can tell.

So save yourselves for the hounds of hell,

they can have you all to themselves.

Since the fashion now is to give away

all the things you love so well.

Welcome back to Chipping Sodbury,

you can have another chance.

It must all seem like second nature,

chopping down the people where they stand.

According to the latest score

Mr. Enoch Powell is falling star.

So in future please bear in mind,

don’t see clear, don’t see far.

When the average social director

mistook a passenger for the conductor,

it’s so shocking see the old Church of E

looking down on you and me.

So, welcome back to Chipping Sodbury,

you can have another chance.

It must all seem like second nature,

chopping down the people where they stand.

In my continuing efforts to ferret out cocktails named for celebrities, I have included below a recipe for the Graham Greene Cocktail, as served at the Sofitel Grande Metropole in Hanoi, the successor establishment to the hotel Greene himself frequented during the 1950s and the gestation of The Quiet American.  (Readers of that book will recognize the drink, which looks quite good.)

Graham Greene Cocktail

Ingredients for 1 Cocktail

• 2 Ounces gin
• 1/2 Ounce dry vermouth
• Splash of creme de cassis

Preparation

1. Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker or mixing glass.
2. Add ice, stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Note:  A suggested variation is to reverse the amounts of dry vermouth and gin.

The wall plaque pictured below is from the legendary Oloffson’s Hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, signifying that the peripatetic “Graham Greene Slept Here”. Similar signs are posted in legendary hostelries throughout the Greene's literary world, which was a source of pain to Greene's fascinating and long suffering wife, Vivian. Greene was a talented, but difficult and contradictory person.  His own works, letters, and the accounts of him written by others all make this extremely clear. 

 

Joi

One further note.  Joining John Cale in this June's rock and roll Honors section is Graham Nash, erstwhile key member of Manchester's marvelous Hollies.  For that signal achievement alone, Graham can be forgiven a lot, including most of Crosby, Stills & Nash.  Congratulations, Graham.