Fall 2023 Events

Our newest Spurl writers are coming out of hiding! So come hang out! Meet the “people” behind “Spurl”; we promise you won’t be kidnapped immediately.

Here are the upcoming events:

Oct 18 - Camp Street Studios, New Orleans - Michael Jeffrey Lee

Oct 28 - The Writer's Block, Las Vegas, 7pm - Michael Jeffrey Lee & M. S. Coe

Oct 29 - Stories Books and Music, Los Angeles, 7pm - Michael Jeffrey Lee & M. S. Coe

Nov 1 - Green Apple Books, San Francisco, 7pm - Michael Jeffrey Lee & Joseph Bradshaw

Nov 8 - Sundance Books and Music, Reno, 6pm - Michael Jeffrey Lee

Dec 9 - Hopscotch Books, Berlin - Michael Jeffrey Lee

Michael Jeffrey Lee’s My Worst Ideas is publishing November 1, and M. S. Coe’s The Formation of Calcium is out now!

Spurl Editions Communiqué No. 5

Exile of the Imposters

Man suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis. Illustration from Kranken-Physiognomik / by von K. H. Baumgärtner / 1929. Credit: Wellcome Collection

As the Spurl Editions Board of Directors has long known, St. Drogo has been ill. Contrary to the rumors spreading from village to village, it is a physical malady that eats away at the legendary editor-in-chief, turning his tongue yellow, making his teeth dusty, and causing the skin on his elbows to flake off and bleed buckets; there is nothing the matter with his mind or editorial acumen (and there never has been). Naturally, the apprentices have taken on more and more responsibilities, which has led to inter-organizational friction, but with protocol changes and a swift ramping up of apprentice supervision and discipline, it was believed that much of that friction was in the past. All have now rallied behind St. Drogo, who for the last six months has not left his cave-room as he has focused on his physical recovery, but who nonetheless has not hesitated to make his opinion known to the apprentices and the Board when necessary via messages he has scrawled on ruined paper in his own elbow blood.

Thus, one of St. Drogo’s dictates was silence. Total, complete, absolute silence. It has been the rule from the beginning, a few hastily penned communiqués notwithstanding. The books are to speak for themselves, St. Drogo explains. In fact, St. Drogo insists that Spurl Editions’ future publications bear no words or images on their covers at all. The books are to be jacketed in a sheet of thick rough paper of some nondescript and unappealing color, maybe the greenish-brown of swift excrement, but certainly no more lurid yellow or orange meant to draw crowds in the square. The books are also to have no more descriptions, and obviously no blurbs, which are widely considered (at least in the academic literature) to be demeaning to the intellect, the spirit, and the body. That was St. Drogo’s vision, which, contractually, Spurl Editions can do no more than execute.

But on Saturday, March 25, of the year 1452, a group of imposters presented a false face of Spurl Editions to the world. These imposters appeared before an audience of dedicated, earnest book-printing afficianados and defrauded them, lying to them without a care. The event was purportedly a discussion between a Spurl Editions “editor” and the Spurl Editions author M. S. Coe. The “editor” betrayed her ignorance of the nature of Spurl’s project almost immediately, discoursing freely with the author on irrelevant literary topics rather than giving thanks to St. Drogo for his visionary approach to paper production. The event was done in collaboration with various other imposters connected to the press Sublunary Editions, a printing house based in a northern village that, day in and day out, must struggle against the rain that seeks to soak their paper and render their text blurry and unreadable, without any Board of Directors to institute apprentice-labor protocols to save their paper from ruin. And given that Sublunary has been in the midst of this concerted effort to stave off the rain and expand to new villages—these efforts surely taking up all their time—it can only be assumed that the individuals masquerading as the editor-in-chief, and author and translator of the new Sublunary book The Whore at this “event,” were imposters too.

The Board of Directors having interviewed every apprentice and convened internally for a full report and accounting, it is clear there is only one path forward. Although Spurl Editions is proud of its new publication of The Formation of Calcium, and believes the book’s author bore no ill will toward St. Drogo when she appeared at the “event”—perhaps not realizing the gravity of the calamity that was unfolding—the press must now destroy all copies of the book. All those who seek a copy must obtain it now, before they are burned. There are still a few copies that are not too sun-damaged available through the usual means. After the current stock is destroyed, the apprentices will create a new version of the book with a St. Drogo-approved cover: unidentifiable, bearing no name, no author, and no description. The book is to speak for itself, and the Spurl Editions imposters are to be exiled, or shot.

Spurl Editions Communiqué No. 4

A Novel Discovery, a Grueling Triumph

I was hired as an associate editor at Spurl Editions toward the beginning of the year, the board of directors insisting that it was time for the “bedraggled press” (their words) to make a fresh start. Having cut my teeth as an editor at various children’s magazines, I had never read a Spurl publication, and looking over the book descriptions that they posted around the village, on random street corners, always either too high or too low for my 4’6” frame, they frankly did not appeal to me. The seemingly adventurous Arthur’s Whims came close to the type of book I might acquire an excerpt of for my children’s journals, but then I saw that the book bore chapter titles like “Pornography” (that’s it, just “Pornography”) and “Children’s Podiatry,” and that was the end of my interest in that. I wasn’t shy with the board about my misgivings about joining this press, but they were so persistent; and of course, who amongst us hasn’t heard of the legendary editorial giant St. Drogo? When he came to wine and dine me, taking me out for avocado carpaccio and tomato seeds dusted with cumin, I couldn’t resist the opportunity. Over espresso dregs I agreed to a six-month editorship, writing my six-page list of wage-and-hour conditions on various napkins, as St. Drogo’s eyes widened. I am proud to say that I am both the youngest and by far the highest paid worker Spurl Editions has ever had, and between my new salary and all the decreases in my monthly expenses that have come with moving to this tiny awful village (close neither to the ocean nor to my friends, with nothing to do here but climb mountains despite the endless heat), I am on my way to a well-earned early retirement after three grueling years of work.

But the point is not to inspire you readers with my financial acumen. It is to make an announcement. I have succeeded in steering the focus of this small press to what are sure to be fertile grounds. During my first weeks as associate editor, the apprentices would bring me manuscripts every day that were nearly unreadable. These manuscripts were all written by authors long dead, or were works long out of print, and they were uniformly hideous. “The discarded tales of Giovanni Boccaccio!” one apprentice cooed, pressing a 1,200-page manuscript toward me. “Who?” I picked up the pages and tossed them at the apprentice (a signature St. Drogo move). Another came in boasting that he had uncovered the true identity of the anonymous author of Lazarillo de Tormes, had tracked down his last remaining descendant, and through torture had obtained from that person a never-before-seen picaresque left behind by the dead Spanish author about a blind, mad prisoner. After my Boccaccio outburst, a single withering look at this second apprentice was all I needed for the apprentice to gather his things, mumble a thousand apologies, and scurry away.

With the apprentices banished to their corners, I was on my own, just as I liked it. I went down to the mail hut where the apprentices received the submitted manuscripts. I shooed the workers out of there and got down to business. I tore open the packages and looked for one thing in the wrinkled, worn pages: a sign of life. Actually, not figuratively. I wanted living authors.

At last I found them. In a stack of hundreds of packages, there were two manuscripts whose authors were unmistakeably alive. I let out a tiny shriek-laugh of excitement. Both were written in sparkly colored gel pen on lined paper—already a sign of youth and freshness. The authors had also clearly sprayed the pages with some kind of lavender-opium smell, which I found deeply satisfying, and had pressed wildflowers here and there in the books (one of the flowers was poisonous, alas, and caused me to faint and hit my head against the wall; but I refuse to believe the author intended this result). Anyway, they were doing all they could to stand out, the poor souls, surely not realizing the change that had happened at Spurl Editions.

After skimming the two manuscripts and finding them to be fresh and youthful, I tucked them under my arms and took them straight to the board of directors. I presented them to the board: the first, a novel, The Formation of Calcium, by M. S. Coe, which followed a lunatic woman as she abandoned her family and established an inspiring new life for herself in the Americas, all told from her unusual perspective. The second, a short story collection by Michael Jeffrey Lee, describing various drifting characters whose thoughtless optimism in the face of so many metaphors for death (there were rivers, burned-out houses, inhospitable new towns) was bracing in an era of so much negativity. I concluded my presentation to the board by stressing that these authors were living, and this was a once-in-a-century opportunity.

The members of the board of directors were concerned, of course. They could not understand how we could publish two authors with the first initial M. But I was ready for this backlash. I explained that Michael Jeffrey Lee would absolutely not go by M. Jeffrey Lee, or even M. J. Lee, but would maintain his full name. Similarly, I explained that M. S. Coe would not disaggregate her name. So, our readers would not be confused, or at least not overly so.

That seemed to placate the board. But they wanted to know, why these two authors?

They are brilliant, I explained. The works are exceptional. There’s nothing like them in the canon of the dead.

The board members mumbled unhappily amongst each other.

At last one member wanted to know who were the other living contenders.

I shook my head to indicate that these were the only two. This is a true opportunity for us, I said. This is what you hired me to do!

At that point, all eyes turned to St. Drogo, who had sat hunched over himself in the corner, silent this whole time, patting his grotesque pet (that ferret-, rat-, lamb-, dog-like thing). He motioned for me to give him the manuscripts, which I did; I was calm, happy, indifferent to those feelings of anxiety that plague so many of the older generation. And I remained calm, happy, and indifferent for the next thirty-six hours as St. Drogo painstakingly read every page.

Until at last he looked up, put the pages neatly back together, and nodded yes.

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Check out M. S. Coe’s forthcoming novel The Formation of Calcium now, with more information about Michael Jeffrey Lee’s upcoming short story collection coming soon!

Spurl Editions Communiqué No. 3

A forthright account of St. Drogo’s return

Three Hunting Dogs, by Konrad Witz, circa 1440/1445

You asked me to report about the current state of Spurl Editions. I believe you thought to do this because you believed I would have positive things to say, now that St. Drogo is back, and thus you could communicate positive news to the shareholders. You could issue platitudes like, now that St. Drogo is back at the helm, Spurl Editions is looking forward to its best season yet. And Spurl Editions has put its controversies with the interim editor behind it. St. Drogo is making top-notch acquisitions. Etc. Of course I am an honest person and I will only tell you the truth, which is that the St. Drogo who returned is not the same St. Drogo who left. I was St. Drogo’s apprentice for many years before he went into the desert. He abused me on a regular basis and called me the harshest names. Of course he blamed me for the mishap with the copyright page of Thomas Bernhard’s The Cheap-Eaters. (It is by now well-known that there is a glaring omission on the page; the words printed on acid-free paper are nowhere to be seen.) He told me every day that I would never be anything more than an incompetent apprentice because he personally would never recommend me for another job. No matter what I did, he was unhappy. He was a glum, ugly little man. In his letter of resignation he complained about being kept in a cave and forced to eat the strictest diet, but he couldn’t have lived any other way, as everything made him miserable, even the wood carving of a sea-monk that I made and gave him to decorate his area, which he refused to accept because it would be a distraction to him, so he said. Still, I loved him. If it weren’t for him, I would have had no intellectual job at all. I would have been working at the stables or cobbling shoes, not proofreading literary fiction deep into the early morning hours. He took me under his wing and sustained me. He told me to cut off my family and my friends, to never speak to them again, because he was my family and friends now. And he became all of those things to me. I dedicated myself to him and I never regretted it until he returned.

He has a gruesome little animal with him now. I can only describe it as a cross between a ferret, a rat, a lamb, and a dog. It is skinny, jittery, bald in spots, and has an incredible overbite and bloody gums. He thinks that in this awful creature he has found his symbol, just as St. Jerome has his lion and St. Christopher his little child. But a lion is a beautiful animal, and this hideous thing of St. Drogo’s climbs up his arms and perches on his shoulder, licking the inside of his ear and making horrific semi-sexual whimpering sounds. St. Drogo does not correct the thing and in fact takes the creature everywhere with him. He claims that the creature sustained him while he lived in the desert. He says the creature went out every morning and killed some other animal, surely even more disgusting than it, and brought the carcass back to him, wholly untouched, to St. Drogo’s amazement, and that this was how he survived those many days and nights out there. When the cold set in, the creature would go out and find a place to nestle in, then lead him there. When he became thirsty and, hallucinating, went rambling through the sand dunes, the creature would find him an oasis. He never calls the creature by the same name twice, but always refers to it as some fruit or vegetable; my sweet pea, my little banana, blueberry shortstacks; it is all equally nauseating. And of course, with such a distraction circling him at all times, yawning and gnawing its scabs, St. Drogo hardly works. It is as though he is not responsible for a publishing company at all. Instead I do all the work of responding to the increasingly hateful correspondence we receive. I package our books to be shipped to the nearby villages, although our shipping materials are growing low, as St. Drogo has not arranged for them to be replenished. I man the one book stall we have left by the river, which no one visits anymore because they don’t find my conversation appealing. Now I hear rumors that the board of directors would like to expand my role even more. But unless I am finally given a position with the corporation, I want no more responsibilities. This apprenticeship has gone on long enough, and today all I feel toward St. Drogo is the deepest resentment.

Spurl Editions Communiqué No. 2

Mea culpa from the Board of Directors

“Stoned.” An illustration from Fuzz Against Junk by Akbar Del Piombo.

We want to take this opportunity to recognize that our decision-making these last few months has at times strayed from the standard you rightly expect. As members of the board of directors our goal is to increase the valuation of this corporation while marginally enhancing the state of literature (we say marginally because literature is static, like history, neither improving nor worsening, but shifting imperceptibly and incoherently; everything has already been written, and if it has not been written, it has been said, and if it has not been said, it has been thought). It is obvious to us now that we placed too much pressure on Saint Drogo, our former editor, that we did not understand what he was going through, given his yearslong confinement to a stone cell and strict dietary and recreational regimen, and we regret that we did not take the time to find out. Saint Drogo served as perhaps the shrewdest editor this village press has seen, bringing us a study of refection by the preeminent Austrian documentarian Thomas Bernhard. But due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, he felt compelled to resign, and the interim editor who replaced him has made a series of costly decisions whose harm we acknowledge.

It is by now well-known that the interim editor acquired a work of true debauchery that is not fitting for this high-minded press. That is Arthur’s Whims, by Hervé Guibert, translated by Daniel Lupo. His decision was made alone; he consulted no one; and, we are told, he made this decision having read only a thirty-page excerpt that was delivered to him by a sea monk, so he says, while he lay on the beach excessively sunning himself and contemplating the mysteries of the sun (whose rays, he says, control the growth of his yellow-green toenails). The book had never appeared in English before, so he gambled. Thus he did not know there were chapters lustily depicting the podiatrist’s profession or fleeting pornographic scenes, nor of course did he know that the work would deviate so far and in such a grotesque fashion from the usual and respected literary depiction of the saint. Nonetheless this was only the tip of the iceberg.

Our surveillance team informs us that the interim editor urinated on book galleys and had to be physically restrained from doing the same on books en route to be distributed, that he drank and used root intoxicants to such excess that he was unable to proofread although he signed the solemn proofreading acknowledgement (“SPA”), that he submitted hundreds of lewd cover designs which he scribbled himself on the paper provided for him to draft contracts (all of which were immediately rejected and burned), that he kept small misshapen dogs and other animals and assigned to them the highest ranking editorial roles, that he vomited into clear jars that he arranged on the bookcase where our titles once stood (from the darkest to the lightest colored jars), and that in fact he exposed himself during a meeting at which a decision was made with which he disagreed. That decision, of course, was to terminate him.

We hope that our mea culpa will be read not only by our shareholders, readers, and workers, but also by Saint Drogo. We believe he has vanished into the desert to focus on his journey to rectitude. No one has heard from him, not even his youthful surveillance companion who returned to the village alone, and who has since taken a hallowed vow of muteness. Thus perhaps it will be some time before he reads this communiqué. Nonetheless we are hopeful, knowing what an illuminated and illuminating thinker he is, what a hardworking person he is, and refusing to believe that he has left Spurl Editions forever behind.

Printed on acid-free paper.

Spurl Editions Communiqué No. 1

An awful lacuna: Saint Drogo’s letter of resignation

Illustration from Thesaurus thesaurorum, ca. 1775, France

I would like to first make it clear that I had no intention for my tenure as editor-in-chief to be as short as it was. When the townspeople—all corporate shareholders to some degree of Spurl Editions—approached me and asked me to take on this responsibility, I was delighted. As is by now well-known, to protect the townspeople from viewing my hideous appearance, I had moved into a small cell and have been subsisting there on the most rancid barley and the cloudiest water that is provided to me through an opening in the stone wall by a goblin of a man who I am sure only means me harm. Confined to this cold hole, my sole occupation for a decade was studying religious texts, and these texts, by the way, had been seeming more and more hollow to me. By taking on the editorial direction of the town’s publishing house, my day-to-day life would become rich, or so I believed. I was provided pen, paper, and the many manuscripts that had been delivered to the town but had gone unread by a previous editor whom I shall not name. Among these manuscripts I made a sublime discovery: The Cheap-Eaters, a novel by Thomas Bernhard, describing a man who regularly eats lunch and walks through parks. I did not hesitate: I made the acquisition and worked diligently on its production. The handsome volume was soon shipped to towns, villages, and hamlets throughout the southern foggy region.

Yet it was not long after this that the majority shareholder of Spurl Editions, who happens to be a trustee and reports directly to corporate counsel, came to my cell for a meeting. The shareholder held a slim volume that a press in the next town had recently published. I immediately recognized its name and design, but I could not fathom why this book would be a subject for our meeting. The shareholder slipped the book to me through the opening in my cell and asked me to turn to the copyright page. He asked if the page disturbed me, to which I candidly answered no. Then I saw it. Five words, or four, if two words that are hyphenated are to be counted as one word.

Printed on acid-free paper.

“As an editor, your responsibility is the copyright page, correct?”

I nodded, although this gesture was absurd, given that the shareholder could not see me through the stone, and I was not so short that I would be visible through the opening.

“I never thought to add this language. I have to deeply apologize. What does it even mean?”

The shareholder snapped back, “That’s neither here nor there.”

I remained silent for some time, hoping that my apology would resonate with this important person who held so much of my life in his hands. I did not want to return to a life of studying religious texts. It was clear that I had made a grave error, and that the shareholders would soon be meeting to discuss my fate; corporate counsel was likely aware of the error, too.

“We will need to consider this further,” he said. “The workers have been instructed to cease production until this is corrected. Goodbye.”

I looked at the copyright page again. Printed on acid-free paper. My head swam; I wanted to vomit. My thoughts began to spin out. Would this painful absence hurt readership? This awful lacuna. Surely there was something superior about acid-free paper compared to acidic paper. What kind of person would go from stall to stall, picking up and comparing books, and ultimately choose the book printed on acidic paper and not the one printed on acid-free paper? Only a madman, only a person who wanted to flout convention and stain his fingers with acid. As an editor I did not want this kind of reader. The shareholders of Spurl Editions did not either. When I took on this role, I envisioned clean, healthy readers, their hands spick-and-span, their minds ready for wholesome reflection. Not filthy greedy fingers whose skin was peeling off.

The book, The Cheap-Eaters, entered my mind again. Obviously I had failed it. The man who ate economical lunches and walked through various parks would be misunderstood now. I knew this. It had reached the wrong readers. They would ascribe a nasty quality to it: call a logically ordered book “obsessive.” Sympathize with insignificant minor characters. This was bad enough, but on top of this misery was the fact that my failure would allow the other towns’ presses to flourish. This was a year when my town needed every bit of help. Our doctor had been fatally mauled by a beast from the mountains, and the townspeople were falling ill with strange diseases, so that they could not work in the same diligent spirit as in years past. In trying to make our situation better, I had made it worse.

Well, there was no choice then. I did not want to wait in agony for the shareholders to meet, for corporate counsel to explain to them what I had done wrong. For them to vote.

I would rather step aside. It has been a humbling and gratifying experience to be editor-in-chief of Spurl Editions from April 1183 to August 1184. If there is one positive thing that I can express about these recent events, it is that they have brought me closer to God. No longer do I dread my existence. I am a “cheap-eater” too. I embrace eating what the goblin serves me through the wall, whatever it is. It is a sign of the goblin’s love for me. I embrace my religious study, for it keeps my fingers clean. My failure will not define me.

I will end by expressing my sincere apologies to all who were affected.

Saint Drogo

Interview with John Brian King (Photography)

Interview with John Brian King
In conversation with Gabriel H. Sanchez
From .jpg, a newsletter by Buzzfeed News

Riviera: Photographs of Palm Springs by John Brian King

$30.00

Softcover, 112 pages (99 color photographs), 21 cm x 19 cm. ISBN: 9781943679119.

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Excerpt from Riviera (Photography)

Excerpt from “Riviera”
by John Brian King

Riviera: Photographs of Palm Springs by John Brian King

$30.00

Softcover, 112 pages (99 color photographs), 21 cm x 19 cm. ISBN: 9781943679119.

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Among the [Eutropheon] restaurant’s most dedicated patrons, conversation likely turned to musings about leaving the city behind for good. The Richters knew of a certain German vegetarian hermit living about 100 miles to the east, in a hut near Palm Springs. [William] Pester must have embodied a shining ideal, a vision of what was possible should city dwellers choose to fully immerse themselves in the natural life.

The sparsely populated desert appealed to the Nature Boys, who often headed out to the arid mountains and their hidden canyons. Tahquitz Canyon was a preferred oasis, a refuge from the heat where a rocky trail led to the rarest of sights: a thin waterfall rushing over massive gray boulders into a pool. It was an ideal place to camp, or even live for several months. [Gypsy] Boots later recalled a conversation there with [eden] ahbez as they took in the calming beauty of the canyon, where red-tailed hawks carved into the clear sky. “Someday there will be a million beards,” ahbez predicted. It took nearly twenty years, but he was right.

“Hermits in the Canyons,” from Sun Seekers: The Cure of California, by Lyra Kilston.

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Riviera documents the eerie fragments of existence left behind in one city. John Brian King photographed Riviera from 2016 to 2018 in Palm Springs, California, and its surroundings; a full-time resident at the time, he used a cheap instant film camera to give his photographs a unique, washed-out, hazy aesthetic. King depicts a city that is frozen in a visually arresting state of decline, cataloguing the totems of an absurd civilization. “I wanted to photograph the Palm Springs that I lived in and interacted with every single day,” King writes, “the beautiful, the mundane, the ugly, the hot desolate nature of Coachella Valley. I wasn’t interested in the tourism-board view of Palm Springs, of martinis by the swimming pool and candy-colored, Instagram-ready desert art installations. I was interested in the debris – architectural and natural – left behind by generations of people who lived in or visited Palm Springs to escape, to exist, to die.”

John Brian King is a photographer, filmmaker, designer, and writer. His two previous photography books — LAX: Photographs of Los Angeles, 1980-84 and Nude Reagan — were also published by Spurl Editions. His photography has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, Slate, Buzzfeed, Lenscratch, Amadeus, Flavorwire, AnOther, WeHeart, L'Œil de la Photographie, Impose, KCET’s Artbound, and Yet Magazine.

Excerpt from In the Midst of Things (Photograph)

Excerpt from “In the Midst of things”
by Sarah Hiatt

In the Midst of Things by Sarah Hiatt

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Paperback, 58 pages. ISBN: 9781943679096.

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Photographer Sarah Hiatt captures a side of adolescence that we only murkily remember: a feeling of weariness with the present moment, terror of the future, the awkwardness of being in between. Over the course of six years, Hiatt photographed her younger niece and nephews around their home as they grew up in the small town of Joplin, Missouri, for her series In the Midst of Things. The images serve as a coming-of-age story, a visual narrative created through their personal experiences and shaped by the photographer’s struggles with guilt, loss, and loneliness. As their aunt, Hiatt was able to depict the formation of memories and the sad passage of time in a uniquely intimate way.

Hiatt writes, “The photographs of my niece and nephews reflect the formation of identity, and the relationship the children have to one another, to their environment, to their bodies, and to me. They live in a rural, predominantly white area of the Ozarks. In this series, they are often seen in quiet spaces, isolated and surrounded by darkness. Their internal lives emerge through subtle gesture and expression. Their home seems a safe space as identities and relationships are built and nurtured within a domestic, womb-like environment. Children often physically and emotionally mature beyond those boundaries. Time extends while pushing us forward, upward, and out.”

As a native of the Ozarks, Hiatt brings a nuanced and honest perspective on rural America that is so often lacking in contemporary photography. In the stillness of Hiatt’s images, becoming an adult means growing out of, or growing into, one’s family, religion, society, gender role, and place. Hiatt’s photographs ask: Do we inevitably accept this place, these obligations, this repetition? Do we reject these constraints? Would anyone know the difference?

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Sarah Hiatt earned her BFA from Missouri State University, and her MFA from Columbia College Chicago. Hiatt currently resides in Chicago, Illinois.

Carl Van Vechten, William Seabrook, and Marjorie Worthington

William Seabrook and Marjorie Worthington
Portraits by Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964)

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Usually we took them in our stride, offering an apéritif, lunch, or dinner, and sometimes a trip in one of the little boats across the harbor to Les Sablettes. But when Carl Van Vechten and his vivacious wife, Fania, arrived, they expected more than that. At least, Carl did. For all his sophistication there was a streak of naïveté in Carlo that was perhaps part of his charm. 

We took him and Fania to Charley’s, where we enjoyed our dinner, and then Carl announced that he wanted to visit a Toulon brothel. I am quite sure he would never have asked to visit one in New York or any other American city, but because he was in France and because Marseilles had a certain reputation and Toulon, actually, was not far from Marseilles, he expected Toulon to be filled with houses of ill fame, all of them very exciting and special. 

The truth was, Willie and I were the last people to act as cicerones in the area of commercialized vice. When Willie wanted excitement he had his own ways of creating it, and the synthetic stuff likely to be found in brothels would have bored him to death. 

However, since all our friends expected us to show them the sights, we walked with the Van Vechtens to a part of the town that was almost as unfamiliar to us as it was to them. As I remember it, there was a row of houses over near one of the gates in what remained of the wall that had surrounded Toulon in medieval times. Over each house, on the glass transom, was written in elaborate lettering, a name: Adele, Nanette, Mignon, etc. And over the name was a naked light bulb, painted red. 

We went along the row and came back to the first one, Adele’s house, because it was the largest and therefore promised the most elaborate entertainment. We rang a bell and the door was opened for us after a while by a rather drab female whom we took to be a servant. She led us into a large square room, and to a wooden table along a wall. She took our order for drinks, and disappeared. 

We looked around. Anything less like a house of joy would have been hard to find. The floor and walls were bare. In a corner was an upright piano and a bench but no piano player. In fact, a lugubrious silence filled the room, and we waited for our drinks with the hope they would brighten things up, at least for us. They took a long time coming and when they arrived were served by a short squat little man with a handlebar mustache, wearing sloppy trousers and carpet slippers. 

Carlo asked him where everyone was and he shrugged his shoulders. Adele was not working tonight, he said, and her regular customers had the delicacy to stay away. It appeared that Adele’s father had just died, and the house was in mourning. 

However, he added, as we started to leave, there was one girl on duty, “une brave jeune fille,” and he would send her to us immediately. In the meantime, since the “girls” were permitted to drink only champagne, would we not like to order a bottle? Of the very best? It was obvious that he disapproved of our marc, the local eau de vie, which Willie had ordered for all of us in a vain effort to show we were not tourists. The French were always great sticklers for form, and in the circumstances champagne was the proper thing to drink, even the sweet, sickening stuff he opened for us with a pop and a flourish. It didn’t make us feel any gayer. 

Pretty soon a young woman entered the room and came up to our table. She was wearing a plain dark skirt and blouse and she looked vaguely familiar. It was the little slattern who had opened the door for us, only now her dark hair was brushed and she looked cleaner. She sat down with us and accepted a glass of wine. Then she looked at us expectantly. 

Willie spoke to the girl, using the patois of the region, and Carlo listened as if he understood, and I grew very nervous. I looked at Fania and she looked at me and we didn’t need words in any language to understand each other. We made an excuse and asked the girl to show us where the powder room was, just as though we were at “21” or the Colony, and if the girl looked puzzled it was only for a moment. She caught on quickly enough that we wanted to talk to her. 

When we got out of sight, Fania took a handful of francs from her bag and I found fifty of my own to add to them. “Say no to the Messieurs,” I managed to say. She understood, parfaitement, and thanked us. After all, with a death in the family . . . you understand . . . and the funeral tomorrow . . . one didn’t feel exactly like . . . It was understood. And she thanked us. 

Carlo and Willie were as relieved as we were to be out on the street again. The hour was late, and the Van Vechtens were catching a train for Italy early in the morning. We took them back to the Grand Hotel, still good friends in spite of the fact that we, as well as Toulon, had failed to live up to our reputation.

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Excerpt from The Big Love

FROM THE BIG LOVE

BY MRS. FLORENCE AADLAND

I know the world will always be full of chattering busybodies. I suppose I should be used to them by now, but I know I never will. 

Ever since Beverly was catapulted into world publicity, she and I have been besieged by busybodies. After all the trouble and tragedy occurred, after Errol died and, later, that lovesick boy shot himself, Beverly and I were deluged by do-gooders and Bible-pounders. “Let’s have this girl baptized!” they cried. “Let’s bring this lost lamb into the church!”

As far as I’m concerned, those do-gooder busybodies can drop dead. And that’s what I told them when they came crying around at us.

The trouble with busybodies is that they never bother to examine the facts. If they had ever bothered to look into Beverly’s background, they would have discovered that she went to Sunday School and church for years, that she learned about God like all good little children do, and that she could recite her favorite Bible stories backward and frontward. 

Even while I was studying with the Rosicrucians, I kept up with the Episcopal Church. I saw to it that Beverly was christened and later, when she was three, she won her first beauty contest at Sunday School. Beverly went as Bette Davis and, believe me, even though she was just a toddler she was Bette Davis. She wore one of my long skirts, a big brimmed hat, and trailed a hanky from her bent wrist. She flashed her big eyes all over the place and won in a breeze. 

When Beverly was still quite small she was noticed one day by Jean Self at a Hermosa Beach cleaning shop. Jean, who lived in nearby Redondo Beach, had guided the careers of many famous children and she was so taken by Beverly that she encouraged me to enroll her in the Screen Children’s Guild. 

From that time on Beverly had many, many opportunities. She posed for magazine pictures. She modeled children’s clothes. She sang and danced at club entertainments and at soldiers’ and veterans’ camps and posts. She was chosen mascot for the Hermosa Beach Aquaplane Race Association. She cut the ceremonial tape when ground was broken for a $200,000 beach aquarium. Her photograph appeared on the cover of Collier’s magazine.

By the time she was five, her hair was a golden blonde, very long and naturally curly. One day when we were returning home on a bus from Los Angeles she got into a winking contest with a bunch of sailors who were sitting ahead of us. They kept turning around, laughing loudly at the cute way she winked back.

I gave her a warning that day in no uncertain terms. “That’s all right now, dear,” I told her, “but in about ten years you better be careful because that’s when they’ll take you up on it!”

When she was five and a half she made her first movie, a commercial film in Technicolor called The Story of Nylon. She wore a special nylon dress and had a featured role in a colorful Easter egg hunt. She was paid six hundred dollars for four days’ work.

Not long after that she fell accidentally in the bathroom and struck the back of her head extremely hard. I became very worried and took her to a specialist for X-rays. I was relieved and happy when the films showed that she had not injured herself seriously.

The doctor was a very learned man, an authority on eastern religions who had lectured all over the world and written many books. He was absolutely fascinated by Beverly. He held her hands the way that Rosicrucian lady had done several years before and then he glanced at me.

“Mrs. Aadland,” he said very seriously, “wherever did you get this little girl? She is something very special. I can tell without ever having met her before that she has a great deal of talent.”

“Yes,” I said, “she has been singing and dancing since before she was a year-and-a-half old.”

Then the doctor sat down in his chair and did a very strange thing. He closed his eyes and passed his hand back and forth just above Beverly’s bright blonde curls.

“I think I see sort of a halo on this child,” he said.

His words absolutely astounded me – because one night a few years before, I’d thought I’d seen the same thing. I had come into her room where she was sleeping and there was a wonderful play of light upon her face and head. I suppose it was really just the light from the living room streaming in through the partly-closed door behind me, but it affected me very much.

“Be very careful of this child,” the doctor warned me, half seriously. “She is more precious than even you realize. Protect her and guard her.”

I was given a similar warning about a year later by the head of one of the advertising agencies Beverly modeled for. He was very fussy about his large modern office and never let any of the young children who modeled for him touch any of the objects on his desk. 

He noticed Beverly playing with a letter-holder made in the shape of a dog and he shook his head and sighed.

“Florence,” he said, “I never allow any of the kids to play around my desk, but your child is so different I just haven’t the heart to tell her to stop.”

He shook his head again very slowly and solemnly.

“I’ve seen hundreds of little girls,” he said. “Perhaps thousands, but I’ve seen very few like your child. And I hate to tell you this, Florence, but I think this girl is going to cause you an awful lot of heartbreak.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I think men will be terribly affected by this girl,” he said. “I think men are going to kill over this girl. I have the feeling in my heart that she has the scent of the musk on her.”

I knew what he meant. It wasn’t the first time I had run into that phrase. I had read it in the Bible. I knew that women who had the scent of the musk were so desirable to men that in ancient times they had been kept hidden away in secret rooms. When it was necessary for them to be outdoors, they were concealed by veils and bulky clothing.

“Be very careful with your daughter,” he went on to warn me, echoing the doctor’s exact words. “You must be very careful to protect her from herself.”

Both men proved more terribly right than I ever could guess.

---

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THE STRANGE WORLD OF WILLIE SEABROOK

COMING IN FALL 2017:
MARJORIE WORTHINGTON’s Memoir

This is the somber, quietly stunning account of American author Marjorie Worthington’s life and relationship with William Seabrook. 

A bestselling writer on the exotic and the occult, Seabrook was an extraordinary figure from the 1920s to the 1940s who traveled widely and introduced voodoo and the concept of the “zombie” to Americans in his book The Magic Island. 

In 1966, years after his death from suicide, Worthington, a novelist and Seabrook’s second wife, cast her eye on their years living in France as lost-generation expatriates; their time traveling in the Sahara desert (where Seabrook researched his book The White Monk of Timbuctoo); their friendships with Aldous Huxley, Gertrude Stein, and Michel Leiris; and the gradual erosion of their relationship. 

Worthington was with Seabrook in France and later New York when his life became consumed by alcohol, and he took the drastic step of committing himself to a mental institution for a cure; though he wrote about the institution in his book Asylum, he remained an alcoholic. He was also fixated by sadistic games he played with women, which he and the surrealist Man Ray photographed, and which he later viewed as a way to initiate altered psychological states through pain.

The Strange World of Willie Seabrook is an intimate look at the complicated, torturous relationship of two writers. Seabrook was a sadist, yet to Worthington he was also enthralling; he was an alcoholic, but she believed she could protect him. Even after he had hurt her emotionally, she stayed near him. In brilliantly depicted moments of folie à deux, we watch Worthington join Seabrook in his decline, and witness the shared claustrophobic, psychological breakdown that ensues.

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Thank you to all of the wonderful, sensational artists who have taken part in PORTRAITS OF SPURL, and who are are not ashamed to read and sell our misfit books!

Two Reviews of Michel Leiris

Two Reviews of Nights as Day, Days as Night
By Michel Leiris

In her article titled “Nocturnal Disturbances” in Diabolique Magazine, Samm Deighan gave Nights as Day, Days as Night a fascinating (rave!) review. 

A book that largely resists classification, this is a combination of surrealist autobiography (literally, in the sense that is was written by a leading Surrealist and figuratively in the sense that it is predictably and wonderful surreal), prose poem (which is how translator Richard Sieburth refers to it), and dream journal. Anyone who has a fascination with the Surrealists or 20th century Paris will find much to love and the work’s appealing strangeness certainly lingers in the memory — I can’t stop thinking about it.

Spurl’s new volume captures the poetry, absurdity, and beauty of Leiris’s book thanks to a translation from Richard Sieburth. A comparative literature professor at New York University, Sieburth specializes in writing about and translating German and French literature; perhaps I’m biased, because he has translated a number of some of my favorite authors, from Walter Benjamin and Georg Büchner to Henri Michaux, as well as Nerval, and I suspect his knowledge of the latter assisted him here. Regardless, he does Leiris proud.

And in “The Pepys of Sleep” (in Strange Flowers), Berlin-based writer/translator James Conway talks about dreams and literature; Michel Leiris, Raymond Roussel, and André Breton; and the real-life dream of an Italian game show. A highly recommended read.

As language rests from its customary labours, Leiris takes words apart, comparing them, rearranging them, rousing the associative logic slumbering in their syllables.

You can also read an excerpt from Nights as Day, Days as Night online at The Brooklyn Rail. 

Nights as Day, Days as Night

Nights as Day, Days as Night is a chronicle of Michel Leiris's dreams. But it is also an exceptional autobiography, a distorted vision of twentieth-century France, a surrealist collage, a collection of prose poems. Translated from the French by Richard Sieburth, with a foreword by Maurice Blanchot. An “important literary document and contemporary pleasure” — Lydia Davis

Amsterdam, 1900 (Essay)

Amsterdam, 1900: Guided by Monsieur de Bougrelon

By Sander Bink

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This essay first appeared in Dutch at rond1900.nl.

In a decadent villa in Amsterdam North, on our crowded desk at the rond1900 offices, for a while a nice little book was waiting for us to review: Monsieur de Bougrelon by Jean Lorrain, for the first time in English translation. You, the well-read Decadent, of course already know of this gem of a novella, which was first published in 1897 and is set in fin-de-siècle Amsterdam. If you are a good Decadent you have read it in the original French in a first or early edition, or otherwise you might have read it in the 1978 Dutch translation Denkbeeldige genietingen (Imaginary Pleasures). Although this translation by Jeanne Holierhoek is, as far as we can judge, quite good, it was still made some forty years ago and a new translator might do it just a little differently today, thus keeping the text alive for a new generation of readers. Unfortunately in our small country it seems to be quite uncommon to translate classic French Decadent writers, let alone translate one of their texts anew. Dutch literary publishers seem to have very little interest in the French Decadents in general, despite their lasting modernity and literary value.

So we recommend that you buy this recent edition by the delightful new independent publisher Spurl, to keep your Lorrain collection up to date but also because it is a good-looking book and the modern translation keeps the text fresh and sparkling. Their site also links to the justly unanimous rave reviews of Bougrelon, which contains a detailed afterword by the translator Eva Richter.

And since quite useless details are our specialty here at rond1900, we wish to add something to that already-quite-interesting afterword. As you might know, Lorrain is one of our favorite writers, whom we wrote about earlier. But the reason for this review’s delay is that we wanted to tell you all about Lorrain’s stay in Amsterdam and to what extent he fictionalized this experience in his novella. That Lorrain visited Amsterdam in 1896, together with Octave Uzanne, is a fact, but we would like to know in which hotel he stayed, with whom he had contact, which places he visited exactly. Did he, for example, visit our decadent Amsterdam North? In Bougrelon the North Holland Canal is mentioned, as well as Monnikendam, and did Lorrain himself visit the nowadays-very-hip Tolhuistuin, which is mentioned in Chapter Six? That would be a nice literary coincidence, as about the same time Gerard van Hulzen immortalized this location.

That Lorrain must have at least had some Dutch connections we hope to have shown in a previous article about Wilde’s favorite painter Leonard Sarluis for The Oscholars (no direct link available). Lorrain was part of a Dutch-French social circle that must have included Alfred Jarry, Carel de Nerée, Antoon van Welie, Louis Couperus, and Sarluis. Unfortunately we have not found any documents or letters that could have shed more light on Lorrain’s stay in Amsterdam and his possible (literary) connections there. Some of his stories were translated for the avant-garde periodical De Kroniek, so he was possibly in touch with main editor P. L. Tak.

But we did find, thanks to the digitized historical newspapers, a very curious case of the reception of Jean Lorrain in the Netherlands. In or around 1900, Van Holkema and Warendorf published an Illustrated Guide to Amsterdam and Environs. Its anonymous author appears to have been a great fan of Monsieur de Bougrelon but deems it necessary to introduce the work to his readers, as apparently it was not that well-known.

This guidebook, nowadays a rare book itself, is one of the earliest Dutch mentions of Lorrain’s masterpiece. Maybe even the very first, but regardless it is the most extensive mention.

In Chapter Nine the author takes the liberty of borrowing Lorrain’s character to guide the reader to some of Amsterdam’s hot spots, like Kalverstraat and Buffa the art dealer’s gallery. It makes for some interesting and amusing reading. For your reading pleasure, we here translate and quote the first part of that chapter. The entire book can be read (in Dutch) here.

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Illustrated Guide to Amsterdam and Environs

Chapter Nine

Walks through Amsterdam
Guided by Monsieur de Bougrelon.

Do you happen to know the hero of the amusing little book that Jean Lorrain wrote about Amsterdam and which bears its hero’s name as the title, Monsieur de Bougrelon?

As I look at you, rows of national tourists seeking joy as well as comfort, who each year set out to see the world’s eighth wonder, which is to be found in the world’s ninth – our great capital, right? – and if I would browse through your city bags, purses, suitcases, florid valises, travel baskets, German baskets, coffrets, sacks, pompadours, satchels, and bahuts with the curiosity of a landlady looking through the belongings of a new tenant who is already a month behind on the rent, then I would probably find a copy of Warendorf’s Travel Library, which you have been reading as compensation for the monotony of the journey, or an illustrated magazine like Die Woche, but I won’t even find mention of Monsieur de Bougrelon’s name in the newspaper that is wrapped around your “sandwich for the road,” a sandwich that is a symbol of the tenderness of a mother, sister, wife or girl, but which is nevertheless doomed to never reach its destination.

The “sandwich for the road” has become like the Chinese man’s prayer, which keeps existing but has no more meaning. Like the tragic remains of ancient times, of carriages and track boats, it has survived, a gray old man with a wrinkled face, a stranger amid modern comfort and modern luxury. The “E pluribus unum” of each station has become an epitaph for that “sandwich for the road,” as Amsterdam offers so many opportunities for one to refresh oneself well and at little expense that you are right to offer it to the boy who sells you The Nieuwe Rotterdamsche, Weekblad, Telegraaf, and Handelsblad, thus stopping his vocal trumpet. You are right to rush to a restaurant as soon as you arrive. Well, no, you are not right: why would you want to do that without our great friend, Monsieur de Bougrelon?

Look at him standing there in his long fitted frock coat, a large top hat bought at Meeuwsen’s Hat Shop rather crooked on his head, a truncheon-like walking stick in his hand, a pretty scarf tied around the most gracious of collars, a pair of Dent’s gloves from Mr. Sinemus’s store on Leidsestraat, and with a face you swear you have seen someplace before.

He already took hold of us, already joined us, already introduced himself, already pointed out the way around the tunnels of the Central Station to us, which is built too high, as compared to the museum, which is built too low.

Monsieur de Bougrelon, placing his walking stick with force into the ground that comes from the seas, leads the way to the Hotel Van Gelder on Damrak. This is quite a suitable place for you to stay, as your fellow Dutchmen possess three characteristics that make them excellent for hotels: they are solid, simple, and tidy. Look here, does not everything shine brightly? Look at this glassware, washed the way it should be, with a cold bath afterward, to get the pure lucidity that reminds one of jewelry. Ah, decency is the sister of tidiness! Really, you could swipe a finger underneath the cabinet and the bed and then swipe it on the white sheets without sullying them.

Rising already, Bougrelon glances at a large collection of bottles of “Kaiserbrunnen,” the most excellent of mineral waters, which had just arrived at the hotel again, and then you are obliged to follow him down Damrak, across Dam Square to Kalverstraat while he unfortunately only verbally burns down the new Stock Exchange and lavishes praise on the Royal Palace, whose silvery chimes ring out above the head of the lonely virgin who, he thinks, has done wisely by turning her back to all the ugliness that is behind her.

“The aorta of the city,” he says, “this Kalverstraat, which is only narrow so that no modern electrical tram shall disfigure it with its rows of gallows, whereupon beauty has been hung by executioners. We do not need a tram in this street. One walks through it like one walks through a beautiful and interesting book, and it is over before you realize it.”

Monsieur de Bougrelon suddenly stops in front of one of the big plate-glass windows of a stately house with a high façade.

“Beauty originates in the south. Here you are standing in front of the art trader Buffa’s gallery, one of the great attractions of your capital. The De Medicis brought the fine arts from Italy into my beloved France. But the Italians traveled farther north and it is the Lurascos, the Cossas, the Grisantis, the Boggias, the Valciollas, and the Buffas who brought art to your ancestors at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which was badly deteriorated by then. The Buffa brothers originally traveled to fun fairs with their etchings. The Venice of the North appealed to them and they settled here, on the Weesper Square, right near the Amstel. The sons expanded their father’s business and soon Buffa and Sons was of eminent importance in Amsterdam.

“In 1836 the firm came into the hands of another son of the land of Dante and Petrarch, Mr. Caramelli, and today Mr. J. Slagmulder and Mr. P. J. Zúrcher are the owners of this booming art gallery, built across three houses on Kalverstraat.

“But you need not stand outside merely looking at the windows displays, although there is plenty of beauty to find there already. The rooms inside are free for anyone to enter and give an overview of the most beautiful and best Dutch painters, old and young, and more; beside the Israelsen, Marissen, Mesdags, Voermans, Witsens, and Mauves, you will see Daubignys, Montecellis, Daumiers, Henners, Ziems, Decamps, Millets.

“Quite often, when my old heart longs for the art-loving shores of the Seine, in whose wide stream the Louvre is reflected, I wander in front of this sanctuary of the arts and never do I leave unconsoled.”

(pp. 143-146)

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Sander Bink is a Dutch scholar on fin-de-siècle art and literature, specializing in Decadence and Symbolism. He is the main contributor to rond1900.nl. He is currently working on a full biography of the Dutch Symbolist/Decadent artist Carel de Nerée (1880-1909).

To read more by Sander Bink, check out his articles on Jean Lorrain, Gerard Van Hulzen, and Jean Lorrain in the Netherlands in Dutch, as well as his piece on Carel de Nerée and Oscar Wilde in English.

French Writers We Love (Art by Félix Vallotton)

Thank you for making 2016 a very decadent year for us!

We released Jean Lorrain’s fever dream of a novella, Monsieur de Bougrelon
“A singular and intoxicating experience” – James Conway
Barbara Payton’s absurdist, seedy memoir I Am Not Ashamed
“A dime store (in the best sense of the term) Notes from Underground – the bellowing of the underground woman” – Kim Morgan
And John Brian King’s arresting second photography collection Nude Reagan
“Both a grotesque imposition and an ugly seduction” – Moze Halperin

And in March 2017, we will publish a brilliant work by French God-of-letters Michel Leiris:
Nights as Day, Days as Night
Translated by Richard Sieburth, with a foreword by Maurice Blanchot

See you in 2017!

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Authors pictured from left to right, top to bottom: Comte de Lautréamont, Alfred Jarry, Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Félix Féneon; Jean Lorrain (the man himself), Joris-Karl Huysmans, Rachilde, Jules and Edmond de Goncourt; Pierre Louÿs, Stendhal, Honoré de Balzac, artist Félix Vallotton. – Illustrations by Félix Vallotton (1865–1925). 

A Dandy in Aspic: Review of “Monsieur de Bougrelon”

Contemporary caricature of Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly by “L’Héritier” (Romain Thomas)

Head on over to STRANGE FLOWERS for James J. Conway’s remarkable writing on the most “eccentric, extravagant and extraordinary” personalities of the last 200 years. One of these extravagant dandies is Jean Lorrain, author of Monsieur de Bougrelon. Conway has written about Lorrain before, and his review of Spurl’s forthcoming translation is both insightful and entertaining:

But as his siècle hastened to its fin, Lorrain wasn’t going to cede the floor before offering a minor (and perhaps not even that minor) masterpiece: Monsieur de Bougrelon.

Monsieur de Bougrelon is the original dandy in aspic. Lorrain’s book is an archive that arrests life at its moment of greatest beauty, preserved in vitrines, suspended in solutions, arrayed in filigree caskets like saintly femurs and the many foreskins of Christ.

It is a reliquary, in other words, and this is precisely the term that the astute Rachilde, loyal companion to Lorrain and fellow adherent of Barbey d’Aurevilly, applied to Monsieur de Bougrelon. The Decadent’s very vocabulary is a collection of lexical curios, recherché jewels here lovingly transferred to an English setting.

It’s a singular and intoxicating experience that ends all too soon. When the ‘old puppet’ departs the stage, you may well elect, as I did, to leaf straight back to the Café Manchester and wait for his silhouette to fill the doorway once more.

And of course we love this sentiment about our books: “These prose works come with the thick black frame of a cigarette health warning or Sicilian funeral notice.

“Caveat lector.”

Monsieur de Bougrelon by Jean Lorrain

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Gifts from Spurl Editions

Get excited, because now you can show the world how refined your taste is in literature while looking stunning at the same time! Our store features a screen-printed tote bag so that you can carry your books to the French château you live in with panache, and an I AM NOT ASHAMED t-shirt that will quickly take over as your one true vestiary love.

Spurl Tote Bag

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This tote bag from Spurl Editions features a quote from Jean Lorrain’s Monsieur de Bougrelon on one side, and the Spurl logo on the other side. It was screen-printed locally by Windmill City Screen Printing. Carry this bag and announce to the world that you are a DECADENT MARVEL.

I am an idea in an era that has no more of them.

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A Vertiginous Decline: Minor Literature[s] Reviews “I Am Not Ashamed”

Thom Cuell wrote a phenomenal review of Barbara Payton’s I Am Not Ashamed in Minor Literature[s] that is sure to get you excited about this unique autobiography. He emphasizes the way that Payton talks about sexuality and subversiveness in Hollywood:

The idea that female sexuality is transgressive and deserving of punishment is a long established trope of Hollywood film-making, satirised by Wes Craven in Scream (1996) which codified the unwritten law, ‘you may not survive the movie if you have sex’. For Payton, this fictional conceit became a reality: ‘I had a body when I was a young kid that raised temperatures wherever I went. Today I have three long knife wounds on my solid frame’. No stunt doubles or prosthetics here, the wounds are written on her body.

She learned early that her body was a saleable asset, and this coloured her view of relationships. It is no surprise that she uses the language of economics to describe her love life: ‘I sold, they bought, and for years the demand was way out ahead of the supply’. At first, this exchange was transacted on an unofficial basis, with her affections bought by extravagant gifts or favours. Later, as her erotic capital began to decline, the arrangement became more formalised: ‘It’s funny how supply and demand, sex appeal and talent regulate a girl’s price. I found out soon enough that my price was a hundred dollars and not a cent more’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, her most treasured relationship did not involve sex: ‘I once loved a man who was impotent and I was faithful to him. He left me after a while saying it was unfair to me. But it wasn’t and I would have loved him for the rest of my life’.

Cuell also remarks upon Barbara Payton’s wretched end, and her take on her own decline:

Payton quotes ‘a kind of saying among the hip set in Hollywood that if the pressures don’t get you the habits will’. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the pressures and the habits haven’t changed too much in the fifty-odd years since she wrote I Am Not Ashamed. She wasn’t the first starlet to come to a disreputable end, and there have been more since (although few suffered quite such a vertiginous decline in fortunes). Ultimately, there’s a lot to be said for the lack of regret or hypocritical self-flagellation which normally characterises the Hollywood exile’s memoir. And at least she doesn’t try vaginal steaming.

Spurl Editions now distributed by SPD!

We are thrilled to announce that we are now distributed by Small Press Distribution! So, dear booksellers and bookstores, we would love for you to order our books here.

And, dear readers, nothing has changed for you: you can order our books on our website (use the promo code SPURL for 10% off your order and free shipping) and on Amazon. . . but you might see our titles at a bookstore in the future, and if you do, take a pic! We will positively swoon!