THE BRITISH THREAD

If Smorgie has finished 120 days of Sodom, this could keep the thread enraptured for quite a time....a bit like Scheherezade.

(note to self- find out how to spell that word)- anyway the Arabian Nights; although there were 1001 of them, I bet Smorgies were more interesting.

I'll provide a brief rundown on de Sade's Justine later when I have more time. Durell's was only about a teeny-weeny bit of incest wasn't it. Tropic of Cancer fired him up. And me.

I have only read a couple of Dickens books. (Not PP).

He has had a significant effect on English usage possibly only second to Shakespeare but I found him more journalist that artist. He certainly had a good grasp on London life but his characters, whilst memorable and sympathetic, are really fantastic and extravagant caricatures which is probably why they are memorable. Who can forget Scrooge?

De Sade is on a whole other level. Swinburne said that one day a statue of de Sade would be erected in every city on the earth. Whether it would be to worship or to throw rotting fruit at it he didn't make clear.

I've watched Pasolini's "Salo - 120 days of Sodom" (1975) which ranks among the most disturbing films I've had the opportunity to see.

Even "Ai no corrida", the Japanese classic with significant sexually-generated horrific scenes, is nothing in comparison with this film.

What was it about the early '70s that made them so bleak? Oil prices, the come-down from the hopes of the hippies, the demise of the "free love" communes etc.? Too many acid flash-backs?

I was born in 1971 so far too young to know from personal experience. Of course, that must have made my immediate family's life a tragedy...

Not read ANY Dickens - although I did try to read Hard Times...

x

How the hell can you call yourself English, smorgs, and not have read any Dickens?

The meat incident in Oliver Twist was one of literature's classic comedic moments.

meat

I've seen all the fims though, gusset...

(and the T.V. productions)

My favourite?

Well seeing as if you asked...

Great Expectations.

x

But it might not be as funny without the familiarity with the characters and the actions leading up to the incident.

Anybody seen Quills?

I thought it was brilliant.

x

To whom it may concern.


The original Les 120 Journees de Sodome was written in 37 evening sessions of 3 hours in 1785 in the Bastille on both sides of a roll of paper 13 yards by 5 inches in microscopic handwriting. That was so it could be hidden in de Sade's cell.

It still exists. (250,000 words).

When de Sade was removed from the Bastille to an asylum, they say he started the revolution going before they moved him, the manuscript vanished and re-appeared 120 years later in the 1890s published by one Dr Juan Bloch, which probably wasn't his real name.

A corrected edition came out in the late 1930s and started an industry going which has resulted in smorgsie reading a version of some of it, telling us about it and me writing this as well as you reading it.

It is considered a genuine masterpiece of literature and has served as a jumping off point for a range of experts in a number of fields.

The main part consists of a description of every form of sexual perversion to the number 600.

De Sade liked numerical symmetry which is itself a perversion similar to stepping on the joints in paving flags or seeing 100 at cricket in a magical light. Or, dare I say, the 3000th post.

This numerical rounding up was easy to achieve by simply allowing bestiality to consist of two perversions or one and extending the range of farmyard animals to arrive at his chosen number.

Had he seen a big zoo he could have made it 6000. But there are limits to a writer's time and patience. And ingenuity.

The book is history's first "psychopathia sexualis". Ovid was somewhat bourgeois and Rabelais too comical. It is thus a scientific document of the first order. On subject as well as method.

smorgsie is to be complimented on improving her scientific education in this way.

Kraft Ebbing ploughed exactly the same furrows but he used polysyllabic words designed to send all but the most erudite or determined to sleep.

Henry Miller used ordinary words as de Sade did but he never really escaped from Mumsi's apron strings. A midget was his limit. And one would hardly need to see a priest over Confessions of a Window Cleaner, Fanny Hill or the Sunday Sport.

Some versions have been messed about with but the original concerns the stories of 4 elderly women (A Boccacio treatment) complete with their life histories.

They recounted the perversions at the rate of 5 per night during a 4 month long orgy to 4 totally debauched war profiteers, their wives and a "harem" of 28 inferior persons of various ages and sex within the walls of an isolated medieval castle.

The characters are described mercilessly. No detail of their wrinkles, pustules, stenches , habits, meanness, cowardice and treachery is denied a mention.

The four war profiteers are representitives of the four classes of the elite in charge of law and order. A duke (aristocracy), a bishop (the Church), a financier (Big business) and A judge (The judiciary.) The duke and the bishop are brothers.

The book is an all out assault on the established order, God and humanity and what a Civil Servant is doing reading it I shudder to think.

A principle motive, aside from the scientific examination of human wickedness and depravity , is the idea that beauty and virtue are boring.

This is quite apparent today as is obvious from the News where sex and muder in a very narrowly located setting dominates the drooling staff of the newsrooms and the experts being wheeled on for a juicy (hopefully) soundbite and their 15 minutes of fame which they are all no doubt having recorded. This is while millions of hard working people up and down the land (a favourite phrase of Gordon Brown) are toiling and drudging, often under adverse conditions ( a turd in the cistern is pretty adverse) to keep the shops full and the lights on and providing care and comfort for the afflicted, and contemporary with terrible scenes in far off places of the utterest desolation for millions.

Virtue is simply boring. It's official.

That's why I like boredom. It makes me feel saintly.(Reaches for halo).

Online ebook......

Adult material........you have been warned.

Spendius

That was really educational and interesting. Thank you.

On the basis of my comments on the film, above, you can take it that I prefer boredom in the same way that you do.

KP

That was a brilliant little essay Spendi.

It would have been awarded one of those little red stars that, if teacher had been marking it for you.


I never got a star when I was at school, I didn't want one. Those who got the stars had to do other jobs, homework monitor, dinner monitor, library work, prefects and the like. A big con really, but life has the onus of the cross.


Did you ever see the film Moby Dick? Only it's quite an attractive title, must be quite an achievement making films, do you think? Taking a video of places and folks, you know Barn Dance stuff, that's not making movies at all. The real film makers, like Michael Winner for instance, he made several films, I am aware. Thing is, when you think of his films you consider The Death Wish films with Charles Bronson and I can't recall any more by name. He used to employ Oliver Reed and made some films with him in a lead role, but again I can't recall any names. I could Google Mick, and get the information, but it isn't that important really.


I had to drive into Stockport today, there was a snooker hall just off Wellington Road South, two guys were having a set to outside for whatever reason. Then I saw a guy with a video camera filming the pushing and shoving, he looked right pleased with himself as well. I just thought to myself, he thinks he's a film producer. On a sensible note, it crossed my mind that it was a peculiar thing to film and yet he must have been waiting or expecting for some outbreak or another and he wanted to get it all on camera. Why? Maybe he wants to get the snooker hall closed down.

Well, if your getting red stars off teacher, he must deserve one for filming all that crap. Don't you think?

Mathos, if I knew how to put a red star on here for you - I would...but I can't...so I shan't.

spends - that was brilliant!

Can anyone remember what their first 'rude' book was?

I don't mean top shelf jobs (yawn) I mean a proper book that you thought ooo-errr Mrs!

I think my first one was 'Hotel Pasionflower' or something like that... my friend gave it to me, I must have been about 13/14, I could barely read it, it made me blush so much, and some of it I couldn't understand.

I remember pinching my Mum's Harold Robbins (can't recall which one) and being shocked and hugely intrigued by it.

x

Oh- I don't know Mathos.

I think I could hold a video camera and press the button after three years in a creative film school. It might shake a bit if I had just come from watching smorgsie perform one of her dance routines.

My essay had a moral. One can be debauched in other areas if one is easily bored and have the cash. The thresholds forever recede.

Which joke did you like best?

spendi, I join with the others to say 'BRAVO!' An excellent post that fits well into the "best 10 on a2k." Congrats.

What are the other nine?

x

smorgsie wrote-



Yes- I can. It was My Life and Loves by Frank Harris.

I was 19 and stationed oversees. I was a virgin and didn't even know there was such things as homosexuals. And Mr Harris never mentioned them either.

There was a long waiting list for the book and when my turn came every page was separated from the rest.

I found an almost new hardback copy at a book fair many years later which I found hilarious. I consider that a must read for every young man.
How to run rings round everybody starting out as a bootblack on a NYC.
street.

He found the money for his ticket to New York when he ran away from his school in north Wales with the cup he won for academic excellence and pawned it. Red stars made no impression on Frank.

He turned up at the height of his powers in Henry Miller's father's tailorshop in Manhattan ( a class shop- it had a good pub opposite), and Henry met him. He was naked under his rough tweed suit. Presumably warming up.

In Dylan's liner notes to John Wesley Hardin' three jolly kings have arrived to find out what this new album is all about

The one with the broken nose said "Faith is the key! ". The one with the broken arm said "No,froth is the key! "

"You're both wrong" said the one who was broke, "the key is Frank."

I like to think Dylan meant the late great man himself. But he might not.

Frank could tell a good tale. Most people think it was all bullshit but who cares about that. Good tales are tough to find.

I recommend it.

Oscar Wilde, whose life Mr Harris wrote, as well as The Man Shakespeare, said that Frank had been welcomed into every fashionable house in London. Once.

smorgs, The "10" is rhetorical.