I got an email from william yesterday. He is currently working on a new book of Poetry but he sent me a little piece on ' Tropic Of Cancer ' by Henry Miller. Now, Henry is my favourite writer ( Sorry William, You're up there, but he's number one. ) and it was through the suberb  MILLER, BUKOWSKI  AND THEIR ENEMIES 2nd edition that I came across William's writing. I cannot recommend that book more highly. It changed me a great deal. The reason I read it was because it was about Henry Miller and in fairness I think William hits the nail on the head in any essay he writes about him. This is only a snippet of a piece but is as they say right on the money.

   Uncle Henry

                 "It is getting toward dinner time and people are straggering back to their rooms with that weary, dejected air which comes from earning a living honestly."     And later, "They might as well be lunatics."

                 This one line explains why Tropic of Cancer was banned for 27 years.  We can't have 100 million people alert as to why they are so miserable.  They'd quit beating on junior or the missus and smash all the machines in the street.   In one sentence Miller proves  why reform will never work,  why no institution can ever be propped up. Now we know why humans need scapegoats, why mobs will eventually take to the streets, and why they will be mowed down by machine gun fire.  

                It is a line so obvious that I have to wonder why no one said it before.  But no one did.  It is a line that every human has experienced but not a single human articulated.  Jobs!  What a joke.  Eliminate the job and you get a semblance of sanity.  In the same instant you eliminate Karl  Marx and replace him with the Marx Brothers.  You ditch Adam Smith and Alexander Hamilton, Napoleon and Socrates.   Enter sunshine, step forward leisure time, music, reading, consultation with the consciense, all because of the breath of a single line of language.

              The men who banned Tropic of Cancer were the same men who paid hookers $20.00 an hour to give them a little relief.  They were the pillars of society but the janitors who  prop up scaffolding against the  pillars to keep them from falling down. They wore white shirts and neckties and swore by the gospel of respectability by which they meant the inherent corruptibility of the human body which they labeled filth.  And not a single intellectual was going to stand up to them.

              Miller has been dead for forty years but he is less known today than he was in 1961.   Now, 2019, we live in a time when rancor steams from every other face and the great nations, once again, are ready to fry each other.  All this because 10 billion people turned their back on one line of one man long forgotten.  Let blood run in the gutters.

GOOD NEWS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

  GOOD NEWS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

                                                    FIRST LADY ADOPTS FIRST BORN OF AN ASS

                       (AP wire service)  

                                                            First Lady, Melania Trump, announced today that thanks to Guillermo O'Joyce's novel, First Born of an Ass, her bowels are moving again.

                                                           Proctologist M.D. Vincent Obias confirmed  that for the last month he has been treating the First Lady for what he termed "severe blockage of the upright colon."

                                                           Dr. Obias said this condition was due to the unusually rich diet conferred upon the gastric system by formal state dinners.  Such a diet left Melania Trump's rump virtually useless because of chronic constipation.

                                                          "Partly it's the rigidity of State protocol where you have to be on your best behaviour.  Mix this with stately food--lobster a la creme, leeks vinaigrette, pate de fois, and you have a classic case of rectal non-gratis.  The poor lady couldn't shit," vouched the emminent proctologist.

                                                          When the usual treatment of massage and laxatives didn't work, Dr. Obias prescribed Guillermo O'Joyce's First Born of an Ass whose hero, Gorm, has a similar condition because of assumptions of power.  

                                                         After reading 50 pages of First Born, the First Lady said she got the giggles.  This giggling produced a jiggling in the lower intestines and lo and behold a ker-plop, ker-plunk, ker-plop.  As the news of Melania's triumph reached the West Wing of the White House, there was spontaneous applause.  The Trumps  had been grumpy the last month.  

                                                        "It's a goofy novel," she said, "but it got the old innards going."  She said she was going to have a talk with her husband whom she felt had a similar condition.  Dr. Obias confirmed what the White House had labeled as "fake news" that numerous foreign leaders had complained about "gas" issuing from the Trump area of the dining table. But now, thanks to First Born of an Ass, that GAS can't be blamed on the First Lady.

                                                        A signed copy of the novel will be auctioned in December at Christie's in New York City.  Bidding is expected to reach the six-figure mark.

A Brief Bullet Point History Of William Joyce's Career

                     One, I am the only writer to expose the fact that a major publisher, Simon & Schuster, was out to totallly discredit a major writer of indelible veracity--Henry Miller--by handing $80, 000 to a feminist to attack his reputation from every fashionable angle.  

                                       Two, I am the only writer to expose the world's largest publisher, Random House, for publishing a biography of a writer (Bukowski) whose work they had consistently rejected during his lifetime.  The object of Random House---make money and do it without the least ethical concern.

                                       Three, In the last 50 years, I am the only writer whose writing (poem---In This World of Terror and Pig-Headed Conmen) made a university (Univ. of Utah) publicly ban a world-prominent scholarly magazine.-- Western Humanities Review.  Public record--- Winter, 1975, Salt Lake City Tribune, Univ. of Utah student newspaper.

                                       Four, I am the only writer to expose Harper's Magazine, the leading intellectual journal in the U.S., and its editor Lewis Lapham for conciously burying evidence of the corruption and total breakdown of the U.S. literary industry.

                                       In none of the 4 above exposes did I get a single letter of support from any of the one million professional writers in the U.S.

                                      Five, I am the only writer in the last 50 years to criticize the New York Times Book Reviewing system. (American Book Review, 1983).  My reward:  The Times Sunday Book Review in March, 1990, hired a recently defrocked Jesuit priest to review my scatalogical novel, First Born of an Ass.  In a tape-recorded interview, this reviewer told me that he had said to the Times that he didn't want to review First Born and couldn't they please find someone else.  He claimed he was told by The Times that if he wanted future reviewing assignments to hurry up with the review of my novel.  The ex-Jesuit priest wrote that First Born of an Ass had no redeeming qualities and never should have been printed.  The Sunday NYTimes Book Review is the leading book-review outlet in the world. It is the major guide that bookstore managers and librarians use to fill their shelves.

                                      Kurt Vonnegut wrote me, "The Times should not have published that review."

                                     Twenty-eight other leading U.S. novelists had the novel and the Times'  review and did not respond.

                                     6. Repercussions:  In April, 2013, Robert Loomis, head of Random House from 1965 to 2012, walked into RH with the manuscript of my latest novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Pyromaniac.  He handed it to his successor, Andrew Ward.  Loomis had written me in 1994, "Believe me, I wish I had had the sense, or perception, or instinct, to publish First Born of an Ass when it was submitted here (1983)."    Ward wrote me a month later, saying that he had enjoyed my manuscript but gave no reason for rejecting it.

                                     7. The only writer ever fired by an arts council (Pennsylvania) for reading an objectionable poem (In This World of Terror) to a group of fellow poets in the program, 1977.   Public record:  the files of Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Democrat, Texas, who challenged the PA Council on the Arts as well as the National Endowment for the Arts and says neither organization would answer his phone calls.

                                     8.  The only writer who exposed corruption within the system of literary agenting.  Pages l47--162, MBE, 2nd edition.

                                     9. The only writer since the McCarthy era to have his work confiscated by the FBI.  Previous allies of mine--typesetters, printers, employers--were threatened by FBI agents who visited them.

                                    10. The only writer to expose chronic corruption within states' arts councils and literary prize systems, essays l978 to 1990.

                                    11. Only writer to challenge the poetry hierarchy led by Stanley Kunitz which controlled major prizes in poetry.  essays 1983 to 1990.

                                    12. Only U.S. writer to establish connection between U.S. foreign policy and its literary apologists.   Several foreign writers had done it, among them Luis Buñel and Eduardo Galeano.  In shor, the arts in the U.S. exists only to prop up an evil and vicious empire which has trashed 90% of the planet.

                                    All this may seem petty given the suffering in the world but for 20 centuries stories and poems were the mediums through which humans learned what was appropriate and what wasn't.  Now nobody acts appropriately.

                                    13. The key in all this is a single poem, So You Still Want to Talk.  Written in 1987, it simply says that language has been trashed.  It no longer functions.  But if you read closely Giono's essays or Rimbaud's poetry, language may have been dead long before.  Except in a few islands words are dead things.  There is no point in talking, in writing.  That's why Miller wrote his most important book,  Time of the Assassins-----the butchers have taken over because words have failed.  Best to cheer them on and hope that some day they enter the sacred confines of Random  House.  Humans are better off dead.  

                                    14. I am the only writer in the world who had fun.

Common Grounds

A few Saturdays ago I was sitting with a bad, bad hangover in one of my favourite bars at half ten in the morning. I always say a man should have at least three pubs he uses. The one where everyone knows you drink. The one where you go when you want to avoid people. And finally and most importantly, the one where no one knows you even know exists, but each and every person inside knows you by first name and choice of pint.

I was in the third kind. A dank and musty church that thinks it's a bar but in reality is home to men of a certain age and background. I'm of a certain age and background too, and so happy as Larry I sat watching my pint of Beamish settle while my stomach turned over and my temples tried to rehydrate themselves by squeezing liquid from my brain.

Though my head ached, emotionally I was feeling a deep sense of well being. The type which can only be experienced by a working man who has avoided a day of toil. I had avoided a day of toil by ringing in sick. And duty done I headed to John Brown's. The dark suited me. I needed some 'Me' time. That time whereby I ignore my future by blocking out the present with large amounts of a depressive substance masquerading as something that cheers you up. It 's not a bright idea or that original but it certainly seems popular in Dublin in certain circles.

It's not that common for a woman to be there in the morning. I think they have a proper sense of the place, maybe more accurate, so I hadn't noticed this person while I said hello to the regulars. She was loud though. Very loud for that time and space. Thin as a rake compared to the beer guts all around and hyper aware as opposed to sunk in drudgery of mindless indolence. Her laugh was abrasive and unforgiving and from the moment I noticed her she never shut up. She harangued, she jided, she fully partook in the whole bar. She shouted conversation down from one end of the room to the other. She wasn't funny and there was an edge to the tone she struck. Don't get me wrong, she was among people she knew and knew well but..... She was wrecking everyone's head. I could see it and I knew what effect it was having on me. And then I thought "I know this sentiment from somewhere" and so here is a new poem from William Joyce

FAT GIRLS GET SERVED FIRST

            Three of them at a back table

            boisterous

            as garbagemen

            at 6 a.m.

            The one's laughter

            would curdle the blood

            of a Chinese wrestler.

            They talk about toenails,

            pricks, dogs in heat

            in voices so loud

            the other diners

            shrink

            into themselves.

            This is a restaurant 

            of long tableclothes

            where diners have been taught

            discretion

            at age 6.

            The manager follows

            the waitress

            into the kitchen.

            "Serve those fat girls

            right away

            and get them out of here."

            Through mounds of food

            in their mouths

            the fat girls never let up.

            They talk and chortle,

            talk and chortle.

            They are quite aware

            they are irritants.

            That's why they got fat,

            got loud, got vulgar

            to irritate 

            respectable citizenry

            wherever they go,

            to be served first

            then show their appreciation

            by burping

            in unison.          

                          Miller Time-- On Henry Miller

" Henry Miller is not a writer; he’s a friend you turn to when your apartment walls close in on you and all the world begins to stink. When you’re most exasperated, Miller is there with his alternately cajoling, absurd, sincere, outraged, sage-like, funny voice, ruminating and gassing in a calm way. Miller’s voice always comes from the quietest corner of the bar. The rest of the occupants are slaughtering each other, offering polemical speeches, toasting their various diseases, and gouging their own thighs and arms with their fingernails in an effort to rid themselves of the itch of being truly alive. Unlike his distant cousin Céline, Miller never gets clobbered by these barroom brawlers. He gets close enough to the action to observe the lice and the whispered endearments between blows, but he never gets whacked by a piece of flying furniture. “Don’t struggle; get in the flow,” he advises in book after book. Much of this “flow” for Miller is in the flotsam – all sorts of deranged and eccentric characters – who are both more lively and can tell us more about life than comfortable citizens at the center. He doesn’t see the same divisions the rest of us have been taught to see. Wealthy hoarders or bourgeoisie hoarders may be deplorable, but the feeling I get after 30 years of browsing through Miller is that he’d knocked aside all compartmentalization; he would sit down for a meal with anybody who was unaffected and learn from him, provided of course that the companion sprung for the meal. Miller is the greatest of all freeloaders, surpassing even that other Joyce."...............

This is the opening lines from the opening essay in "MILLER , BUKOWSKI AND THEIR ENEMIES " (2nd Edition) Quite simply one of the best and most invigorating books you could ever read. Guillermo/William 

writes with passion, integrity ,fire, passion and a whole lot of bile about a range of writers he loves and the industry he has plenty of reason to despise. It is magnificent.

Go buy it. You won't regret it.

It's available on Kindle too.  

The Trump Effect

I can't turn on the TV or Radio now without having to put up with one man. Donald J Trump. The whole world seems hypnotised by his every act and word. I'm no Trump advocate (He clearly is dangerous on certain points) but no one seems to be able to find anyone who supports him to talk to. It reminds me of the post crash Ireland where I could not find one person who had ever (Ever,  ever) voted for Fianna Foul. The non presence of ordinary people who happen to agree with 'The Wall' or 'The Muslim Ban' says a lot about both the political climate and the quality of a lot of mainstream media who have an agenda of their own to push. The visceral anger I see not only on television but as I walk and live on the streets of Dublin seems to me to be in at least some sense false. 

I mean it seems to cloak a rage at almost everything in life and Trump is just an easy, open, acceptable target to voice off against. Those who I do find who apologetically say "Trump is kinda right" or who immediately go on a rant about 'Foreigners' or 'Bankers' also seem to be using the 'Trump' brand as leverage to vent some spleen.  This crippling modern western system of living never gets a mention.  

The fact that the man or woman next to you may be struggling too never gets a mention. Forget politics, that man there, that woman there, maybe even that child there is probably experiencing something akin to how you feel. We all seem to ignore that simple human truth.

William Joyce never ignores the Human. He is no fan of the 'Mob' as he often calls it, in fact I can't think of many who rage as hard against it as he does, or so successfully guards his personal borders, and I know on this issue he would tell me to "Go for a swim and forget about it" but it is his very humanity which draws me in. He sees those that struggle even in the heart of all the glitter and can't tolerate those who don't. He'll give you a chance but forget you as quickly if you don't grasp it with both hands. He is for and with the outsider, be that a Trump outsider or an AntiTrump outsider. It's a rare gift from a rare man. 

Go read him.

Over the month of December I was down with a virus infection which left me struggling to concentrate or even breathe. I went through Christmas and The New Year in a reduced state and to be honest for the first time in a long, long time I didn't even read.

In the opening days of 2017 I looked in amazement at the vast amount of wasted energy spent on trying to carve up your enemy ( Whoever that is ), attach mud to whatever story took your fancy, justify by logic or brute force or just plain old lie whatever narrative suited the little human corner of the Universe you call your own while laughing at everyone else's hopes and fears. I then remembered that I don't have to play that game.

If the consequences of the sad tawdry little mess wasn't so terrible on an individual and a Human level, If I didn't see broken children and broken adults every where I look on the streets I walk and the television I see, Well I might just give up all hope.

But I don't, because I think if we all listen to our bodies, learn to laugh a little more, walk the streets with a smile and an eye for play and appreciate the men and women we see each day, well then things in some small way may get better.  

In those moments as always I turn to William Joyce to make me smile and think. The first thing I found was this and it did both ................



                                                   GIRLS AND THEIR TERRIBLE TITS


All the girls have big tits now,
and they use them to mow men down.
Howitzer tits, tits with an aim
in life, they got this weaponry
from steroids in the beef
but not all the girls are beefy.
Some are as slender as celery stalks
but they have these burgeoning,
over-sized, obtrusive tits.
Along with the chin, the tits
are pushed out in front
somewhere between a prim pout
and purposeful arrogance.
Make no mistake about it,
these tits are embossed with power
not pleasure. First promoted
by admen in a titless society
to sell soap, the tits have grown
with the economy. No longer
tender paps for nurturing
but bountiful busts for bullying,
tits lead the way through crowds,
take charge of committee meetings,
assault the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals
with writs of complaint that their tits
were groped in a crowded park.
The symbol of sex and a healthy economy,
the tit has come loose from it's moorings.
Tits don't want to be used by anybody---
not men, nor babies, nor pitch men
for Hollywood; tits want their own leverage,
their own comfort zone
free from pawing hands and grasping mouths.
And they get it as they soar
across the sky- a nipple and a cape--
the first SuperTit-- and all
the stratojets make way for it.