Category:
Literature
Literature
Mystery Girl of 1947
Pulp International reveals:The Mystery Writers of America, which was founded in 1945 in New York City and soon expanded to other locations, in its early years used to throw what they called a Clues Party. In November 1947 the party was in Chicago, and the MWA awarded the title of Mystery Girl to the woman who performed best in a scream test—as opposed to screen test. Four contestants—Marybeth Prebis, Betty Rosboro, Bobby Jo Rodgers, and Portia Kubin—let fly with their most bloodcurdling screams, and the winner was Kubin, above.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Sep 23, 2023 -
Comments (4)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Literature, Books, 1940s, Screams, Grunts and Other Exclamations
The Coach With the Six Insides
James Joyce's novel FINNEGANS WAKE is notorious for its undecipherability. But somehow Jean Erdman, wife of mythologist Joseph Campbell (himself a Joyce expert) decided the book could be transformed into a dance.See video after snapshot.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Sep 06, 2023 -
Comments (3)
Category: Literature, Music, Unsolved Mysteries, 1960s, Dance
Most Inscrutable Liner Notes Ever
The Wikipedia page for the album.
I have taken the liberty of breaking the text into random paragraphs, to ease your perusal.
Who was the author, Barry Titus? We find record of him under his wife's Wikipedia page.
WAIT QUICKLY by Barry J. Titus after Jim Hall and Bill Evans
Rimmed iron wheels chew candy between tracks window smithers Xmas tree window silver money fleeing present unone given coca cola smiling blank wall perspires omens heads nodding close gaped lips seen stick stuck taxi sign disrobes May 15th, 1959. hanging about her knees mail bundle wheeled cripple clutches Read Wall Street clock white sun monocle IIV or VII long blink see eyes time? Apparitional liquid hesitates a foot, a universe below the white paint-trussed varicose cieling. Liquid slips, drops, unoutlineable shape, presenting absence, glides unreal, an excuse for splattering focus, a school of Dolphins or a dark Grecian head.
Virtuoso: practice makes perfect. Two sharps. Ice crystal diamond egg frog oan wrkwrk-wrxwrx. Donned rubber belts nose mouth. Nub knuckled fingers bounce overfilled heat tear salt balling. Again. Two sharps. Ice crystal, diamonkey, egg, nail rubonk, snill. Huhhh. Snill. rubru, nail, frog, diamond many windows flash ice. Air out. Curtain fingers, cieling lines, French door bars gripped unstill sun broiling play, fat ended keys with black spines.
"How could the Augsburg festival have been in Vienna, hah! Loewy?" Paint corner her jagged lip fingertips petrified red cream smile flicked starving grotto. "I mean is she a satirist or," her tendon muscle stomach dieted twist the flat skirt front. "I think she needs a milk man, Loewy." The shambled, bent, stripped fingers forked each others angles. His imagination chained in Veronica's orange ochre wallpaper, blankets. A quicksilver limb paints the swamptoon. "Yes, I do!" shook, he shivered, remembering, room loose daggers broke ice bergs about them. Peanut butter note, Fang, Fang. Ice Fang back wriggled sorcerer hand hung dead skin frog fangs back Mama into Eassie leap shrunk from the door hid sharpened tusk hallway awwwrice fang bump jump.
"Six fifteen," growled grate hunched on the sofa. "You're presence is expiring, I mean, inspiring." Blue, yellow tinged, Mars capillaried, eye, blue crystal, whites slash, "I know what I want! Why is it such a struggle for you? I feel revolutions." Lie quicksilver idealisation limb delusion chrome rationalisation dance dragged curtained bog cracked ice amazon child's burning nerves. Always left whiskers, uneven fingernails, premature orgasms hairy legs, long nose pranthula.
Go play. Eat chocolate cake, peanut butter, pickles, but clean your room and wash your elbows. Ceiling lines, piano leg shadows, French door bars, eleven to four thirty. "Ma!" shook the still fingers. Rectangled silence coagulated, scraped waiting, dangling. Daddyeeee drove him smack clamored up back fallen stairs into the quilt where a silk wrapped, dark quaked moon bled tears. Run vanity open smear black commaed cheek. "Coups d'etat!" forehead burst powder, lipstick ribboned run eye shadow sink spit spigot greyened clear washed black rubbed lather pushed red pressed tan smeared blue smudged grey circled one eye deathlaughcue hiccupping criggle vermouth spread on the table top gash crystal core neck glass cupped fingers polished green.
A silver ghost hears. Life illuminates a paper screen. Eyes dance truth's instrument. Sieve, sickle and sloat, red grimes grey molds parted skins furrowed tissue lives skeletal screams. Long brown stone blunt nose raised, "Naked day?" puffed sound slices blush. Tongue stuck inside closed teeth. Torso immobile inflame face clacks ticket counter leaned hat veiled hat pulled hat swivel, "I don't know what to say." Jagged leaning brown limbed face. His eyes crumbled smiles smoke dust wound warm bricks.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Jul 08, 2023 -
Comments (2)
Category: Literature, Vinyl Albums and Other Media Recordings, Surrealism, 1960s
FINNEGANS WAKE on Audio
Ease yourself into this famously baffling masterpiece by listening to Joyce himself proclaim a passage. Then queue up the whole book on your car's sound system for a relaxing commute!
Posted By: Paul - Thu Feb 23, 2023 -
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Category: Literature, Unexplained Historical Enigmas, 1920s, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults
Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits
The Bard's words as you have never dared to imagine them before.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Jan 05, 2023 -
Comments (2)
Category: Literature, Music, Vinyl Albums and Other Media Recordings, 1960s
foew&ombwhnw
foew&ombwhnw, by Dick Higgins, was published in 1969 by Something Else Press. The title was an acronym for "freaked-out electronic wizards & other marvellous bartenders who have no wings."The design of the book was unusual. It was made to look like a prayer book, with black cover and thin pages. Inside, the text was divided into four columns. To read the book in order you had to first read all the left-hand columns, then all the second-to-left columns, etc.
The book itself was a collection of essays, plays, and poems. Or, as Higgins described it, "a grammar of the mind and a phenomenology of love and a science of the arts as seen by a stalker of the wild mushroom."
Copies of it generally go for over $100, for anyone interested in adding it to their collection of weird books.
More info: DickHiggins.org
source: printedmatter.org
Posted By: Alex - Sat Dec 10, 2022 -
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Category: Literature, Books, 1960s
Moby Dick, from the whale’s perspective
Artist Wu Tsang's six-hour looping film Of Whales, displayed recently at the 59th Venice Biennale, reimagines the story of Moby Dick, from the whale's perspective. Details from artnet.com:The site-specific digital film displays a six-hour loop of dreamlike subaquatic sequences and changing reflections of daylight, woven together through the use of game engine technology... the film imagines the story of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick from the whale’s perspective...
"The work is about reflection in both senses, as well as capturing the whale come out of the water and dive back into it," the artist said, looking at the looping underwater scenes in which the whale remains unseen but is hinted at in fluctuating camera movements. Images of jellyfish float through the water and spiral beams of light reflect across forceful waves.
"The work is about reflection in both senses, as well as capturing the whale come out of the water and dive back into it," the artist said, looking at the looping underwater scenes in which the whale remains unseen but is hinted at in fluctuating camera movements. Images of jellyfish float through the water and spiral beams of light reflect across forceful waves.
It doesn't sound like Ahab and crew ever make an appearance, which seems to me like a bit of a lost opportunity. It could have been six hours of jellyfish and waves, followed by five minutes of crazed sailors.
Posted By: Alex - Thu May 05, 2022 -
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Category: Literature, Movies
A History of Mechanical Horses
Read the piece here.
There should be a separate article on mechanical horses in literature. My favorite one occurs in these two novels by Roger Zelazny.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 30, 2021 -
Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Inventions, Literature, Fantasy, AI, Robots and Other Automatons, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century
The Odd Downfall of Mary Carolyn Davies
From pulp writer and poet to Skid Row: writing has never been an easy career.
Read the whole arc of her life here.
Read some of her fiction at the Internet Archive.
Newspaper clip from The News Journal (Wilmington, Delaware) 08 Feb 1940, Thu Page 20
Posted By: Paul - Sun Aug 29, 2021 -
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Category: Eccentrics, Literature, Money, Twentieth Century
Hell Up To Date
A modern (1894) version of THE INFERNO. Many more weird illustrations at the link, where you may read the whole thing.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Aug 22, 2021 -
Comments (1)
Category: Fate, Predetermination and Inevitability, Literature, Religion, Parody, Satire, Nineteenth Century
| Who We Are |
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |