Heavy Temple / Waxed / Zang! / Asatta
Club Garibaldi, Saturday, April 25 at 08:00 PM CDT
X-RAY ARCADE PRESENTS
LIVE MUSIC / 21+
7PM DOORS / 8PM MUSIC
$18 CASH DAY OF
HEAVY TEMPLE
Doom Metal from Philadelphia, PA.
WAXED
Metal/Hardcore from Nashville, TN.
ZANG!
Milwaukee Horror Psych
ASATTA
Milwaukee Doom Metal
BLAX, Modern Tigers, Dana Coppa & Mike DNA, Youth Energy, Je’Love, They Want Blood
The Cooperage, Sunday, February 15 at 07:00 PM CST
BLAX OMNIPOTENT METHODOLOGY ALBUM RELEASE PARTY & BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
Doors: 7:00 PM | Show ends approximately 10:30 PM | 21+ | $15 Advance | $20 Door
7:00 PM - Doors open. DJ Bucky Luger opens the night with curated sounds.
7:30 PM - YOUTH ENERGY kicks off with raw punk energy.
7:55 PM - THEY WANT BLOOD brings trip-hop intensity.
8:15 PM - JE’LOVE shifts the vibe with soulful hip-hop and R&B.
8:35 PM - DANA COPPA & MIKE DNA bring lyrical precision and Milwaukee hip-hop authenticity.
9:05 PM - MODERN TIGERS takes the stage with progressive rock experimentation.
9:40 PM - BLAX closes the night with a full performance of Omnipotent Methodology—jazz-influenced conscious hip-hop in the tradition of MF DOOM and J Dilla. The birthday boy performs the album that represents the culmination of two decades of independent artistry, now pressed to vinyl.
Lights by RARE VISIONS - Immersive lighting that transforms The Cooperage into a sonic and visual experience
Join BLAX as he celebrates two milestones in one hypnotic night—the release of his highly anticipated album Omnipotent Methodology and his birthday. After 20+ years in underground conscious hip-hop, BLAX brings his most refined work yet to vinyl and digital, throwing the kind of multi-genre celebration only an independent artist who owns his masters can orchestrate.
BLAX is a Milwaukee-based hip-hop artist with over 20 years in the underground conscious rap scene. As founder of God Degree Media, he maintains complete ownership of his masters, publishing, and touring revenue while building a career rooted in authentic storytelling and community. The 2018 WAMI Award winner for Best Rap/Hip-Hop Artist, BLAX has earned critical acclaim from The Fader, The Source, and Respect Magazine, recently gaining national exposure through MSN.com. His experimental, West African-influenced sound bridges Milwaukee’s hip-hop generations as co-founder of Fresh Cut Collective.
This isn’t just an album release—it’s a showcase of Milwaukee’s most dynamic voices across the sonic spectrum. From trip-hop energy to prog rock experimentation and hip-hop craftsmanship to R&B soul, this night represents the eclectic creative community BLAX has built around God Degree Media. This is a celebration of independence, community, and 20+ years of dedication to the craft.
Omnipotent Methodology vinyl (limited pressing) and digital albums will be available for purchase. Don’t miss your chance to own a piece of Milwaukee hip-hop history.
https://mkeshows.com/event/blax-omnipotent-methodology-album-release-party-and-birthday-celebration
Woodstock '99, Piss Me Off, Curbsitter, Scourn
Uptowner, Friday, December 12 at 08:00 PM CST
Free - bring additional dollars for touring bands if it's within your means
Doors 8pm, Music 9pm, 21+
https://mkeshows.com/event/woodstock-99-piss-me-off-curbsitter-scourn
XXL, .cordless, Laliberté @ Martyrs’
Martyrs’, Friday, November 14 at 07:30 PM CST
21+ show.
Double Extra Large: https://doubleextralarge.bandcamp.com/album/double-extra-large
Laliberté: https://lalibertemusic.bandcamp.com/track/h-ritage
https://chicago.askapunk.net/event/xxl-cordless-laliberte-martyrs
Short Story Reviews: E. C. Tubb’s “Without Bugles” (1952), “Home is the Hero” (1952), and “Pistol Point” (1953)
The following reviews are the 33rd, 34th, and 35th installments of my series searching for “SF short stories that are critical in some capacity of space agencies, astronauts, and the culture which produced them.” Some stories I’ll review in this series might not fit. And that is okay. I relish the act of literary archaeology.
For this post I’ve selected three short stories about the horrific conditions on a colonized Mars by E. C. Tubb (1919-2010) that appeared in the British SF magazine New Worlds. Along with three additional tales, they were fixed-up as the novel Alien Dust (1955).1 I “blame” the “Friend of the Site” John Boston for my renewed interest in Tubb’s bleak stories. I recently acquired Boston’s three-volume commentary on pre-Moorcock New Worlds and Science Fantasy.2 Boston correctly describes Tubb’s earlier stories as preoccupied with the “domestic lives of spacefarers” in often overwritten and maudlin strokes.3 Regardless, I found the topics he explored worth my time. I’d only previously read his later short story “The Seekers” (1965) and The Space-Born (variant title: Star Ship) (1955). Considering his hard-boiled sensibilities, I imagine a substantial slice of his fiction would fit this series.4
Previously: Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959) and James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972).
Up Next: John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934)
3.5/5 (Good)
“Without Bugles” first appeared in New Worlds, # 13, ed. John Carnell (January 1952): You can read it online here.
As with most E. C. Tubb stories, “Without Bugles” starts with a punch: “The man writhed on the narrow cot, and fought for his life” (52). The man in question is one of many colonists on Mars afflicted with a futuristic black lung–“an industrial disease. Silicosis they called it once”–caused by radioactive dust (54). The origin of the radioactivity isn’t clear. Dust cannot be avoided on Mars. It seeps through all seals. It gathers in corners. It bypasses masks. Into the colony of the dead and dying and those that tend them, Anders, the Secretary for Extra-Planetary Affairs, and Pat Easton, a vivacious and idealistic reporter for Trans-World Communications arrive on an infrequent rocket. The purpose of the commission? Anders gets straight to the point: “Congress has poured billions of dollars into this project. When are you going to start paying it back?” (56). Pat proposes the fate of the colony can be swayed by a positive depiction of the heroic colonists.
The narrative follows Dick Banner (the perfect noir name) who struggles with the heroic idealism regurgitated by Pat–“Heroes! Pioneers! The vanguard of all Earth, breaking new frontiers!” (55)–in her attempt to save the colony. Dick, on the other hand, who has experienced the brutal reality firsthand agrees with Anders’ assessment that the Mars isn’t suitable for short-term investment. Instead, Dick surmises, “it will take years. Billions. Thousands of men. It may take a generation” (60) in order for Mars to be livable. And thousands will die along the way. And when Pat learns of the impact of Martian dust on Dick, whom she feels drawn too, all illusion comes crashing down.
As with the other two stories in this post, Tubb reframes our romantic conception of Mars. The colony itself is not depicted, in its incubatory state, as a place of wonder. Instead “it was a depressing sight,” a mere “huddle of low rounded buildings” that gave the “appearance of pre-fabrication” (54). Due to a diet of yeast products, the colonists must even be “conditioned” to dislike the finer pleasures of earth (tobacco, coffee, milk, alcohol). It’s a cynical story. Tubb’s characters peer underneath the romanticism of it all and see the true movement of the gears. Gears gummed and greased by the blood of humanity and the vapors of public opinion.
Recommended for fans of the theme. I assume most others will find it a bit on the nose.
3.5/5 (Good)
“Home is the Hero” first appeared in New Worlds, # 15, ed. John Carnell (May 1952): You can read it online here.
At some chronological point after “Without Bugles” (1952), the Mars colony gets a new lease on life–the discovery of uranium. Growing nuclear tensions on Earth pull the colony into its arms race, a colony that must immediately be exploited. Unfortunately, the public has forgotten the plight of its dying men. Another punchy sentence begins the madness: “Gravity clawed at him, dragging down his head, bowing his back, sending protesting quivers along the muscles of thighs and shoulders” (79). Major Randolph arrives of Earth. The gravity turns him into an invalid. He spends his days in his bathtub observing his once-athletic limbs, attended by a masseur, and further disturbed by the why of his arrival on Earth. He’s been recalled for a propaganda mission: “it is essential that the original enthusiasm attending the initial colonisation of Mars be revived” (83). The problem? Life of Mars is miserable and the low gravity means you cannot return to Earth for long spells. Also, no one is to know the why–to facilitate the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. Randolph is torn on the latter point. He wants Mars to have a new lease on life. He knows that it might come at the expense of countless lives on Earth.
The masterplan to restart the colony? Get women desperate for husbands to volunteer. Randolph isn’t content to regurgitate the jingoistic nonsense he’s been told to parrot. The women wait for him to tell them that they’ll be heroines. Instead, he lays out the brutal reality of life: “Don’t expect to find big handsome men in the colony. They’re all skinny little runts […] No coffee. No cosmetics. No fancy clothes. […] You’ll live on yeast, and drink water partly reclaimed from waste from your own body. You’ll live in huts of tamped dirt. You’ll have no books, no cinema, little privacy” (87). He’s accused of sabotaging the project until he convinces them of the necessity of his ways.
At this point the narrative oddly shifts to another victim of the human ambition to conquer the stars: John Lomas, ‘Atom’ Lomas (90). Rudolph is summoned by Lomas’ sister to John’s bedside. John participated in an earlier expedition to the Moon. The man lies in bed dying. The story becomes a rumination on the nature of heroism. The hero only exists when they’re strapping and young and healthy and in the public eye. As with Malzberg’s astronaut hero on welfare, Tubb ruminations: “what happens to heroes–when they live too long?” (93). The implication is clear. The men on Mars might be heroes in a time of need. But what happens when public opinion shifts to other arenas?
2.75/5 (Below Average)
“Pistol Point” first appeared in New Worlds, # 21, ed. John Carnell (June 1953): You can read it online here.
Nuclear war ravaged Earth. Mars’ uranium is no longer needed. The women recruited in the previous story have returned to Earth.5 The resupply rockets come more infrequently with less and less supplies. Mars’ demands for basic supplies to start hydroponic farms in order to be self-sufficient go unheeded. As with the other two tales, another punchy sentence leads things off: “He rested in a shallow grave scooped from the fine, red dust, a small man with pipestem limbs and shrunken cheeks” (41). On the death of the previous leader of the colony, Ventor, Carl Denton takes over. At some point Mars had become a penal colony (the internal chronology of the stories isn’t exactly clear) and Carl decides to channel his criminal tendencies to rescue the colony. Boston correctly points out in his brief review, this story was written before terrorism periodically dominated the news cycle–the plot hits a bit different as a result.
As with the other two, Tubb narrows in on the central, and all too flighty, role of public opinion–mediated through the news–in the survival of the colonists. And unlike the other two, Tubb moderates the draconian implications of his scenario. Carl must believe he will kill millions but others around him have a bit more heart despite the redolent desperation afflicting all. There’s even a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Mars might be able to escape the cycle of obsession and abandonment that plagued earlier generations.
Notes
For book reviews consult the INDEX
For cover art posts consult the INDEX
For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX
#13 #15 #1950s #21 #bookReviews #ECTubb #sciFi #scienceFiction
Persönliche Texte unserer Mitglieder
Christina Spachtholz
Lieber Paul,
im Laufe unserer Forschungsjahre über dein Leben und Werk habe ich zahlreiche Briefe von dir gelesen – und selbst so einige Texte über dich verfasst. Doch dieses Mal verspüre ich das Bedürfnis, dir keinen weiteren wissenschaftlichen Text zu widmen, sondern einen persönlichen Brief.
Ich bin wirklich dankbar, dir begegnet zu sein. Als ich meine erste Abschlussarbeit über dich an der Universität schrieb, machte es mich traurig, dass sie lediglich für eine Note gedacht war, von meinem Professor gelesen und dann wieder in Vergessenheit geraten würde. Aber du verdienst es, dass man dich in Erinnerung behält. Welch glücklicher Zufall, dass ich am Forum Queeres Archiv München mit Anderen zusammentraf, die diese Überzeugung teilen.
Ich werde dich als den Menschen in Erinnerung behalten, der du warst, und nicht nur als den Lehrer, der in den Biografien seiner Schüler beiläufig erwähnt wird.
Ich werde dich als den gütigen Mentor in Erinnerung behalten, der seine Schüler ermutigte, sich selbst zu finden, während er seine eigene Identität nicht auszudrücken vermochte.
Ich werde dich als einen wunderbaren Maler in Erinnerung behalten, der die Schönheit und Emotion deiner Modelle auf so einfühlsame Weise eingefangen hat.
Die stille Melancholie in deinen frühen Werken berührt mich ebenso wie die befreite Darstellung männlicher Schönheiten in deinem späteren Schaffen. In jedem Werk sehe ich dich. Die Vielfalt in deinem Œuvre fängt auf lebendige Weise die enorme Bandbreite an Gefühlen ein, die du erlebt hast. Jedes Bild, das meditierende Nonnen und Mönche zeigt, offenbart ein Stück deiner inneren Welt. Diese Figuren, die Einsamkeit und die Disziplin eines Lebens im Zeichen der Reflexion und der strikten Einhaltung von Regeln verkörpern, spiegeln die komplexen Facetten deiner emotionalen Reise wider – insbesondere den bittersüßen Frieden, den du im Verbergen deines wahren Selbst gefunden hast. Ich sehe deine Sehnsucht in den Gemälden schöner Männer, die ihre Körper in unschuldige und verspielten Pierrot-Kostümen verhüllen, wodurch die liebevollen Details verborgen bleiben, die du ihrer Physis widmen würdest. Doch ihre Augen verraten die Tiefe deiner Zuneigung und deines Verlangens.
Du warst mehr als ein Künstler, mehr als ein Lehrer – du warst ein Mensch mit starken Emotionen, mit einer komplexen Identität, der die Welt mit einer Anmut durchschritt, die die Herausforderungen, denen du begegnet bist, kaschierte. Dein Erbe, das beinahe in Vergessenheit geraten wäre, hat seinen Weg zurück in die Welt gefunden – und mit ihm die Anerkennung der Liebe und Leidenschaft, die du in deine Kunst gesteckt hast. Ich möchte, dass du weißt, dass deine Geschichte erzählt wird – nicht nur als Mahnung einer Gesellschaft, die dich nicht verstand, sondern als Feier deines Lebens, deines Mutes und deines unbestreitbaren Talents.
In der Erinnerung an dich sehe ich nicht nur den Menschen, der du warst, sondern auch den, der du hättest sein können, wenn die Welt eine andere gewesen wäre. Und in dieser Erinnerung finde ich sowohl Trauer als auch Freude – Trauer über die Kämpfe, die du durchleben musstest, und Freude darüber, dass deine Kunst weiterhin zu uns spricht, uns bewegt und uns an die Schönheit erinnert, sich selbst treu zu sein.
In tiefer Zuneigung,
Christina
Philipp Gufler
Der Künstler Paul Hoecker wurde 1854 in Oberlangenau in Schlesien, der heutigen polnischen Stadt Długopole Górne, geboren. Ab 1871, dem Jahr, in dem Paul seinen siebzehnten Geburtstag feierte, kriminalisierte der Paragraph 175 gleichgeschlechtliche Liebe zwischen Männern in Deutschland. Nach seinem Studium an der Akademie der Bildenden Künste in München lebte Paul Hoecker eine Zeit lang in Berlin, wo er den Arzt und Sexualwissenschaftler Magnus Hirschfeld kennenlernte. Mit der Mitbegründung des Wissenschaftlich-Humanitären Komitees im Jahr 1897 war Magnus Hirschfeld einer der prominentesten Vertreter der Homosexuellenbewegung um die Jahrhundertwende und forderte die Abschaffung des Paragraphen 175. In seiner Biografie schreibt Hirschfeld, dass Hoecker sich erst mit seiner eigenen Homosexualität abfinden konnte, nachdem er die queere Identität von Künstlern wie Leonardo da Vinci oder Michelangelo Buonarotti zur Kenntnis genommen hatte:
Vor vielen Jahren erzählte mir einmal einer der bewundertsten Maler jener Zeit, er habe sich mit seinem eigenen Urningslos erst aussöhnen können, als er erfuhr, dass die vier von ihm verehrtesten Bildner der Renaissance seine Schicksalsgenossen gewesen waren. Als er diese vier Unsterblichen als »so« erkannte, habe sich seine Wehmut in Demut, seine Trauer in Stolz gewandelt.1
Der Paragraph 175 wurde in der Weimarer Republik nicht abgeschafft, als erstmals eine sichtbarere queere Bewegung möglich war. Während der Nazi-Diktatur wurde der Paragraph 175 verschärft und Bars, Zeitschriften und Organisationen wie Magnus Hirschfelds Institut für Sexualforschung – das als erstes queeres Archiv und Museum der Geschichte gelten kann – wurden verboten und zerstört. In Westdeutschland wurde der Paragraph nach 1945 in der von den Nazis verschärften Form weiter angewandt. Nach 1969 wurde er nicht mehr umgesetzt, jedoch erst nach der Wiedervereinigung vollständig und ersatzlos aus dem Gesetz gestrichen. Eine Erinnerung an die erste queere Bewegung vor dem NS-Regime in Deutschland war daher erst ab den 1970er Jahren möglich, als sich verschiedene queere Aktivist*innengruppen und Bewegungsarchive gründeten.
Die Auswirkungen der Auslöschung queerer (Kunst) Geschichte durch Verfolgung und gesellschaftliche Ausgrenzung bis in die Gegenwart zeigt auch die Rezeption von Paul Hoecker, der aus der Kunstgeschichte ausgeschlossen wurde. Trotz seiner Teilnahme an Ausstellungen wie der ersten bis dritten Biennale in Venedig und der Weltausstellung in Chicago 1893 und seines Einflusses als erster moderner Professor an der Akademie der Bildenden Künste in München sind seine Werke und seine Biografie heute fast vergessen. Im Bewegungsarchiv Forum Queeres Archiv München (FQAM) erforschen Stefan Gruhne, Nicholas Maniu, Christina Spachtholz und ich sein künstlerisches Schaffen, seinen Austausch mit der homosexuellen Emanzipationsbewegung um Magnus Hirschfeld und sein Leben in Italien, nachdem er die Akademie verlassen musste.
Als ich 2008 nach München zog, um an der Akademie der Bildenden Künste zu studieren, 110 Jahre nach seiner Entlassung, war ich enttäuscht, wie heteronormativ und sexistisch viele der Studierenden und die fast ausschließlich männlichen Professor*innen waren. Vielleicht war ich deshalb auf der Suche nach einer queeren Vergangenheit, um mir eine queere Gegenwart und Zukunft für die Institution, der Kunstszene in München und mich vorzustellen? Durch den Ausstellungskatalog „Goodbye to Berlin? 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung“ von 1997 hörte ich zum ersten Mal von Hoecker und machte mich auf die Suche nach weiteren Spuren seines Lebens. Im Internet konnte ich nur wenige weitere Artikel und Bilder finden. Nachdem ich sein Kündigungsschreiben an die Akademie vom 11. Oktober 1898 gefunden hatte, widmete ich Paul Hoecker 2018 einen meiner Quilts – meine laufende Serie von Siebdrucken auf Stoff in Erinnerung an Künstler*innen, Schriftsteller*innen, Zeitschriften und verlorene queere Räume – und verwendete Zitate aus seinem Kündigungsschreiben.
Als unsere Forschungsgruppe mehr über das Werk und das Leben von Paul Hoecker herausfand, habe ich mich vielleicht ähnlich gefühlt wie er, als er die queere Identität einiger Renaissance-Künstler erkannte. Natürlich hat sich die politische und gesellschaftliche Situation in Deutschland seit der ersatzlosen Abschaffung des Paragraphen 175 im Jahr 1994 grundlegend geändert. Mit jedem neuen Werk und jedem neuen Brief, den wir von ihm fanden, konnte ich seine künstlerische und menschliche Entwicklung trotz der Rückschläge, die er erlebt musste, besser verstehen. Die Vergangenheit ist nie ein abgeschlossenes Feld. Wir müssen uns auch um die Menschen aus der Vergangenheit kümmern.
Philipp Gufler, Quilt #21 (Paul Hoecker), 2018, Siebdruck auf Stoff, 93 x 177 cm, Courtesy of the artist and BQ, Berlin, Foto: Roman MärzNicholas Maniu
Obwohl ich Kunstgeschichte in München studiert habe, war mir der Name Paul Hoecker zunächst kein Begriff. Dies änderte sich erst, als ich mich im FQAM engagierte und später auch der Forschungsgruppe Paul Hoecker beitrat, die sich um die Wiederentdeckung eines zu Unrecht vergessenen queeren Künstlers bemüht. Aufgrund meiner eigenen kunsthistorischen Forschung, die sich auf Queer Studies, Ikonographie/Ikonologie und Visual Culture Studies konzentriert, bin ich mir der Bedeutung von Sichtbarkeit bewusst und weiß, wie wir als queere Menschen darum kämpfen müssen, von der Geschichtsschreibung berücksichtigt zu werden. Die Ausstellung Remembering Paul ist ein wichtiger Schritt in diesem Prozess, vor allem angesichts der jüngsten Angriffe auf queere Sichtbarkeit.
In meiner Dissertation Queere Männlichkeiten. Bilderwelten männlich-männlichen Begehrens und queerer Geschlechtlichkeit (2023) habe ich versucht, die komplexe Geschichte queerer Männlichkeiten innerhalb verschiedener Kulturen und Zeiten aufzuzeigen und wie sexuelle und geschlechtliche ‚Andersartigkeit‘ lange Zeit als ‚Sünde‘ oder ‚Krankheit‘ gebrandmarkt wurde.2 Einem Palimpsest gleich verschwanden diese Vorstellungen allerdings nie gänzlich, sondern überlagerten sich lediglich und prägen unser Verständnis von Geschlecht und Begehren bis heute. In einem Umfeld aufzuwachsen, in dem nicht-heteronormative Sexualitäten und Geschlechtsidentitäten in der Regel als etwas Negatives dargestellt wurden und teilweise auch noch werden, stellt die Entwicklung eines positiven (Selbst-)Bildes eine große Herausforderung dar – es sei hier beispielsweise auf die monströse Figur des Sodomiten im christlich-religiösen Kontext hingewiesen oder auf die Pathologisierungsversuche queerer Sexualität und Geschlechtlichkeit im medizinischen Kontext. Im Laufe der Zeit haben sich jedoch zwei mögliche Strategien herauskristallisiert: Entweder können Bilder der allgemeinen Kultur angeeignet und mit einer neuen (queeren) Bedeutung versehen werden, wie es zum Beispiel schwule Männer taten, indem sie den heiligen Sebastian als homoerotische Ikone für sich beanspruchten. Oder aber es wird versucht, die queere Geschichte freizulegen, die schon immer da war, aber verschüttet wurde – mythologische und historische Figuren wie Ganymed, Hadrian und Antinoos, Il Sodoma und Michelangelo sind Beweise dafür, dass es eine queere Vergangenheit gibt. Wie Philipp Gufler in seinem Text hervorhebt, blickte auch Hoecker in die Vergangenheit und konnte sich ein positiveres (Selbst-)Bild aufbauen, indem er die Existenz anderer queerer Künstler wie Michelangelo entdeckte.
Bei der Betrachtung von Hoeckers Gesamtwerk fällt auf, wie sich dieses neue queere Selbstbewusstsein allmählich herausbildet: Während sich die meisten seiner früheren Arbeiten durch die Abwesenheit bzw. Unterdrückung jeglicher Erotik auszeichnen – holländische Genreszenen sowie Nonnen und Mönche sind die Hauptmotive –, tauchen in einigen seiner wiederkehrenden Pierrot-Darstellungen erste Anzeichen seines queeren Begehrens auf.3 Doch wie auch Christina Spachtholz betont, verbergen die übergroßen weißen Gewänder, die für die Pierrot-Figur typisch sind, die Körper seiner attraktiven Modelle vor den Blicken des Publikums (und des Malers) und machen sie zu geschlechtslosen, fast ätherischen Wesen. Doch obwohl er sich bemühte, sein Verlangen in seinen Gemälden nicht offen zum Ausdruck zu bringen, war es letztlich seine Kunst, die seine Homosexualität ‚offenbarte‘: Für die Madonnenfigur seines religiösen Gemäldes Ave Maria (um 1897/98) soll Hoecker einen männlichen Sexarbeiter als Modell genutzt haben, mit dem ihm auch ein sexuelles Verhältnis nachgesagt wurde. Der Wahrheitsgehalt dieser Gerüchte konnte nie bestätigt werden, aber angesichts der schnellen Reaktion Hoeckers – er trat von seiner Professur an der Akademie zurück – scheint es plausibel. Die Darstellung eines Mannes in ‚weiblich‘ gelesener Kleidung als Jungfrau Maria wäre auf jeden Fall ein gewagter, wenn auch verschleierter Akt queerer Rebellion. Zudem würde es auch auf eine queere (Kunst-)Geschichte referieren, so war doch der libertäre Caravaggio dafür bekannt, für seine religiösen Gemälde Modelle ‚von der Straße‘ (einschließlich Sexarbeiter*innen) zu verwenden.
Nach dem Verlassen der Akademie ging Hoecker auf Reisen und verbrachte viel Zeit in Italien. Die ab dieser Zeit entstandenen Werke bestechen durch ihre unübersehbare Homoerotik: Einst verhüllte Körper werden offen und lustvoll präsentiert (z. B. Nino, um 1908). Doch mit dieser Befreiung ging auch das Ende seiner Karriere einher. Hoecker sollte nie wieder in der Kunstwelt Fuß fassen.
Das Entdecken des ebenso traurigen wie erstaunlichen Schicksal Hoeckers, der für lange Zeit völlig in Vergessenheit geraten war, gab mir den entscheidenden Impuls, mich für die Ziele der Forschungsgruppe einzusetzen. So arbeiten wir derzeit etwa daran, Hoeckers Werk wieder eine Präsenz in der Münchner Museumslandschaft zu geben – ein Ankauf für das Lenbachhaus ist in Arbeit. Wenn uns queere Geschichte etwas lehrt, dann, dass wir dafür kämpfen müssen, einbezogen zu werden, und dass wir die Geschichtsschreibung nicht denen überlassen dürfen, die die meiste Macht haben – im Sinne von Paul Hoecker und all den Anderen, die aussortiert wurden, weil sie nicht in die dominanten Vorstellungen von Geschlecht, Sexualität, Klasse und/oder Herkunft passen, die als akzeptabel gelten.
Personal texts from our members
Christina Spachtholz
Dear Paul,
Throughout our years of research into your life and work, I’ve read numerous letters from you. And I have written quite a few texts about you. This time, rather than producing another scholarly work, I feel compelled to write you a personal letter.
I’m truly grateful to have encountered you. When I wrote my first thesis about you at university, it saddened me to realize that it was merely intended for a grade, to be read by my professor and then forgotten again. But you deserve to be remembered. What a happy coincidence that I joined up with others who share this conviction at Forum Queeres Archiv München (FQAM).
I will remember you for the person you were, not just as the teacher, mentioned briefly in your students’ biographies.
I will remember you as the kindhearted mentor, who encouraged them to explore and find themselves, whilst being unable to express his own identity.
I will remember you as a wonderful painter, who captured the beauty and emotion of your portrayed models in such a sensitive way.
The still melancholy in your earlier works speaks to me just as much as your liberated portrayal of male beauties in your later work. In every piece, I see you. The diversity within your oeuvre vividly captures the vast range of emotions you experience. Each work depicting meditative nuns and monks, reveals a piece of your inner world. These figures, embodying the solitude and discipline of a life devoted to reflection and strict adherence to rules, mirror the complex facets of your emotional journey—particularly the bittersweet peace of concealing your true self. I can see your desire in the paintings of beautiful men, covering their bodies in innocent and whimsical pierrot costumes, masking the loving detail you would designate for their physique. Yet, their eyes reveal the depth of your affection and intent.
You were more than an artist, more than a teacher—you were a person of deep emotion, of complex identity, who navigated the world with a grace that belied the challenges you faced. Your legacy, though nearly lost to time, has found its way back into the world, and with it, a recognition of the love and passion that you poured into your art. I want you to know that your story is being told, not just as a cautionary tale of a society that failed to understand you, but as a celebration of your life, your courage, and your undeniable talent.
In remembering you, I see not just the person you were, but the one you could have been, had the world been different. And in that remembrance, I find both sorrow and joy—sorrow for the struggles you endured, and joy that your art continues to speak to us, to move us, and to remind us of the beauty of being true to oneself.
With deep affection,
Christina
Philipp Gufler
The artist Paul Hoecker was born in 1854 in Oberlangenau in Schlesien, now the Polish town of Długopole Górne. From 1871, the year Paul celebrated his seventeenth birthday, Paragraph 175 criminalized samesex love between men in Germany. After his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich Paul Hoecker lived for a while in Berlin, where he met the physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. With the co-founding of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in 1897, Magnus Hirschfeld was one of the most prominent advocates of the homosexual movement at the turn of the century, calling for the abolition of Paragraph 175. In his biography, Hirschfeld writes how Hoecker was only able to come to terms with his own homosexuality after recognizing the queer identity of artists such as Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo Buonarotti:
Many years ago, one of the most admired painters of that time once told me that he had only been able to reconcile himself with his own lot as an Urning when he learned that the four Renaissance painters he revered most had been his companions in destiny. […] When he recognized these four immortals as ‘such,’ his melancholy turned into humility, his grief into pride.1
Paragraph 175 was not abolished during the Weimar Republic, when for the first time a more visible queer movement was possible. Paragraph 175 was tightened during the Nazi dictatorship and bars, magazines and organizations like Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Research—which could be considered the first queer archive and museum in history—were banned and destroyed. In West Germany, the paragraph continued to be applied after 1945 in the form introduced by the Nazis. It was no longer applied after 1969, but was only removed completely from law without replacement after the reunification. A remembrance of the first queer movement before the Nazi regime in Germany was therefore only possible from the 1970s onwards, when various queer activist communities and grassroots archives were formed.
The effects of the suppression of queer history through persecution and social exclusion right up to the present day are also shown by the reception of Paul Hoecker, who has been excluded from art history. Despite his participation in exhibitions like the first to third Venice Biennale and the Chicago’s World Fair in 1893 among many others, and his influence as the first modern professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, his works and biography are almost forgotten today. At the grassroots archive Forum Queeres Archiv München (FQAM), Stefan Gruhne, Nicholas Maniu, Christina Spachtholz and myself are researching his artistic oeuvre, his exchange with the homosexual emancipation movement around Magnus Hirschfeld and his life in Italy after he had to leave the Academy.
When I moved to Munich to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in 2008, 110 years after his dismissal, I was disappointed how heteronormative and sexist many of the students and the almost exclusively male professors were. Maybe that’s why I was looking for a queer past, to imagine a more queer present and future at the institution, the art scene in Munich and myself? Through the exhibition catalog “Goodbye to Berlin? 100 Jahre Schwulenbewegung” from 1997 I heard about Hoecker for the first time and started to look for more traces of his life. I could only find a few more articles and images online. After finding his letter of termination from the Academy on October 11, 1898, I dedicated one of my quilts—my ongoing series of silkscreen prints on fabric in memory of artists, writers, magazines and lost queer spaces—to Paul Hoecker in 2018 and used quotes from his letter of termination.
When our research group learned more about the work and life of Paul Hoecker, I may have felt similarly to how he felt when discovering the queer identity of some Renaissance artists. Of course the political and social situation in Germany has changed fundamentally since Paragraph 175 was abolished without replacement in 1994. With every new work and every new letter we found from him, I was able to better understand his artistic and human development despite the setbacks he experienced. The past is never a closed subject. We have to take care of the people in the past too.
Philipp Gufler, Quilt #21 (Paul Hoecker), 2018, silkscreen print on fabric, 93 x 177 cm, Courtesy of the artist and BQ, Berlin, Photo: Roman MärzNicholas Maniu
Although I studied art history in Munich, I never came across the name Paul Hoecker until I became involved in the FQAM and would later also join the research group trying to reawaken interest in an unjustly forgotten queer artist. With my own art historical research focusing on queer studies, iconography/ iconology and visual culture studies, I am aware of the importance of visibility and how we as queer people have to fight to be represented in historiography. Remembering Paul is a crucial part in this process, especially in light of recent attacks on queer visibility.
In my dissertation Queere Männlichkeiten. Bilderwelten männlich-männlichen Begehrens und queerer Geschlechtlichkeit (2023) I have tried to showcase the complex history of queer masculinities within different cultures and societies that have long considered them to be a ‘sin’ or a ‘sickness’, and how those ideas linger on like a palimpsest and haunt us today.2 Growing up in an environment where non-heteronormative sexualities and gender identities are usually depicted as something negative—be it as some sort of ‘queer monster’ like the figures of the sodomites in a religious context or as someone with a contagious disease in a ‘scientific’ context—developing a positive (self-)image is a difficult task. Over time, two possible strategies have emerged: One can either appropriate images of the general culture and give them a new (queer) meaning, as gay men did, for example, by claiming St. Sebastian as a homoerotic icon. But one can also try to uncover the queer history that has always been there but has been buried—mythological and historical figures such as Ganymede, Hadrian and Antinoos, Il Sodoma and Michelangelo are evidence that there is a queer past. As Philipp Gufler points out in his text, Hoecker also looked to the past and was able to create a more positive (self-)image by discovering the existence of other queer artists before him such as Michelangelo.
When looking at Hoecker’s art, it is interesting to see how this new queer self-awareness emerges: While most of his earlier works are characterized by the absence and/or suppression of any eroticism—Dutch genre scenes as well as nuns and monks are the main motifs—the first glimpses of his queer desire surface in some of his recurring Pierrot portrayals.3 However, as Christina Spachtholz also emphasizes, the oversized white robes typical of the Pierrot figure hide the bodies of the handsome models he used from the viewer’s (and painter’s) gaze and turn them into sexless, almost ethereal beings. And yet, despite his efforts not to overtly express his queer desires in his paintings, it was ultimately his art that ‘revealed’ his homosexuality: It was said that Hoecker had used a male sex worker as a model for the Madonna in his religious painting Ave Maria (ca. 1897/98), with whom he allegedly also had sexual relations. The truth of these rumors could never be confirmed, but given Hoecker’s swift reaction—he resigned from his professorship at the Academy—it seems plausible. Depicting a man in drag as the Virgin Mary would definitely be an interesting albeit veiled act of queer rebellion. It would also connect back to a queer past, as the almost certainly bisexual Caravaggio was also known to use models ‘from the street’ (including sex workers) for his religious paintings.
After leaving the Academy, Hoecker went traveling and spent a lot of time in Italy. The works created from this time onwards are captivating in their undeniable homoeroticism: once veiled bodies are presented openly and lustfully (e. g. Nino, ca. 1908). Nevertheless, this liberation was accompanied by the end of his career. Hoecker was never to regain a foothold in the art world.
Learning about this equally sad and astonishing story and realizing how Hoecker was banished from history has led me to contribute to the goals of the research group. We are currently working to reintroduce Hoecker’s work into the Munich museum landscape—a possible purchase for the Lenbachhaus is in the works. If queer history teaches us anything, it is that we must fight to be included and that we must not leave the writing of history to those who have the most power—for the sake of Paul Hoecker and for all the others who have been discarded because they do not fit into dominant ideas of gender, sexuality, class and/or origin that are considered acceptable.
Books in 2024
This is a bunch of books I read in 2024. I made some very bad choices this year and also reread some things. I’ve listed them in the order I read them. The average length of each entry gets longer as we get closer to the present and that’s because my memory for these things is dreadful. Last year, I took notes as I went along. This year, I did not. Some or all of what you read here might well be wrong, up to and including the titles of the books and the names of the authors.
Settling the World: Selected Short Stories 1970-2020 – M John Harrison
A collection of short stories with an interestingly British flavour. The kind of science fiction that reminds you that the universe is a vast and improbable place that may be full of wonder – it remains to be seen – but also contains the ominous damp patch in the hotel ceiling. I wanted to like the stories more than I did, but I find them haunting me nonetheless.
Holly – Stephen King
More Stephen King. He can spew this stuff out like a fire hose. The story is the latest instalment in the ongoing saga of Holly Gibney. It’s readable, but ultimately unsatisfying. More political in tone than one expects from Stephen King and with a fairly obvious theme of the old (read MAGA Republicans) preying on the young (read… yeah you get it). Second tier King1.
The End of the End of the Earth – Jonathan Franzen
Essays about environmental matters by Jonathan Franzen2. Mostly about birds. Can everyone please stop sending novelists to the poles, please. Or if you do, leave them there.
What is History? – Edward Carr
A book that answers the question posed on the cover. It’s a series of lectures given back in the 60s. Out of date now, I suppose3, but the arguments are still interesting and it’s beautifully written. This was a re-read. It takes barely any time at all.
Gandhi Father of a Nation – Catherine Clement
One of those little pocketbooks mass produced on a wide range of topics. While you might learn some of the basic data of Gandhi’s life the writing is occasionally so bad it is incoherent.
Enlightenment Now – Steven Pinker
Pinker writes nicely. He even wrote a book about writing nicely, so he must do4. In the nicest possible way, he wants you to know5 that things are better than they were across a wide range of things that matter. The problem with the thesis that things have got better (past tense) is that it’s inseparable from the prediction that things are getting better (present tense) and that they will keep on getting better (future tense). And, as nice as the writing is, it’s already out of date a mere six years after publication which just goes to show… something.
The Body: A Guide for Occupants – Bill Bryson
An interesting and amusing tour of the body and its functions. Bryson does this kind of things so well, threading together the medical details and diverting historical anecdotes with an effortlessly light touch even when talking about the times things go about as wrong as they can. When things are going better than that it’s also quite funny.
A re-read. I thought I read this years and years ago, but it was published in 2020 so I can’t have. Tricksy brain.
Tell no one – Harlan Coben
I’d not read any Harlan Coben before, but I’d seen the stacks of paperbacks in bookshops and airport kiosks. I was also aware that many of his books had been turned into films. I figured, no one could have written that many books and be that popular and not be a good writer.
Right?
Wrong. So very, very wrong.
Perhaps it’s some kind of joke that I didn’t get, but almost everything about this book is awful: The characters, their names, the writing, the plot, the dialogue, the structure, even individual sentences. All of it.
I actually took a photo of this paragraph:
“Griffin6 said thank you and moved on. The women were well coiffed and wore gowns that highlighted lovely bare shoulders; they fit nicely with the many ice sculptures – a favourite of Griffin’s wife, Allison – that slowly melted atop imported linen tablecloths.”
It wasn’t the first passage that made me stop and wonder exactly what I was reading, nor was it the last, but it was the point at which I thought that maybe I was the witness to something catastrophic, something that ought to be documented.
The Woods – Harlan Coben
The only good thing I can say about this book is that it isn’t “Tell No One”. It has a semblance of a plot, but it’s a mess, and while the writing is occasionally competent, it still manages to churn up sentences like this when it bottoms out, which is often:
“Her stomach dropped, but she managed to keep it off her face.”
Now, I don’t hate cliché the way some people do, but this is what happens when they start to pile up. On one level, you know what it means because you’ve heard the two separate parts so many times before. On another level, it creates an unintended and unfortunately vivid image that distracts you into thinking about the kind of gymnastics and general body-horror elasticity that this would require.
As with Tell No One, everything else is substandard too. The character names are quite awful – Loren Muse, Flair Hickory, Cingle Shaker. Cingle Shaker is, it seems, a recurring character. She was bad enough the first time. Why anyone would want to bring her back out of anything other than spite is a mystery.
How to be Irish: Uncovering the Curiosities of Irish Behaviour
A promising idea: an Irish anthropologist studies his fellow countrymen and women. There’s no excuse for this material to be anything other than amusing, but while it is fitfully amusing – even very funny, particularly when it comes to funerals and wakes – it more often isn’t. Much of the material is generic and has nothing whatsoever to do with Ireland or its inhabitants; the author might be writing about any western country in the 21st century. It also doesn’t have the nerve to follow through on the initial premise, recalling it only infrequently and to little effect. The whole thing is delivered in a light bantering tone, but for much of the book it isn’t quite witty enough to build up the momentum this kind of things needs to work.
Oracle Night – Paul Auster
Paul Auster is one of those authors that I hadn’t read. Some authors you’ve never heard of. Others you’ve heard of but there’s no expectation that you’ve read anything that they’ve written. No one would think any less of you for not having read Harlan Coben, for example. I certainly wouldn’t. Then there are the authors you conspicuously haven’t read. Not having read them is a thing. A lack, a gap, a failing, sometimes even a joke.
So, I finally read Paul Auster.
Based on this acquaintance, I’d say I didn’t really get the best of him. The writing was a dream, especially after wading through seven hundred pages of Harlan Coben’s relentlessly ugly prose, and for anyone who likes stationery it’s got the good stationery action. The story (within a story (within a story)) was deftly handled and the characters had character and believable names, but it didn’t quite come together.
Nine Dragons – Michael Connelly
(Harry Bosch #14; Harry Bosch Universe #21)
I’m going to preface this one by noting that I found a bag full of English books in the local book-share box. Normally, I have to rely on the idiosyncratic and syllabus driven selection of English literature at the local book shop, so I take these windfalls whenever I can. The books were mostly by Harlan Coben and Michael Connelly (except for the one by Paul Auster). Reading both these authors was a velleity that never amounted to an actual desire, let alone a purchase. I felt like I might be missing out on something, because there were no end of reviewers queueing up to say breathlessly superlative things about them. Harlan Coben had already been a bitter disappointment, but Nine Dragons wasn’t just by a best-selling author, it was also the 14th book in the best-selling Harry Bosch chronicles. I figured that there was no way it could be bad: a bestselling author and one of his bestselling creations. He even had his own universe7. I was wrong. It was dreadful. All of which is to say that I didn’t set out to read a bunch of awful books this year. It just happened.
There are spoilers in the next paragraph, though it would take a real doozy to make the experience of reading the book worse than it already is.
Fictional detectives are often dysfunctional and we’re supposed to accept it (or at least feel the conflict) because they get the job done. Bosch – at least in this book – is just unpleasant. He’s racist, rude, and hypocritical but without the redeeming qualities of competence or insight. Here his incompetence takes him from LA to Hong Kong and back again in search of his kidnapped daughter. During the pursuit, Bosch’s ex-wife dies. The psychological fall out of this event occupies fewer pages than the description of a new forensic technique for lifting finger prints from spent ordnance. Dismal stuff. It takes genius of a negative sort to make both LA and Hong Kong seem dull, but Connelly has it.
I Let You Go – Claire Mackintosh
A far more down-to-earth detective story about a hit and run crime and its aftermath. It’s nicely written and, in the latter half of the book, builds a tense atmosphere of creepiness and growing horror. There are a couple of twists thrown in for good measure, but that’s what ultimately lets the book down. In order to get the twists to work, the book is structured a certain way with the first 100 or so pages that comprise part one being more of an extended patience-stretching prologue. The twists only work by deliberately leaving out a lot of information that the plot later relies on (in court, as it happens). I know that’s how twists work but I could really feel the strain of things deliberately left unsaid. There’s also a side plot about the detectives which feels like its there because all detective books have to have at least one troubled detective in them. It’s believable and nicely done but feels superfluous.
If you can make it past part one, it pays off on balance, but I spent a long time wondering if it would.
Mr Paradise – Elmore Leonard
After reading a run of mostly mediocre to dismal detective stories, Mr Paradise was like a cool tall drink after a hot frustrating day. It’s far from Leonard’s best work, but it still delivers interesting characters, cool dialogue, and an intricate plot, paced perfectly to deliver a denouement that could go either way – tragedy or triumph – right up to the very last page. Probably one of the worst Elmore Leonard books I’ve read – sometimes the dialogue is a bit too clipped – but still streets ahead of Coben and Connelly.
The plot scarcely matters. Mr Paradise is a rich and unscrupulous lawyer who is executed with a Victoria’s Secret model in his lap (also executed) and a ballgame on the TV. Witnesses include Mr Paradise’s recently disinherited right hand man, the model’s spitting image and best friend, the butler, two hitmen hired for the job, their lawyer, and a young CI. The right-hand man wants what’s owed to him and his only chance to get it rests on a safety deposit box and the similarity between the dead model and her friend. The detectives are smart and resourceful, but no one is quite as smart as they think they are and as the lead detective falls for the key witness and the risks get higher and higher for less and less return, there’s a real sense of jeopardy. It’s great fun.
Solo Faces – James Salter
A beautiful book, sublime even. It’s the story of Rand, a climber, who lives his life like he doesn’t care and climbs like it’s the only thing that matters. A daring rescue in the Alps brings him fame and the distractions that go with it. They draw him away from the mountains. When the mountains draw him back, he finds he is consciously reaching for fame; something matters beside the climbing. While climbing was the only thing that mattered, it was its own measure of success and there was no failure except by not climbing. Now, perched on the tips of his toes above the abyss, he finds the next handhold forever out of reach and for the first time he feels it as a failure. He retreats: from the mountain, then from life. Without the obsession of climbing to sanctify his selfishness and troubled by an ego that can’t live with his failure, he shrinks away to a pathetic everyday existence, a nothingness.
The writing is literary without being overly affected. In contrast to the highball charms of Elmore Leonard, it was like a cool mountain breeze. It’s all good, but the passages where they are climbing are exceptional.
La Fileuse d’Argent – Naomi Novik
This took me forever to read. It was the first French book I read this year after letting things slip for several months. I stopped Duo Lingo-ing because of its oppressive pushiness and then its jaunt into AI8. By the end of the book, I was back to reading whole chapters without the help of a dictionary, even if some sentences did take me twenty minutes to work out and I had to make a guess at the meanings of some words. Fortunately, Naomi Novik writes a cracking story. A friend leant me one of her books saying, “It’s about talking dragons and set in the Napoleonic war” I was sceptical that this was a winning formula, but it worked.
Spinning silver – as it’s called in English – lays out its wares on the first page: this is not a fairy tale. You may know the tale, it says, but this is the truth. In it, we find three fairy tales’ worth of story spun together.
Miryem is the daughter of a moneylender, who can’t or won’t call in his debts. He is openly mocked by everyone in town and they take advantage of his kindly nature. Miryem has no patience for her father’s ineffectualness and, as winter draws in, she sets out to gather the debts for him. She’s good at it but the awareness of why her father might have been the way he is dawns far too slowly. She makes money and then some, but the town folk mutter and complain behind her back, and, as she grows richer, she attracts the attention of the Staryk lord – a creature out of nightmare – who takes her away to his ice kingdom to turn silver into gold literally.
Wanda is a peasant girl whom Miryem hires to collect money for her, but her father has other plans. He wants to marry her to the son of the brewer so that he might drink for free for the rest of his miserable life.
And finally, there’s the lord’s daughter, who is to be married to the Tsar. The Tsar is renowned for his looks and charm, but she knows that he is a cruel psychopath and, it turns out, possessed by a demon.
The stories of the three women are intertwined and each is fighting in her own way against what society and family expects of her. In the process, everyone gets what they want and then has cause to regret it. So far, so fairy tale, but unlike a fairy tale, the story doesn’t end when the monster is vanquished and the kingdom is saved. There is no happily ever after, just an ever after and all the hard work that goes with it9.
Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge – William Poundstone
An interesting book which is notionally about the limits of knowledge, but gets lost in a labyrinth of its author’s own creation. This may be intentional. By framing the limits of knowledge in terms of paradoxes, it inevitably takes the reader down a lot of dead ends and never really emerges from the maze. On the other hand, one of the book’s conclusions is that – barring an unlikely revolutionary discovery – there are limits on what we can know. Knowledge is a labyrinth without end and we will only ever be able to explore a vanishingly tiny fraction of it. This is kind of depressing for a book that is animated by moving from one mildly diverting paradox to the next, like Boffo the Clown performing magic tricks to entertain the crowd at his own execution.
Like Boffo, the book is showing its age. The first part is about “confirmation”, which had me looking for the word “Bayesian” in the index. It’s not there. And so, the book is missing out on a modern framework for thinking about “confirmation” of theories as well as a whole rich seam of interesting paradoxes. Likewise, the section on chaos, which was already cursory when the book was published, is now woefully out of date.
Even if those gaps were filled it would still be somewhat unsatisfying. Firstly, the theme of how frail our knowledge is gets lost completely at times because the paradoxes are too delicious. Secondly, it raises an obvious question which is “how, despite all the difficulties, do we know so damn much?” A question it never comes close to answering.
For all that though, the book left a strong impression. The idea that what we know is only a tiny fraction of everything there is to know is one thing. The idea that we can only ever know an infinitesimal fraction of everything, is another. That there might be obvious truths hiding in plain sight, truths with the power to make us whole, healthy or happy, truths that nonetheless elude our grasp and maybe always will… well, it haunts me.
The Quarry – Iain Banks
Kit and his father, Guy, live in a house on the edge of a quarry (metaphor alert). Guy is dying of cancer. The house – grand, but dilapidated – will soon be sold and the land consumed by the growing quarry. The story such as it is revolves around one long weekend during which Guy’s old university friends assemble one last time, ostensibly to say goodbye, but also, possibly to find and destroy an old video that might be career-ending for one or all involved (and they were all involved). All of them talk and drink and talk and eat and talk and get high and talk and talk and talk as they search for the tape. Kit narrates. He cares for his father, living at his beck and call and subject to his angry tirades. He endures this with a kind of accepting objectivity. At times, it seems like he knows nothing – nothing about the mysterious tape, his mother’s identity, the motives of the other characters, or even what his future holds beyond the next few months – at others he seems cannily observant. Given how little really happens, its surprising how much momentum the story gathers, propelled by off hand comments, chit chat and the search for that tape. The conclusion is satisfying albeit melancholy.
I started reading Banks’ books when I was a young teenager. My mum bought the Wasp Factory and decided after reading only a little way through it that it wasn’t for her. So, without quite realising what she was doing, she gave it to me. “You’ll enjoy this,” she said. “It’s weird”. I did; it was. It was weirder than she could possibly have imagined, and I was hooked. I read everything he wrote as it came out, up to Look to Windward, then for reasons that are a mystery even to me, I stopped. I still bought his books but I never got round to reading them10. I’ve carried them from flat to flat and country to country, gathering dust and suffering the various indignities of being crammed into overflowing boxes and bookshelves. I was looking for something else entirely when I found The Quarry. I picked it up and started reading. The voice was instantly recognisable, familiar. How do writers do that?
Bonus books – added 2024-12-20
This is stuff I read in the last days of 2023, after my 2023 summary, but not strictly in 2024.
Meantime – Frankie Boyle
This isn’t going to be much of a bonus because I couldn’t tell you much about this book. It involved a murder, a lot of drugs and the dissociation of reality. Elements of Robert Rankin and Irvine Welsh delivered in Boyle’s mordant deadpan voice.
We have always lived in the castle – Shirley Jackson
Darker than anything Frankie Boyle came up with and proving you don’t need drugs to be an unreliable – and terrifying – narrator.
-fin-
Jonathan Franzen likes birds. This much is clear. His argument though fragmented across the essays in this collection, can nonetheless be assembled from its parts:-
We’re doomed by climate change so we should stop trying to stop climate change and save birds instead because doom will be nicer with birds.
I mean, he’s not wrong: doom would be nicer with birds. But he is wrong about climate change and his information is clearly not coming from any reputable source. He manages to be blasé about a worse-than-worst-case scenario of climate change that he believes to be inevitable. In the last-but-one essay that gives the collection its title, he goes to Antarctica on a cruise ship that burns through gallons of fuel each minute. On this ship, he muses about the loss of the Antarctic ice sheet, something that would – by our best estimates – take several thousands of years and require the burning of every combustible fossil that Earth has to offer: oil, gas, coal, tar sands, lignite, you name it. The resulting sea level rise would transform the world utterly. Only, it’s not going to happen.
That’s not to say he doesn’t make reasonable points along the way, he just has difficulty fitting them all together. For example, he notes that humans are putting many pressures on the environment and climate change therefore isn’t the only environmental problem we face. This is of course true, but climate change is global and it’s putting pressure on all natural systems everywhere all the time. The pressures aren’t always negative – there are winners and losers – but the pace of change is rapid and these changes form the backdrop to any kind of local effort to protect nature and preserve the environment. A long-term conservation strategy needs to know that the local climate in twenty or fifty or a hundred years time, will not be the same as it is today and may be dramatically different.
Science aside, the constant bird theme flits between charming and tedious, but in the end his clear love of birds shows. On most other topics, he maintains a cool ironic distance, watching himself watching the world, but on the topic of birds – from which he is very often literally distant – his writing has an immediacy and playfulness that is missing elsewhere. His one line prose sketches of the species he’s spotted and dutifully added to his list are full of the life that’s missing elsewhere.
No great shakes, but nicely written. ↩︎
