“Oh Mammie! You don’t want me to go away and leave you alone? You won’t go away and leave me alone, will you, Mammie!”
“No Joe! Don’t be silly, darling! It’s nothing... really! I just needed a good cry! Oh Joe...”
“And I won’t leave you ever, Mammie! I promise! You’ll always have me!”
“One day when you’re grown up and a man,” she said, holding me tightly to her.
Later I said: “You don’t really want Daddie to go away and not come back?”
“No, Joe, I’m all right now. You go to bed like a good boy. I’ll be all right. And I’m not far away here in the kitchen.”
My father came in.
“I’m going out,” he said. It sounded like an ultimatum.
“You went out last night, Louis,” my mother said. “I have nothing to give you.”
“I didn’t ask did I?”
“I gave you two shillings last night.”
“I didn’t ask you for any bloody money!”
“Don’t lose your temper, Louis.”
“I’m not losing my bloody temper! I didn’t ask you for any bloody money! We’ve never got any bloody money because you’re too bloody soft on them, the whole bloody lot of them! Pitchimuthu with his bloody fried sardines and that old bloody cripple in the blue room! Kept me out of the bathroom all bloody day with their bloody carry on!”
“Louis, you just stop this! Stop it at once! Go on out if you must, but don’t begin that business all over again!”
“Always defending them. They can make a bloody pigsty of the whole place! You don’t care! You let’m do as they bloody well like! Well, not in this house! Not in my house they bloody well won’t! I’ll tell the whole bloody lot of them to get to hell out of here!”
“No you won’t, Louis, you won’t!”
“Do as they bloody well like! Powder all over the bloody toilet seat! The damned dirt on their feet all trod into the bloody carpet! Did you see the carpet in the bloody hall today? Can’t wipe their bloody feet!”
This, then, is the beginning, a tentative organization of a sea of ambiguous experience, a provisional dyke, an opening gambit.
Ending, I should not care to estimate what has been accomplished. In terms of art and literature? – such concepts I sometimes read about, but they have nothing in intimacy with what I am doing, exposing, obscuring. Only at the end I am still sitting here, writing, with the feeling I have not even begun to say what I mean, apparently sane still, and with a sense of my freedom and responsibility, more or less cut off as I was before, with the intention as soon as I have finished this last paragraph to go into the next room and turn on. Later I shall phone those who have kindly intimated their willingness to publish the document and tell them that it is ready now, or as ready as it ever will be, and I surprise myself at feeling relieved, as I once surprised Moira at feeling relieved one New Year, knowing again that nothing is ending, and certainly not this.
New York, August 1959
Notes
1. Mendelian: A reference to Gregor Mendel (1822–84), an Austrian botanist and monk whose theories of heredity are the basis for the modern science of genetics.
2. Tout ce qu’on fait... Cocteau: “Everything one does in life, even love, one does on the express train that rolls toward death. Smoking opium is to leave the train; it is to care for something other than life, death” (French). From Opium: Journal d’une désintoxication (1930) by Jean Cocteau (1889–1963).
3. ex nihilo nihil fit: “Nothing comes from nothing” (Latin).
4. boost: Steal.
5. dollies: A slang term for methadone, a drug used as a substitute for heroin when treating addiction.
6. Don’t you suppose... Unamuno: Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936), a Spanish novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher.
7. Ave Caesar! Nunc civis romanus sum: “Hail Caesar! Now I am a citizen of Rome” (Latin).
8. John Knox: The leader of the Scottish Reformation and founder of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, John Knox (c.1514–72), was noted for his austere, Calvinistic moral beliefs.
9. Espero: “I hope so” (Spanish).
10. Cellini: Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71), a Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith.
11. AMA: American Medical Association.
12. GI Bill: The popular name for the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, which provided unemployment payments and other benefits for veterans of the Second World War.
13. Lucky Luciano’s: Charles “Lucky” Luciano (1896–1962), a powerful New York gangster.
14. Chou En-Lai: Another spelling of Zhou Enlai (1898–1976), the first premier of the People’s Republic of China.
15. the Tombs: Popular name for the Manhattan Detention Complex, a prison in lower Manhattan built in 1838.
16. Miró: Joan Miró (1893–1983), Catalan painter associated with Surrealism.
17. Reuben, Reuben, I Been Thinking: A children’s song, published in 1871, by Harry Birch and William Gooch. It is otherwise known as ‘Rachel and Reuben’.
18. Isthmian Lines: A shipping company founded in the early twentieth century by the United States Steel Corporation.
19. Bothnian Gulf: The northernmost part of the Baltic Sea, between Finland and Sweden.
20. King Haakon: Haakon VII (1872–1957), the first king of Norway following that country’s independence from Sweden in 1905. He was a key figure in Norwegian resistance to the Nazi occupation during the Second World War.
21. dexies: A slang term for Dexedrine, or amphetamine sulphate, a stimulant.
22. bennies: Short for Benzedrine, another trade name for amphetamine.
23. Baron de Charlus... no convict is: The Baron de Charlus is a homosexual character in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past), published between 1913 and 1927. He enjoys the sadomasochistic services of young men procured for him by the brothel-keeper Jupien.
24. L’Histoire d’O... literary prize: An erotic novel by Pauline Réage (in reality the journalist Anne Desclos), published in France in 1954. Although a ban was imposed by the French authorities and obscenity charges were brought against the publisher, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, the novel was awarded the Prix des Deux Magots in 1955. It appeared in English in 1965 as Story of O, published by Maurice Girodias’s Olympia Press, who were Trocchi’s own publishers and for whom the author had himself pseudonymously written a number of pornographic novels.
25. Horatio defending the bridge: The Roman hero Horatius Cocles was said to have saved Rome from invasion in 500 BC by defending the Sublician bridge across the Tiber against the forces of the Etruscans.
26. This time I know... Samuel Beckett: From Beckett’s Malone Dies, published in French (as Malone Muert) in 1951 and in an English translation by the author in 1956. The second of Beckett’s Trilogy (which begins with Molloy and ends with The Unnameable), and famous for its rejection of traditional narrative structure and experimental style, Malone Dies consists of the reflections of a dying man, Malone, who finally passes away at the end of the book.
27. el-train: An abbreviation of “elevated” train. Much of New York’s elevated-train system had been dismantled by the mid-twentieth century.
28. Gill’s Stations of the Cross: In 1914 the British sculptor Eric Gill (1882–1940) produced fourteen relief carvings representing the Stations of the Cross (i.e. the suffering and death of Jesus Christ) for Westminster Cathedral.
29. I Want to Be Happy: An optimistic, light-hearted song by Vincent Youmans (1898–1946) and Irving Caesar (1895–1996), originally from the Broadway musical No, No, Nanette (1925).
30. the perfect correlation of Leibniz’s clocks: A reference to the “two-clock” theory of the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716). Leibniz compared the relationship between the soul and the body to that between two perfectly synchronized clocks, which have no influence on each other but instead owe their exact correlation to “pre-established harmony”, i.e. the wor
k of a clockmaker (and, therefore, God). The narrator’s point here seems to be that just as the two clocks appear to be closely interrelated but in fact are entirely independent of one another, the outward appearance of harmony in his personal relationships disguises the truth that he is never able to make meaningful connections with others.
31. wen: A protuberance on the skin such as a wart.
32. acker: Slang term for an Egyptian piastre.
33. Dale Carnegie: The author of many self-help books, including How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936).
34. Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?: “What does he say?” (French).
35. Merde! Petit con!: “Shit! Little cunt!” (French).
36. Dada: A nihilistic, revolutionary and iconoclastic movement in the arts in the early twentieth century founded by the poet Tristan Tzara (1896–1963).
37. pelf: Stolen goods, material wealth (in a pejorative sense), or rubbish.
38. Dahlberg’s The Sorrows of Priapus: Edward Dahlberg (1900–77) was an American novelist and critic. The Sorrows of Priapus was published in 1957.
39. Mais tout de même... on se justifie: “But all the same we justify ourselves badly, all the same we do badly when we justify ourselves” (French).
40. Il vous faut construire les situations: ¨You need to construct the situations” (French).
41. dies zeigt sich: “This shows itself” (German).
42. Babbitt-forming: A reference to the eponymous central character of Babbitt (1922), a satirical novel by Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951). “Babbitt” became a byword in the United States for bourgeois conformity and narrow-mindedness.
43. Homo ludens: “Playing man” (Latin).
44. Stephen Dedalus... cunning: In James Joyce’s autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist a Young Man (1916), Stephen Dedalus (the author’s representative) rejects the Roman Catholic Church and Ireland, his fatherland, in favour of “silence, exile and cunning.”
ALMA CLASSICS
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1. James Hanley, Boy
2. D.H. Lawrence, The First Women in Love
3. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
4. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
5. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
6. Anton Chekhov, Sakhalin Island
7. Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, Sonnets
8. Jack Kerouac, Beat Generation
9. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
10. Jane Austen, Emma
11. Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
12. D.H. Lawrence, The Second Lady Chatterley’s Lover
13. Jonathan Swift, The Benefit of Farting Explained
14. Anonymous, Dirty Limericks
15. Henry Miller, The World of Sex
16. Jeremias Gotthelf, The Black Spider
17. Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray
18. Erasmus, Praise of Folly
19. Henry Miller, Quiet Days in Clichy
20. Cecco Angiolieri, Sonnets
21. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Humiliated and Insulted
22. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
23. Theodor Storm, Immensee
24. Ugo Foscolo, Sepulchres
25. Boileau, Art of Poetry
26. Georg Kaiser, Plays Vol. 1
27. Émile Zola, Ladies’ Delight
28. D.H. Lawrence, Selected Letters
29. Alexander Pope, The Art of Sinking in Poetry
30. E.T.A. Hoffmann, The King’s Bride
31. Ann Radcliffe, The Italian
32. Prosper Mérimée, A Slight Misunderstanding
33. Giacomo Leopardi, Canti
34. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron
35. Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, The Jew’s Beech
36. Stendhal, Life of Rossini
37. Eduard Mörike, Mozart’s Journey to Prague
38. Jane Austen, Love and Friendship
39. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
40. Ivan Bunin, Dark Avenues
41. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
42. Sadeq Hedayat, Three Drops of Blood
43. Alexander Trocchi, Young Adam
44. Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying
45. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
46. Sadeq Hedayat, The Blind Owl
47. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jealousy
48. Marguerite Duras, Moderato Cantabile
49. Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus
50. Alain Robbe-Grillet, In the Labyrinth
51. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
52. Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
53. Ivan Bunin, The Village
54. Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Voyeur
55. Franz Kafka, Dearest Father
56. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
57. Ambrose Bierce, The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter
58. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
59. Bram Stoker, Dracula
60. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
61. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities
62. Marguerite Duras, The Sailor from Gibraltar
63. Robert Graves, Lars Porsena
64. Napoleon Bonaparte, Aphorisms and Thoughts
65. Joseph von Eichendorff, Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing
66. Adelbert von Chamisso, Peter Schlemihl
67. Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, The Three-Cornered Hat
68. Jane Austen, Persuasion
69. Dante Alighieri, Rime
70. Anton Chekhov, The Woman in the Case and Other Stories
71. Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve
72. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
73. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
74. Gottfried Keller, A Village Romeo and Juliet
75. Raymond Queneau, Exercises in Style
76. Georg Büchner, Lenz
77. Giovanni Boccaccio, Life of Dante
78. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
79. E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil’s Elixirs
80. Claude Simon, The Flanders Road
81. Raymond Queneau, The Flight of Icarus
82. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
83. Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of our Time
84. Henry Miller, Black Spring
85. Victor Hugo, The Last Day of a Condemned Man
86. D.H. Lawrence, Paul Morel
87. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Life of Monsieur de Molière
88. Leo Tolstoy, Three Novellas
89. Stendhal, Travels in the South of France
90. Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
91. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Erasers
92. Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, Fosca
93. D.H. Lawrence, The Fox
94. Borys Conrad, My Father Joseph Conrad
95. James De Mille, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder
96. Émile Zola, Dead Men Tell No Tales
97. Alexander Pushkin, Ruslan and Lyudmila
98. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
99. James Hanley, The Closed Harbour
100. Thomas De Quincey, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts
101. Jonathan Swift, The Wonderful Wonder of Wonders
102. Petronius, Satyricon
103. Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on Credit
104. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
105. W.B. Yeats, Selected Poems
106. Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double
107. Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night
108. Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
109. Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
110. Guido Cavalcanti, Complete Poems
112. Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier, Hashish, Wine, Opium
113. Charles Dickens, Haunted House
114. Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Children
115. Dante Alighieri, Inferno
116. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
117. Alexander Trocchi, Man at Leisure
118. Alexander Pushkin, Boris Godunov and Little Tragedies
119. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
120. Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
121. Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen
122. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
123. René de Chateaubriand, Atala and René
124. Mikhail Bulgakov, Diaboliad
125. Goerge Eliot, Middlemarch
126. Edmondo De Amicis, Constantinople
127. Petrarch, Secretum
128. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
129. Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
130. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
131. Luigi Pirandello, Plays Vol. 1
132. Jules Renard, Histoires Naturelles
133. Gustave Flaubert, The Dictionary of Received Ideas
134. Charles Dickens, The Life of Our Lord
135. D.H. Lawrence, The Lost Girl
136. Benjamin Constant, The Red Notebook
137. Raymond Queneau, We Always Treat Women too Well
138. Alexander Trocchi, Cain’s Book
139. Raymond Roussel, Impressions of Africa
140. Llewelyn Powys, A Struggle for Life
141. Nikolai Gogol, How the Two Ivans Quarrelled
142. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
143. Jonathan Swift, Directions to Servants
144. Dante Alighieri, Purgatory
145. Mikhail Bulgakov, A Young Doctor’s Notebook
146. Sergei Dovlatov, The Suitcase
147. Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat
148. Jonathan Swift, The Battle of the Books
149. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
150. Alexander Pushkin, The Queen of Spades and Other Short Fiction
151. Raymond Queneau, The Sunday of Life
152. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
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