Forum / a ruseless guide

• 
  strannikov

  Apr 02, 12:00am

  Fresh in the mail and only half-read so far, reliably comprehensive and soberly circumspect: 'Pataphysics: A Useless Guide by Andrew Hugill, MIT Press, 2012. (ISBN: 978-0-262-01779-4) ((MIT Press also publ. in 2011 the fine Jarry biography by Alastair Brotchie.))

  Frankly, I'm no more 'Pataphysician than surrealist, and too remote to be of direct OBERIU descent, but to date I've launched no comparative study of OBERIU and 'Pataphysica (I lack the requisite language skills and intellectual sophistication, but Hugill for all the competencies he demonstrates does not invoke the comparison himself). Vvedensky and Kharms were both being conceived and born about the time Jarry was exhaling his final doses of ether. Jarry took classes under Bergson, whereas the OBERIUty seem to've found inspiration in Bergson without recourse to Jarry. (Kharms was notably shy of francophone influence himself, I seem to recall.) While the two distinct enterprises might also share the common inspiration of crocodiles, perhaps it is the case that 'Pataphysics remains the science it is while OBERIU survives as the art it is. Certain correspondences in outcomes seem evident, just can't say how exact, or whether the correspondences are exact.

  Someone may yet say. In the meanwhile, though, Hugill's monograph holds the charms inherent to his subject.

• 
  strannikov

  Apr 04, 01:56pm

  The other half of Hugill's monograph, however, the portion between the early half and the back matter, is a bit weaker: when he brings film into the discussion, yes, there're the Marx Brothers, BUT: no Buster Keaton, no Jean Vigo (!), no Luis Bunuel. He mentions The Beatles because of the lyrics to "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and because Sir Paul heard a radio production of UBU in 1966 (to this day Jarry STILL does not appear on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band).

  Hugill also fails to address the prominent Jarryesque practice that contemporary pataphysics seems to've dropped like a vacuum ascending into a periphery: vast and appplied intoxication. Not only does he fail to treat Jarry's antecedents in Baudelaire and Gautier (and G. de Nerval, as applicable), he fails to treat developments in sensory derangement since the heady days of absinthe and ether: in fact, he fails distinctly to treat Jarry's intoxication and inebriation as such, except the familiar single-paragraph synopsis provided by Rachilde. (Shattuck's account of Jarry in BANQUET YEARS is elaborate and expansive on AJ's/HA's dedication to intoxication, going so far as to title the first Jarry chapter "Suicide by Hallucination".) Hugill's account thus shows overall how clever pataphysics has become without cultivation of any capacity for self-dislocation and the narrative perspectives emerging therefrom, arguably a betrayal of Jarry's intrinsic approach to 'pataphysics.

  As in my earlier note: not one word about the Russian literary scene (from Silver Age symbolism to Bulgakov and Kharms of Vvedensky or anyone else), even though he brings in Joyce and Calvino with apparent justification (Borges and Flann O'Brien perhaps less so). Still worth consultation, but perhaps closer to its subtitle than its title without whatever improvements and enlargements a second edition could provide.

• 
  strannikov

  Apr 04, 04:17pm

  Further echo: maybe Hugill's quote from Flann O'Brien's THIRD POLICEMAN amounts to the intuition that cycling is just as central to the exercise of pataphysical perspective as abject or insanitary piffication.

  (Dreadful and uncharacteristic typo up above: "Kharms or Vvedensky . . .". Profuse apologies.)

• Frankie Saxx

  Apr 04, 05:30pm

  So worth reading?

• 
  strannikov

  Apr 04, 05:58pm

  ("What, was I not clear enough?" ha ha)

  The book IS informative but could have been more informative with little effort on Hugill's (and/or his editor[s]') respective parts. If Jarry is the actual target of investigation, consult Jarry's available work (especially UBU and FAUSTROLL), Brotchie's bio, and/or Shattuck's survey of the period; if an introduction to pataphysics, Hugill's a good place to begin, only supplement the latter with the intriguing insights I offer above, especially the appalling oversight of Jean Vigo: ZERO FOR CONDUCT is a compact recapitulation of Jarry's career, if you ask me, not only for the character of M. Viot's Ubu-like presence and Tabard's long-haired Jarry lookalike muttering "Merde!".

• Frankie Saxx

  Apr 04, 07:47pm

  That's a yes, then.

  Will check the university library & see if they've got it. They get all kinds of stuff.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Apr 05, 04:19am

  Thanks for the tip, strannikov!

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