Book of Jokes: the video preview
Jul. 12th, 2007 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI'm writing a long fiction called The Book of Jokes right now. Basically it's the story of the world's most dysfunctional family -- a family defined by some of the world's darkest jokes. It'll be published by La Volte in September 2008, initially in French. La Volte will license it to other publishers (if you're a publisher and interested in the rights for your country, contact Xavier Belrose). Here's a mock-up of what the English edition of the book might look like when it comes out next year:
I thought it might be interesting -- very much in the spirit of jokes, which are a kind of open source oral culture, but also in the spirit of 18th century subscription publishing -- to open up the composition process over the next months by doing a series of readings of excerpts of the book (unedited drafts, basically) on a new YouTube channel called bookofjokes. So here's the first reading, a couple of bits from Chapter One concerning our glass house, my father the trouser snake, and the death -- in a hunting accident -- of my uncle The Englishman:
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Disclaimer: This material is dark and filthy and sick and deranged. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is a total fucking joke, mate.
I thought it might be interesting -- very much in the spirit of jokes, which are a kind of open source oral culture, but also in the spirit of 18th century subscription publishing -- to open up the composition process over the next months by doing a series of readings of excerpts of the book (unedited drafts, basically) on a new YouTube channel called bookofjokes. So here's the first reading, a couple of bits from Chapter One concerning our glass house, my father the trouser snake, and the death -- in a hunting accident -- of my uncle The Englishman:
[Error: unknown template video]
Disclaimer: This material is dark and filthy and sick and deranged. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is a total fucking joke, mate.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 12:04 am (UTC)I look forward to more.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 01:12 am (UTC)Nick, great recital, you need to release it on audio-tape.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 07:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 09:10 am (UTC)He is indeed. That sketch is perverse, but also deeply moral in the way it exaggerates the moral depravity of the property market, gazumping, and so on. It's Swiftian.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-13 12:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 10:54 am (UTC)Interesting, hadn't thought of that, but it might be in there... I've read "At Swim Two Birds".
A pint of plain is your only man!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 08:14 pm (UTC)I want it twice poured and the head scraped off with a wooden ladle. We shall watch the rings form down the glass like a receding tide.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 12:18 am (UTC)Noted, my man! Thanks for the warning!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 08:29 am (UTC)mmmh. I did recognise myself in brother francesco, or was it San Francesco?
Anyway, just can't wait for the book of jokes!
Francesco
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 12:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 05:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 12:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 01:11 am (UTC)Also the book jacket is some nice design, even if it makes a bit of a joke out of earlier-this-week's street art entry. Hey, dialectic: street art vs. patina!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 08:46 am (UTC)And yes, there's tagging on the book jacket! It's a photo of a chair I shot at the Beaux Arts in Paris and it actually suggests the underground, writeable, illicit nature of jokes quite well. It also looks a bit Arabic, that tag. But more important is the doodle below, which says "Merder". And the whole kind of "put your butt here" nature of a chair. It's the essence of comedy.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 09:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 03:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 08:08 am (UTC)and i would like an audio book of your book as well.
much love,
random appreciator
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 09:15 am (UTC)We're talking about doing a CD or DVD with the book when it comes out, which might be these vids, collected, or might be just readings; an audio book.
i picture...
Date: 2007-07-12 10:19 am (UTC)Re: i picture...
Date: 2007-07-12 10:48 am (UTC)Re: i picture...
Date: 2007-07-14 05:36 pm (UTC)Subtitles
Date: 2007-07-12 11:06 am (UTC)Re: Subtitles
Date: 2007-07-12 11:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 11:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 12:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 11:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-15 10:09 am (UTC)en Français ?
Date: 2007-07-12 12:52 pm (UTC)Re: en Français ?
Date: 2007-07-12 01:16 pm (UTC)As for whether it's "thought" in French, well, since La Volte have been in on this from the start -- they're the only publishers ever to have pursued me, and Xavier Belrose, the editor, has been in touch since his days at Serpente a Plumes, encouraging me to write something for one of the French houses he's been associated with -- it's certainly encadré in a French context. Also, culturally, I think it owes a lot to french traditions -- the medieval gross-out elements of Villon and Rabelais, the fables and clarté school of La Fontaine, the libertinage of De Sade and co, playful philosopher-pornographers like Diderot, transgressor-economist-anthropologists like Bataille and Leiris, eccentric dandies like Huysmans... It's really much more in a French tradition than an English one. Though of course Swift and Sterne loom large... So many heroes!
"Jokes" is a hard word to translate into French. Le Livre des Blagues? Des Plaisanteries? It's up to the translator, really.
Re: en Français ?
Date: 2007-07-12 01:43 pm (UTC)btw, I liked a lot of books from Le Serpent a Plumes (and their revue was excellent), so it really sounds promising.
Re: en Français ?
Date: 2007-07-12 09:15 pm (UTC)Re: en Français ?
Date: 2007-07-12 10:18 pm (UTC)Re: en Français ?
Date: 2007-07-12 10:42 pm (UTC)Interstitial stand-up
Date: 2007-07-12 05:16 pm (UTC)One can get more from a mediocre joke that comes with a good (often superfluous) yarn than a punchy one liner that fire-crackles out of memory.
Your delivery is the antithesis of stand-up convention, you sound halting, hesitant and a little inconfident which actually makes the joke more effective - the stock bombast that most stage comics believe is essential to their trade is actually off-putting.
I actually think you could find quite a niche in stand-up but I would avoid telling the first joke at church benefit gigs....
Thomas S.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 05:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-12 06:59 pm (UTC)I appreciate that you have to be (a) british and (b) over twenty-five years old to understand.
More Please!
Date: 2007-07-12 07:32 pm (UTC)More, Please!
Date: 2007-07-13 03:18 am (UTC)grow that thing out Moondog style!
nick nick nick
Date: 2007-07-13 09:32 am (UTC)Hi Nick, I just sent you an email but I never trust the address of you that I have...just wanted to ask you about the name of those cheap flights to beijing you told me about, cos I cant find them!
Thanks a bunch,
Mario El Canario
Re: nick nick nick
Date: 2007-07-13 03:10 pm (UTC)Greetings from NW6
Date: 2007-07-13 10:27 am (UTC)Might be able to help you with that; have other news but you're going to have to drop me a line to get it...
your uncle
Date: 2007-07-13 12:23 pm (UTC)Midas?
Date: 2007-07-17 06:28 am (UTC)Everything you touch must turn to gold or some other maleable rock.
P.S
Ocky Milk is incredible
"The birdcatcher" and Nervous heartbeat are in constant rotation
:)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-18 12:53 am (UTC)