Fly leaf as fig leaf

[imomus]

September is the big American month for our big American books. When I say "our", I mean Tao Lin, Nick Cave and myself, and when I say "books" I mean novels. Cave's sophomore effort The Death of Bunny Munro comes out in the US on the 1st, and on the 15th Tao Lin publishes Shoplifting From American Apparel. The same day, my debut The Book of Jokes comes out.



This morning I received finished copies of The Book of Jokes. My first impression was that they are made of paper, which is odd, because the book was put together on a computer screen, two years ago. Paper doesn't shine as brightly as a computer screen, you have to get used to that. There's a faint scent of paper and ink, of course. The back cover mentions Rabelais, Martial and Boccaccio as my peers and references, which is odd but nice. They're a sexy bunch, and so are Cave and Lin.



Without even bothering to dress, I snapped a couple of pictures of myself proudly holding my novel. I held it like a fig leaf, covering my genitals, because for me culture does that; it covers our genitals, blurs our primal instincts, softens our shove.

So now I have to think about promotion. I'm not nearly as inventive a self-promoter as Tao Lin, who's currently selling his stuff on eBay (including this nice moleskin journal) in a bid to draw attention to a novel about shoplifting he financed innovatively by selling shares (he raised $12,000 by selling six 10% shares at $2000 each).

Nick Cave, meanwhile, is issuing a 7-CD / DVD set of himself reading the whole of his new book. I actually was supposed to shrinkwrap a CD of some sort with the French edition of my novel, but talked the publishers out of it, because I wanted the book to stand on its own as a book, not as a side project from a musician.

[Error: unknown template video]

Nick Cave has already done a bunch of readings from Bunny Munro, and run excerpts in Vice magazine. Oh, wait, I've also done readings from The Book of Jokes! It's just that they happened so long ago it seems like another era, another life. Two years ago I read this one:

[Error: unknown template video]

And one year ago I performed an artier reading at Tranzit/Display Gallery in Prague:

[Error: unknown template video]

On September 17th I'll do a performance reading a bit like the Tranzit/Display one at Staalplaat Working Space in Berlin, too. Still deciding whether to wear clothes or not.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I fucking ADORE Dory Previn! She was actually a huge influence on early Momus, but one that never, never gets spoken about. I have all her albums. My favourite song by her is Doppelganger:

[Error: unknown template video]

Now, if people can't hear Momus in that, they're DEAF!

[(Anonymous)]

I hear Momus, Morrissey and Jarvis. Thats just the British contingent, I could go on and on and on....

[(Anonymous)]

Indeed! And both of you are aviaphobes, she even more so. But I could never take to her music or that of her former husband, André, one of whose crimes was to make Schostakovich sound so bland : (

Owen.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow. That's my favorite Dory Previn song also. And I never made a connection between your music & hers. Now that you've pointed it out, it couldn't be more obvious.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's not just the doppelganger theme, or the gently spooky acoustic textures, sudden style changes, and so on, but also the underlying theme that evil is something inside us, something we shouldn't project onto outgroups, but locate and deal with in our own psyches. I think that's such a big and important theme, and it applies to cultural blocs too: we need to see that the "evil" things we project onto other cultures are actually present -- and more pressingly dangerous -- in our own. I'd go so far as to call this "the paradox at the core of liberalism": the idea that, however good our intentions may be, evil still exists. And not out there, but in here.

[(Anonymous)]

And haven't you used the Doppelganger vocal phrasing in several of your songs... which is essentially:

DA-duh DA-duh DA-duh...(pause)...DA-duh DA-duh DAAAA, where the last note goes up a little

It's trochaic meter - the opposite of iambic meter (I looked it up).

Like in the first verse of "The Angels Are Voyeurs."

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Trochaic? All ancient Greek to me!

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Used to listen to Mythicial Kings and Iguanas often as a child. A very underrated songwriter, it seems to me.

dory previn

[(Anonymous)]

i hear ya i hear ya .this is amazing thanks i thought i had exhausted and mined all rocks many seams .
this with momus singing would have fitted "don't stop the night" or the compilation "monsters of love "
.im only talking about the phrasing/melody not necessarily the content.