CONTENTS

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EDITORIAL - Ken Clay

THE SAVOY: A MAGAZINE OF THE 1890s – Jim Burns

EVERYONE THEIR ISLAND - Alexis Lykiard

TAKING LINES FOR A WALK - Alexis Lykiard

INTRUDER - Alexis Lykiard

COMMENTARY – Alexis Lykiard

LIKE – Alexis Lykiard

SURREALISM REVISITED – Alexis Lykiard

PIECEWORK – Alexis Lykiard

BEWARE PAPARAZZI - Alexis Lykiard

ERIC THE RED – John Lee

MY COUSIN SYLVAIN – Edouard Louis

ASYLUM (2) – Andrew Lee- Hart

ABOUT SUFFERING – Keith Howden

CHOCOLATE BOX – Keith Howden

THE LIVID LIVING – Tanner

BUNTAH – Ken Champion

GAINS AND LOSSES  -  Ivan de Nemethy

ALL IN GOOD TIME – David Birstwistle

TAPPING INTO MONEY (1) – Bob Wild

PAUL LEAUTAUD – Hubert Juin

ON PROUST – Paul Léautaud

 EDITORIAL 

FOG IN DOWNING STREET – CONTINENT CUT OFF

There’s a fair degree of frenchiness in this issue. We make no apologies for that but realise it’s unlikely Rees Mogg or Boris will be snapped with issue 39 sticking out of their pockets. Indeed the whole country seems to be lurching into a xenophobic rage characterised by those exchanges in Act 2 of Britten’s opera Billy Budd: “Don’t like the French Don't like their Frenchified ways Their notions don't suit us, not their ideas. Don't like their bowing and scraping Don't like their hoppity-skipetty ways. Don't like their lingo.” The ratty sea dogs on the Indomitable had, at least, the Napoleonic wars as an excuse.

K.R. Evans translates a chunk of Édouard Louis’ novel The End of Eddy (2014). This describes oik life in a rural shithole near Amiens. Eddy’s opening line is “I have no happy memories of my childhood” Reminiscent of the work of our own oik laureate Tanner (but not quite as funny) which proves that oikitude is a universal category.

Then, sticking with things French, we extract some entries from the Journal of Paul Léautaud not previously translated (Well who in their right mind would translate the whole 19 vols? And who’d publish it if they did?) But Léautaud was a tireless chronicler of the Parisian vie litteraire between 1893 and 1956 - more hippie than oik. We have ferreted out some entries on his first encounter with the works of Proust. He recognised Proust’s genius but said he had no plans to read anything other than the snippets in the reviews. This illustrates perfectly Léautauds’ adamantine self-absorption – even the two world wars did little to displace his obsession with his menagerie, twenty dogs and cats and a female monkey. 

I imagine aspirant oik writers will be fascinated by such excursions off the beaten track. Nigel Ford, a contributor from Sweden, promises a similarly extensive journal – the new Knausgaard?  Little mags would be another such byway and Jim Burns writes the history of The Savoy, a magazine of the 1890s considered decadent and pornographic.

Vide grenier is another frog term – something like garage sale in English. I’ve had many fascinating rummages with John Lee in French towns where all sorts of crap from ancient farm implements to back issues of L’Illustration are laid out on the asphalt. There is a literary equivalent for which we are grateful eg. Alexis Lykiard’s poems from his attic trove. What a donation! Rescued from oblivion!  Or maybe simply from one oblivion to another. Also Keith Howden’s hilarious Gospels of St Belgrano which mouldered in a bottom drawer until it appeared in Oiks 18-36. So oiks of the world get rooting – you have nothing to lose but your obscurity.

KEITH HOWDEN 

About suffering 

In eighteen ninety five, early in April,
beside the  Bull and Butcher, almost
against the wall of the  Quaker Chapel,
near that incursion where meadows start
to interrupt the town's enclosure,
an elephant killed a man. By name
Hartnell,  a circus hand, apparently
incensed by the beast's unruliness,
its slowness and dalliance, kicked its trunk. 

At this, it swung the same to swipe him,
knocking  him to the ground, and after,
came down on him with head and tusks,
piercing and killing him.  Then Hoiler,
calm again, stopped his attack. The river.
as usual, ran on. Weaving sheds
still ranted their looms' sermons. Chimneys
blossomed their icarus filth. Auden
applauds the Old Masters' understanding
of the trivial in such insect happenings.

Nothing had really changed. The world
reloaded the world. I am reminded
of a once day in Court when a Lascar
guilty of killing a fellow crewman was queried
if there were explanation or good reason
for what he had done. 'Why all this fuss,'
he asked us, 'over the death of one man?'

Gertrude Stein - Felix Valloton 1907