ISSUE 52
WINTER 2022
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EDITORIAL -
Ken Clay
IN
LOVEWITH HELL – Jim Burns
REMEMBERING COLIN WILSON –Alexis
Lykiard
SENEX
CONCLUDES –Alexis Lykiard
UNPOSTED
BIRTHDAY CARDS –Alexis Lykiard
THE
RIGHT TRACK –Alexis Lykiard
VARIANT
READINGS AND LACUNEA–Alexis Lykiard
GOVERNANCE–Alexis Lykiard
PECKING
ORDERS–Alexis Lykiard
OPPORTUNISTS–Alexis Lykiard
MODERN/IST TIMES–Alexis Lykiard
ALRIGHT
IS ALLWRONG–Alexis Lykiard
CRACKED
MARY’S HOLIDAY – Keith Howden
RE-JOYCE
– ULYSSES IS 100! – Aubrey Malone
THE
MATCHBOX GIRL – Mary Mannion
THE DAY
RATIONING ENDED – Tom Kelly
ANYONE
GOES – Nigel Ford
IN A
COUNTRY CHURCHYARD – Ron Horsefield
SPECIMENS – Mark Ward
THREE
POEMS – Tanner
KILLING
TIME – Bob Wild
MALRAUX
– John Lee
A STROKE
OF GENIUS – David Birtwistle
HOME
MAKERS – Nigel Ford
TYPOLAND
– Paul Murgatroyd
THE
MACKON COUNTRY – CHAPTER 3 – Martin
Keaveney
THEN AND
US – CHAPTER 4 – Ken Champion
CRAZY
OIKS IN FRANCE – Ron Horsefield
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EDITORIAL
APOCALYPSE NOW? Four Horsemen? Yep, had all
those. War? – tick, Famine? – tick, Plague? – tick
(the TV is full of it), Death? – tick – well no-one
lives for ever as we see from accounts of Archbishop
Tutu’s
untimely death (I repeat lib-dem leader Charles
Kennedy’s poignant adjective from his eulogy on the
Queen Mum’s demise aged 103) Then there’s the Puke
himself dying
at a mere 99 (if he’d have lived another
couple of months he’d have got a telegram from the
Queen. But who sends her Madge one when she gets to
100? The self-referential paradox can be fun, So where’s the fifth horseman
when you need one? The horse’ll have a shaggy yellow
mane, bray immoderately, constantly demand a bigger
nosebag and promise to win the Grand National if
you’ll stump up for a new, posh stable. Yes, he does
exist. He looks a bit phoney like a pantomime horse
but at least we’ll have a larf as he falls flat,
pisses himself and dumps a giant turd. Then we’ll
have to clean it up. Meanwhile Ireland seems like
Shangri La but it too, going back a bit, has had its
share of apocalyptic horses – Famine especially. We
won’t mention Shergar. Mary Mannion and Martin
Keaveney re-acquaint us with a rural paradise while
Aubrey Malone celebrates the 100 anniversary of
James Joyce’s
Ulysses first published in February 2022. Aubrey
is no quirky fantasist like Flann O’Brien (see p14
for more on this old soak), but a distinguished
alumnus of Joyce’s old alma mater University College
Dublin. His piece is a bit of a pisstake (he prefers
Hemingway) but one should note his brother, now in
USA, is top jockey in a Yank James Joyce society. I
sent him a pic of a Plumtree’s Potted Meat container
(Plumtrees were based in Southport where I found one
in a junk shop). I hesitated to send the actual pot
since a home without it would be incomplete – with
it an abode of bliss. Then, to stretch our
universalist credentials, we have John Lee’s
fascinating account of that great faker Andre
Malraux in the Dordogne during the occupation and
two more oblique slices of life in Sweden. Both
these writers live in the EU – lucky sods. I guess
we’ll be back someday – if we live as long as Phil
the Greek. Ken Clay Jan 2022
MALRAUX My friend Pierre Yquem, is a
communist who services Mercedes Benz for the wealthy of
Manchester. It’s a tribute to both the conservatism of
the Communists and contemporary Britain that the dealers
and his clients have absolute confidence in his
suitability to make delicate adjustments to their
steering. It turns out that his father, a lecturer in
French literature at Cardiff university and a distant
relative of both Montaigne and the previous owners of
Chateau Yquem was born down the road from Neuvic at St
Medard. He came to visit me along with Pierre who is a
wine expert of some clout. When I asked the father what
exactly he’d specialised in, he told me that it was
literature of the thirties but that he’d written his
thesis on a certain Andre Malraux
who he still
thinks of as one of the great French novelists. I told him of the story of the
young maquisard who had met Malraux in the forests of
the Dordogne and who was studying
Man’s Estate
for his Bac. Apparently Malraux had given him a two hour
impromptu lecture on the philosophical import of the
novel but had done so in his tic-ridden rapid-fire
staccato voice so that the young man had either not
heard or not remembered much of it when he came to make
notes the following morning. "It was the same for me!" said
Raymond . "I was writing my thesis and I made an
appointment to see him at his office in Paris. He wanted
all the questions written down beforehand, so he could
reflect upon them, just like De Gaulle - but when he
came to answer them I was so mesmerized by the sound and
speed of his voice as though he were addressing a crowd
of 10,000, that I couldn't remember a word he said. He
filled the talk with a million references that I’d never
heard of. I don't even know if he answered my
questions." It seems that Malraux had devised the
ultimate technique for getting through unprepared
lectures and tutorials and still giving the impression
of genius and great erudition. This version of the man is upheld
by a story that Cates tells in his biography. Malraux
was disputing with his friend Chasson the novelist and
expert on Provencal art. He followed Chasson’s lecture
by informing the assembled literary giants of France
(including Gide, Mauriac and de Montherlant) that
Chasson was out of date and reeled of a string of modern
references to make his point. Afterwards Chasson
expressed surprise and admitted he’d never even heard of
these new authorities. "Neither have I,” admitted
Malraux . "I made them all up but it’s important to win
arguments."
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