Verbivoracious Festschrift Volume One: Christine Brooke-Rose

Verbivoracious Festschrift #1

by Christine Brooke-Rose, G.N. Forester (Editor), M.J. Nicholls (Editor)

The flagship issue fêtes Christine Brooke-Rose, one of the most innovative voices of the twentieth century, whose fiction plays challenging games with form and structure, using grammatical constraints, multiple languages, and a dicing of genre styles and theoretical discourses as an integral component of her novels. Brooke-Rose is among an unfortunate revue of writers whose work is fading out of print, rarely part of critical or academic discussion.

This issue contains creative responses to her fiction and criticism, written with an eye to the general literary reader unfamiliar with her output, but with enough homage, parody, imitation, and criticism to excite her devoted fan base.

Table of Contents

Jean-Michel Rabaté — An Introduction
Editor — The (lack of)di-facile-facere=>do/schwer/sweer/serio in the Work of Christine Brooke-Rose
Christine Brooke-Rose — Gold
Chretine Broke-Prose — The Logαλφαgeis of kLeubʰ: /la:f/; /lʌv/
Nadine Mainard — Le Diner
Christine Brooke-Rose — Aubade
Scott Beauchamp — Reading the Horoscope After Reading Christine
G.N. Forester — In the Labyrinth, translated by Christine Brooke-Rose: A Review
Christine Brooke-Rose — Troglodyte
Silvia Barlaam — Thru My Words
Wee Teck Lim — Landscapes of My Childhood
Christine Brooke-Rose — Le Pop
S.D. Stewart — Walking a Disappearing Line: Christine Brooke-Rose’s Treatment of Language Ambiguity in Xorandor
M.J. Nicholls — Reset
Christine Brooke-Rose — On Terms
David Auerbach — Christine Brooke-Rose and the Liberty of Literature
Emily Rhodes — A Long Way from San Francisco
Maria del Sapio Garbero — Interview January 1991
Joseph Andrew Darlington — Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christine Brooke-Rose’s Distant Relatives (But Were Too Poststructuralist to Ask)
Joanne Blair-Hayley — Three Recovered Manuscript Excerpts
Nicolas Tredell — (W)rite of Passage
Gottfried Gottlieb — Mein gott!
Jonathan Morton — The Origin of Myth/SubText
Christine Brooke-Rose — Review
Ali Millar — Talking to Mirrors
Françoise Gramet (with G.N. Forester and Wee Teck Lim) — Translation, Pastiche & Things
Christine Brooke-Rose — Review
Adam Guy — Brooke-Rose, Lastness
Nathan “N.R.” Gaddis — Prayer for the BURIED
Christine Brooke-Rose — Heaven’s Hospital
D. Lecter — Postscript: What Tess Would Have Said

Jean-Michel Rabaté, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania's English & Comparative Literature Department, has been a staunch supporter of the Press since before its inception, provided much needed assistance in acquiring republishing permission for the earlier works of Christine Brooke-Rose, and has written the Festschrift's Introduction.

Genres: Essays, Short Stories, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published March 21, 2014

About the author

Christine Frances Evelyn Brooke-Rose was a British writer and literary critic, known principally for her later, experimental novels. Born in Geneva and educated at Somerville College, Oxford and University College, London, she taught at the University of Paris, Vincennes, from 1968 to 1988 and lived for many years in the south of France.

She was married three times: to Rodney Bax, whom she met at Bletchley Park; to the poet Jerzy Pietrkiewicz; and briefly to Claude Brooke. She shared the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction for Such (1966).

She was also known as a translator from French, in particular of works by Robbe-Grillet.

NYT obituary.

Reviews

[Fionnuala]

In this day of e-books, I'd like to draw attention to a paper and ink book of more than usual caliber. As an object, this book is very attractive: a striking blue cover; pages of good quality paper that are almost square, with a border top and bottom; a beautiful font throughout, interspersed with typographical variations, some surprisingly inventive. In fact, turning a page in this unique book becomes an adventure because of the layout alone not to mention the very inspiring and creative content.

I use the word 'unique' partly for the quality of the presentation and partly because it is not every day that I get to read a book in which several virtual friends have written entire chapters - you'll find their names in the updates. And not only have they written sections of it, some of them have edited and published the book, initiating a series of Festschrifts of the work of less mainstream authors.

When I first heard of this venture, I thought it could never happen. I was wrong. But I’m still in awe at the work involved in getting this beautiful book rolling off the presses. There’s a statue of Johannes Gutenberg near where I live. He’d approve of this very creative publication.

There are thirty-eight pieces included here, ten by Christine Brooke-Rose herself, the rest a mix of professional-standard critical analysis plus some creative tributes, directly and beautifully inspired by Brooke-Rose’s words. The updates give an idea of the variety of the material included.

Verbivoracious Press, whose remit is to publish, reprint, and translate fiction in the spirit of writers...who revel in language, wordplay and distinctively daring approaches to form and content, and whose work is too awkward and unclassifiable for even the most avant of avant-garde publishers, reminds me of the group of young enthusiasts who more or less resurrected Samuel Beckett’s work in the early 1950s by taking the risk of publishing extracts in their fledgling magazine, Merlin. Against all the odds - no money, small circulation, they eventually started a publishing arm in order to publish Beckett’s novels and plays when mainstream publishers were no longer interested in him. Those men and women, Alexander Trochhi among them, did no more than what Verbivoracious Press are doing today.

*******************************************

Here are some quotes from two chapters of this book, one, the text of an interview Brooke-Rose gave at her home in 1991 when she was almost seventy, the other, her essay Illiterations. I’m highlighting these quotes because among the many interesting things she says about the writing process, there are some comments that echo my own thoughts about reading and writing, and specifically my opposition to the notion of grouping writers by their gender, colour, or class; it was a really welcome surprise to find her uttering them.

From the start, I was concerned with technical matters in literature...technical metaphor..how language functions, how narrative structure functions.
Speaking of Dorothy Richardson: One safe way not to recognise innovative women is to shove them under a label, and one such label is ‘woman writer’.
Reflecting on the theory that men and women read and write differently, she says, Both should read as both, just as both should write as both...I am absolutely against the notion of segregation...These categories (gender, colour, class) are not right. For the writer they are mutilating, they are debilitating.
On the difficulty of men creating women characters and women creating men, she says: It is very difficult to imagine yourself as totally other, but if you can’t do that you don’t even begin to be a writer.

[Scribble Orca]

Update: Here's what noted academic, feminist, and critic Ellen G Friedman - who contributes an essay on Christine Brooke-Rose in Verbivoracious Festschrift Volume Three: The Syllabus - says about Verbivoracious Festschrift Volume One: Christine Brooke-Rose - on its back cover, no less:

Verbivoracious Press launches its Festschrift series with a spectacular volume on christine Brooke-Rose, writer of mind-bending formal experiments in fiction. The epigraph on the title page encapsulates her sense of her own reputationL "Have you ever tried to do something very difficult for a very long time, unnoticed?". This Festschrift seeks to rekindle interest in her work ahead of Verbivoracious reprinting her out-of-print work. Brooke-Rose would have loved and hated this volume: loved because so many brilliant minds pay tribute here. Hated because having swallowed the pomo Koo-Aid, she disdained anything explicitly biographical and her and this volume contains plenty. The biography, imitations, and analyses of her work offered in the Festschrift are essential tools for literary critics and students entering her oeuvre. It will will them avoid becoming hopelessly lost - unless of caurse they want to.

Unusual disclaimer:

Association by dint of special relationship to the publisher. Therefore all and any comments should be taken with standard skepticism and suspension of (dis)belief.

— Quite clearly, this is a ploy to gain a couple of unremarkable wannabes international acclaim and fortune by jumping on the bandwagon of an invisible author. Such antics should be wholly encouraged to ensure they learn an object lesson in abject failure.

— My god, could the first "academic" essay in the volume have contained any more footnotes? A millipede would feel limbically challenged.

— Phew. That was a long poem. I gather the Gulag is easy work in comparison?

— Play-jar-ism: these people with Gallic sounding names and clever little ironical comments. Obviously if Christine Brooke-Rose had intended to write a lively dinner scene she'd have included it in the first book.

— Missed the big steal - we hear all about the Harry Ransom Centre and the Christine Brooke-Rose archive and then see nothing of it. Where are the pix?

— Good grief - there's a review with a fork in it! How pointed.

— Christine Brooke-Rose' essay on Illiteration is literate reading.

— Hahahaha! An egg. In the middle of the text. About evolution. Ok, I'll pay that one.

— Jip n Zab alias Bat n Imp are taken out for a cyber spin with WOWs LOWs FOWs KOWs HOWs ... bejaezuz, reads like Dr Seuss. And someone's grandmother carks it on A Sennimenal Journey.

— Some guy wrote something about Lastness and the essay is almost Last? Some kind of logic operating there, I guess.

— Ah! Nicolas Tredell pops up. Now that's a memoir worth squizzing, considering at one stage he interviewed just about any writer who was anybody. And of course, the Yves Saint Laurent scarf flutters past again...

— Oooooh. Battersea Boats and the Meeting to Discuss the Reader as Giver of Being. Shades of Textermination....

— Well, that made a lot of sense. Frenglaish. A la Joyce. Watch out for textual sautés.

— Lots of reflective me-rois....

— Heavens! They've even included a liturgical litany. Appeals to religion. How desperate can a publisher be??!?

— Christine Brooke-Rose essay on Ill Wit - yes, she'd have probably trashed this review as well, were it worth her reading.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

What happens to a writer who stubbornly refuses every formidable label she is offered, from nouveau romancier, to postmodern experimentalist, to radical feminist, and even has the brass tacks to refuse indoctrination into the OuLiPo? What happens to that writer if she elects to write under a series of self-imposed constraints that she refuses (for most of her career) to reveal to patronise the reader? She finds herself a marginalised figure in critical discourse, leaving behind a sui generis oeuvre no sensible respecter of innovation would dare to stoop so low as to slap on a label and bung in the poh-no bucket.

Genome Forcedher and Umgee Knuckles have compiled a triple-layer CB-R confection with extra servings of wordplay and wit in the form of essays, fictions, and material filched from the archives. ‘Gold’ is an epic poem based on the medieval ‘oraculum’ form found in the 14thC Pearl with a strict metre, making this her first serious work of constraint, and a powerful rumination on the Kolyma gulags to boot. CB-R’s ‘Illiterations’ and ‘Ill Wit and Good Humour’ essays air her views on her life as an “experimental woman writer,” and on creating comedy in fiction in a lucid and compelling style. The tremendous stories ‘Troglodyte’ and ‘On Terms’ from Go When You See the Green Man Walking are included, the former a sardonic tale of a city dweller who takes a break to live in a Spanish cave, the latter a chilling tale using her characteristic break with punctuation. Those keen to know CB-R’s take on French pop music and the reported death of structuralism at a party need only consult the contents.

G.N. Forester’s ‘The (lack of)di-facile-facere=>do/schwer/sweer/serio in the Work of Christine Brooke-Rose’ is a rollicking denunciation of Creative Writing 101s and a meticulous semi-seminar on CB-R’s constraints. Among the other treasures include Jean-Michel Rabaté’s remembrance of an ailing CB-R who endured a painful final decade, as described in the melancholic Life, End of, Joseph Andrew Darlington’s investigation into the Brooke-Rose lineage as explored in The Dear Deceit, Nicholas Tredell’s encounter with the fierce CB-R intellect as a rookie interviewer, and Maria Garbero’s long interview from 1991.

Among the various idiosyncratic contributions are the ludic typographical larks of Silvia Barlaam’s ‘Thru My Words,’ Françoise Gramet’s ‘Translation, Pastiche and Things,’ and Wee Teck Lim’s exuberantly annotated poem ‘Landscapes of my Childhood.’ Numerous skilful acts of homage from Swiss-Hungarian ex-pat Igo Wodan, retired vicar Gottfried Gottlieb, and former danseur Gianni Dane bedeck the issue, alongside meatier academic contributions from David Auerbach and Victoria Stewart, who discuss respectively CB-R’s work in A Rhetoric of the Unreal, and her techniques for self-creation in Remake. Goodreads stalwarts are to be found lurking: S.D. Stewart’s excellent essay on Xorandor, J. Morton’s reflective and visually striking nod to Subscript, and N. Gaddis’s rousing and elegiac ‘Prayer for the Buried’ enhance the issue and score a victory for literary cronyism. This premier issue, ideally, will preach to the converted and shake the uncoverted into a posthaste reading of Textermination, Amalgamemon, and the remaining 20-odd works in the oeuvre.

Available from here.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liber Amicorum

How's your German? It's a pity this Gedenkschrift wasn't a Festschrift in the true sense of the word, because then we might have had the added pleasure of a response from Christine Brooke-Rose during her lifetime.

If you've already read some of her non-fiction, you'll know that there is no better critic or explicator of her work than the author herself.

Another matter for regret is that many of the friends who could have contributed to a Festschrift or a Gedenkschrift predeceased her.

Hence, necessarily, this work can't live up to the expectations of a Gedenkschrift. However, that's OK, because whatever the pretence of its title, most of the content doesn't pretend to be criticism.

If you're friend or family of an editor or contributor, I recommend that you acquire this work in one format or other, regardless of merit or your familiarity with the subject author. The financial support will enable this not-for-profit enterprise to publish additional works of both Brooke-Rose and other authors, some of whose work might have fallen between the cracks.

For other potential readers, it's a matter of determining the promise of the work, whether it matters and whether the editors and contributors have delivered on it.

My Wakean Year

Remember 2013 and 2014, when your GR feed was filled with pastiches of "Finnegan's Wake", whatever the subject matter?

As T.S. Eliot said of "Ulysses", it was a "book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape", even if (like William Gaddis) we haven't read it.

Overnight, grammar and punctuation deteriorated, double- and treble-semi-colons became the nu blak;; meaning went both troppo and entropic;; and what had once been many individual voices became one perpetual stream of self-conscious imitation (it's rumoured that it continues to this day). It was as if Joyce's legacy was gobbling up everything in its path, digesting it and excreting it in its, ahm, wake.

Somebody thought it would be a good idea to wake up Christine Brooke-Rose, so to speak, so that, paradoxically, they could celebrate her own unique prose. The question remains whether Brooke-Rose needs to be (or benefits from being) viewed through the lens of a predecessor, as great as Joyce might have been.

As Gaddis said of his own experience, "anyone seeking Joyce finds Joyce even if both Joyce and the victim found the item in Shakespeare, [even if they] read right past whole lines lifted bodily from Eliot etc, all of which will probably go on so long as Joyce remains an academic cottage industry."

Still thrives this cottage industry.

Nevertheless, let's celebrate Brooke-Rose's awakening, before trying to assess her achievement and the contribution of this Gedenkschrift to her legacy.

This Big Eyed Girl Sees Her Faces Unfurl
Thanks to Severin, Ballion and Lydon

...and hello a lo again naturally it was time to pass auf one's moore and envision a moorening become eclectic when a way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, through their goode looking glasses, a mötley crüe of pirates, ensconced aboard the fearsome pirate shippe, "the Evil Grappa", fresh from six weeks hell-raisin amidst dangerous currants, espied another fabulous inn, deserving of their customs and agape o'grape, and lo it was Christine's, a handsomely appointed tavern, a contributary to having the right honourable financial Bacchus, it being named and numbered hup two three for the strawberry girl whose bananas split, famously, and it was perched high upon the left banke where the anciente brooke rose from the estuarie mouth, and they did descende from their humble vessel, as soon as they were foreshore of their footing, and having ceased disclaiming arrgh me arrghties a handful of years ago-go, lest they appear too jeff tweedy and academick, they regaled the banshee-like Christine with their insight and wit, ad-free infinitum, usw, and she laughed politely, as if in a song, trying not to shatter kaleidoscope style, hiding personality changes behind her red smile, thinking every new problem brings a stranger inside, helplessly forcing one more new disguise, usw, it is a nice song, isn'tit, and lo the base play of the cure having caused her even greater dis-ease, she did consider retiring from the hospitability business, it's not a game of monopoly, after all, you know, even when you own your own hotel, Christine being more used to guests who lived and laughed and loved and left promptly after paying their bill, for which departure she did but have to wait unstill after several months, fueled by their own consumption, the pirates finally adaired to ungrippe Christine from the clutches of "the Evil Grappa", and thence parted company and resumed their careering, the steady hand as planned behind the reasoning, in pursuit of their next most adventuresome enterprise, and so on their voyage home or thereabouts they did open their journals and record their impressions of Christine and their good selves and each one another in learned finneganisms and earnest incantations which untold pirates and pastichio nuts, having read and herded them, decanted and recanted them all for many years to come again, which brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs as it does and always shall do until the next gedenkschrift so help me dog amen...

Unsung and Invisible?

To be totally frank, I'm uncomfortable and sceptical about two aspects of the publisher's stated aesthetic stance that I would like to declare and explain, so that a reader of this review can form their own opinion on this enterprise.

This scepticism doesn't relate to the works of Christine Brooke-Rose in their own right, about which more below.

The publisher states that it has three "raisons d’être":

* "Grape ά republishes out of print titles ignored by other non-profit publishing houses..., primarily by non-conformist writers...

* "Sultana β fêtes one fabulous and unsung innovator or mischief-maker on a triannual basis by soliciting donated submissions from writers, critics, readers, poets, hobos, and librarians, to create a series of festschrifts where egos, agendas, and carping opinions are eschewed in favour of a celebration of deserving literature, away from the sniping eye of Critical Consensus.

* "Currant γ assists authors of the daring to find a platform for publishing."

It might be nit-picky to highlight that the raisons d’être define two enemies: other non-profit publishers (i.e., competitors) and "Critical Consensus" (no matter how that might be determined). However, wouldn't it make more sense to focus on why any particular author or work is "deserving" of celebration?

This particular Festschrift is Verbivoracious Press' flagship issue, dedicated to a "fabulous and unsung" writer described as "an invisible author".

Much of the book (a quarter by item) consists of material by Brooke-Rose, some of which comes within the category of B-sides and Rarities. If no licence fee has been paid to her estate for this material, it could have been made available online. Instead, it's been secreted behind a paywall, and bundled with other material of diverse quality, some high, some not so, some critique, some pastiche, all of it apparently "donated" (I'm not sure whether the Harry Ransom Center waived its fee in relation to anything derived from its collection). You have to pay for the critique to get the Brooke-Rose, and you have to pay for the pastiche to get the critique.

Somehow, in the process of going from donation to bundling, the publisher has acquired overheads. As a result, you have to buy the whole album (including filler), instead of accessing it track by track. You have to wonder whether this is the best way to attract attention to the work of Christine Brooke-Rose.

Her work is of such merit that it warrants its assembly into a series of Collected Works.

While not all of her work is in print, it is already split between at least two publishers (not to mention any rights held by the Harry Ransom Center): Dalkey Archive Press and Carcanet Fiction. Dalkey actually published a genuine Festschrift ("Utterly Other Discourse", which contains fifteen essays) dedicated to Brooke-Rose in 1995.

To the extent that this Festschrift has licensed original Brooke-Rose works not released by these (non-profit?) publishers or other works held by the Harry Ransom Center, it simply adds a third publisher to the list and presumably makes the prospect of a Collected Works even more problematical.

That said, it seems to be hyperblurbole to describe Brooke-Rose as "unsung and invisible", as deserving as her works clearly are.

She has been sung, she is being sung, she is not invisible.

The question is: do her legacy and her estate and her readers and her potential audience deserve more than this?

Nick Cave - "Death is Not the End" (Featuring Kylie Minogue, Shane MacGowan, Blixa Bargeld and Mick Harvey)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao0ly...

"Oh, the tree of life is growing
Where the spirit never dies
And the bright light of salvation shines
In dark and empty skies."

Canon Fire

The second concern is at least good for a laugh, if you like to play dress-ups.

The aesthetic from which Verbivoracious Press emerged is best described, if somewhat obliquely, in "Prayer for the BURIED", an incantation delivered by someone who would have been its patron saint, but for the fact that they prefer a higher office (besides the role was already taken by Christine Brooke-Rose herself).

"Prayer" would have made an excellent Preface, Foreword or Introduction to the Festschrift, except that it already had one of each. Instead, apart from a poem by Brooke-Rose and a Postscript, it represents the last word on its subject matter, something its author is wont to do.

No sooner does the Word become Speech than the Speeches become Commandments and Imperatives. The grim reapertition of "Prayer" drones on, trance-like, until everybody has been either entranced or exited.

So why this "Prayer"?

We've become accustomed to debate about the existence of a literary canon. Even those who would condone the concept rarely agree on what should be included in one. However, more importantly, many readers think the whole concept is dubious.

"Prayer" adopts a different approach. It doesn't question the role of a canon. It simply wants an alternative one. It falls to "Prayer" to eviscerate all previous canons and ordain a new one. Again, no insight into why any particular author or work is "deserving" of celebration. What matters most is the (self-) adornment and ordination of the speaker (i.e., the elevation of the status of the speaker so that authority is conferred on and by their every word).

Brooke-Rose would herself describe the canonical phenomenon (at least the practice) in terms of "a priesthood..., a club, a sacred male preserve,...a privileged caste,...i.e., essentially male, priestly and caste-bound." As far as I can tell, she would find the priestly self-aggrandisement of "Prayer" quite foreign to her own temperament, even if it incidentally sought to elevate her own status.

As is customary, the author of "Prayer" (let's call them Pseudonimus) achieves their earthly mission by donning priestly garb, entering the realm of the canonical, and proceeding to canonise every neglected or overlooked or underloved author who comes to mind.

The argument is that these authors have been "buried" by "Spade-Wielders" such as the canon or commercial publishers or other non-profit publishers or critics or academics or readers (let me know if I've missed anybody) less discriminating (or is it more discriminating?) than Pseudonimus or Verbivoracious Press.

Traditionally, different literary canons have focussed on individual books, even though one author might have a number of entries in the canon.

The "Prayer" approach is quite different. As is more consistent with the meaning of the verb, it "canonises" the author. It declares the writer a saint, and by extension of the declarative/imperative all of their acts or works are now saintly. Everything they wrote must be a masterpiece, for yea, verily, it is written in the "Prayer". And we must acquire it toot sweet (psst, from a not-for-profit publisher near you). Hence the hyperblurbole to assist the curious purchaser/reader.

Buy the Whole Set!

So much for the absolutism. Now that we know what's good for us, we're supplied with shopping lists that guide our way to completism and, needless to say, completism is followed, short festschrift, by supply.

We're encouraged to purchase the lot for the sake of our intellect and credibility. Overnight, GR wishlists have swollen, even if the number of reviews of so-called buried books (ultimately, a review being the best remedy for neglect) remains infinitesimal. And woe betide any reader who reads a canonical work in other than the prescribed manner (fAKE!!!!) or any reviewer who fails to award a work a hagiographic five star review (hERETIC!!!!). You will be hunted down, woken from your humble slumber, and expelled from this New Eden by the Haus Committee's posse of Fatwahstards, all members of a religio-political movement (for it is they) responsible for spreading the "Finn Stain".

Inside its ranks, apparently, the code name for Verbivoracious Press is the "Oyrish Republishing Army". A Finn-Stained Manifesto is available now as a Syllabus (for the Ev-Angelical). Of course. And if your contribution was previously freely available online, it seems it must be removed, so that it can be housed behind the paywall. Oh sweet vanity press!

It would be hilarious if it weren't so laughable!

If only the focus could return to the writer, the reader and the book in hand.



HELPFUL ONLINE ASSESSMENTS OF THE LIFE AND WORKS OF CHRISTINE BROOKE-ROSE:

“The Lunatic Fringe”

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/a...

"The Lunatic Fringe” was Christine Brooke-Rose’s first contribution to the TLS.

"Remaking" by Christine Brooke-Rose?

http://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scr...

A superlative self-assessment.

A Conversation with Christine Brooke-Rose By Ellen G. Friedman and Miriam Fuchs

http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/a-conver...

Whose Afrayed of Christine Brooke-Rose?

https://equuspress.wordpress.com/2014...

https://equuspress.wordpress.com/2014...

"..the price to be paid for writing fiction that resists critical pigeonholes and eludes classification is obscurity and invisibility vis-à-vis the various critical constructions of the canon. The second half of this essay will argue that it is in its resistance to the already extant “canonic networks and labels” that lies the strength of Brooke-Rose’s oeuvre. That, in fact, it is thanks to its combination of virtually all the chief thematic and stylistic concerns of post-war fiction (technology, gender, history, the future, discursivity, subversion, hybridity, linguistic innovation and playfulness) that Brooke-Rose’s work can (and should) be accorded an exemplary, paradigmatic status."

Christine Brooke-Rose: the great British experimentalist you've never heard of

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012...

Christine Brooke-Rose obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012...

Christine Brooke-Rose (1923-2012)

http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2012/03...

R.I.P. Christine Brooke-Rose

http://htmlgiant.com/author-news/r-i-...

Christine Brooke-Rose is dead

http://www.pnreview.co.uk/np16.shtml

Flinch Wince Jerk Shirk - Frank Kermode

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n07/frank-ke...

Review of Life, End Of, by Christine Brooke-Rose

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/p...

Celebrating Christine Brooke-Rose

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stoth...

The life and work of the late, great experimental writer, Christine Brooke-Rose

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/b...

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...

The Anti-Canon: Christine Brooke-Rose – an Algorithmic Appreciation by Joanna Walsh

http://www.influxpress.com/the-anti-c...

Twitter Page for 2013 CBRconference

https://twitter.com/cbrconference

Christine Brooke-Rose and May '68

https://prezi.com/adbwczxmexio/christ...

Includes a fascinating comment by CBR on John Barth.


DISCLAIMER:

Please exercise caution and discretion in this vicinity. I regret that I can offer you no shelter from the Fatwahstards!

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

So I’ve got a little piece of pious prattle in here. Hope you enjoy it!

Aside from the star herself, Ms Christine Brooke-Rose, and passing over with grand quantities of gratitude the editors of this inaugural Festschrift, and not to say nothing of the contributions of our several fellow goodsreaders ; we should perhaps not fail to recognize and acknowledge the foundational role played by the Harry Ransom Center, a little literary archive located down in Texas, USofA. This little house of disorganized paper, this little mill=grist center to which academics of multiple literary stripes flock on a steady basis to churn out their academic license applications, is that little piece of the real we might call the sine qua non or perhaps a condition of the possibility of the kind of thing we have here in this Festschrift. Academics get targeted here on goodreads like lawyers do in cheap working=class jokes ; but the truth, just as lawyers protect us from the very law we claim is on our side, so too do those much=disparaged academics make it possible for us to come closer to that which we thought were already along side of us -- the unacknowledged academic with his/her academic enjoyment is that vanishing mediator which possibilizes the very books we read when we read anything not on the NYT Top 40. And makes possible this very Festschrift.

What is the academic? Nothing much more really than a paper mole, burrowing through mounds and mounds of wads and wads of papers ; looking for that one thing amidst the chaff and the dust (the dust!!). When those mounds and wads of paper are swept into one little Center of the Harry Ransom variety, one saves a bundle on gas money, shuttling from literary estate to literary estate hoping granddaughters and grandsons haven’t already burned it all for winter heat. Yes, that thing known as The Archive, a sort of Library in an exponential version, a Library cubed quad’d quint’d -- a stack of semi-organized, solely author=authorized unpublished never-see-light-of-day material is the material ground of the Sainting of those Greats who didn’t make it onto stacks 20 or 30 volumes high of redundant title there in the aisle at The Strand. The Archive, built of the One and only One. The Harry Ransom Center ; need we say “Mecca” to make our point explicit.

The Festschrift itself? Joyous like those volumes of The Review of Contemporary Fiction are joyous. Hit and miss in the same way too. Always those few piece which kinda irritate. Always those few pieces which turn lights on and open up new territory. A mixed bag, but nevernever to be missed by the devoted.

[Whitaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Festschrift in honour of Christine Brooke-Rose celebrates her writing and her life, and while at it makes a strong case for her being one of Western literature’s unjustly unsung heroes. Like Van Gogh, unfortunately, her work never received popular acclaim in her lifetime, and for much the same reason: it was regarded as too challenging, too different. Hopefully, like Van Gogh, she will receive far greater posthumous recognition than she was able to garner when she was alive.

The Festschrift, with contributions of critical writing on her work and homages using the techniques she pioneered, will hopefully go some way towards achieving that end. With any luck, works like “Reset” by MJ Nicolls or Emily Rhodes’s “A Long Way from San Francisco” will inspire other writers to see how they can use her techniques to strengthen and inform their own creations. For those needing an introduction to her innovations, G.N Forester’s essay, “The (lack of)di-facile-facere<=>do/schwer/sweer/serius in the Work of Christine Brooke-Rose”, provides a useful starting point, while those of a more academic bent will find much to chew on from critical analyses such as “THRU my WORDS” (Silvia Barlaam) or “Walking a Disappearing Line: Christine Brooke-Rose’s Treament of Language Ambiguity in Xorandor” (S. D. Stewart).

Ultimately, and perhaps fittingly, some of the best material in the Festschrift comes from Christine Brooke-Rose herself, well represented here in a selection of critical essays, poems, and articles. In her critical writings and in the interviews with her, she certainly comes across as formidably intelligent, and that perhaps is one of the reasons why she has remained for so long unsung.

More importantly, she comes across as someone fully committed to the work of writing as art. In Maria del Sapio Garbero’s interview with her, “A Conversation with Christine Brooke-Rose August 1991”, she states:

“I’ve always had this rather technical attitude to what I am doing and I have often been blamed for this. English writers often seem to be against technique and against theory as if talent alone were all that mattered. It’s a very strange notion, which no one would ever dream of upholding in music, or in painting. But with writing they seem to think that a thorough grasp of theory blocks creation. In my case on the contrary it absolutely inspired me. When I went to France and plunged into structuralism, and then poststructuralism, this awareness of how narrative was constructed and above all what it is, epistemologically, stimulated me. I am not ashamed of this. I’ve always pleaded for this technical knowledge which is not to be dismissed as “mere” technique. Of course technique isn’t enough, you’ve got to have both. I hope I have both, but I’ve always found literary theory exciting, to understand how language functions, how narrative structures function and in my more recent work I have played with this.”

This is in many ways a startling idea, ironically so given the number of creative writing courses available these days. One learns about “creating characters” or “plotting”, and there are exercises for delving into yourself for authentic experiences—as if literature were nothing but a form of public psychoanalysis. But no one, at least not to my knowledge, challenges would-be writers to examine the actual building blocks of their trade: words, syntax, and their creation of meaning. This surely must be like learning music composition without learning scales.

I have always felt that if art had to have a point other than escape it had to be in providing us with new tools for seeing the world around us. In “Illiterations”, Christine Brooke-Rose put it this way:

Years ago (1956) Nathalie Sarraute reversed the realist/formalist opposition and said that the true realists were those who look so hard at reality that they see it in a new way and so have to work equally hard to invent new forms to capture that new reality, whereas the formalists were the diluters, who come along afterwards and take these now more familiar forms, pouring into them the familiarized reality anyone can see… Today one would push it much further and say, not that new ways of looking necessitate new forms, but that experiment with new forms produces new ways of looking, produces, in fact, the very story (or ‘reality’ or ‘truth’) that it is supposed to reproduce…”

David Auerbach’s essay, “Christine Brooke-Rose and the Liberty of Literature”, aptly summarises it thus:

“A central and representative insight of Brooke-Rose’s was that the exhaustion of conventional narrative required a reinvigorated polyvocalic approach (cf. Bakhtin) rather than a solipsistic one. … Brooke-Rose identified a common thread between both the ‘realistic’ work of Cheever and Updike and the ‘experimental’ work of John Barth and Robert Coover: a retreat from any curiosity toward foreign experience and into the reflective mirrors (be they flat or curved) of the mind, an area which Beckett had already mined brilliantly, but to exhaustion.

He ends it with this call to arms:

“Brooke-Rose’s account of the possibilities of literature is far more fecund than the arid, imploding ouroboros offered by Blanchot, Fish, and Derrida. In comparison, Brooke-Rose’s bravery, curiosity, and sheer energy refresh… [her] criticism presents the idea of literature as such an immense mass of potential knowledge and experience that it makes one ashamed of settling for anything less.”

To come back to Van Gogh, it is startling to even think now how difficult people found his work when he first started painting it. Now, his works are not simply iconic but the techniques that he pioneered, the new ways of seeing the world through art, are imitated by countless artists the world over. Would that Christine Brooke-Rose have the same success.

[Ronald Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A festschrift is defined variously, and commonly, as “a collection of writings published in honour of a scholar.”

 - from the Verbivoracious Press website

I considered giving an overview of just who Christine Brook-Rose was – both biographically and bibliographically – but that would be redundant in the face of this collection. The thing that stands out the most to me is the organization of the collection – it begins with an overview of CBR’s life, is than followed by a detailed overview of her work, and then dives into the work itself (presented in the chronological order of her oeuvre) – explored through essay and homage. In this way it functions as both an introduction to the unfamiliar and a celebration to the initiated.

Sprinkled throughout the selections are works by CBR herself, and the selection of these works – a few poems, a couple essays, a couple short stories, an interview – manages to briefly but deftly show the breadth of intellectual dexterity that is the defining characteristic of her overall canon. CBR managed to never appear to repeat herself – she took on difficult ideas and endeavors, and, once successful, moved on to others. Her books manage to be well executed feats of intellectual complexity mixed with adroit textual limitation and experimentation. And each manages to be stand uniquely on their own – a feat that is celebrated and emulated by the other works in this collection.

Both “homage” and “pastiche” are mentioned by authors in the collection. It is appropriate for them to do so – as the line between the two is blurred and uncertain at the best of times – and is all the more complicated when attempting to textually-celebrate an author of singular (and inimitable) tone. Unsurprisingly the selections within succeed – for me, and I speak only for me – based on how firmly they remain in the realm of homage without falling into the role of pastiche. All homage – especially of experimentation – contains elements of pastiche (without that it simply becomes something else) yet manages to remain it’s entity – and as such each work attempts a delicate balancing act.

A large majority succeed.

As a whole the collection itself is a great deal of fun – more books should remember to be fun - and contains an almost overwhelming selection (and variety) of rollicking good prose and erudition: it is toweringly obvious the depth of devotion these practitioners feel for CBR. It is this sense of overwhelming devotion that serves to buoy the book when it ebbs – though those points are rare – and allows it to reach great heights when it succeeds.

What the reader is left with – hopefully – is the depth of respect and love these writers feel for CBR, the overwhelming desire to celebrate a great (goddamn nearly) forgotten author of spellbinding wit and unique intelligence. And what the reader walks away with – again, hopefully – is the desire to seek out more of CBR, and, once that font has been exhausted, hopefully continue seeking for practitioners of the experimental that have been left behind and forgotten, and to drag them into the light and scream “look here you fools, look and be awed, as I myself am awed.”

[Jonathan]

Well, I'm in it, and I have only read the ARC so far on my computer..nevertheless, the whole thing is clearly the most important literary event of the century. Once I receive my hardback copy I shall place it upon an altar and daily prostrate myself before its marvels.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's my review...

http://www.winnipegreview.com/wp/2014...

[David]

A curious collection of entries by Brooke-Rose herself, occasional criticism or reviews, and almost half (or so it felt to me anyway) small pastiches of the Brooke-Rose style, most of which seemed to smell a little bit of “Look at me, I’m so clever because I can pastiche the great Christine.” I especially enjoyed Brooke-Rose contemplating the relationship between women artists and humour. Some of the critical writing was useful in clarifying a few bits of my earlier summer reading—Out, Such, Between, Thru and Textermination, neither for the first time. But all those cute little pastiches ....I’d say definitely worth a look through, but do feel free to enjoy it “maturely” as Anthony Powell’s Nick Jenkins says: free to skip anything that provokes the least sign of tedium.

[David]

An exuberant collection of bits influenced by Brooke-Rose and bits written by Brooke-Rose herself.