The Snark Gibson Show

I'm posting earlier than usual because I'll be appearing on the CBC Radio One in Montreal this Sunday morning, Jan. 30, 8-9 a.m. local time. The inimitable Dave Bronstetter will be interviewing me and I am hoping for an unusually vivid mental picture of my Snark GN to be broadcast into the snowy ether of Quebec. The Montreal feed can be heard here (I hope).

Many thanks to everyone at Drawn & Quarterly who both hosted and assisted me in my presentation & signing last night, Rory, Julia and Fiona. And thanks to everyone who showed up, a good time was had by all and no one softly and silently vanished away.

Several members of the audience expressed surprise at my assumption that the Snark was a she-Snark. I thought it was rather obvious … the perpetual lateness for meals, the lack of humor and the tendency to bite and scratch when cornered.

Male Snarks are entirely different. I leave it to female Snarkologists to fill us in on their shortcomings, fair's fair, I think.

Meanwhile, the above stanzel is a hearty quatrain of Lewis Carroll’s finest Snark vintage embellished with a festive pattern of squiggles, lines and dots which correspond to a semi-hallucinatory circus vision of Friedrich Nietzsche masquerading as a Bonnet-Maker while the Second-Greatest-French-Novelist-Ever, Raymond Roussel, exerts himself as a Billiard-Marker and dares to chalk the Prussian’s nose.

We have already had a laugh at Nietzsche’s expense, exposing the risible connection between himself and all things Bonnet, and quite frankly, the very words "Prussian philosopher" can provide sufficient innocent merriment for anyone's purposes.

As for the Billiard-Marker Raymond Roussel, it is his destiny here to powder the Nietzsche’s nose for all eternity, both of them suspended high above the circus audience, plummeting towards the earth at a frightening velocity. Roussel maintains his Gallic sang-froid with his customary grace. In fact, it may truly be said that after an initial, youthful setback, no earthly mishap or reversal ever again disturbed his composure or determination to write the Great French Novel!

To every young person who genuinely burns with a desire to make Art I say — look to Roussel! Look to him who, when asked what he thought of the Great War, remarked only that he had never seen so many men! Study this adept of Cartesian logic, who, when asked by a Parisian friend for some memento of his travels in India, mailed her an electric heater! Reflect upon the sagacity of the author who, when searching for an illustrator for his verse masterpiece, hit upon the brilliant device of employing a detective agency to find a suitable artist!

"I shall reach the heights; I was born for dazzling glory. It may be long in coming, but I shall have a glory greater than that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon … No author has been or can be superior to me … As the poet said, you feel a burning sensation at your brow. I felt at once that there was a star at my brow and I shall never forget it."

Also Sprach Snarkathustra!

One of the best things about illustrating Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark is the many opportunities it provides for acting one's own petty revenge fantasies.

The drawing above, which shows the Billiard-Marker (AKA Raymond Roussel) chalking the nose of the Bonnet-Maker (AKA Friedrich Nietzsche) is a classic example of all that. The unerring aim of the dapper French novelist (the 2nd finest French novelist ever!) has neatly punctured the pre-existential pomposity of the overly mustachioed Prussian philo-bloviator.

For those readers who like a rational explanation of all of the above, hurry to MobyLives, where I posted a jolly example of one. For those readers who don't, who prefer to just wallow in the sordid pleasures of petty revenge, keep looking at the drawing. Or better yet, buy a copy of the book and put Freddie out his misery once and for all!

NB. I refer to Raymond Roussel as the 2nd greatest French novelist, for he must defer to the greatest of them all, the Master of all French scribblery, Jules Verne. Take that, Messers Beyle and Flaubert, you phonies!

There go the ships: there is that Snark, whom thou hast made to play therein

The HMS Snark, silently proceeding at full speed, has just narrowly avoided a collision with a gigantic avatar of the Prussian philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, cunningly disguised here as the Bonnet Maker in the Hunting of the Snark.

Let this be a warning to all those Snarkistadores who go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great nonsense: keep a sharp eye out for the wonders of the deep, in particular the to and fro reeling and writhing of Continental philosophers with a penchant for cross dressing and cross hatching.

Thanks, Will!
Will Schofield has been kind enough to do a profusely illustrated posting about some of my projects at his wonderful bibliophile's blog, A Journey Round My Skull. It's all good clean fun, and it makes me realize just how much illustrating of verse I've been doing for the last few years. What a novel and even more penurious niche for an illustrator to stake out for himself … poetry! What's next for me, I wonder, in my rapid descent into the nether regions of unprofitability … stay tuned — you won't be disappointed!

Where there is happiness, there is found snarkish pleasure in nonsense

We continue with our introduction and explication of the Snark's Dramatis Personae with this week's specimen … the Maker of Bonnets and Hoods, or as he's known to the authorities, the Bonnet. Curiously, this character is given almost nothing to do in the epic, except for a brief episode in Fit the Fourth where he allows someone to chalk the tip of his nose. Other than that, not a peep, which poses obvious problems for an illustrator trying to flesh out this nonentity.

One might even say that the Bonnet poses us an existentialist problem, perhaps even a protoexistentialist problem of sorts. Luckily, the persona of Friedrich Nietzsche, the notorious Continental steamer, was available on short notice and we gladly inducted him into our Fellowship of the Snark, moustache and all.

We see him above, as he appears in Fit the Second of our version of The Hunting of the Snark, leering at the HMS Snark in a nautical manner. I think he looks rather fetching in his big bonnet, don't you?




No doubt the more well-heeled aficionados of Lewis Carroll, and Western Civ in general, are having a quick apopleptic fit upon seeing all of this. Why, they wonder aloud over their breakfast scotch-and-cornflakes, did this artist feel it necessary to clothe the persona of the Bonnet-Maker in the fleshly lineaments of the Prussian demiexistentialist Nietzsche?

Was it the leather, the machismo, the whips and such-like that Nietzsche was wont to bandy about when talking of women, a bandying which he not only spoke of in print but would even indulge in personally right in front of a camera operated by — yow! — a man named Bonnet?



And so … have we hoisted Nietzche upon his very own petard here, a petard which the philosopher had himself loaded with the scattershot observation that there are no facts, only interpretations? Have we stooped so low that we must rely upon the flimsiest of nominal accidents to populate our Hunting of the Snark?

Or is it just a petty bit of passive-aggressive revenge by an inkster who still suffers from debilitating bouts of Post-University-Philosophy-Course-Syndrome, an illness which can only be controlled by long-term exposure to Carrollian Nonsense and in severe cases, repeated applications of Three Stooges shorts?

In short, there’s nothing going on here at all, folks, just a guy with a moustache wearing women’s clothes, a guy who knows that to become what one is, one must not have the faintest idea what one is.

______________


A propos of nothing else, I’m very pleased that MobyLives is peeking into the Carrollian goings-ons around here and I’d like to return the compliment by commenting upon an issue which they’re covering far better than most far-better-funded media outlets: the various machinations of certain American businessmen to corner the North American book trade.

Amazon’s deactivation of Macmillan’s buy-buttons is just the latest round in an old, old story: how to monopolize and thus fully monetize information. The byzantine nuances of this struggle over e-book pricing are better summarized by MobyLives; I will add my own two cents by adding that the e-book is a classic example of a solution in search of a problem.

Yes, it has certain advantages which are not to be sniffed at but he printed book has itself almost perfectly evolved after several millennia to far better suit our optical and financial constraints; the e-book exists mostly to create a proprietary and pre-monetized system of reading.

The e-book reminds me of the essential fact of the American newspaper industry: the newspaper and its contents were secondary, what was critical was that the subscriber let the newspaper install a tube on their property which only they could legally use. The tubes were serviced by minimum-wage peons who fought like junkyard dogs to keep out penny-mailers and competing papers. The e-book will do the same thing, it will make the consumer give away his right of access. Heck, the e-book is even brassier, the consumer will pay the provider to take away his freedom of choice. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

Fit the Fourth, Page 27, Panel 4 … locus snarquus

The maker of Bonnets ferociously planned
A novel arrangement of bows:
While the Billiard-marker with quivering hand
Was chalking the tip of his nose.

What a jolly Christmas treat we have for you, dear reader! A hearty quatrain of Lewis Carroll’s finest Snark vintage embellished with a festive pattern of squiggles, lines and dots which correspond to a semi-hallucinatory circus vision of Friedrich Nietzsche masquerading as a Bonnet-Maker while the Second-Greatest-French-Novelist-Ever, Raymond Roussel, exerts himself as a Billiard-Marker and dares to chalk the Prussian’s nose.

Quite a mouthful, especially when one is chewing over one’s rum-soaked Christmas plum pudding and mincemeat pie, prior to tucking into a restorative nap upon the family charpoy whilst the household domestics busy themselves with preparing the immense urns of thickly-sweet, syrupy hot tea with which they must lustrate you upon awakening.

But so be it! The lower classes will have their little jokes at one’s expense, it is the Way of Saturnalia and all of it jolly good fun. We have already had a laugh at Nietzsche’s expense, exposing the risible connection between himself and all things Bonnet, and quite frankly, the very words "Prussian philosopher" can provide sufficient innocent merriment for anyone's purposes.

As for the Billiard-Marker Raymond Roussel, it is his destiny here to powder the Nietzsche’s nose for all eternity, both of them suspended high above the circus audience, plummeting towards the earth at a frightening velocity. Roussel maintains his Gallic sang-froid with his customary grace. In fact, it may truly be said that after an initial, youthful setback, no earthly mishap or reversal ever again disturbed his composure or determination to write the Great French Novel!

To every young person who genuinely burns with a desire to make Art I say — look to Roussel! Look to him who, when asked what he thought of the Great War, remarked only that he had never seen so many men! Study this adept of Cartesian logic, who, when asked by a Parisian friend for some memento of his travels in India, mailed her an electric heater! Reflect upon the sagacity of the author who, when searching for an illustrator for his verse masterpiece, hit upon the brilliant device of employing a detective agency to find a suitable artist!

"I shall reach the heights; I was born for dazzling glory. It may be long in coming, but I shall have a glory greater than that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon … No author has been or can be superior to me … As the poet said, you feel a burning sensation at your brow. I felt at once that there was a star at my brow and I shall never forget it."

Next week : a Snarkalicious and useful New Year’s gift for all my readers! You won’t be disappointed!

Fit Two, Page 13, Panel 1 … also sprach das Schnark

Another wordless sighting of the HMS Snark, observed tacking ‘round the Bonnet-Maker, whose resemblance to Friedrich Nietzsche borders upon the implausible. But plause we must, nonetheless. After a promising start in hunting Snark on the Continent, Nietzsche was surprised by a Boojum on the streets of Turin* in 1889. The shock was fatal … in his own words …

"Since I am condemned to amuse the coming eternity with bad jokes, I have set up a writing business which actually leaves nothing to be desired … Last autumn I attended, dressed as lightly as possible, my own burial twice … negligé of one’s attire is a pre-requisite of good form … I go everywhere in my student jacket, here and there I tap someone on the shoulder and say : ' Siamo contente? Son dio, ho fatto questa caricatura (Are we happy? I am god, we did this caricature today) . " **

Apart from this, our communal Snark enterprise, to this day no one has ever taken Nietzsche at his final word, preferring instead his earlier, less humorous work. What a brilliant career this Prussian Snark-hunter could have had in the realm of Wilhelminian nonsense literature …

Let this be a lesson to all those who hunt the Snark — some Boojums one will never discover, unless one invents them first!
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NB. By habitually linking the words "Friedrich Nietzsche" with the word "Bonnet", I plan to create the germ of the seed of the beginning of a informational non-sequitur (triggered by some unusually google-gullible undergraduate searching for a quick copypasteprint) which will bring western civilization as we know it to its arthritic knees. Après la snarque, le deluge! Cue evil laughter here!

* Empty piazzi, depopulated train stations, the eternally recurring backdrop for our Snark hunt, de Chirico, Hebdomeros, Savinio, Calvino … all the lost and emptied portmanteaux of European protosurrealism.

**Black Letters Unleashed: 300 Years of Enthused Writing in German, Ed. by Malcolm Green, Atlas Press, London, 1989. Do we detect the perfectly light and razor-sharp touch of Robert Walser in these sad lines? Walser … the only genuine heir to Cervantes of the last century (and both of them the definitive book-ends to European literature) … oh, these delicious literary bread-crumbs with which we encrust our Wiener Schnitzel of postpostmodern protosurrealist angst!