| Title | : | ULULU (Clown Shrapnel) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1566891965 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781566891967 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2007 |
The myth of “Lulu” began during the height of late-nineteenth-century Viennese culture with a sequence of two plays by Frank Wedekind (Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box), and continued through the two world wars with Lulu, an unfinished opera by Alban Berg, and Pandora’s Box, a highly acclaimed film by G.W. Pabst, starring Louise Brooks. Throughout all of Lulu’s incarnations she met with censure—Wedekind’s plays were banned from the stage, Berg’s opera, which contained a secret score for his young lover, was kept from the public by his widow, and Pabst’s erotic film was too risqué for many.
As Field’s story peeks into the dressing rooms and back alleys of history, words take the stage, “fictional” and “historical” characters speak side by side, and lyrical symbolism undulates throughout the pages. Original and treated footage from award-winning filmmaker Bill Morrison and illustrations from artist Abbot Stranahan complete this masterful work of avant-garde fiction, presented in a numbered and signed first edition limited to 1,500 copies.
In addition to her multimedia performance work, Thalia Field, an assistant professor at Brown University, is the author of Point and Line and Incarnate: Story Material.
ULULU (Clown Shrapnel) Reviews
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This is one of those books. Unreadababble. That’s an adjective I’m supposed to mock ; I do mock. As in the case when Mano’s Take Five is rendered unreadable by some critic taking money. But this Ululu is unreadababble like Pynchon’s not (who is totally readable). This one’ s like
A Midsummer Night’s Babella, like La Medusa, like Roche’s
Compacta, that one by Schmidt (“Caliban upon Setebos” and several others). The kind of thing just on the edge of (my) comprehension. Probably manymany more we could list. But not Finnegans Wake which is another thing altogether.
It’s not really the prose. And it’s not really the cut=up, the found material stuff ; although that’s related . It’s probably the allusive nature of the whole damn thing, which makes the unreadababble-bility totally surmountable. See, it’s one of those layers=of=cultural=product kind of thing. Like (wait for it!) Barth’s
Coming Soon!!!: A Narrative and like the Pocahontas in his and Vollmann’s sagas about that and like how Coover’s Pinocchio is also about all those several versions of poor Pinocchio’s story from over the years. Layered like that. Just like a layer cake.
So you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the Lulu story. Hers is that kind of iconic character like Lolita’s or Judith’s.
The following would be the beginning of a list ::
Frank Wedekind’s
Lulu (and probably the other two in that edition).
The Pabst silent film,
"Die Büchse der Pandora", starring
Louise Brooks.
Not
Lulu.
Berg’s opera “Lulu” and its history. Here’s a recent performance ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ElJq...
His
Lulu Suite because the whole opera was left incomplete until the late ‘70s.
But not the recent
Lulu by Loutallica because it came out after Thalia’s book. But its existence demonstrates the repeatability of the Lulu story.
So about half way through I saw the Pabst film which made it much easier to orientate myself to Ululu. There’s other stuff that’s helpful to know about -- Pierrot and the rest of Commedia dell’Arte, Jack the Ripper, the Berg and Schoenberg stuff, Hollywood history and its censorious tendencies.... In other words, a text rife for annotation!
But I’m not optimistic. The novel exists in 1500 exemplare (Coffee House Press!!), all triple=signed by Thalia and by Bill Morrison (of The Simpsons fame) who provides a Silent Film and by illustrator Abbot Stranahan. Alas, this just isn’t the kind of book people want to read..... -
bizarre and beautiful, trying and evocative.
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Yes, I like this book, although I have to admit that I constantly put it down, move away from it, move on to other things, but keep it in my bedroom bookcase, which is where I put all the books that I like to pick up, touch, look at, read, study, flip through, reshelve, stare at, and generally just keep near me. On a lighter note, a friend of mine looked through this book and said to me: "This writer must be either a genius or retarded to have written this. And double goes for the publisher." I'd like to say that the publisher (Coffee House press) is one of my favorite publishers - they also did The Pink Institution (Saterstrom).
