2022 Reading List Monthly Update: July

 Books read in July of 2022:

“Hieroglyphics and Other Essays” (Arthur Machen/edited by S.T. Joshi) 7-10-22 

“Sanctuary” (William Faulkner) 7-10-22 

“Stricture” (Isabelle Nicou) 7-15-22 

“Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West” (Cormac McCarthy) 7-18-22 *

“Berserk Deluxe 6” (Kentaro Miura) 7-24-22 

“The Liminal Zone” (Junji Ito) 7-25-22 

“The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England” (Ian Mortimer) 7-28-22 

“A Medieval Book of Seasons” (Marie Collins & Virginia Davis) 7-29-22

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2022 Reading List Total:

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1. "Kingdom Come" (J.G. Ballard) 1-6-22

2. "Dune Messiah" (Frank Herbert) 1-21-22

3. "Nana" (Émile Zola) 1-24-22

4. "Introduction to Jungian Psychology" (C.G. Jung) 2-7-22

5. "Schoolgirl" (Osamu Dazai) 2-21-22

6. "Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages" (Dan Jones) 2-25-22

7. "Rough" (Callum Leckie and Sailor Stephens) 2-27-22

8. "The Ironic Skeletons" (Colby Smith) 3-1-22

9. "Paradoxes From Hell" (Thomas Ligotti) 3-2-22

10. "Agitation" (Alexandrine Ogundimu) 3-3-22

11. "A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible" (Kristin Swenson) 3-7-22

12. "The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral" (Robert Westall) 3-12-22

13. "Beyond the Mountains of Madness" (Brian Stableford) 3-18-22

14. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (Josiah Morgan) 3-21-22

15. "The Topiary Cat: A Bushy Tale" (Richard Saunders) 3-22-22

16. "The Orchard Keeper" (Cormac McCarthy) 3-29-22

17. "A Shakespeare Motley: An Illustrated Compendium" (The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) 4-5-22

18. "The Green Man" (Kingsley Amis) 4-10-22

19. "Berserk Deluxe Edition 1" (Kentaro Miura) 4-18-22

20. "Outer Dark" (Cormac McCarthy) 4-20-22 *

21. "When the Train Runs out of Tracks" (Tom Champagne) 4-22-22

22. "Heqet" (Brendan Connell) 4-23-22

23. "Berserk Deluxe Edition 2" (Kentaro Miura) 4-28-22

24. "Child of God" (Cormac McCarthy) 5-8-22 *

25. "The Temple of Gnide" (Montesquieu) 5-10-22

26. "Berserk Deluxe Edition 3" (Kentaro Miura) 5-13-22

27. "Road: a Postlapsarian Comedy" (Josiah Morgan) 5-16-22

28. "Zealous Immaculate" (Audrey Szasz) 5-20-22

29. "Berserk Deluxe Edition 4"(Kentaro Miura) 5-27-22

30. "Whimsical Tales" (Jean Printemps) 5-30-22

31. "The Assassins and Other Stories" (Marcel Schwob) 6-4-22

32. "Suttree" (Cormac McCarthy) 6-18-22

33. "Lazy Eyes" (James Nulick) 6-23-22\

34. "Berserk Deluxe Edition 5" (Kentaro Miura) 6-23-22

35. "The Driver's Seat" (Muriel Spark) 6-26-22

36. "Catholica: The Visual Culture of Catholicism" (Suzanna Ivanic) 6-28-22

37. “Hieroglyphics and Other Essays” (Arthur Machen/edited by S.T. Joshi) 7-10-22 

38. “Sanctuary” (William Faulkner) 7-10-22 

39. “Stricture” (Isabelle Nicou) 7-15-22 

40. “Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West” (Cormac McCarthy) 7-18-22 *

41. “Berserk Deluxe 6” (Kentaro Miura) 7-24-22 

42. “The Liminal Zone” (Junji Ito) 7-25-22 

43. “The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England” (Ian Mortimer) 7-28-22 

44. “A Medieval Book of Seasons” (Marie Collins & Virginia Davis) 7-29-22  

*= book I have read at least once in the past
+= book I have read before, but not this reprint/edition/translation

Currently Reading: 

Memories, Dreams, Reflections 2: Self-Portraits

Before I continue on with my reminiscences on my youthful desire of becoming a filmmaker, I should provide some biographical details about myself. During the month of November in 1989, at the age of 9, I began keeping a short-lived “private journal” (that lasted up and till around Thanksgiving Day), and these were some of the traits I assigned to myself at the very start of the journal: “Juggles balls, artistic, mumbles a lot, eats spaghetti, sly as a fox.” In a bio poem written for school on February 9th, 1990, I described myself as “kind, weak, creative, silly,” portrayed myself as a lover of “sharks, drawing, parents,” and claimed that I often saw “messy rooms, bloody boys, and tasty food.” 

In 1991, when I was in the 5th grade, I typed out an even more elaborate autobiographical sketch (obviously done on one of the school computers, judging by the appearance of the font and the early 90’s clip art illustration of the planet Saturn in the upper right hand corner, Saturn being the home planet of my imaginary friend Hammerhead), which I shall now reproduce:

“James

Gross, weird, silly,

Smart

Brother of Tom, Bill, Andy

Lover of

Nintendo, drawing, and

Sharks

Who feels Smart, silly, sure

of himself WHO needs

Plastic surgeory, respect,

and laughs Who fears

Aids, cancer, and brain

tumors WHO gives, help

to friends, and good jokes

WHO would like to see

More gross things, more

work, and more food

WHO lives in Thundermist,

RHODE Island, Champagne”

Evidently I had some sort of weird food fixation in my younger years which now eludes my memory. I also find it odd that, in the above list of expressed fears, I neglected to mention bees, the one thing that scared me more than almost anything when I was a lad. They still terrify me.

In June of 1991, I completed the 5th grade and thus graduated from grade school. During the final days of my grade school experience I created an autograph folder, on the front of which was an illustration of the Waldo character (from Where’s Waldo? fame) walking around with an autograph book, surrounded by a motley assortment of vampires, aliens, red-skinned dwarves, knights, wizards, dragons, and other fantastical creatures and people, all of whom are seeking his autograph. I tried to get everyone in my classroom to personalize and sign this folder (even my teachers). One girl wrote down, “To a really weird kid.” Another girl wrote, “how sad can you get?” I don’t think the girls in my grade school liked me very much. Perhaps because I was prone to getting warts on my hands, and when such a thing happened I would sometimes chase the girls around the playground, trying to touch them with my wart, while they fled away, screaming.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections 1: The World of Er

“The memories of childhood have a strange, shuttling quality,

and areas of darkness ring the spaces of light.

The memories of childhood are like clear candles in an acre of night,

illuminating fixed scenes from the surrounding darkness.”

-Carson McCullers, “The Orphanage”

“Nostalgizing on one’s childhood memories is like handling a rose:

while it is pretty to the eyes and often smells divine,

one must be ever wary of the thorns prickling such recollections.

For behind the radiance of nostalgia is a shadow that can never be forgotten.”

-James Champagne, “The Fire Sermon”

The World of Er

“Welcome to the world of Er. Here are bakers, plumbers, and butchers. To be a member of Er, you must be a member of the Er club. You must join a baker, and make a cake to become a member of the world of Er. If you come from the Less world, you are useless, and can’t be a member.”

The above treatise is written on an old and wrinkled piece of white lined paper, in a child’s clumsy attempt to write in cursive, and remains untitled save for the date on which it was written, this date being January 26th, 1990. I was in the 4th grade at the time, and nine years of age, for my tenth birthday was in June of that year. No doubt this was a school creative writing assignment of some sort, and in all likelihood I probably forgot all about it a day or so after its composition. I know that as an adult I had completely forgotten about it, and it wasn’t until I stumbled across it on July 23rd, 2017, that I read it again, after all these years. Despite its childhood inanity, I now see what I wrote all those years ago as oddly (and accidentally) profound, in much the same manner that the sayings of young children are often unintentionally profound.

I found this old creative writing assignment (and many others like it) while going through a box full of my old grade school papers that my parents had kept in the basement of their home for years now (and it’s amazing to me how much of my old school papers were preserved: in this box I even came across old speech progress reports, as back in those days I had a slight stutter that required speech therapy). Also in this box were various drawings and illustrations I had done in those years, and reports I had written for assorted school science fairs, dealing with subjects such as the digestive processes of earthworms and examinations of theories related to the disappearance of the dinosaurs (for even in those days of old I had had an obsession with extinction events, an obsession that remains to this day). No doubt one day when I am gone all of these mementos from my childhood will face an extinction event of their own, and the thought of strangers disposing them as if they were nothing is a thought I find intolerable. That’s the tragedy of materialism; sooner or later it’ll always break your heart. But I shall now do my best to memorialize at least a few of these documents of juvenilia. I see these recollections as sort of literary Noah’s Ark, a barge of words constructed to rescue various childhood trinkets from the oblivion of Time.

And yet, there’s also a part of me that feels hesitant about looking back into my own past, for I suspect that my own childhood, like the childhood of the majority of the human race, is something that is both beautiful and dangerous at the same time, like a stained glass window depicting satyrs instead of saints. This window shines a light onto my childhood memories, but it is a twisted light from a twisted window.

I find it amusing that, when people look back at photographs of me from the 1980’s, they commented on what a happy child I seemed to be. Hell, sometimes even I look back at those photographs and think the same thing. But I’m just deceiving myself and falling for my youthful beautiful disguise. Truth is, fear and anxiety have been my perpetual handmaidens. And yet, as a child I was obsessed with the very things that terrify the majority of the human race: bugs, creepy crawlies, sharks, monsters, vampires, saurian abominations (or, to use the common vernacular, dinosaurs). It was almost as if, by trying to associate myself with such creatures, I was trying to keep fear itself away. And was it not Arthur Rimbaud who once stated, “But the problem is to make the soul into a monster?”

But to get back to the world of Er. At the time in which I first wrote about that fanciful world, I had no idea that I myself would one day become a member of it myself, in the form of a writer. Because back in that time of my life I belonged (or fancied I belonged) to other neighboring worlds, which is to say the world of Or (in that I desired to be a film director when I came of age) and possibly also the world of Ist (in that I also saw myself as an artist). But that's another tale for another day.

Coming Soon

 For years now, I've mainly just used my writer's blog as a repository for my monthly reading list updates or for news related to my writing/publications (sadly those latter cases have become extremely infrequent over the last few years). Recently I've been thinking of new content I could add to it, and one thing I think I might start is a series of autobiographical memories and reminisces, sporadically updated "whenever I feel like it."

Generally speaking, when it comes to fiction, I don't plumb the depths of my own life for material (HARLEM SMOKE being one of the few exceptions, and of course, bits and pieces of my life/character sometimes appear in my stories, though sometimes in an oblique or disguised fashion). This is partly because I don't lead the most eventful/exciting life, but also because I find trying to sum myself up very difficult to do in the concise manner that narratives often require. But perhaps this strategy, blog entries on diverse elements of my past, might be the best way to tackle some of this material, in a way that would not be as ephemeral/transient as just posting about it on Facebook or whatever.