November 5th, 2009 / 12:31 am
Craft Notes
Epigraphs: Vollmann
Some epigraphs are hokey as a fart. But sometimes they can add a whole new skin on a book’s face. Or they can just be right. Here’s one of my new favs, from Vollmann’s You Bright and Risen Angels:
This book was written by a traitor to his class. It is dedicated to bigots everywhere. Ladies and gentlemen of the black shirts, I call upon you to unite, to strike with claws and kitchen pokers, to burn the grub-worms of equality’s brood with sulfur and oil, to huddle together whispering about the silverfish in your basements, to make decrees in your great solemn rotten assemblies concerning what is proper, for you have nothing to lose but your last feeble principles.
William T. Vollmann, Karachi-Anatuvak Pass – San Francisco, 1981-85
On the page before this it says:
Only the expert will realize that your exaggerations are really true.
Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw
What epigraphs do you like?
Tags: epigraphs, you bright and risen angels
that book. that fucking book.
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November 5th, 2009 / 1:36 amBlake Butler—
it’s seriously fucking ridiculous
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From Bolaño’s Nazi Literature In The Americas:
“If the flow is slow enough and you have a good bicycle, or a horse, it is possible to bathe twice ( or even three times should your personal hygiene so require) in the same river.”-Augusto Moterroso
And Cooper’s Closer:
“When you’re expecting bad news you have to be prepared for it a long time ahead so that when the telegram comes you can already pronounce the syllables in your mouth before opening it”- Robert Pinget
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i think the one that has stuck with me most and was the most applicable to the thing in a really unusual/illuminating way is david ohle’s epigraph at the beginning of motorman.
“Bricks are usually rectangular, because in that way they are most suitable for building the vertical walls of our houses. But anyone who has had to do with the stacking of stones of a non-cubic type will be well aware of other possibilities. For instance, one can make use of tetrahedrons alternating with octahedrons. They are not practicable for human beings to build with, because they make neither vertical walls nor horizontal floor. However, when this building is filled with water, flatworms can swim in it.”
- M.C. Escher
but vollmann really is the epigraph king.
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November 5th, 2009 / 1:00 amBlake Butler—
ohle with escher does make an amazing effect, i love that one
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I always like Lish’s epigraphs.
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I’m fond of the epigraph for James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential:
“A glory that costs everything and means nothing”– Steve Eickson
Ellroy’s epigraph for American Tabloid is also spot on, but it’s too long to run here. I’ll quote just the first graf:
“America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can’t ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can’t lose what you lacked at conception.”
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I’m sort of a sucker for epigraphs. I like the sort of pre-novel oasis they can offer. Totally agree with Joseph: Cooper is always awesome for epigraphs. My favourite, I think, is his Rimbaud quotation from Guide: “So what if a piece of wood discovers it’s a violin.” What else? I like how epigraphs can be mined for meaning in the most stubborn sources. Brian Evenson’s Dark Property quoting Matthew 6: 23: “Therefore the light that is in thee is darkness, how great is that darkness.” In a similar way, I always liked Robert Coover very carefully citing Eisenhower in The Public Burning too: “I did not come to tell you things you know as well as I.” Or Saramago quoting Pontius Pilate: “What I have written, I have written.” Rudy Wurlitzer and the Lankavatura Sutra in The Drop Edge of Yonder: “Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise.” Tariq Goddard’s The Picture of New Contented Wealth citing Adorno: “What is constant is not an invariable quantity of suffering, but its progress towards hell.” So many good ones. And as for best original epigraph of the author’s own invention, I can’t think of a total killer right now. But there is one I did always kind of like. Whatever whoever thinks of its merits as a novel, I think Danielewski’s opener to his House of Leaves is pretty neat: “This is not for you.”
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November 5th, 2009 / 10:44 amGian—
I like all of these except the last one. When I read it, it made me think of that Pearl Jam song which was kind of big around that time. And I think he might have stolen it from that. Which is…gives me shivers.
Nothing against Pearl Jam. Well, maybe a little.
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“It’s always night, or we wouldn’t need light” – Thelonious Monk
Pynch’s Against The Day
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November 5th, 2009 / 1:55 amlarry l.—
And the above epigraph gave me pause, because Monk’s quote came way after the time period of the book. Then again, there was some time travel, so never mind.
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My email address (the public one, linked through my website) is drawn from an early line in this book- “I want to send history to the bright fires.” For a while I owned thebrightfires.net .
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Since Matthew mentioned the great Speedboat earlier, here’s the epigraph:
“‘What war?’ said the Prime Minister sharply. ‘No one has said anything to me about a war. I really think I should have been told…’
And presently, like a circling typhoon, the sounds of battle began to return.”
From Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies.
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The first epigraph to make a deep impression on me (and the one that immediately came to mind here) is in Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan, and it is Bunyan, from Pilgrim’s Progress:
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Jospeh– spot on with Nazi Literature’s epigraph….
From Life, A User’s Manual: “WIth all your eyes, look”– Jules Verne.
Harry Mathews’ epigraph for “My life in CIA” is the most baller of all epigraphs in my opinion, since he quotes himself, from the book you are about to begin reading. I’ll post it later, when I have the book in front of me.
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Dedication, not epigraph, but I always loved this, from Bukowski’s Pulp
“Dedicated to bad writing.”
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Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; if you can bounce high, bounce for her too, ’til she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!” – Thomas Parke D’Invilliers
Fitzgerald made this guy up for ‘The Great Gatsby.’
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I like “Every word was once an animal” in Marcus
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November 5th, 2009 / 4:03 pmKen Baumann—
2nd’d
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Not an epigraph, but I’ve always liked Toni Morrison’s dedication of “Sula”:
“It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you. This book is for Ford and Slade [Morrison's sons], whom I miss although they have not left me.”"
The epigraph is a nice quote from “The Rose Tattoo”.
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“My rider of the bright eyes,
What happened you yesterday?
I thought you in my heart,
When I bought you your fine clothes,
A man the world could not slay.” – the rum diaries
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I hate epigraphs.
“The rings of Saturn consist of ice crystals and probably meteorite particles describing circular orbits around the planet’s equator. In all likelihood these are fragments of a former moon that was too close to the planet and was destroyed by its tidal effect.”
– W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
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“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”
tom waits. oh wait, never mind, that’s not an epigram. but still good advice maybe.
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