LENARK - was: Down the toilet

[marc issue robinson]

Apologies if two copies of this eventually show up. I've been having hellish
trouble with my email, and I don't think this made it onto the list
(although a copy of it may still be looping around in the ether somewhere...) 

three-day-old message follows:

Quoth hg:

>Fellini's "La Femme Citadel" features a cassanova finding a hole 
>under his bed - he slides down a birth canal-like tunnel and finds a 
>world peopled by militant feminists, etc. 

Wurgh. Mind you, the cloacal film to end 'em all must be Eraserhead - which
seems to take place entirely down some unspecified hole or other. Doesn't do
to speculate too closely... objects and characters seem to be forever
slipping in and out of orifices, whole other worlds. Same theme dealt with
in a rather lighter way by the Cramps' What's Inside A Girl?... don't know
why I mentioned that.

>Speaking of Scotland and BIG BOOKS and  holes and strange 
>journeys - has anyone read Alasdair Grey's "Lenark"? A truly good 
>book, I think. I asked this before, but.... 

Oh yes. I read Lanark a few years ago, but all I really remember about it
was (a) it was impressive and original, but (b) it was almost as bleak as
Paul Auster's In The Country of Last Things - which is about as
wrist-slittingly bleak as novels get... 

Come to think of it, there's a certain down-the-toilet-ness about that one,
too. A-and there's more related stuff in Lempriere's Bloody Dictionary
(antics in the Belly of the Beast), which I've reached about halfway, before
putting it aside to catch up with the V. coach party... 

rgds, marc.