the 27 April 2005 Times Literary Supplement
Arthur Machen, the Apostle of Wonder
Phil Baker

THE LIFE OF ARTHUR MACHEN
Edited by Roger Dobson
John Gawsworth

394pp. | Leyburn: Tartarus. Available upon application to the Friends of Arthur Machen, 78 Greenwich South Street, London SE10 8UN. | 1 8726 2181 3

Notably independent of contemporary fashionî was Jocelyn Brookeís comment on Arthur Machen, which was admirably diplomatic, if lacking the flourish of J. P. Hoganís ìFew people read Arthur Machen nowadays; he is the preserve, zealously guarded, of lonely men who step into the gutter when the bowler-hatted jostle them in the streetî. Interviewing Machen at his Lisson Grove flat (ìa shrine to which no one pays homageî) in 1919, Ben Hecht felt that the writer now lived in an era that ignored him, while clinging to an era that had overlooked him, in effect pinning him down as a minor Nineties writer.

That was before the 1920s revival, after which Machen was allowed to join the ranks of the reforgotten, where he has largely remained until quite recently. ìThe Apostle of Wonderî is nowadays intensely appreciated, and although he notionally dealt in tales of horror, he is surely read more in hope than in dread. For all his nightmare unveilings and horrible transmogrifications, Machen was fighting a rearguard action to keep open a space of romantic and mystical possibility, resisting the ìdisenchantment of the worldî that Max Weber saw accompanying the rise of science.

Much of Machenís work involves a re-enchantment of London as a place of infinite and ultimately mystical possibilities, like the fabulous glimpsed park that opens up in one of his finest stories, ìNî, within a transfigured Stoke Newington. Barry Humphries has described discovering Machenís London by reading him in Australia, so that when he finally arrived in 1959, ìI wandered in the streets that I felt I had got to know through the Machen guidebook, in Clerkenwell, in Camden Town, in Kentish Town, in Islington. The gaslight was still there to my surprise, there were still dark corners, there were traces of the eighteenth century . . .î. Humphries was also an enthusiastic reader of M. P. Shiel, the Caribbean fantasy writer, and admired the John Gawsworth introduction to Shielís Best Short Stories. In his own introduction to Gawsworthís Life of Arthur Machen, Humphries recalls wandering around Notting Hill Gate, then run-down and associated with race riots and the murderer Christie, and finding himself in a pub on Westbourne Grove called the Alma. He noticed an old drunk, with ìthe look of a failed actor or minor literary gentî, holding forth to a small group of duffel-coated listeners, and it was an appropriately Machenesque moment when the barman told him this character was none other than Gawsworth: ìI decided I had been led to this horrible little pub by Fateî.

U.S. Widens Its Protective Frame for Indian Rock Art

A ceremony at China Lake will mark the 36,000-acre expansion of the historical landmark.
By Fred Alvarez
Times Staff Writer

May 20, 2005

RIDGECREST, Calif. No matter how many times archeologist Russell Kaldenberg roams Renegade Canyon, its volcanic rock reveals new magic. Depending on the season or the slant of the sun, the dark stone will erupt with chalk-white images, carved over the past 16,000 years, that he hasn’t seen before.

There are bighorn sheep and long-tailed cougars scratched into the walls of the high desert corridor. There are snakes and dragonflies and mammoth-like creatures, captured in rock carvings by the native people who once hunted and gathered their food on the western edge of the Mojave Desert.

There are so many images, in fact, that they can’t all be counted. All anyone knows for sure is that the carvings, set deep within the Navy’s testing range at China Lake, make up the largest concentration of Indian rock art in North America. And that every visit yields new discoveries.

“The harder you look, the more you see,” said Kaldenberg, who as base archeologist is responsible for preserving dozens of canyons peppered with prehistoric art at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. “It’s magical to me, with the light and shade and angles of the sun. If the clouds move just right, you can almost see things move.”

The last time she counted, Patricia Elliott Marvin had about 30 boxes of books, posters, drawings and other assorted leftovers from the Beat Generation.

“I want to get down (to) two boxes,” Marvin said Thursday while sorting through a pile of William S. Burroughs paperbacks, many of them signed by her good friend, the author.

“I need to simplify my life,” she said.

Marvin, 56, is having a Beat Generation garage sale Saturday in her home at 810 E. 13th St.

“The art will be in the front room, the books will be in the dining room,” she said. “The cookbooks — I have about 800 of them — will be in the back library.”

Marvin met and befriended Burroughs in 1978 in Austin, Texas. “I liked him right away,” she said.

They remained close confidants until Burroughs’ death in Lawrence in 1997. He was 83.

Burroughs, best known for his experimental novel “The Naked Lunch,” and his influence on writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, settled in Lawrence in 1981.
  
“I think Lawrence restored his soul,” Marvin said.

Sale items include:

• A short stack of programs from the River City Reunion, an event that brought the best of the Beats to Lawrence in 1987.
‚Ä¢ Signed copies of Burroughs’ “The Place of Dead Roads,” “The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead,” “Tornado Alley,” “Queer,” “The Western Lands” and “Letters to Allen Ginsberg.”
‚Ä¢ A Carl Apfelschnitt poster commemorating Burroughs’ 70th birthday in New York, signed by Burroughs and Apfelschnitt.
‚Ä¢ A complete set of “City Moons,” a Lawrence-area underground newspaper from the late 1960s.
• A letter to Marvin from Burroughs, explaining how to care for his cats while he was away.
• A collection of art prints and small-press publications from Lawrence, 1968 to the present.
‚Ä¢ Black-and-white drawings by risqu?© underground comic artist S. Clay Wilson.
• Dozens of Burroughs T-shirts.

“These are the only T-shirts authorized by Burroughs that bear his image,” said Marian O’Dwyer, former owner of the Phoenix Gallery who’s helping Marvin.

So far, Marvin said, she’s not had second thoughts about parting with so many prized possessions.

“I know this is going to sound weird, but I finally figured out why I am doing this,” Marvin said. “It’s because I miss (Burroughs). I have all this stuff, sitting dead in a box. That’s not where it belongs. It’s alive, it ought to be with people who will appreciate it, who will read it. I want them to have it.”

The sale starts a 9 a.m. No early callers will be allowed.

Marvin said she expected the sale to turn into a mini-reunion of Burroughs alumni.

“I’m hoping it will be an event,” she said, “and not just a sale.”

COURTESY MICHAEL SIMMONS!

The Independent

As the death toll of troops mounts in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s military recruiting figures have plummeted to an all-time low. Thousands of US servicemen and women are now refusing to serve their country. Andrew Buncombe reports

16 May 2005

Sergeant Kevin Benderman cannot shake the images from his head. There are bombed villages and desperate people. There are dogs eating corpses thrown into a mass grave. And most unremitting of all, there is the image of a young Iraqi girl, no more than eight or nine, one arm severely burnt and blistered, and the sound of her screams.

Last January, these memories became too much for this veteran of the war in Iraq. Informed his unit was about to return, he told his commanders he wanted out and applied to be considered a conscientious objector. The Army refused and charged him with desertion. Last week, his case – which carries a penalty of up to seven years’ imprisonment – started before a military judge at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

“If I am sincere in what I say and there’s consequences because of my actions, I am prepared to stand up and take it,” Sgt Benderman said. “If I have to go to prison because I don’t want to kill anybody, so be it.”

From a 1989 interview:

I wrote a song called “I Belong to a World That’s Destroying Itself” in 1969. That was 20 years ago. It’s getting worse, not better. People are victims of habit. It’s very difficult to break behaviour patterns. Not many people are able or willing to take the effort to do that. Unless it becomes a socially accepted lifestyle to change your behaviour patterns very quickly, I can’t feel too positive.

SPIRIT óTHE GROUNDBREAKING L.A. COMBO EQUALLY swayed by moody jazz and Hendrix-style rockíní rollówas born to record movie soundtracks. Unfortunately, they cut only one, for the seldom-seen 1969 Jacques Demy film Model Shop, but what a triumph it is: a magical blend of John Lockeís eerie keyboards, the soaring guitar of Randy California and Jay Fergusonís impassioned vocals and percussion, backed by the rock-steady bass and drums of Mark Andes and Ed Cassidy. Itís mindboggling that something as dazzling as the Model Shop soundtrackórecorded by the classic Spirit lineupó has been languishing unreleased in the vaults for over 35 years! The stuff of longplaying-legends and vinyl-myths, this full-length album was recorded in late 1968, but the completed master was shelved before release. Rescued from obscurity at last by Sundazed, this much rumored film-score gem is now center-stage where it can take a much deserved bow.

New York Times
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
Published: May 13, 2005

Two one-ton horses broke loose near the Meatpacking district this morning, galloping down sidewalks among startled morning commuters, after the stagecoach they were pulling tipped over and the drivers were flung from their seats.

The horses were caught unharmed several blocks away, but one coach driver, Kazim Palaz, was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital complaining of shoulder pain.

The red stagecoach, promoting a new Shania Twain fragrance by Stetson’s, was heading east on 14th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues about 9:30 a.m. when it was struck from the rear by a white van, Mr. Palaz told the police.

The stagecoach tipped over, letting the horses slip free of their harness and bolt east, past a Starbucks, Gristedes and Papaya King. The van sped off, too.

The horses, named Princess and Hero, charged down sidewalks as one of the drivers gave chase, yelling at people to get out of the way. Shocked pedestrians darted into the street and took refuge in building entryways.

“I heard someone screaming, ‘Look out! Watch out!’ ” said Carla Morreale, a software company employee, who had just come out of the Subway stop when she saw the horses bearing down on her. She ducked into a building entryway with two other women. “You don’t expect horses to be charging towards you on your way to work on the sidewalk in Manhattan,” she said.

Chester Burroughs, 62, was sitting at his desk just inside the lobby of the Teamsters building on 14th street when he saw the horses run by. “I had to get up and look again,” he said. “It was strange to see two horses loose on 14th Street.”

Hero was corralled at 14th Street and Sixth Avenue by police officers who happened to be in Union Square for an anti-terrorism drill. They tethered him to a lamppost, surrounded by yellow police tape.

But Princess continued on, galloping east to Fifth Avenue, where she made a right turn, and then another right turn at 13th Street.

“It was flying with the flow of traffic,” said Bob Di Giorgio, a crane operator, who was working behind a barrier at a construction site when he first spotted Princess.

But then the light turned red. As the cars came to a stop, Princess skidded to a halt herself, right behind a sedan, Mr. Di Giorgio said.

He saw his opportunity. “I leaned over the barrier, grabbed the reins and restrained the horse,” he said, describing a move that would have been far more practiced a century ago, when horses were still commonplace on city streets.

A motorist leaped out to help. “It was a joint effort,” Mr. Di Giorgio said of the effort to restrain and calm the animal. They tied Princess to a tree and waited for help.

“Luckily, the light turned red,” Mr. Di Giorgio said, reflecting.

While horses were still familiar fixtures of urban American life early in the 20th century, stagecoaches, used mostly for long-distance travel, were virtually phased out of New York City by the 1830’s, superseded by trains, according to Kathleen Hulser, the public historian of the New York Historical Society. However, they continued to be used in western states, where lower demand for transportation meant railways were not an economic option.