5.17.2005
the street of crocodiles by bruno schulz
at the store, we're selling a mounted print of this salvador dali painting. the museum is coming to the end of a major dali exhibition, and i've been immersed in dali commodities for several months. it gets you thinking...
surrealism, for better or worse, is not only one of my biggest preoccupations, but also perhaps the most fitting adjective for my artwork (feel free to throw "neo" in there if you'd like). and dali's above-mentioned painting is emblematic of everything i don't like about surrealism. it reduces one's unconscious to a hodge-podge of flashy commodities, its "unleashed desires" are dull and chauvinistic, and it's rendered with dali's typical fussy classicism. an uninspired nosedive into his well-worn bag-of-tricks; "weird" in the same way that hugh grant is "british."
with things like this in mind, it seems strange to me that the surreal would still be relevant. it's refreshing and inspiring, in our universe of computer-generated spectacles, that a film by kiyoshi kurosawa or an object by robert gober, or even a dance track by missy elliot can still be meaningfully weird. and i'm happy to say that bruno schulz' the street of crocodiles is one of the most meaningfully weird novels i've ever read.
the story is told in short passages concerning the author's childhood. it's a nostalgic and detail-oriented memoir of sorts (i'd call it "proustian," but that would imply that i've made it through swann's way during one of my several stabs at it). most of the episodes circulate around the author's father-- an eccentric shopkeeper who spews quasi-pantheistic philosophy, hatches exotic birds, obsesses over cockroaches and mannequins, and essentially bewilders all those around him.
but this bewilderment has none of the bloated showboating of dali. schulz is more concerned with texture than with spectacle. his descriptions are as uncanny as the objects he depicts. his approach is polite, in the way that one of joseph cornell's boxes is polite. a sophisticated sense of wonder replaces the carnival of authorial id. it's not a prudish book by any means, it's just indifferent to shock value. like a thick fog, it is slow and romantic and lingering.
the most impressive aspect of the street of crocodiles is how it seems to occupy a world of its own making. an odd and occasionally frightening world, but one that seduces and invites you as well. it is both child-like and well-spoken, eccentric in a manner not unlike raymond roussel. but unlike roussel's writing, it is also personal and affectionate. it warms you up as it weirds you out. it's one of the finest surreal novels i've ever read, a perfect literary companion to my all time favorite surreal piece of film-making, jean vigo's l'atalante.
a valuable reminder of the rich, radical foreign-ness of the everyday world.
surrealism, for better or worse, is not only one of my biggest preoccupations, but also perhaps the most fitting adjective for my artwork (feel free to throw "neo" in there if you'd like). and dali's above-mentioned painting is emblematic of everything i don't like about surrealism. it reduces one's unconscious to a hodge-podge of flashy commodities, its "unleashed desires" are dull and chauvinistic, and it's rendered with dali's typical fussy classicism. an uninspired nosedive into his well-worn bag-of-tricks; "weird" in the same way that hugh grant is "british."
with things like this in mind, it seems strange to me that the surreal would still be relevant. it's refreshing and inspiring, in our universe of computer-generated spectacles, that a film by kiyoshi kurosawa or an object by robert gober, or even a dance track by missy elliot can still be meaningfully weird. and i'm happy to say that bruno schulz' the street of crocodiles is one of the most meaningfully weird novels i've ever read.
the story is told in short passages concerning the author's childhood. it's a nostalgic and detail-oriented memoir of sorts (i'd call it "proustian," but that would imply that i've made it through swann's way during one of my several stabs at it). most of the episodes circulate around the author's father-- an eccentric shopkeeper who spews quasi-pantheistic philosophy, hatches exotic birds, obsesses over cockroaches and mannequins, and essentially bewilders all those around him.
but this bewilderment has none of the bloated showboating of dali. schulz is more concerned with texture than with spectacle. his descriptions are as uncanny as the objects he depicts. his approach is polite, in the way that one of joseph cornell's boxes is polite. a sophisticated sense of wonder replaces the carnival of authorial id. it's not a prudish book by any means, it's just indifferent to shock value. like a thick fog, it is slow and romantic and lingering.
the most impressive aspect of the street of crocodiles is how it seems to occupy a world of its own making. an odd and occasionally frightening world, but one that seduces and invites you as well. it is both child-like and well-spoken, eccentric in a manner not unlike raymond roussel. but unlike roussel's writing, it is also personal and affectionate. it warms you up as it weirds you out. it's one of the finest surreal novels i've ever read, a perfect literary companion to my all time favorite surreal piece of film-making, jean vigo's l'atalante.
a valuable reminder of the rich, radical foreign-ness of the everyday world.
