Yearly Archives: 2006

heritage of the accursed

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Kurt Seligmann’s “Heritage of the Accursed” from Charles Henri Ford‘s magazine View (number 5, December 1945). Reprinted in View: Parade of the Avant-Garde 1940–1947 (compiled by Catrina Neiman & Paul Nathan; printed by the Thunder’s Mouth Press in 1992) as pages 179–182.

Click on the thumbnails of the four pages to see them in readable size:

seligmann 179seligmann 180seligmann 181seligmann 182

And details of the two illustrations – click to enlarge:

seligmann 179 detailseligmann 180 detail

There’s a note from the editors of the anthology on p. 181 that the discussion and illustrations are expanded in Seligmann’s History of Magic (1948), reprinted as Magic, Supernaturalism and Religion (1971) (superseding a note from the editors of View that the article was an excerpt from the forthcoming Seers, Wizards and Magicians, which would have been published in 1946 by Pantheon.

rayner heppenstall, restaurant critic

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“From Vitrac’s account of his visit, it would appear that, by 1926, Roussel was already accustomed to receive visitors at Charlotte Dufrène’s apartment in the Rue Pierre-Charron, a practice which M. Leiris’s account might have led us to think Roussel only adopted later (perhaps because not until later, when he was living in a disreputable hotel, did he take to receiving even old friends at Mme. Dufrène’s). At any rate, although Roussel was apparently still resident with the Elchingens at Neuilly, Vitrac was received at ‘l’appartement d’une femme‘, and it was clearly in a turning off the Champs-Élysées, as the Rue Pîerre-Charron is. This little street is nowadays best known to men of letters as that in which stands the maison internationale of the P.E.N. Club, flanked on one side by a night club called Le Sexy and facing The Chickens Self, a restaurant no doubt specialising in barbecued chicken and operated on self-service principles.”

(Rayner Heppenstall, Raymond Roussel: a critical study, p. 13)

freud’s got nothing on tutuola

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“Having looked at them without talking to them, he took his eyes away but he directed them to the one who rushed out from my skull in the form of thick grey smoke and sat one one of the chairs. then he said loudly: ‘Yes, Mr “Memory”, what are your accusations against Mr First “Mind”?’ Then when the thick grey figure which was my ‘memory’ stood up, he first bowed for the deceptive judge which was my ‘kidney’ and he explained to him with a sad voice: ‘Yes, Judge “Kidney”, my accusations against Mr First “Mind” are that when we were with our Possessor,’ my ‘memory’ called me their possessor, ‘as his partners and advisers, while he went and returned safely on his two dangerous journeys, Mr First “Mind” misled our Possessor several times, which nearly ran our Possessor to death. But if I were not with him, and also Mr Second “Mind”, our Possessor would have perished in the wild jungles or when he and his wife were sacrificed to the god of the river. So for this reason, Mr First “Mind” must be severely punished even to death!’ Thus Mr ‘Memory’ explained to the deceptive Judge ‘Kidney’ and then he bowed and sat back.”

(Amos Tutuola, The Witch-Herbalist of the Remote Town (1981), p. 199)

from the new york times archives

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Here’s a letter from Dick Higgins about rent from 13 February 1965:

dick higgins letter to the editor about rent

And here’s what appears to be Marcel Duchamp’s first appearance in the Times, an unsigned note in the “Topics of the Times” section from Sunday, 1 March 1913:

topics of the times

An unsigned notice on the publication of Duchamp’s Green Box with a lovely turn of phrase: “there is something nostalgic and lavender about it, too”. From 30 June 1935; also seems to be unsized. Click the thumbnail for the full-sized scan.

green box

things around

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