Doug and Josephine and list, sorry for the delay in this reply. (I currently 
prefer using an obsolete notebook computer running an obsolete console version 
of Linux without internet access and so don't go near my desktop computer 
which has the network connection for days or weeks on end.)

A criticism of Poppy Z Brite's writing which was suggested by an email friend 
(another Gothic fan) was that Gothic works best with an economy of gesture. 
Why use a huge sledgehammer when a small silversmith's hammer is more useful 
or perhaps that butterfly which flaps a wing and a huge storm wrecks havoc at 
another co-ordinate position. This suggests also that a novel can be thought 
of as a type of poem rather then, or along with the various narrative 
structures concerned with genre, as I was taught. My enjoyed reading of 
Drawing Blood was important to me, also, in suggesting a move from a verse 
novel to prose fiction. One of the things that fascinated me about this book 
was the way it seemed to straddle both Realist and Gothic conventions. 
Perhaps another problem is that of being a professional writer which is being 
Poppy Z Brite with a pressure to publish attached. Perhaps fortunately, the 
book market in Australia is not always large enough to sustain a professional 
career as a poet or novelist and writing novels and poems may become a hobby 
or a love, even when you have professional degrees in this field. The 
indulgent joy of spending years on a book, with years of silence to stew on 
the next one, rather then the demand which implies you are not a real writer 
unless you produce prolific publications, not that I have anything against 
being prolific, itself, of course. Perhaps this has something to add to 
Josephine's original questions on shock art as marketing (which I seem to 
remember Warhol being rather good at). I was fascinated that Mapplethorpe is 
included in this (his retrospective, I assume) as the studied formalism of 
his death lily, for example, tells me quite a different story........ 
different perspectives, I guess, which suggests another diversion into Gothic 
themes (at least in the skewed tropes of novel writing which makes another 
link to novels as poems.)

Anyway, just some scattered thoughts, I am supposed to be writing an annual 
research report (talking of writing prose fiction)  which has placed me under 
pressure to explain my lack of publication in peer review research 
journals.... (this pressure to publish seems to be everywhere) and so must 
cut out here, for now. I am very happy you speak generally about Gothic, 
Doug, I should add. (One can love a general) and the debt to pleasure angle 
suggests Nietzsche's free gift, also. Pleasure as theft beyond a debt 
relation and the debt which the existence of evil imposes, etc etc.

best wishes and uncertain if some of the above leaps make much sense....

Chris Jones

On Tue, 23 Jul 2002 18:03, you wrote:

> >I finally remembered a title which explicitly goes into eating people....
> >Poppy Z Brite _Exquisite Corpse_.... although I don't think the novel
> > really works and since _Drawing Blood_ with its HIV/AIDS Gothic theme I
> > have not been impressed with her writing, I am sorry to say.


> I was being rather general, Chris, but admit that Exquisite Corpse was the
> last of her books I read, & I thought it a bit too much in various ways.
> Too much onside? I think, having recently read it, & although it doesn't go
> into that territory, that the representation through narration of the bad
> guy is better handled, & wittier, in John Lanchester's The Debt to
> Pleasure. Iagree with you completely about teh falling off, but haven't
> paid much attention I guess...
>
> Doug
>
>
> Douglas Barbour
> Department of English
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
> (h) [780] 436 3320      (b) [780] 492 0521
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
>         O baby, get out of Egypt -
>         This history is not for you,
>         Get out of there, out of my path,
>         Out of my speechless mouth, the Egypt shrieking
>         a redundant, plundering tongue . . .
>         An ancient slang speaks through me like that.
>
>                         Gwendolyn MacEwen