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Anthony Steyning
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May 2008: Welcome to Anthony Steyning's homepage. =========================================== Site traffic is approaching the level of 50.000 readers annually. (Out of half a million 'hits'). This from an average of more than 40 different countries each month, representing a 60% increase over last year:
Life's a bitch, but she ain't all bad! (Bogus XIV)
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I was busy explaining to a slow friend of mine that Hildegard von Bingen is not Crosby's love child, when I shouted 'I don't believe it, that man writes like his sofa!', blaming my small outburst on the premature evaporation of my drink. A writer I know was interviewed from his own living room on Twittish Television, the thing a brown, soft, dull monstrosity with flowery pillows, quite static and like its owner... utterly straight laced.
The internet’s different; no comfortable, outdated stuff should clutter it. In this spirit my site proposes to be a living document: I frequently re-think and re-draft my texts keeping them fluid and relevant. In fact, following their evolution might be of interest to international readers sympathetic to my work. You may even wish to do some cross-referencing as my novels find their roots in my essays and my essays in my novels, depending on which was produced first. Constant minor changes are aimed at reinforcing their coherence. Also, the overlapping of themes is a vital feature given that modern life plays that trick on us. Yes, it does all sound a bit complex, doesn't it? But only here and there, I assure you. Orwell warned us we can't over-simplify all the time. It too easily leads to crypto-totalitarian or at least despotic 'truths'.
Put together this demands a subversive type of writing, digging deep and trawling wide in exposing where the beauty and all the hurt began. On this rocky, twisting stretch, cutting through the crap, I frequently stumble on how matters really stand in relation to each other---issues and conditions ostensibly linked or not but in the end affecting us in ways not always evident. My last move to recreate these findings through half-real or fully fictional characters, placing them in dramatic context while reproducing the core dynamics that led to specific human experiences. In other words fascinating events relived not via more headlines or insipid generalities but through very urgent yet ordinary people, from their walking shoes and the pavement of their day on up.
Now please select play, essay, critique or a novel from the navigation bar on the left for the first part/chapters/paragraphs of each work. Kindly allow a few seconds for the text to load before scrolling down and be aware that if you decide to print, the number of pages will be condensed to about half their posted number, due to web format.
To order your First Edition copy, click on the face of each book-cover. The novels are shipped world-wide by priority mail through www.amazon.co.uk (NOT through www.amazon.com for the moment). For synopsis and recent reader critiques of each work, simply scroll down the amazon.co.uk page where you'll have ended up or go into each title on the left navigation bar of this site, preceding the first pages of main text.
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SPECIAL NOTE My reading at the Shakespeare & Co in Paris seems to have come off quite well. Both my novels are on sale there, should you transit the hallowed city. Met a great young American talent by the name of Roman Payne, promising author of The Basement Trains. The superb jazz and gospel singer Manda Djinn led me to actor Raphaël Loison who has since translated most of this site into French. Manda performs regularly at Lionel Bloom's Swan jazz bar in Montparnasse, nextdoor to the Closerie des Lilas. Don't you miss her now, she's the greatest, as Jacky Gleason used to say. The reading at Patricia Laplante-Collins' literary salon in Paris on March 4th was a blast, with Manda Djinn singing gospel in her exquisite husky voice, followed by my words of wit and wisdom. Approx. 60 people in attendance and the place jam-packed. Should the French site have any impact at all, I'll do the same in Spanish next year. Seguro! Te lo prometo! Pero necesito encontrar un traductor de mucha envergadura y a condición que no se llame Armando Follón... Budapest My Love was well received and presented by the Nottingham Evening Post right beside works of Ian McEwan and Umberto Eco: not bad company, what? Westcoast Magazine came out with a full review in its February edition. As for The Applicant, I added a synopsis and a significant critique of the work above the first real pages that you'll find on the left navigation bar under its title.
(Amsterdam's Hegeraad Café. A. Steyning in black sombrero & white scarf & rapt APPLICANT prime suspect: below the tightrope, obviously waiting for Godot... to fall.) Please help critical thought and literary originality survive; small donations are most appreciated:
You may now wish to read Quarter to Four under Short Stories. The gradual shifting of language, the imperceptible change of direction and explosive ending may not leave you indifferent. Especially young, female readers will immediately sense what this is all about. I'm putting the last touches on a short story, called Dance of the Rhino. Sisyphus Rex: O Tempore, O Mores! Cicero used to sigh, discouraged with the violence of his times. I express the same sentiment through a modern fable of two myths, involving King Sisyphus and the Minotaur placed together in the Knossos labyrinth. While not attempting to give Camus a run for his money, I thought it would be incongruous to have these two discuss their take on existence: one a reforming cheat, the other a hybrid half man, half beast! It also is an allegory, dealing with what's happening in the world right now. (So don't pussyphus, read Sisyphus!) Volver: Living in Spain most of the year I picked this Almodovar flick because of all the self-congratulatory hype there, begging to be weighed. Turgheniev, Lampedusa, Garcia Lorca now they could dramatically reflect pastoral plight. Alas, Almodovar's no Visconti and in my opinion made a royal hash of things. Actually, a reVolver's what I'm looking for. And don't for a moment think that I'm too tough on him: a French critic I just read, among other things accuses Almodovar, a gay man, of being a film director with a 'women fixation' of 'lesbian proportion'! Well, whatever, but in this case the result is well below par. The Lives of Others: A magnificent German movie with Brechtian ensemble players. Read my reaction to von Donnersmarck's Das Leben der Anderen under Critique. A real movie, not pablum. -I guess they'd nothing else to vote for at BAFTA or the Oscars. Got fraudulently suckered into seeing Atonement, a month ago, while visiting Montreal. A fetching, brief love scene between Keira Knightly (what's in a name?) and James McAvoy but otherwise a static British bore of a movie. Another one of those Ivory-Merchant-like jobs, inspired by Laura Ashley, about as thrilling as wallpaper. It's not easy getting confronted by careful class crap time and again, animated slide-shows of cliché intimacies and fine frozen manners with plots twisting so slowly that everyone's asleep by then and choking on the popcorn. Lovely Estate, love those servants, nice polyester WWII. Comes close to an upscale Harlequin. A cinematographic dud. Who'll atone for it? And when will Britain produce another Betrayal, instead of committing one? Read the tormented Ingmar Bergman and the prismatic Michelangelo Antonioni both died of bleakness. Was it worth it, they were asked, not knowing joy and still not finding the answer to the great questions that haunt? Their reply, like their movies and for all, in the end too long, too late & too slow. And being deliberately enigmatic a sure sign of frustration. Can't figure it out either? Hate to admit it? Cover your tracks with darkness... -Puccini stated that the day he stopped falling in love, people should start preparing his funeral. To which his wife said 'Don't Touch My Puccini' and others hastened to assure her 'Don't worry!', as apparently she was quite a (watch)dog.
Recent Revisions & Additions (Recommended by Roman Emperor) FLATUS MAGNUS
- Read about arsenic and black lace around white thighs in A Kiss By The Clowns - I have revisited all my poems. Do read them again - The radio played nightmare music, repetitive electro crap, characterless electrocution stuff of the type used by people like the North Koreans as a brainwash and torture tool. It was Saturday night and apparently a good day for this, though there were different times, warm and hopeful, hypnotic in more sensual ways. Days when lovers talked and people spoke, instead of looking through you, mouths most mute, eyes opaque. He no longer felt like going out, but staying home was hell as well. It was when he threw his radio against the wall and lit a cigarette. - (Political aside: N-K : Terrible societies where the young get a single career choice: become executioner or victim, nothing else. Whereas historically we have fought for and opened up the beautiful space that exists between these two disturbing extremes) - He danced so smoothly, he danced like water, there wasn't a move that he had studied, at least it seemed to her. And if his caresses were as natural and effortless, he could easily cut her breath and make her moan or curl her toes, the woman seated ringside in that Ballroom, fantasized. Instinctively straightening her back, pushing forward her breasts, raising her chin, she slightly tilted her head to expose her neck. Whereupon, one foot softly tapping in rhythm with the music, she spied the woman in his arms through half shut eyes, with him sneaking a peek at her table every time he turned. The band played fast, the brass won out, the couple on the dance floor the first one out, the other woman not realizing she danced alone, that the man who held her really danced with another, sitting on that chair. Or so our lovelorn lady believed, and this thought and her desire imperceptibly pushed her forward on her seat, towards the band, the stand, and a conquest not realistically hers. Near the edge of that spotless, that stained parquet floor. - This from The Montauk Partnership, an excellent 'action' crime novel by Canadian author Louis F. Benson, on the subject of top international IT criminals: "At a certain level there are no more rules, no more laws. Once you’ve managed to free yourself from all external constraints, once you’ve crossed a certain line, the only limit left … your own will. There are no rules for the rulers. Everything was sorted out by the Montauk partners long before it got to BB&M, but…” Widdowson said etc. C'est beau ça, Monsieur Benson! - In another effort towards incredible accomodation, the most cleverent Archbishop of Canterbury has called for a return to the mule - Nuts over Italy: - This summer, I want to rent a house on the Labia Majora! - I bet you do. Perhaps you mean the Lago Maggiore? - Yeah, whatever! - Their Washington: Some don't know the difference between The State of the Union and Union Station - Despite their own claims I refuse to believe this has anything to do with Islam as such, but everything with dark backwardness. The latest refinement in Baghdad, by those calling others evil, packing retarded Down Syndrome women like mules with explosives then blowing them up in crowded market places by remote control. Does it get any sicker than this? And how would you like to push that button? Or is it precisely that those who do, have the un-evolved EQ of reptilians? That is to say none! Making one wonder who the real mental patients are. And how would you like a bunch of these actually ending up running your country? No viable society has ever benefited from, let alone successfully been created by the cruel and the utterly depraved. For the simple reason that whatever legitimately ails a society, these boys are woefully unqualified to solve its problems. Therefore they cannot be the liberators they claim they are, having nothing to offer, capable only of violent, visionless non-solutions. Senseless primitives believing in the little power their acts give them and these efforts inferior because the ideas behind them inferior--- generating nothing, nourished by obstinacy. They won’t quit, they can’t quit, they know it, hooked on easy destruction, the proud owners of a vile sense of victimhood and no matter what they'll tell you a horrendous lack of awareness and self-esteem. So that given the pain they cause, we must conclusively help these animals out of their suffering. Now. As a matter of utmost policy. Catching them as easy as observing the suspect house, nextdoor. (Read Sisyphus Rex)
- Just because I'm anti-oxidant, doesn't mean I'm pro-orient, the molecule sputtered. - There can be no matter without anti-matter, no electron not counter-balanced by a positron, no light without darkness, no male without female and no life without death. But alas, there also can be no good without evil: a sad assessment of the immutable laws of the universe... And isn't it ironic how, when there can be no life without opposites and no life without change, these laws themselves seem inalterable. - Personally I think a guy who needs a pastor, has no business being a presidential candidate. But then again Americans are famously practical about their religion. Like a man who told me that when he was a boy he used to pray the Lord almost every night for a new bike. But when he saw that's not the way the Lord operates he stole one, instead praying for forgiveness.. - On Hillary: she seems to have quite a bit of pride, but not quite enough to live up to - That word 'humane' bothers me. As if it comes from humans. - Hillary, panting to America: Take me! Take me! And Bill to America: Take her, for God's sake! But my wife says it all: had she sent this guy to hell, divorced him, run for NY senator on her own, won on her own, proven her qualities and done well, she would deserve to win the nomination. But this phoney goodie-goodie but totally dishonest, opportunistic love story and display of moral cowardice is the turner of all stomachs. Blind ambition itself should never be the national yardstick, character yes. - Read A Funeral for Immortality, a prose poem under Selected Poems (first draft, subtitled: Sodomy and Velvet Hats) - Read Icarus Accused, a prose poem under Selected Poems about current judicial affairs and lying through distinguished teeth - All right! spake Nietzsche. I'll believe in God on the condition that He'll dance for me! To which Diaghilev added Yes, Do astonish me... and Béjart said... Amen! - If it has a foot and toes, it's one of my legs, he bragged
(On Good and Evil)
-Contrary to convenient wisdom Atheism does not equate Immorality, though immoral people can be atheists in the way that they can be non-swimmers, brick-layers, politicians, bankers or whatever. -Also, while both are atheistic, Existentialism does not equate Nihilism.
-Nihilism is incapable of recognizing joy.
-Existentialism celebrates human dignity and joy.
-Chances of being a convinced immoral Atheist are remote.
-Being an immoral Existentialist is difficult.
-It is far easier to be an immoral Nihilist.
-Furthermore, many Believers cannot accept joy. Thus, in a way and in an unconventional sense they are Nihilists: pro-God Nihilists, though more than likely just defeatist.
-Given this propensity, plus our jails filled with nominal Believers, it is simplistic to attribute Morality to Faith and Immorality to Atheism.
-Let us simply agree that Immorality is the exclusive domain of the Non-thinker.
- A filibuster is not a Philadelphian - A wild boar comes perilously close to being an oxymoron -- The Hari Krishna gang came by the other day, beating their drums, their tambourines and singing their mantras or incantations in their orange robes on the pavements of the city. But I had noticed earlier that when the temperature drops below zero, they disappear pretty swiftly. I also seem to recall the Virgin Mary has never made an appearance in Alaska, only near the balmy Mediterranean. Hence my theory that religious fervor is allergic to the cold or else much like those UFOs, never getting sighted in the Congo, always near areas of certain sophistication where there's more nourishment for imagination. Wouldn't it give food for thought though, if, miraculously, the Virgin were sighted in Mecca? Or Mohammed's mother in Spitsbergen? And what if those two venerable ladies would then get together and have a cup of tea? - Allow me to be the first to say on December 19, 2007: The tone is changing. Ben Laden and Al Zawahri are getting old and tired of being on the run. They crave what all men crave and that is respectability. They want a formal role in global affairs, not as pariahs but as legitimate representatives of the Islamic world. Their affairs are not producing world revolution and accomodation has entered their minds. They won't control Iraq and will never completely regain Afghanistan or be able to keep a free run of parts of Pakistan. They'll pinpoint strategic actions to secure a political niche in Middle East structures, not their destruction. If it's not America and Israel they can bring down, it's Libya, Morocco, Dubai and the Gulf States they now fear most. Successful Arab capitalism will relegate them to total insignificance if they don't change tack. They await Bush's departure and won't 'promote' rival Iran in any meaningful way. After 2008 they'll be aiming for a 'truce'. Reduction in western dependence on Arab resources will finally introduce a degree of Islamic pragmatism. Real Politik affecting them like everyone else. It's why it's called 'Real', auf Deutsch. - There's something the New York Times and the networks didn't pick up on. And that's the incongruous sight of Iran's Ahmadinejad boarding his Jumbo Jet flying to New York to denounce western ingenuity and morality, in so many words proclaiming Tehran and Islam's superiority while employing an aircraft built in Seattle and pilots trained in Florida, navigating the globe on technology produced by free, secular society, including TV appearances using equipment presumably invented in Qom. How deluded and at the same time disingenuous can one get? And why does this man not do more for his own gifted people? - Needless to say, my friend Eddy the dwarf can only read short stories - It's almost impossible explaining ignorance to the ignorant, their children our best hope... (John Locke already said it. But it never hurts to say it again, especially some 250 years later. He noticed It's one thing to show a man he's in error, quite another to put him in possession of truth!!) - What to make of people seemingly devoid of any sense of authentic decency, treating any cruel ill-informed, ill-advised brazen thought crossing their mind as 'God' speaking to them? Is emotional apathy, this transferring out of all legitimate worldly compassion not a form of insanity. Is dealing rationally with completely irrational and aberrant notions not Rational Lunacy? - Today I won't touch my rabbit, but rinse my hare instead - I don't think it'll moose, but do you think it might reindeer? - Napoleon Bonaparte wore a wide red sash so that if he were wounded the enemy wouldn't see him bleed. It's why Hitler wore a brown shirt, ein braunes Hemd. He also grew up in Braunau, listened to a Braun radio, married Eva Braun and Werner von Braun was his favourite scientist. Judge a man by his colours, is what I say - A new friend of mine writes me he's lysdexic, whereas when I step out of cold water I'm lessdixic. He also raves about this movie with the Lone Ranger exhorting 'Ho Hi, Sliver', starring Peckery Greg. There are many universes... - Rap is rabble-babble - Despite the canals, Shakespeare drove his Portia through Venice - Once upon an actress... - Besides his own wicked ways, man has brought some order in the situation whereby the sole purpose of bringing him to life, seems to have been to beat the crap out of him (Collected Notes) - Tell me what it all means, by I. Kan't - For those using Viagra: should you get an erection lasting more than 4 hours, immediately go see your physician. Unless of course your physician is gay. (Personally, I'd call a witness...) - I've decided against a military career. It's too hard on poor front page editors. Though when something goes wrong their indignation doesn't extend to construction workers and thousands of others who die on the job. And yet they'll desperately rely on the cops, also getting killed by dozens each year, should their own house get blown up. 'Own' the operative word here, thus 'indignation' partial and a calculation. Editors with an agenda in other words. A fronted agenda, or a forum hijacked and to news what infomercials are to education. But getting them to admit any of this another kettle of fish, not even when drunk. And what this also says is nobody in his right mind is for war, but we should all be against cheap, exploitative sentiment - Just bought my wife a Hamburghini - Last week I got her a tPod - Nothing but the best, you'll agree - As for SCGS (Stewart & Colbert Glib Sanctimony) Inc: Mass murderer Lenin called western protesters his useful idiots; predictably some critical applauders have found their way into this daily studio. It's equally disturbing to see people make a comfortable living out of cloying moralism and still others making this the place where they get all their news to begin with. But then this has been going on for thousands of years, except they used to wear robes and the congregation kneeled. And mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most decent of them all... is so much goodness 'on the sleeve' not much more than self-congratulatory delusion? Evangelism shouldn't pose as humour, this professional flaunting of decency on the cheap, followed by nothing but empty derision not even produced by the moderators themselves, but, apparently, by a gaggle of 20 writers. Let's face it, I don't care much for people against war foolishly suggesting that I'm for war by not subscribing to lunatic reasoning and bitingly inane one-liners. I'm not, and also very much against forest fires and mudslides so strongly suggest you admire me for it: now can I have my own TV show? - Comfortably distant protest continues to have life's injustices settled exclusively by victims, because it feels aggrieved by concrete but not risk-free intervention. Sensitivity has mysterious ways... Among these many blind alleys and the odd cul-de-sac - Of course we all know Pennsylvania is named after William Pencil, the 17th century discoverer of the graphite writing tool, in due time replacing the quill - This has nothing to do with William Quaker who invented breakfast or Sir William Pitts who invented the burgh - During Iraq, the same number of Americans were shot and killed in the city of Los Angeles. Nobody talks about them. Non-ideological warfare at home not as fashionable or attention-grabbing to the Tenured and the Pulitzered? A famine of indignity? A feast of selectivity? Also called steering the news, or in a court leading the witness? - Read all about Shakespearean pianist Polonius Monk (Collected Notes) - Not to speak of the less gifted Melodious Plonk - The question is, can satire take satire and parody, parody? - It was a sad day when my woodpecker was diagnosed with termites - Read about how the US should conduct Dale Carnegie style immersion courses in Baghdad, instilling Aristotelean, alleviating Blood Pragmatism in hearts and minds down there. (Political Notes) - There's a difference between Brave New World and Stupid New Globe (Political Notes) - Read about Guy Laliberté's new Quebec (Political notes) - No point in bubbles making love! They'll just burst and die. (see an Archangel's distress under Collected Notes) Please try keeping up with these Notes as there's loads to hang your hat on, even jump-starting valid notions your own. As under Banier: " My parents had no children. I was twelve years old." Or that Gide, the French writer, suggested that by the time he's in his fifties a real man should have had syphilis and the Légion d'Honneur, though not necessarily in that order. While Brecht, the German playwright, acidly asked Why be a man if you can be a success? And speaking of the horse's mouth: He should know; by all accounts old Bertold was not much of a man, but a great success. Would that standards vary... - It's not easy being mediocre he must have sighed, and of course it's hard work. Nearly as much as being brilliant, he reluctantly discovered: Read COBB'S JOLT - Cobb's hurting! - What happened? - He was struck by her wallet! - Was it full? - Yes, or he wouldn't have been struck by it! - Sure hope he doesn't get Ballsheimer's... - Forgetting her? Forgetting us? - I hope not!
Trolley Car Line Greed: as a woolly translation of A Streetcar named Desire under Critique will amuse you endlessly, unless you live in Belgium or in other places where dutiful theatre productions are a 'must'. Fairy Tales: Is not some tiresome Karma running over Dogma rant, but a passionate plea for dignity in human affairs by an ordinary XXI citizen, hoping to eliminate 'truth' jobs once and for all In paragraph 10, I disagree with the great XVII century Prussian thinker in this way: " Or as his bosom pal Johann B., from across die Strasse in Königsberg, used to fondly tell him: "Immanuel, you're a real Kant!'" (This when (I'm) not questioning duplicitous Heildigger, not the first thinker of the deep never to have the truth interfere with his exquisite plunging,( also see Collected Notes, to your left.) irreverently condemning the 'dignity trade' (or worse, should it be called the 'solemnity game'?). But why not read the whole damn thing in proper context? It makes everything so much more interesting! Tradition: The Critical Core: Read about the treachery of tradition, how obstinate tradition is obsolete tradition, and the way in which Every man's a nation could change all that. How Michel de Montaigne already said it 400 years ago: If I can't govern the world, the least I can do is govern myself. With this author adding that the real, the only Body Politic is me, is you, plus that shooting roots sometimes is healthier than inheriting them... Truth & Lies: "It's all a misunderstanding," Leni Riefenstahl admitted. "I had a mad crush on Adèle Fitler." (You read it here first!) Waiting For Beckett: read why I concluded that Godot is a deeply religious play, not in a conventional sense perhaps, but in the way that any Godot would do, as long as we are wanted ... On Fundament: deals with robotic believers, obstinate literalists willing themselves to denigrate the metaphor, killing life for total lack of moral imagination. Could it be that Mars was formerly inhabited by them, viewing what was left behind...? Humour/Laughter/Silence: paragraphs 5, 6 and 11 were altered, adding notions that the very best comics are always deadly serious, and that while some like to think of the Messiah as a joke, I submit that much to the contrary Humour is the real Messiah, or that the young Bororo men in Niger dress-up outlandishly once a year and humour a woman in order to win her hand, obliged to prove they can make her laugh and smile rather than impress with crude masculinity: not bad for a desert tribe. Plus... These days, everybody writing yet again about Freud, I make the link between him and that old Canadian trick of putting a small piece of fur round the keyhole of your front door, when it's freezing cold and dark outside and you're groping to get in... (see Collected notes, to your left) Or... the correlation between Parades in Moscow and in New Orleans! (See Collected Notes, to your left.)
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Do support the arts, so vital in preserving free focus. Any small amount and PayPal will do.
Those helping the cause are sent the full text of one short story; a matter of kindness repaid. (It's either this or I shall be forced to introduce a whole new banking concept, convincing rich amnesiacs to open trust accounts, appointing me trustee...!) |
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Contact Stella Bascuñan to obtain specific rights for certain countries and/or language domains at my posted e-address Caveat Lector: In order to protect international copyrights, all my works have been deposited with EU & US based notaries. |
