Flaubert and the Great Recession

A piece on Madame Bovary and the American landscape from a UK blog in 2013. 

Plymouth-Whitemarsh: Book #2

The first book in my oeuvre to directly address Plymouth-Whitemarsh: autumn 2019's The Great Recession. As of late 2024, another missive directly from Ply-Mar begins its journey; the Beams sequel Dance Monkey, from Funtime Press. Will I  get to a trilogy? Who knows.

Ungovernable Press: Rubber Soul

In 2008, a year before Ungovernable Press released The White Album, they also released a brief Adam Fieled e-chap: Rubber Soul.

Equations: Tobi Simon

#28 

I get lost in the social nexus oriented around Trish’s house. It’s all painters and musicians. Trish has a friend called Tobi who’s around a lot. Tobi is tiny and elfin (barely five feet), with an exquisitely sculpted face— cheekbones, blue eyes, full lips. Tobi is another painter and Trish and Tob tend to share things— drugs, guys, ideas. Tob is funnier than Trish and her laughter is contagious. But there’s a paranoid strain in her that hates being excluded from things and gets snappish when she feels it happening. Of course, Tob and I desire each other. One night, the three of us happen to be at my apartment. Trish is taking a bath; we’re all high. For some reason, Tob and I get in a wrestling match. I pin her to the floor (wall-to-wall beige carpeted), and for a few seconds I hold her down. What is consummated in these moments is the sense we both have that we will eventually sleep together. The three of us live up to Trish’s romantic ideal— young, gorgeous, promiscuous artists in an intoxicated ménage. But Tob, unlike Trish, cannot do monogamous relationships (or most other kinds). The extreme regularity of my antics with Trish, once a schedule has been established, cannot be replicated with Tob. I feel it is more intelligent, at this point, to stick to (and with) Trish. We do gain an added sheen of glamour from Tob’s presence, and we’re all too young to inquire into the nature of glamour: its essential evanescence. 

 …………………………………………………………………………………………………………

#29 

Tob hovers between straightness and gayness. It is years later; I’ve broken things off with Trish. We’re upstairs at the Khyber, me with my friends, Tob with hers. We’re dancing and I start to do touchy-feely moves. This is it; this is the preordained time at which Tob and I consummate things (she put me in my place a year ago because we were both still too close to Trish). I show up at her apartment the next day; she spends the night at my apartment. But there’s some fakery involved and our equation involves contingencies: I’m putting together shows for her band, she needs to keep me (for them) in place. We take a bath, and Tob begins giving me a very thorough (and loving) blowjob. The problem is, this won’t count for me unless we actually have penetrative sex. So I stop myself from finishing in her mouth, take her to bed, put on the condom and do the deed, without finishing. I let my piggish principles interfere with Mother Nature’s chosen course. By disobeying Nature, I have already given Tob a reason to mistrust me. The truth is, she will never forgive me for seducing her. She doesn’t like guys that much anyway. The kind of impulse that chooses willfulness over acceptance can never have consonance with satisfaction, and pleasure.

191 Arden Road, Gulph Mills

Another circumstance attendant on Season in Hell: White Candle on P.F.S. Post. Prior to my Liverpool visitation, and Arts Fest/Atherton Hilton, Jennifer had spent several days visiting me here, on Arden Road in Gulph Mills (191), where I was stationed for my PSU semester breaks, '94-'96. By late '96, this tribe was back in Glenside, on Lindley Road. From here, I liked to hang out on Lancaster Avenue in Ardmore, where there was a Borders (books/music), when Borders was still around. And Tower Records in KOP.    

Philly's Elite Main Drags

Philly and its environs are laid out and built with a sense of graciousness and sumptuousness that is difficult not to notice over a long period of time. It's been my pleasure to admire the sense of absolute architectural elitism which makes so many vistas here Heaven-on-Earth ones. These vistas are most apparent on a seemingly endless string of exquisite main drags, which take the region and sprinkle it with star-dust. Some of the main drags I'm about to mention are more about earthiness and serviceability, others are more about the aforementioned architectural razzle-dazzle effect. All take this area and, for me, radically transcendentalize it. The list I've assembled cannot be, nor is meant to be comprehensive; but these are the main drags I know best, and which I've spent a big chunk of my life imbibing:

Conshohocken- Fayette Street

Plymouth Meeting- Germantown Pike

Chestnut Hill (Philly)- Germantown Avenue

Glenside- Easton Road

Bryn Mawr- Lancaster Avenue

Ardmore- Lancaster Avenue

King of Prussia- Dekalb Pike

Center City (Philly)- Walnut Street

West Philadelphia- Baltimore Avenue

North Philadelphia- Broad Street

South Philadelphia- South Street

Manayunk (Philly)- Main Street

Old City (Philly)- 2nd/3rd Streets

Ambler- Butler Pike

Jenkintown- Old York Road

Abington- Limekiln Pike

North-East Philadelphia- Five Corners

Penn's Landing (Philly)- Delaware Avenue

If you can make it to these, you will not be disappointed. Peace!

Preface

With the new Monday Journal out with a vengeance (online & print), worth noting that Vlad has something else coming out of note: a second print edition of his late Nineties chapbook Derelict. When Derelict was released, Vlad still lived in Philly, and much of the action in the chap takes place in Philly. Vlad asked me to write a preface for this second edition, and I did.