Jonathan Bowden’s Deliverance, Part 5

1,982 words

Part 5 of 7 (Full series here ^[3].)

Edited by Greg Johnson and Peter Jacobi

In 1995, Jonathan Bowden self-published his Collected Works in six volumes (London: Avant-Garde, 1995), edited by Jürgen Schwartz, one of Bowden’s pen names. These volumes comprise 27 distinct books, 12 of which had been previously published. Altogether, the Collected Works contain more than 2,600 pages of rare early Bowden.

Deliverance is the fifth book in the second volume. It had not been previously published. We will publish it online in seven installments.

Like many of the Collected Works volumes, Deliverance  covers a wide range of political and cultural topics. But instead of interspersing these analyses with fictional narratives, Deliverance is fictional from beginning to end.

Eventually, a fully annotated version of Deliverance will appear at the Jonathan Bowden Archive. It will then be followed by similar editions of the rest of the Collected Works, plus a couple more early volumes that were not included. — Greg Johnson

For much of Brian’s maudlin irrelevancy—the endless circumlocution and proletarian reflex of his speech—is reminiscent of the sort of language which is customarily used in George V. Higgins novels, such as Cogan’s Trade. It is the representationality of the discourse: the redundancy of its patois or semantics—the wistfulness and ironic humour of ordinary voices (as the critic Martin Amis once described the ear for dialogue of Norman Mailer—in democratic mode). Such a thing floats in the ether: the disembodied and brackish smoke—blue-to-grey—which floats in the air in a bar—itself the favourite abode or habitat of a writer like Derek Raymond (a.k.a. Roger Cook). For, in his opinion, you never know what will happen next in a bar—it is the disacknowledgement: the contingency of what might happen: the violence—if indeed violence is to be expected—which fascinates him. As the dialogue of uneducated souls switches back and forth; labile; inconstant; running to fat; diarrohea of the mouth and mind—itself inconstant: logorrhoea; the glottal-stop semantics of the promenade (Brighton promenade, perchance?): down the dogs or the darts; the horses or the women (alternatively); the expectation of blue rinses; eye-shadow; the expectancy of fate: cheap rum and pink and yellow betting slips, the expectation of what is to come: a cough in the darkness. Here, one finds cheese sandwiches—a sliver of “off” calcified milk between slivers of bread, brown or rye, it matters not—merely the intonation of the facts is what matters. It mistakes itself—turns in on itself: murders the absence of its future prospects. We know what we want—and we are here to obtain it. For what matters in this type of speech is the emotional articulacy—itself transcribed through a haze of redundant buzz-words solecisms, grammatical errors, cat’s-paws and counter-textual misquotations. These are the words which mean nothing at all—and yet everything at once (depending on the circumstances). It is, if you like, a bodying forth within language—a literal transposition of the body in language—the redundancy of dirt: the fact that what is to be expressed is itself a condition of the body (if not the mind); it is an essay—a progression or promulgation—the going beyond of certain characters and misreadings of the flesh. For the language of the uneducated (primarily the working class—but not exclusively) is a miasma—it is all at sea; it expresses nothing and yet everything, at the same instant, all at once. The meaning hovers in the interstices of these verbals—this constant sense of the inconstancy of human discourse and interaction. One can almost see (somewhat humorously) the excuses and obfuscations of the leftwing professor—most particularly, the professor of marxian deconstruction or late post-structuralism—to wax tabloidesque* (*at least in the manner of Jean-Francois Revel) the men (with the exception of Belsey and Kristeva they were all men) who wanted to go beyond the destruction of God (Sartre & the existentialists—out of the The New French Review) towards the destruction of man (at least in a generic sense)—in the manner of Barthes, Levi-Strauss & the denial of “free-will” in relation to the determinacy of structure. Only to later retract it all—post-existentialism is a humanism, after all, you see—when confronted with its apparent inhumanism. A situation (pregnant word) which left-wing structuralists had to overcome by saying: “We have freed man from the delusion of free-will; only to allow him to exercise free-will within the determination of carceral structures”. All of which has left certain professors—particularly those who labour in “reach-out”, open access, open roll or extra-mural courses—to worship at the shrine of working-class or post-bourgeois inarticulacy. For these people have suffered, all intellectual labour achieves its fructification on the back of oppression (you understand), and the true teacher—certainly an instructor in this mould—has to listen to the redundancies, the non sequiturs, the pitiless and humourless diatribes, the veritable rants of the illiterate, with rapt attention and bated breath. For here lies truth—at the bottom of the well of inarticulate speech!

Whereas a more normalized; non-leftist or socio-centrist picture is built up by writers and artists—such as Emlyn Williams, Alan Sillitoe and Heathcote Williams—who raid or plunder the hesitancies and inarticulacies of working-class speech when it means something—namely, when the simplicities of speech are the harbingers of extremism. Whether the extremism spoken of is criminal, mental, political or (on occasion) religious. As is the case with Higgins’ Cogan’s Trade (already mentioned) and Emyln Williams’ Beyond Belief: the story of Ian Brady & Myra Hindley—the Moors Murderers. When such works plunder the linguistic depths in the manner of Celine. They are masterpieces of oral literature, as Raymond Aron says of Papillon in Richard O’Brien’s introduction to the work, which take for their understanding of meaning the power of inarticulate speech. What is, in turn, bodied forth from the temple of the body, out of the main-line of the flesh. Yes. This is what matters. In that Cogan’s Trade, by the self-confessed Balzac of the Boston underworld, is a work of linguistic retardation—the artless transcription of meandering speech (a fact which is, make no mistake, very difficult to accomplish). It is the reflections of an absent pool; a surreal image—the possibility of disclosed features—staring up at you from the discoloured alcohol which has been spilt on a bar-top—brass-top; iron ferrule of the liquor—as you look out beyond the grime and gingham blinds, past the dead flies transfixed in dust on hollow panes—to the figures scurrying in the rain outside the bar; their footsteps a distant murmur in the streets. This is Buckowski’s in the noon-time (named after the famous American author / drunk)—the blackboards daubed with yellow, orange and blue chalks—the colour of death (purple) stands in a corner—it has rolled there by mistake—the black hangings in the air, lone drunks in the corner, scuffing the air with their fists: missed turn-coats: iced fondues of relief before their eyes: ice in the bucket; lemon in the glass: MTV on outside screens: the future denizens of Alcoholics Anonymous (the manager of the establishment is a previous one) fingering their chances—a glass stem twirling between their fingers. Here, those who plot and plan murder (and assorted crimes) pass their time—for Cogan’s Trade (the title of the piece) is murder or contract killing for the Mob. He is the man who settles the discipline and enforces the rules—the punishment for the infraction of the rules—in the underworld. The world which is, particularly, his kingdom. While in Beyond Belief the concern with a form of language which bodies forth the facts is different: it relates to the concept of a reckoning: the non-voluntaristic side of slaying: the total opposite of contract killing: almost its refutation: in that the acts entertained had nought to do with business, due form, law and order, the imposition of force amongst criminals, merely pleasure: hubris: Luciferian pride: the arrogance of Goetiac abandonment—a rendezvous in the temple of distracted pleasure—not the tabernacle of disinterested selflessness. This was a sexual compellant—the need to go beyond what presently existed & revenge oneself against the Fates. What essentially confounded most observers—including Emyln Williams—was the combination of the psychopathia of the crimes with the ordinariness of the lives within which these events found themselves situated. It was this which gave rise to most comment at the time. What seemed to strike most observers was the mismatch between Ham & Eggs; Sport on 5 (retroactively speaking) and mass murder—a mixture of toast; Auntie’s bunions and the whetted blade of a knife: jam on the plate, black puddings balanced (metaphorically) on the shoulder or in the hand; and the grey mist—admixed with a streak of green—which came down from Saddleworth Moor: the misty—purple spliced with pink—after-taste of the act: the fledgling count: the vampiric hatred of the moon: buried beneath the luxuriant turf: the loam of despondency. It was, as Superintendent Talbot of Greater Manchester CID made clear, an event that was out of time—but not out of mind: the culmination of undisclosed and half-glimpsed acts: a seizure of the absence of the peace: blood on the end of a bayonet which was itself hidden in winding sheets: rapped under the dexterity of re-arranged turf: the ecstasy of unrequited and sado-masochistic flesh—a picture of Hindley “asleep” or lying provocatively on the upturned soil of a new victim—a Boots’ own photograph: a simple montage of forgotten colour, occasionally in moody black-and-white, that had been taken by Brady. If we might return to return to Superintendent Talbot for a moment: I keep remindin’ myself [he said in a broad Manchester accent] that this isn’t a tale—that it’s been happening, as you might say, in our midst. Even as a hardened copper, you just rob your eyes. Indeed. It is the futurity, the undisclosed discolouration of the prints, the mismatch between the ordinariness of the lives and the allegedly extraordinary nature of the crimes—at least enacted as deeds of vengeance—which startles the on-looker. Here, one sees the strength of the body; the physiology of mindless exertion; mismatched with the Beano, trashy pornographic mags under cardboard cartons, bacon rind in its own grease, the tang of lemon, scrubbing brushes and scouring powder behind upturned toilet seats, bric-a-brac around the house, the laughter of children in the dark—Lord Lucan returning home with a bludgeon in Belgravia—the gambling debts in the Clermont Club having risen out of all proportion. For we seem to move across the turf, past grave-yards of the dead, under the stars, around the back of St. Lawrence’s in the centre of Reading, adjacent to the old market, habitude of the poor & pigs brought in from outlying districts, strictly for future abattoirial usage—passing beneath an old arch; architrave of the past, embedded in moss, as you moved across its ballustrade: the moon casting the ribbed formulae of a skeleton—its internal innards on display—as you dreamed of murder; more accurately, its artistic rendition. What did it mean—this dark moment in the soul?

[Only to then find that we return to Brian—grinning: cachinnating: a mock Joker—the man who in the comic-book (as well as the card deck) smiles without mirth: his irregular, yellowing and yet broken teeth, dully shining in the reflected light—halitosis bob: uncle without the snuff: the social inversion of Lucan (never mind G— L—-F—) without his handy bludgeon: the remainder of strength in the body without thought in the mind. A man who had not committed the act of violent self-assertion—save possibly emotionally (over the matter of Club intrigue)—which would have saved his life from its otherwise quotidian travail.]