I wrote the passage (further below on this page) as part of my real-time review of Rhys Hughes’ seminal book TALLEST STORIES today here.
It made me think of my own avant-gardism generated through Genre fiction. This will not do me any favours.
Being instrumental in helping form The Zeroist Group at Lancaster University in 1967.
‘The Visitor’ in 1973.
Having arguably 1500 published stories from 1986 to 1999, and the obsessive nature of accomplishing even the believable potential of being able to claim that achievement – let alone actually achieving it.
The Aesthetic aims and nature of ‘Nemonymous’ in 2001.
The world’s first blank story published in Nemonymous #2 in 2002.
The ‘Synchronised Shards of Random Truth & Fiction’ in WEIRDMONGER (Prime Books 2003)
The massive ‘Weirdmonger Wheel’ (2004) as the textual base for much of my work.
The blank cover of Nemonymous #4 in 2004. The non-existent issue of Nemonymous #6 in 2006.
Zencore, Cone Zero, CERN Zoo.
My gestalt Real-time Reviews of books (2008 onward).
The HA of HA.
My years of multifarious neoloquisms here.
The challenging nature of my first published novel when I was 63 in 2011: ‘Nemonymous Night’ (Chômu Press)
My distribution of past editions of ‘Nemonymous’ as Found Art (2013).
The non-Avant Garde nature of ‘The Last Balcony’ collection as a final culmination – an admission that I am not an Avant Gardist at all.
The Last Anchovy: here.
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The Story With A Clever Title
“It’s this story, the very piece we are standing in.”
[…] I sense that Rhys Hughes is for the Absurd but against the Avant-Garde (e.g. against things I enjoy like someone playing monotonously wrong notes on an untuned piano for some hours as I did once with Cornelius Cardew in the late 1960s) whilst I believe that Hughes is actually bouncing off the anti-Avant-Garde part of his nature by the perverse means of creatively and entertainingly utilising that very Avant-Garde, including Devolved Fiction (devolved to the reader finally in Part One’s Epilogue, leaving the reader fully responsible). Hence the story within the story (‘A Tale of Terror’) about Laura and the monster is symbolic for me of these possibly sub-conscious considerations on Rhys Hughes’ part. But meanwhile, someone from within this ‘Clever Title’ story itself ends up by walking the walk, talling the tall, telling the tale – […]
Above image is my photo of the cover of ‘At Dusk’ by Mark Valentine (Ex Occidente Press 2012)
Last Balcony: Essex Serpents and Pier’s Echo 
“The non-Avant Garde nature of ‘The Last Balcony’ collection as a final culmination – an admission that I am not an Avant Gardist at all.”
Well, we knew that, didn’t we? They’re much too reactionary; you’d never fit in!
Thanks, Rog. 🙂
Public statement on TLO in response to above blog post:
“Whether out of modesty , discretion, or inadvertent (or intentional?) deflation-by-omission, you didn’t mention the speculation by yellowish haze that you may have published a famous non-genre avant-garde author in Nemonymous #2. http://www.ligotti.net/showpost.php?p=53756&postcount=8 ”
Indeed there are many other items of evidence to ‘incriminate’ me with avant-gardism that I have omitted above, such as my artisization of the ‘Big Brother’ TV show over many years! 😐
”Any attempt to exclude the ‘irrational’ is irrational.” John Cage.
https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/scrying-the-found-rocks-and-weird-palavers-of-the-avant-garde-temperament/
My latest self-indulgent self-appraisal or soliloquy: https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/the-relaxed-snowman/
Previous solioquys or soliloquys linking to other soliloquys:
https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/a-soliloquy/
https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/the-desultories-of-december/
https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/british-fantasy-awards-4/
https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/8249-2/
My ‘Rameau’s Nephew’ syndrome: https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/rameaus-nephew-denis-diderot/
“Des Lewis obviously needs no presentation to the wayward fantasts. Even if I have enjoyed reading his fine volumes for Dan Watt’s press and the one for Chomu Press – two volumes I recommend – I feel like there is still space and reasons to “discover” D.F. Lewis. It is no easy feat to “break” Mr. Lewis’s Code. His work is constructed like a house, almost like a living mausoleum, according to his particular way of thinking. In other words: astonishing and uncomprehending. There is no key to this house, although there are a lot of doors. Everything is available, everything is waiting to be plucked but few dare knock at the door. Caution is good. Running away is even better. You don’t read Des Lewis to understand and “enjoy” his works. That’s not the point. You read him because you have to believe in something, after all. The reason for which Ex Occidente Press is doing a D.F. Lewis collection are many, but most of all is my wish to present him as one of main European practitioners of fantastic art. That being said, A Dead Monument to Once Ancient Hope is as much a “D.F. Lewis” collection as it is an Ex Occidente Press homage to an European icon.”
— Dan Ghetu (Ex Occidente Press) from HERE on 1 Sep 2013
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https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/todays-skyline-the-avant-garde-and-me/