February | 2014 | Guy Portman's Blog

The Brompton Cemetery

Feb 28 2014

My second book, Necropolis ~~(Release Date: April 24th)~~, is a humorous plot driven work of dark fiction about a psychopath, who works for the Burials and Cemeteries department in his local council. Due to the cemetery theme I am dedicating this blog post to the cemetery closest to my own heart, the Brompton Cemetery. I was born in a hospital adjoining the cemetery, spent countless hours of my childhood there – walking, skateboarding, feeding its many squirrels and inspecting its grave sites. To this day I continue to live in the vicinity and regularly visit this remarkable sanctuary. Perhaps one day I will find a permanent residence here. Below is the Old Brompton Road entrance to the Brompton Cemetery.

Consecrated in June 1840, the cemetery covers 16.5 hectares (39 acres). This necropolis is one of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ set of cemeteries that were built during this era, others include Kensal Green and Highgate Cemetery. The Brompton Cemetery (originally called The West of London and Westminster Cemetery) came into existence due to concerns that churchyards in central London were getting too full and that they posed a health hazard (London’s population doubled to 2.3m in the first half of the 19th Century). Since 1840 over 205,000 people have been interred in the Brompton Cemetery.

Taking an opportunity to visit during a lull in the relentless rain this week, I came across this fox (see above). The lustre coat of this specimen bears testimony to the fact that it is not only the dead that thrive here.

I am not the only writer to have sought inspiration in the Brompton Cemetery. Beatrix Potter lived close to the burial ground and would often take walks here. She named many of the characters in Peter Rabbit after those buried in the cemetery, including Nutkins, McGregor, Jeremiah Fisher and Peter Rabbett.

Amongst the many famous people interred here is Dr John Snow (see picture above). Snow was a pioneering anaesthetist and the discoverer of the cause of cholera. In 1887 two Oglala Sioux Native Americans, Surrounded By the Enemy and Red Penny, died whilst on tour with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. They were both buried in the cemetery. To date I have been unable to locate the site of their graves.

The Brompton Cemetery abounds with magnificent architecture including a number of family crypts or mausoleums (see below).

The main character in my ~~forthcoming~~ book Necropolis wishes to be interred in a mausoleum and I think I would too. Seclusion is a wonderful thing in life and one can only assume it is also in death. The Brompton Cemetery’s gravestones, tombs, plinths and mausoleums embrace a blend of grandeur, sombreness and good taste (see below). This is not always the case in modern burial facilities, much to the chagrin of the main character Dyson in Necropolis.

Many soldiers are buried in the cemetery. Below is the memorial to the Brigade of Guards.

The catacombs were originally added to the Brompton Cemetery as a cheaper alternative to burial. However of the thousands of spaces available, only about 500 were ever filled. Below is one of the catacombs as observed from ground level.

The catacombs really don’t seem that enticing as a final resting place (see below)

(Courtesy of www.thebohemianblog.com)

Below is the cemetery’s chapel as viewed from the colonnade.

Surely there can be no better place to be laid to rest in this great city than the Brompton Cemetery.

Transgressive Fiction II

Feb 21 2014

My second book, Necropolis, is a humorous work of dark fiction about a psychopath, who works for the Burials and Cemeteries department in his local council. Necropolis could be described as Transgressive fiction, and it is for this reason that I have dedicated two blog posts to the subject.

Transgressive literature is a genre that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways.

Protagonists in Transgressive literature are in one form or other rebelling against society. Due to this they may appear to be anti-social, nihilistic or even sociopathic. Transgressive literature deals with potentially controversial subjects such as sex, drugs, crime, violence and paraphilia.

Last week we looked at a number of early and mid 20th Century authors, who wrote books that could be labelled as Transgressive. The authors were James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Vladimir Nabokov and William S. Burroughs. This week we continue in the same vein with:

Charles Bukowski

August 16th 1920 – March 9th 1994

Notable Transgressive Works: Post Office, Factotum, Women, Ham on Rye

Charles Bukowski’s writing could best be described as Dirty realism and/or Transgressive literature. Heavily influenced by his home city of Los Angeles, Bukowski wrote about disillusionment, alcohol consumption, women, a loathing of authority and the dehumanising nature of low-level work, all presented in his unique visceral writing style. His seminal work, Post Office, is a semi-autobiographical account of his years of drudgery at the post office prior to writing the book by the same name. Bukowski is a cult figure, whose writing remains popular to this day, despite the fact that he has been accused by some of being misogynistic.

Click here to read my blog post about Charles Bukowski

Click on the links to read my reviews of Post Office, Factotum & Pulp

Hunter S. Thompson

July 18th 1937 – February 20th 2005

Notable Transgressive Works: Hells Angels, Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diary

Hunter S. Thompson was a controversial author and journalist with a penchant for alcohol, drugs and guns. The Gonzo Journalist’s most famous work, the cult classic, Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, is about a journalist and his attorney consuming a vast array of pharmaceuticals in Las Vegas. First published in nineteen seventy-one against the backdrop of Vietnam, and President Nixon’s declaration of war on drugs, the book can be viewed as a savage indictment of a corrupt, violent, ignorant, polarised and disillusioned nation, hell-bent on a path to self-destruction.

Click here to read my blog post about Hunter S. Thompson

Click here to read my review of Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas

Irvine Welsh

Born: 27 September 1958

Notable Transgressive Works: Trainspotting, The Acid House, Skagboys, Filth, Porno

As the titles of many of the iconic Scottish writer’s books suggest, Irvine Welsh’s controversial themes include, drug abuse, soccer hooliganism, sexual perversion, inner city poverty and brutality. His first book, Trainspotting, about Scottish housing scheme dwelling heroin addicts, disgusted some in the literary world, was later adapted for the cinema and is now regarded as a cult classic. Perhaps Welsh’s most controversial book, Filth, has a tapeworm afflicted, misanthropic, corrupt policeman as its protagonist, whose pastimes include sexual abuse and gorging on junk good, alcohol and cocaine.

Bret Easton Ellis

Born: March 7th 1964

Notable Transgressive Works: Less Than Zero, American Psycho, Glamorama, The Informers

Disillusioned, nihilistic and even sociopathic characters are the staple of cult author Bret Easton Ellis’s books. His most famous work, the infamous American Psycho, caused outrage even before it was published, as many in the literary establishment were disgusted with the sexual violence and what some viewed as the misogynistic nature of its contents. American Psycho went on to become one of the most influential books of the nineties and secured the author his legacy as an important literary figure.

Click here to read my reviews of Less Than Zero, American Psycho, Glamorama & Lunar Park

Chuck Palahniuk

Born: February 21st 1962

Notable Transgressive Works: Fight Club, Haunted, Choke, Snuff

Palahniuk has constantly courted controversy with the content of his books. Fight Club, which remains to this day his most celebrated effort, was viewed as extremely controversial when the film version was released in 1999, only six months after the Columbine school shootings.

Palahniuk’s dark and disturbing fiction has continued to scandalise ever since. His book Haunted is often voted in polls as one of the most disturbing books ever written. In Turkey, the translator of Palahniuk’s book, Snuff, was detained and interrogated by the police over what the authorities regarded as the book’s offensive content.

Click on the links to read my reviews of Choke, Damned, Fight Club & Haunted

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Transgressive Fiction

Feb 14 2014

Transgressive literature is a genre that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways.

Though fiction of this kind has only relatively recently been labelled as Transgressive, its origins lie in the literature of the past. The writing of the Marquis de Sade, Émile Zola and even Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s seminal work, Crime and Punishment, have been described as Transgressive, due to what at the time was perceived as their controversial subject matter.

The following 20th Century authors all wrote books that could be labelled as Transgressive. They are presented in chronological order:

James Joyce

February 2nd 1882 – January 13th 1941

Notable Transgressive Work: Ulysses

James Joyce was a central figure in the modernist avant-garde. His seminal work, Ulysses, embraced a revolutionary stream of consciousness style that influenced many later writers. At the time of its publication, the masturbation scene in the book’s Nausicäa episode was viewed as so scandalous that it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the United States. Ulysses came out victorious and the case is today remembered as a landmark in literary free speech.

Click here to read my blog post about James Joyce

D.H. Lawrence

September 11th 1885 – March 2nd 1930

Notable Transgressive Works: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Rainbow

D.H. Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow faced an obscenity trial and was banned, all copies being seized and burnt by the authorities. Perhaps his most famous novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, though published was heavily censored, due to what was regarded at the time as its pornographic content. Thirty years after Lawrence’s death in 1960 Penguin attempted to publish the original version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but were forced to go to trial because of the ‘Obscene Publications Act’ of the previous year.

Click here to read my blog post about D.H. Lawrence

Vladimir Nabokov

April 22nd 1899 – July 2nd 1977

Notable Transgressive Work: Lolita

Lolita, Nabokov’s most famous work, is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century. The book is also amongst the most controversial books of all time due to its sensitive subject matter. To this day Lolita continues to court controversy. In 2013 the producer of a long-running one-man show in Saint Petersburg, in which Leonid Mozgovoy reads out passages from Lolita on-stage, was assaulted after being accused of being a paedophile.

Click here to read my review of Lolita

William S. Burroughs

February 5th 1914 – August 2nd 1997

Notable Transgressive Works: Junkie, Queer, The Soft Machine, Naked Lunch

The writers of The Beat Generation wrote about disillusionment and rebellion. One of its most famous exponents, William S. Burroughs, was a controversial character with a penchant for rent boys and heroin, who rebelled against the social norms of his era by writing about disillusionment, drugs and homosexuality. Arguably his most famous book, the non-linear Naked Lunch was viewed as so scandalous at the time of its publication that it underwent a court case under U.S. obscenity laws. In 2012 a Turkish publisher faced obscenity charges after releasing a Turkish translation of The Soft Machine.

Click here to read my review of Queer

Click here to read Transgressive Fiction Part 2

Bizarre Author Deaths VII

Feb 07 2014

This is likely to be the final instalment of my Bizarre Author Deaths series. I have more or less exhausted this fascinating if morbid subject matter, and there will be no further additions until there is a fresh batch of deaths.

Sherwood Anderson

(September 13th 1876 – March 8th 1941)

Notable works: Winesburg, Ohio & Dark Laughter

The Ohio born Sherwood Anderson is today remembered more for his influence on the following generation of writers than for his own writing efforts. Ignoring the literary devices of his era, Anderson wrote portraits of American life in a precise, simple and unsentimental writing style that others would become more famous for than he.

Though many of his works were published posthumously, Anderson did find fame during his lifetime with his interrelated short story sequence, Winesburg, Ohio, published in 1919, and his bestselling novel, Dark Laughter.

The writer is also remembered for the bizarre nature of his death. In 1941 at the age of sixty-four, Anderson fell ill with abdominal pains on a cruise to South America. He was rushed to hospital in Colón, Panama, where he was diagnosed with peritonitis and died. The autopsy revealed that he had swallowed a toothpick, which had damaged his internal organs, causing the infection. It is widely assumed that this occurred when the author was eating the olive from a martini.

Pietro Aretino

(April 20th 1492 – October 21st 1556)

Notable works: La contigiana & La talenta

This Italian author, playwright, poet and satirist was a major influence on both contemporary art and politics, in addition to being regarded as the inventor of modern literate pornography. An unrepentant satirist, Aretino is perhaps best remembered for his humorous and scathing letters, in which he attacked both the authorities and a host of aristocrats. This practice earned the writer fame, numerous enemies and the nickname, flagello dei principi or scourge of princes.

Ironically the humourist purportedly met his demise due to laughing himself to death. There has been much speculation over how this occurred. One version is that he was at a party, when a guest told Aretino a humorous joke, involving the writer’s own sisters (possibly imaginary ones) and the brothel that they were employed at. Rather than taking offense, Aretino found the story so amusing that he was unable to stop laughing, and falling back in his chair, died of suffocation.

Click here to read Part VI