University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Ballast Quarterly Review Summer 1986 Ballast Quarterly Review, v01n4, Summer 1986 Roy R. Behrens [email protected] Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy Copyright ©1986 Roy R. Behrens Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ballast Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Behrens, Roy R., "Ballast Quarterly Review, v01n4, Summer 1986" (1986). Ballast Quarterly Review. 4. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ballast/4 This Periodical is brought to you for free and open access by UNI ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Ballast Quarterly Review by an authorized administrator of UNI ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. • l I AMBROSIA e LOGENBERRY • ARTICHOKE e BUTTERMILK • LICORICE • TARTAR e SHALLOT boy named Eddie Shell came ometimes when I am sitting hat interests me is to set up one afternoon to play with at my drawing table thinking what you might call the Frank and me, and at the hour of ideas for a particular W rapports de grand ecart--the A for going home did not know s assignment, it occurs to me most unexpected relationship how to do so. This is a malady that that the total range of my meta­ possible between the things I want afflicts all children, but my mother phoric invention is circumscribed to speak about, because there is a was not sure how she should handle by a tiny list of events and images certain difficulty in establishing it in Eddie's case. She consulted that caught my attention between the the relationships in just that way, us secretly as to whether he should ages of five and twenty-five. It is and in that difficulty there is an be asked to stay for supper; we disappointing to believe that I be­ interest, and in that interest there thought not, so she hinted to him came a closed system in my middle is a certain tension and for me that that his mother might be expecting twenties; but I think that in terms tension is a lot more important than him. He was so slow in acting upon of archetypal incidents and objects, the stable equilibrium of harmony, the hint that we were all in despair nothing very strong has been added which doesn't interest me at all. and began to feel guilty because we to my subconscious vault since that Reality must be torn apart in every had not pressed him to stay. What I time. sense of the word. What people for­ remember now is Eddie standing at get is that everything is unique. last on the other side of the screen James McMullan, Revealing Illus­ Nature never produces the same thing door and trying to say good-by as if trations (New York: Watson-Guptill, twice. Hence my stress on seeking he meant it. My mother said warmly: 1981), p. 102. the rapports de grand ecart: a small "Well, Eddie, come and see us again." head on a large body; a large head Whereupon he opened the door and on a small body. I want to draw the walked in. • mind in a direction it's not used to fan artist (or scientist) and wake it up. I want to help the Mark Van Doren, The Autobiography uses his work to explore the viewer discover something he would­ of Hark Van Doren (New York: Green­ I limits of his own imaginative n't have discovered without me. wood Press, 1968), p. 24. powers, and then, by making them public property, abandons them, Pablo Picasso, quoted by Francoise he will experience not just post­ Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life With • parturitional gloom, but a state in Picasso (New York: McGraw-Hill, abitualization devours works, which his own boundaries, both in­ 1964), pp. 59-60. clothes, furniture, one's ternal and external, have been dan­ H wife, and the fear of war ... gerously weakened. He has subjected And art exists that one may himself to a species of leaching, • recover the sensation of life; it and, temporarily at least, will be uns, pungently pointed and exists to make one feel things, to vulnerable both to the alien from perpetrated promptly are pro­ make the stone stony. The purpose without and the alien from within. P ductive of a proruption of a of art is to impart the sensation of Each successive work thus becomes a pretty proportion of piquant things as they are perceived and not means of repairing the damage done pleasure; but puns protracted and in as they are known. The technique of by the artist to himself by the pub­ every person's premises, should be art is to make objects "unfamiliar," lication of the work previous to it. punishable by a propulsion of the to make forms difficult, to increase In this respect, the production of perpetrator from the punning prem­ the difficulty and length of percep­ symbolically significant objects, of ises. tion because the process of percep­ whatever sort, becomes the temporary tion is an aesthetic end in itself cure for the disease of which it is Boston Evening Transcript (6 August and must be prolonged. Art is a way itself the cause. We produce in 1832), quoted by C.G. Loomis in of experiencing the artfulness of an order to recover our equilibrilllll; "Traditional American Wordplay, object; the object is not important. but our equilibrium is in question Wellerisms, or Yankeeisms" in West­ because we produce. ern Folklore 8 (1949), p. 2. Victor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique" in Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, Liam Hudson, Bodies of Knowledge: • trans., Russian Formalist Criticism The Psychological Significance of Hark Van Doren: Nothing in nature Four Essays (Lincoln: University of the Nude in Art (London: Weidenfeld is more beautiful than the eye of a Nebraska Press, 1965), p. 12. and Nicolson, 1982), p. 46. horse. from soup to nuts BALLAST Vol I No 4 Summer 1986 eradicable tumbadde ne day there in Ohio, when I In gutter dispear I am taking my pen was a little fellow, they toilet you know that, being leyde up 0 took me to a neighbor's where in bad with the prevailent distemp­ an old, old man had died, and ter I opened the window and in flew I stood with my mother looking at Enza. Ballast. him. She went away for a moment and left me in the room with the body. James Joyce, in Samuel Beckett et I stood mute and all atremble in my al., _Our E~agmination~nd His heart when suddenly, without warn­ Factificatibn for Incamination of BALLAST is privately published. It ing, the old jaw on the dead face Works in Progress (New York: New is a journal devoted to wit, the unhinged, dropped, and the mouth Directions, 1972), p. 193. contents of which are intended to be opened. With an agonized scream I insightful, amusing, or thought pro­ fled from the room, and so as a voking. Its purposes are education­ little child I knew and understood al, apolitical, and entirely non­ as much as any man has ever known of • commercial. It does not carry paid life's two great mysteries--life and y favorite toys in those days advertisements, nor is it supposed death, joy and sorrow, the way we were a clockwork train and to be purchased or sold. It is come and the way we go. M lead soldiers. When the sol­ issued quarterly, beginning in diers had lost too many limbs Autumn and ending in SU111111er (begin­ William Allen White, The Autobio­ to stand up we melted them down in a ning in September and ending in graphy of William Allen White (New frying pan over the nursery fire and J'une). There is no charge for sub­ York: MacMillan Publishing Company, dropped them into cold water as scriptions as such, and (to the ex­ 1946). people do now in Sweden on New tent that finances allow) the jour­ Y~ar's night, seeking omens of the nal will gladly be mailed to people future . who send in their mailing address, • accompanied by two first class U.S. Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (New postage stamps in payment for each ustav Hertz .•. was quite bald; York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), p. of the issues they want . In other his head, shining like a so. words, to subscribe for one full polished billiard ball, was year (any series of four issues), G said to illuminate the dark- you need only send in a total of 8 ened lecture room and make project­ first class U.S. postage stamps. No ion difficult. He had a peculiarly other currency will be accepted. Do impish sort of humour. Sometimes he not send cash, checks, or money or­ came to drink tea with the chemists ders. Nor can the journal be order­ in the laboratory .•• On one occasion ed by phone. All subscription he waved the tea aside with the orders (as well as requests for gift remark "I am fed up with that stuff, subscriptions) must be mailed to: give me the alcohol" and got one of the students to hand him a bottle BALLAST Quarterly Review of absolute alcohol from the shelf. Attn: Obsequious Serf Lise Meitner was horrified "But Undoubtedly one of our favorite 2968 North Prospect Avenue Hertz, you can't drink that, it's books is Adaptive Colo:r!ati'on in Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53211 pure poison!" Hertz took no notice, Animals by Hugh B. Cott (London: poured himself a tumbler and drank Methuen, 1940).