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logomanic — logomania, diarrhea of the mouth

witch’s milk — secreted from the breasts of newborn babies, both male and female

V

— Who the fucks Sara Lidman? Or Torgny Lindgren! I’ve never heard of anything so moronic! Do they even exist?!

Grandpa was fighting with the bookbusguy, a little graybrown Zionist with glasses, egg in his beard, and a slut with a ponytail and a nervouscough. Grandpa had asked for a book by a bonafide Norrländer. Now he was going on and on about how downright vile, even sinful it was to waterdown fine words.

— What kind of titles are these, anyway? Blatherers and busybodies! Users and abusers! Fuck your motherfucking mother!

Their voices carried very well.

— Naboths Stone, Merabs Beauty … Husak’s Harmonica! Horthys Exhaustion! Conans Tears! The Elders’ Protocols!

Sullenly, he lit a Philip Morris and waited on the officiousinstigator. He was gulping down Jim Bean when the latter came bustling up with a new book.

— What about that guy Torbjörg Säve? You read anything by him? He lives out in Lule?

— He a homo?

— Nah, I don’t think so …

— Not him, he likes women! the cheekygirlie quipped. And he wears black boxers, she sighed longingly.

— Oh, for fuck’s sake. Is that all you’ve got! I’ll never be that hardupandhorny for something to read! Never! Throw it on the dungheap! Flush it down the toilet! Obscure wannabes, breadandbutter authors, coffeeshop poets! Marxistoid-apopleptic songs of enforced celibacy! Mediocrity’s apotheoses! Rookycliques! Habilehacks! Clever pauses, tedious passages! Not worth lickaspit!

Sharp gusts of wind echoed Grandpa’s ire. Fall was in overtime, though there was snow at the door. It was a transitiontime, neither fall nor winter, and that’s how it can be around here for months. When Grandpa’s mad, he gets stubborn. Now he was refusing to set foot in the yellowbrown bus, but just stood outside, threatening everyone inside with a flogging.

— Do you have anything by Nikanor Teratologen?

— Who?

— Teratologen of the Ten Thousand Tortures? The Misunderstood Genius! The Desktop Murderer! Locked away for life for one repeated offense: the serialrape of language! His words go down a rawcraw like butter! The Slayer of Euphemisms! Scurrilous Church Father! The Confabculprit! The Blasphemer! The Enemy of Mankind!

— So what does he write?

— The worst smut a dirty penny will buy! Bizarre baroque comedies! Downandout orgies! Repulsive yarns! Reptilian jokes! He’s morbid! obscene! makes you want to hurl! gets you going! I don’t remember any titles! By the devils pimpledass, though, he belongs to world literature!

— Never heard of him … Sorry …

— That’s not the kind of thing we buy here. Were only interested in serious authors. Cleanly written, clearly stated, with an ear for language’s subtleties …

— Adorno and Horkheimer! Pöhl and Greenspan! Torquemada and Savonarola! what a blessing it is to be stark raving mad! When I want to read something that gets downanddirty with mankind, it won’t be those fucks! That’s all I’m saying.

They went back and forth like that for a long time.

Finally, Grandpa borrowed two volumes of FUB-Contact and a colorfully illustrated book about “the life of the field digger wasp” by Gottfrid Adlerz.

__________

Sara Lidman, Torgny Lindgren — Swedish writers from Västerbotten whose work was heavily influenced by local dialect

Naboth’s Stone—by Sara Lidman

Merab’s Beauty—by Torgny Lindgren

FUB-Contact—journal for children with developmental disorders

VI

Grandpa stood at the pulpit and read Max Ferdinand Sebaldt von Werth’s racemystical Sexualreligion for about ten seconds; then he took up Frodi Ingolfson Wehrmann’s The Germanic Tragedy: Divinely Created Women and the Fall … that lasted for about half a minute; then he tried to read René Fülöp Millers The Holy Devil and Otto Rahns Lucifer’s Court at the same time.

In the last five hours he’d gone through about 300 books, reading a couple of sentences, sometimes a full page. Now he was exhausted … He came over to where I sat with my Armeniangenocide coloring-book, lifted me off the floor, and shook me like a sackofpotatoes.

— Lanz and Wiligut! By the Devil, they could dance! They’re the ones who stood their ground! Why don’t you write that down in your dirty little diary, you Satan’s pegatu!

— What do you mean, Grandpa?

— Fuck me with a spoon, you little asswipe! Halfwitting nincompoop! Not another word out of you, you yapping old granny!

He tossed me like a stevedore into the thrashingposition, and I lay where I fell. If you don’t, you’ve sown your last seed … danced your last dance … He calmed down, though, enough that disappointment colored his words. He wasn’t dangerous anymore, now he was just depressed and scared.

— I’ve suspected for a while now that you’ve been writing on the sly, sugarboy, he announced, and I was just about to say we can’t have that … but you’re one crafty little bugger, and next time I’m sleeping you’ll just hide your trash somewhere else … I bet you’ve been spouting a lot of highstrung nonsense, something like Ludwig Derleths Proclamations … and I’ll tell you something, the thought shames me like a suckwench being questioned by a parishpriest … You’re too weak to indulge in swearing and bloodshed, blasphemy and some goodoldfashioned Kiruna violence … I bet you’ve got a nice little chapbook going there, you aren’t capable of much more … You’ll be the next Brecht … an asswipe who singlehandedly declares creation null and void … And publishers, you know, shriek like babies roasting on an openfire for more gangsters and psychos and allthatjazz … all you’ve got to do is pickyourpoison … But I’ve hit on the right medicine for an estruspumped little junker like yourself … Before I sleep, I’ll see you nailed to the World Tree, so help me I will … that’ll put an end to your writing … once and for all … It’s for your own good! … what do you think Husserl’s and Derrida’s Grandpas thought of their little grandsons?! They should’ve blown their kneecaps off from shame! but instead, what did they do when their weetykes first started jacking around with words? They spared the rod, that’s what! … Me — I couldn’t have lived with the shame! A child’s faith and the Pearly Gates have always been good enough for me! and they’ll do for you, too, oh yes they will! now’s the time to get hard! and cocky! but there’s gotta be some fuckin’ moderation! once you start writing, you’re hooked! once you start thinking, you’re through! Just promise me one thing, boy: don’t come home one day all oozing with feeling! because once that happens, life’s over! Leave the writing to the sexmaniacs! the berserkers! the teeming, writhing masses! The hordes and legions! trying to crush each other with their own filth! the raunchier the cunt, the better the story! that’s how they think! and if I have to poke your eyes out with my own thumbitythumbthumbs, I’ll see to it you never become one of them!

__________

Sexualreligion—describes the sexual religion of the Aryans; von Werth argues this was a form of eugenics meant to maintain Aryan racial purity

Wiligut—“Himmler’s Rasputin,” in September of 1933 was appointed under the pseudonym of Karl Maria Weisthor to head up the Department for Pre- and Early History, located within the Race and Settlement Division’s Main Office. Wiligut claimed to be the last descendent of the prehistoric Uiligotis of the Asa-Uana-Sippe’s seers and priests. Around 78,000 B. J. (before Judas), his forefathers ushered in true history by founding the second Boso culture and erecting the city of Arual-Jöruvalis. And so forth … Himmler was quite interested in the aged “clairvoyant,” who left the SS in 1939 at seventy-three years of age. Among other things, Wiligut helped design the Death’s Head Ring of the SS Pegatu — a beast-man in Lanz von Liebenfel’s conceptual universe (and Strindbergs?)