A brief note on self-publishing

"I'm not a tourist!"

The self-publishing trend is usually linked to the internet. Along various causal chains, the internet is supposed to facilitate self-publishing, while simultaneously complicating the life of traditional publishing venues.

Yes, sure.

But when you walk through the ultimate tourist trap of Mougin, that historic town north of Cannes, you discover that the self-trend is more pervasive. At least, it includes visual art as well, at least in Mougin it does, even though the internet cannot be the culprit.

Rue du Docteur Buissard, Mougin

A few years ago, Mougin, like every tourist trap---and in particular the ones in Southern France---was packed with galleries of tourist-trap art: garish colors, palette-knife work (faster), sunsets, harlequins, clowns, harlequins, sailing boats, aggressively abstract (faster), Picasso imitations, and so on. That hasn't changed, the galleries are still there, but, in the meantime, in the space of a few years, whole colonies of live artists have entered the mix, exhibiting their own work in one-man/woman shops, outnumbering the galleries 10 to 1. Ten times as many garish colors, sunsets, clowns, aggressively-abstract, Picasso-style, the vieux village of Mougin has turned into an artist colony, literally.

Food for thought. Think this through: the internet cannot have anything to do with this...

Come to think of it

Chang drags us to Mougin, north of Cannes, where Picasso lived (and developed a major depression), and at the entrance to the main downtown (more correctly: uphill) section of the vieux village they've installed this statue:

"I am the Trojan Horse of contemporary art,"---it says.

Fragment, fragment...we were returning from Nice, from the quartier Ariane, where we did a little research for Michael's latest short story, fragment...(and true-true, except that Michael doesn't take the guy to Grasse)...fragment:


The story starts at Le Trayas Station. I live in Le Trayas, on the French Riviera, a settlement of 200 houses perched on the foothills of the Estérel range between Cannes and St. Raphael on the Mediterranean. Each morning I go for a walk, always the same, climbing down the hill, unlocking a pedestrian gate with code C 638 A, turning right on the Rue Charles Hechter (family of the French designer, rumor has it), walking past a gazeebo-style belvedère above the tracks littered with abandoned prophylactics, one more turn, and the view unfolds onto the western Cote d’Or, the train station smack in the middle and a white villa further down, pied-dans-l’eau, once belonging to Greta Garbo, rumor has it (everything is rumor here and they are always false). If God---who doesn’t exist---we have proof now---if God would exist---and if he were to create a Train Station with a View, it would be this one.

Although it has its own web site, the station doesn’t do much. Six local trains stop by per day, each delivering one passenger. The main structure is abandoned, including the ticket booth. An auxiliary building is also abandoned, and the outdoor restroom is occupied by an Arab, Muhammed.

Muhammed and I have a difficult relationship. We were on greeting terms initially, but I snubbed his various attempts to relate---I’m not peddling excuses but I could never get over the fact that somebody is living in a restroom---so he stopped addressing me and now averts his eyes. The situation is so awkward, I’m no longer making it all the way down to the station but turn around before I reach the level crossing at the tracks, where I would be in full view of this restroom and its occupant. 

Le Trayas Station

This particular morning, a train had just arrived, and the one passenger coming up the road was a young man, perhaps eighteen years old. He was apparently lost. Batting his eye lashes he asked whether he could ask a question, and then asked how he could get to Grasse---that’s an old town to the north of Cannes, seat of the vice-prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes and self-appointed World Capital of Fragrances. He would have to take an exam there, at 10 o’clock. Where he could find a bus station, perhaps. 

I shook my head. You have fifty minutes left, I said with a look at my watch. Getting to the bus station would take fifteen minutes, the bus is once per hour, you’d have to change buses, and so on. There’s no train for the next five hours. “How did you end up here?” I asked. He replied with a sheepish grin. 

I had a better look at him. He was pretty---regular features, good profile, full lips, deep, brown eyes, thick, tousled hair, and a sleepy seductiveness that was apparently irresistible.  

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll take you to Grasse.”

“Would you do that for me?” he replied. 

It's downhill from here, since this guy, it turns our, has a terrorist brother...

Michael and friends --- by Joe Phillips

Yes, this is little Michael, right in the middle (the serious looking guy), and it's not even photoshopped. Done by Joe Phillips for his 2016 calendar, which is on pre-order now, using an only mildly outdated picture of the bestselling author.

Never thought about it (Glenn)

Gallery (28) --- Ken Monkman

"Cree Master," Kent Monkman

(right, you need a close-up; here it is:)

(more art on the Gallery page)

Gallery (26) --- Lambro Vassiliadis

"Enigma," Lambro Vassiliadis

(More art on our Gallery page)

Gallery (25) (Artur Pashkov)

"A cup of green tea," Artur Pashkov

(More art on our Gallery page)

Find a caption

"That has to be the smallest I've seen in my life."

"Bacchus and Ariadne," (1621) Guido Reni (1575-1642)

Gallery (23) (Sadao Hasegawa)

Sadao Hasegawa (1996)

(We discovered Sadao Hasegawa today; it's an incredibly intense Japanese artist, who committed suicide in 1999)

(More art on the Gallery Page)

Gallery (22) (Hannes Steinert)

"Hier bin ich," Hannes Steinert

(More  art on our Gallery Page)

Find a caption

"They haven't built the Golden Gate Bridge yet."

Gallery (21) (Daniel Barkley)

"Blue Lazarus II," Daniel Barkley (2010) 

(More art on our Gallery Page)

Gallery (20) (David Hockney)

"Adhesiveness," David Hockney (1960)

(More art on our Gallery Page)

Gallery (19) (David Alan Crumpler)

"Baron," David Alan Crumpler

(More art on the Gallery Page)

Gallery (18) (Tom of Finland)

"I love boots," Tom of Finland (1920-1991)

(more art on the Gallery page)

Gallery (17) (Ron Kibble)

"Cropped," Ron Kibble

(There's no Kibble link---we got his permission to post this picture, since then he has disappeared from the web. More art on the gallery page)

Gallery (16) Mel Odom

"First Eyes," Mel Odom (1982)

(More art on the gallery page)

Gallery (15) Steve Walker

"David and me," Steve Walker (1961-2012)

This is a follow up to our last "This Is Heaven" teaser, A virginal handkerchief, where we failed to place this picture in the vicinity of a few lines about David Leavitt and this very young boyfriend entering the hall of the Accademia Galleria in Florence.


(Okay, here they are again (the few lines, John speaking)): "There’s a passage in David Leavitt’s “The lost language of Cranes” that comes back to me once a year or so, one of the characters relating a story of him and a very young boyfriend visiting Florence, and as they enter the hall of Michelangelo’s David, the eyes of the crowd are drawn away from the statue and to the magnetic beauty of this very young boyfriend. It doesn't read as if Leavitt made this up, this somehow really happened to him. Anyhow, the boyfriend must have looked like Romeo---by analogy, I mean.")

(More art on the gallery page)

How to write a book

(Hat tip: Hall Qualls)

Gallery (14) (Alessio Slonimsky)

"C'est encore loin, grand Schlumpf," Alessio Slonimsky

(More of this on the gallery page)