"Evguenie Sokolov" by Serge Gainsbourg, his only work of fiction (TamTam Books)

Evguenie Sokolov

By Serge Gainsbourg. Translated by John Weightman, Doreen Weightman.

Serge Gainsbourg's sole foray into fiction, Evguenie Sokolov describes an artist who uses his intestinal gases as the medium for his scandalous artwork. What once was a smelly and noisy problem in his social and sex life becomes a recipe for success in the early 1980s art world.

FROM THE BOOK

"So, as I said to myself during the dark hours of the night while trying in vain to get to sleep, the pestilential exhalations prophetic of my corporeal death were to serve the purpose of channeling and transcending that which was more pure, most enduring and most despairingly ironical in the inner depths of my creative mind, and after all the years devoted to the technique of painting and all the day spent releasing my gases in front of museum walls radiant with the genius of the great masters, these jagged, fragile and torturous lines had now rid me forever of my inhibitions."

Excerpted from Evguenie Sokolov.

You can buy a copy here: 

Evguenie Sokolov by Serge Gainsbourg 

"Evguenie Sokolov" by Serge Gainsbourg (TamTam Books)

Evguenie Sokolov

By Serge Gainsbourg. Translated by John Weightman, Doreen Weightman.

Serge Gainsbourg's sole foray into fiction, Evguenie Sokolov describes an artist who uses his intestinal gases as the medium for his scandalous artwork. What once was a smelly and noisy problem in his social and sex life becomes a recipe for success in the early 1980s art world.

PUBLISHER
TAMTAM BOOKS

BOOK FORMAT
PAPERBACK, 7 X 5 IN. / 137 PGS.

PUBLISHING STATUS
PUB DATE 2/29/2012
ACTIVE

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. EXCLUSIVE
CATALOG: SPRING 2012 P. 46    

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780966234619 TRADE
LIST PRICE: $17.00 CDN $20.00

December 28, 2014

December 28, 2014

Everything I do have a beginning, a middle, and then an end.  Life doesn’t often naturally follow that pattern in life, but alas, the role of a publisher can frame the world in a certain light, and therefore that’s TamTam Books.  I don’t want to last forever, but the moments I’m here, I want to be the best that I can be.  Everything else is nothing more than a distraction to me.  Some think it is a matter of luck, but I feel that luck have nothing to do with it.  I think luck is an invention of those in power, who insist that everyone gets a fair chance in grabbing the big award that is only inches from their grasp.   “Like a modern ‘wheel of fortune’ the message is ‘all is luck; some are rich, some are poor, that is the way the world is … it could be you! ”

When we’re down, it is good to believe in shit, because that is the one thing we have in common.   The president of the United States shit, I shit, you shit, even birds in the sky shit.  At least three times in my life I had birds shit on me from a distance.  Is it luck that I’m shitted on?  “There is nothing more natural than to consider everything as starting from oneself, chosen as the center of the world; one finds oneself thus capable of condemning the world without even wanting to hear its deceitful chatter.” Therefore to make the chatter louder, I began to publish.

The author Robert Greene brought me the idea of publishing Guy Debord’s “Considerations on the Assassination of Gérard Lebovici.” The book is fascinating because it is both a critique of the spectacle as well as Debord’s defense to his intimate friend Lebovici, who was also his publisher and financial backer for his films.   As I read this book, it seemed that one of the key titles for Lebovici’s press, was Jacques Mesrine’s “The Death Instinct.” Like the Boris Vian titles, I needed to publish all the main works from these authors.  To do just one book would be pointless.  I thought of my press as a structure or a building.

The foundation or basement will be Boris Vian’s “I Spit on Your Graves” and “Foam of the Daze.” The first floor had to be Debord’s “Considerations…. And Mesrine’s “The Death Instinct.” One without the other would have been incomplete.   In this house of TamTam Books, then there was a need for Vian to have separate rooms for “Autumn in Peking,”  “Red Grass,” and then a special wing of the building to go to Vian’s alter-identity Vernon Sullivan’s “To Hell With The Ugly,” and “The Dead All Have The Same Skin.”   To give focus on the world of Vian, I had to co-edit a book “Boris Vian’s Manual of Saint Germain des Prés”  And if you are going to mention Vian, then you have to add Serge Gainsbourg to the mix, which means publishing his short novel “Evguenie Sokolov,” as well as the magnificent biography on Gainsbourg by Gilles Verlant.   The attic is Debord’s book as well as Mesrine’s - and there we have the perfect structure that is TamTam Books.  For spice and color, I added the selected lyrics by Sparks, as well as an art book by Lun*na Menoh.

Now that I have my house, I realized that it is built on flammable paper, and can easily be burned down.   So what I left here is a series of thoughts, images, narrations, and a pathway for a future traveler, who may want to connect the dots or string that are attached to Debord to Vian to Gainsbourg to Mesrine.   I went full-circle, and therefore, is there a need for me to publish again?  “In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles.  Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”

As I merge my publishing into my writing, I’m slowly erasing the line between publishing and writing. The one thing that will be consistent in my make-up, is to read.  Often I felt like a magician in front of an audience and I’m just showing parlour tricks-of-the-trade.  I give you illusions, because you have a need for them.   Supply and demand, and I be damned if I fail in supplying you the illusion you need.  “The passions have been sufficiently interpreted; the point now is to discover new ones.” As a fellow traveler, I will sniff out what culture has to offer, and try to re-package it into another item or at the very least, a shiny new toy.  In other words, “nobody kills me until I say so. ”

April 2, 2014 (Serge Gainsbourg)

April 2, 2014

A tainted beauty entered my life about 20 years ago, when I discovered the works of Serge Gainsbourg.  It seems that I waited for almost all of my life to listen to such genius, that I had to do more than just listen.  I also had to read Serge Gainsbourg, and therefore I published his short novel “Evguenie Sokolov.” Then some years later I published the great Gilles Verlant biography “Gainsbourg, ” which gives a complete picture of the man and his world.

As most can gather by now, my life is not like a straight ahead narration, where A go to B, and then C comes along.  No, the journey is just as important as the results of that trip.  I knew Gainsbourg’s music here and there, but didn’t fully grasp his genius till much later.  It was when I discovered the works of Boris Vian, that I became a Gainsbourg fanatic.  As my press is very much devoted to the works of Vian, I researched as much as possible about his life and times - and the name Gainsbourg comes up a lot, due to the fact that Vian was one of the first professional people to give Serge notice for his music.  Gainsbourg was a fan of Vian’s music, but not so much for his books, but nevertheless, he never forgot the good word Boris gave him, because it was Vian’s foot that kept that door open for him to succeed in the French music world.

My press TamTam Books is very tightly winded up with the Vian motif, in that everything comes from that source.  But using Vian as a foundation, leads to a lot of stuff, due to the fact he worked on so many levels in French pop culture.  Musician, composer, writer, playwright, A&R for a record label, engineer, translator, and socialite for the Saint Germain des-pres society.   Right there is a great canvass, and Gainsbourg is one of the participants in that giant work of art.

The beauty of Gainsbourg’s work is that it consists of all the greats of the French aesthetic past - especially the literature of the 19th century, for instance Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, and matches it with the   talents of Charles Trenet and bingo, that hybrid becomes Gainsbourg.  Like his much younger fellow artist, David Bowie, Gainsbourg was hungry to find new influences, new sounds, and he was also a great explorer, but he used his knowledge of the past, and went forward with respect to his music making.   His private life was full of scandals, and his taste in women was the connoisseur preference.  Like a lot of narratives it wasn’t always a good story, but when you look at the immense picture of him, and what he did in his lifetime, with respect to the world it was and is, he was simply an amazing artist.   Happy birthday Serge Gainsbourg, and long may we enjoy your work, as well as the down and the numerous up’s in your (one’s) life.

33 1/3 "Histoire de Melody Nelson" by Darran Anderson

Darran Anderson's little study on one of the great albums that came out of Europe, "Histoire de Melody Nelson" is a superb study on Serge Gainsbourg and his masterpiece.   First of all I am touched that both titles ("Gainsbourg" by Gilles Verlant & Serge Gainsbourg's short novel "Evguenie Sokolov) that i published are in the bibliography.  So with the music and the books he's coming from a good place!

Anderson's book is very brief, but there's no wasted words.  He has a deep understanding of Gainsbourg's work, and not only does he talk about the Melody Nelson album, but it is also a brief biography on the great artist.   As in the Verlant biography, it is moving as well as terrifying to read about Gainsbourg's childhood running away from the Nazis.  Over time I have read tales dealing with the Occupation, but the Gainsbourg narration is one that really makes me emotionally aware how horrible those times were.  Almost unthinkable, yet it is these surroundings that probably inspired the greatness in Gainsbourg's songs and his very own iconic stance against authority.  

The book also captures the flavor of Gainsbourg's love for literature and how that inspired him as well.  Baudelaire, Jarry, Rimbaud, and the lasting influence of Boris Vian played a big role in how Gainsbourg looked at life and art.   Anderson is a wonderful writer, and his smart, intelligent take on Gainsbourg is right on the button.    Essential read for anyone who even has the slightest interest in the world of Serge, but also insightful in how bad things (occupation) can charge a shy figure into a warrior of sorts.   This book along with Gilles Verlant (The granddad of Serge bios), Sylvie Simmons' English bio and Gainsbourg's "Evguenie Sokolov"  we now have a great representation of the world of Gainsbourg in print.