Dear Esther,
There’s another European group I like besides the surrealists: the European Finnegans Wake Study Group from the early 70s. I learned about it in an article by an Italian participant, Rosa Maria Bosinelli. If you insist on forming an organization of some kind while we await the reemergence of the underground surrealists, I think the Wake group is the best model. (Anything is better than being another Henri Simon or Gilles Dauvé!)
I’ve never read Finnegans Wake and probably will never take that English Leap (thank you, Enrique Vila-Matas), but I’m very taken with the projects, groups, and friendships that surround the text. Few books have created such possibility of international collaboration and friendship. Much more successful than Pound’s Cantos.
As for me, I’m happy to wait out the surrealist cave dwellers, so I won’t be joining. But I’m curious to hear how your efforts at an organization turn out.
My daughter is learning to turn over, and soon enough she’ll be speaking to us in her own brand of wakese. Linguists say that baby’s babble follows internal sound rules. I have no idea if this is true. What I am sure of is that babies do not think, at least not until they have language. And how that happens is a mystery. Something about God, I’m sure.
vale bene,
D