John Yau on the Very Necessary Selected Prose of Christopher Middleton
John Yau writes about the unique strangeness and beauty of Christopher Middleton's prose for Hyperallergic. After writing "Why I Am a Member of the Christopher Middleton Fan Club" (The Brooklyn Rail, October 2010), [Yau] stated the need for “a selected prose that brings together all the different kinds of writing he has done.” That comes in the shape of Loose Cannons: Selected Prose (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2014).
Middleton’s short prose pieces are not prose poems as that term is conventionally understood, and they have little to do with the beloved Francophile tradition spawned by the posthumous publication of Paris Spleen (1869), Charles Baudelaire’s book of fifty-one prose poems. Middleton’s imaginative prose pieces are not motivated by disgust, nor do they, in opposition to prose poems by Charles Simic and Russell Edson, for example, seem to have an overriding theme, recognizable style or tic holding them together. If anything, they are in a league of their own, just as those pieces found in the astonishing book, Tatlin! (1974), by Guy Davenport, his friend and classmate at Merton College, Oxford (1948–52). As I see it, the imaginative prose of Davenport and Middleton constitute two of the more singular achievements in American letters.
Like Davenport, Middleton’s erudition is unrivaled in its grasp and comprehension of many sources. A prolific, innovative translator, he started translating Robert Walser’s fiction in the 1950s, in postwar, non-German- loving England, long before this unique writer was on anyone’s radar. In 1957, Middleton published his eye-opening translation of Walser’s The Walk and Other Stories. He has also translated the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Christa Wolf, Elias Canetti, Georg Trakl, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Lars Gustafsson. Along with his interest in Dada, Surrealist, and Expressionist writing, all of which were largely rejected in England, Middleton was a devotee of the experimental work of his own time and became friends with some of the most radically innovative poets of the century, such as Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop; the multilingual Romanian-born German poet and honorary member of OULIPO, Oskar Pastior (1927-2006); and the Austrian poets Ernst Jandl (1925-2000) and Friedrike Mayröcker (1924-). The other difference that sets Middleton apart from his peers is that, in addition to not aligning himself with the French tradition, Middleton doesn’t see himself as an heir to Ezra Pound. . . .
Read the rest of this strangely beautiful tribute at Hyperallergic.