Notes to Jacob Bladders and the State of the Art
Here are the notes I sent to my long-suffering translator for the French version:
1. New York 1947. The date is when Peter Arno waved a gun at someone in a bar, a gun that belonged to the New Yorker. The character of Charlie is loosely based on him.
2. The name “Jacob Bladders” refers to Jacob’s Ladder, painted by William Blake in Jacob’s Dream circa 1805, and the illustrations of career ladders, the most boring metaphor in the trade. If you’re translating the name, please try to find something equally unpleasant and unwieldy to pronounce. Bladders is a freelance illustrator, the person in the last panel is a secretary in a studio where he works with a few other unseen illustrators. She’s responsible for phone calls, bills, mail and twitter.
3. twenim: (mumbled) twenty minutes. 200: meaning $200 by current rates (2014–16).
4. charlesillo: Charlie’s twitter handle, something like “charles the illustrator.”
5. Golden shower works with rain, but can be replaced, as long as it’s not particularly apt and poetic.
6. His unfinished phrase is “it’s just a career ladder.”
7. Perspective.. can be replaced with similar art criticism (roughly voiced), if it doesn’t translate directly.
8. swattitis: that’s what it is (mumbled).
9. grating our cocks: can be replaced with a different sort of punishment, preferably involving
genitals (there’s a callback to it later with ovaries)
10. The punctuation in Bladders occasionally combines ? with , and . Here it’s a sort of half-question in the middle of one sentence. Daily is both literally daily, and more significantly the name of the newspaper he’s working for. Artdirs: art directors.
11. One vertebrae: meaning don’t break more than one. Should be written in a similarly anodyne yoga-mom style.
12. …
13. …
14. …
15. She is loosely based on Lipstick, he: on Harold Ross.
16. Her pen name, as revealed later, is Bangs, as in the haircut.
17. He slides her a bag of cocaine.
18. Obscured sign: “the Weekly.” Incoming! Signs the arrival of the art director, can be
something like “it’s approaching” or “danger!” Preferably militant in style.
19. Cuckhole: genital orifice.
20. The overtly phallic wooden thing from a place is not supposed to help, let it be confusing
and vague in description.
21. …
22. The floor map shows various newspapers that operate in the building. Third floor, gents: he deliberately sends them to the wrong floor, instead of ringing fire alarm as planned, in order to create a diversion, as well as to add confusion to Bangs’s escapade.
23. snf. She’s taken a few lines of cocaine at this point.
24. He checks his watch, satisfied that Bangs will now have to extricate herself out of the chaos in the Weekly’s offices.
25. Full unsmudged text: “Please stop.” Next line in plain speech: “You think two hundred is enough for a spotillo?”
26. The top contains vague echo from the previous page. Full text: “You’ve got the wrong floor! Daily is on the forth!”
27. Same line as in 26. Smudged text: “Yea yea.”
28. Neva know=never know.
29. And did those feet: from William Blake’s short poem, commonly known as the source for the song Jerusalem: “And did those feet in ancient time…”
30. Jacob’s Ladder. This is the painting he thinks he found: http://www.artfund.org/supporting-
museums/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/2723/jacobs-ladder-william-blake Of course it’s Bladders’s career ladder, corrupted and enhanced through its journey down the river.
31. …from mental flight. Corrupted ending of the same recital that starts in 29. The original is “I
will not cease from mental fight”
32. ruffs: roughs, meaning the two faceless men who came to terrorize the Weekly. Brolly: umbrella.
33. Jammered: jammed/broken. In her line she’s alluding to the Arno incident.
34. fuckingwell is a single word because she speaks it this way, in one sound. The translation can be similarly treated.
35. Bladders is transported through time and space to the end of the night.
36. Smudged text: “Are you from the Daily? Look, it’s Charles, he insisted that…” Shit up and elm can be something completely different as look as it’s uncommon, preferably sounding close to a simple “shut up.”
37. Smudged text: “please.” Lesse: let’s see.
38. Matthew the Mare. Reference to Madeleine the Mare in Ulysses chapter 3. A made-up
poet’s pseudonym. Artrep racket. Means artist representation, agents etc. Inwit/ agenbitten. Again reference to Ulysses, chapter one. From wikipedia: The Ayenbite of Inwyt — also Aȝenbite (Agenbite) of Inwit; literally, the ‘again-biting of inner wit’, or the Remorse (Prick) of Conscience[1] — is the title of a confessional prose work written in a Kentish dialect of Middle English. In Ulysses it’s spelled as agenbite, close to “agent.”
39.Bangs takes out what may be a sheet of paper or the packet of cocaine. More likely latter, if you ask me.
40. Abbey Bath. The bar name is a reversal of Bath Abbey, an Anglican parish church. Its west front depicts angels climbing Jacob’s ladder.
41. …
42. …
43.Here angelic wings/hands release Bladders from his torment and take him upstairs.
It’s left unclear whether he’s just hallucinating from being assaulted and passing out, or whether it’s divine intervention for real.
44.The ladder is a queue, full of Bladderish hack illustrators. 45. …
46. …
