Halston Couth: A Dabbler in Extremes
Halston Isaiah Couth, born 18 February 1929, died 20 January 1982. Natives of New Rockford, North Dakota, the Couths were primarily engaged in canola farming, though several members of the family suffered from an inexplicable obsession with gold, of which the local geology was exceedingly bereft. Fortunately for the world of literature, Halston was not among them. The youngest of eight, chronically malnourished, thrice-frostbitten, and utterly isolated from cosmopolitan civilization, a meandering sample from his first experimental novel perhaps provides a glimpse of an adolescent prodigy with few other mediums in which to vent his mourning and creativity:
All horrors are real to me, the asylum of reality is no longer impermeable. Glowing murderer’s eyes, the whirlpool in an ocean of blood, the coffin junkyard, the sound of raining blood, antimony powder for choking on, a church spinning widdershins, sourceless music in the night, passing like a breeze, dredging the moat for disposed toys, gateways filled with red stars, a hexed moon casting me into a constant penumbra, infinite twilight, reaping of hoarfrost, wormwood elixirs emptied from tarnished bronze chalices over pulped manuscripts, the ticking of the horologue in the tin man, sleep a black cesspool of zoological cryptids seething in a brine of nightmares, the ruins of Atlantis wandered by tall shadows with elongated heads, deformed crania, a trephination drill for a migraine, a barnacle encrusted biplane…
— The Tarnished Cenotaph, 1946, published in 1965 (1)
Most of his older brothers not returning from war, he languished for years in a territory that can only be described as ‘Disturbed Post-Gothic’. But from there, Couth found inspiration in Joyce. Apparently fascinated by the subconscious shadow-writing and pun-filled playfulness of Finnegans Wake, Couth endlessly imitated and experimented on his own. This ‘dream writing’ was occasionally published as poetry in the avante-garde quarterly Hourglass, which operated out of Bismark for only two and a half years. Here is a single piece, reproduced in full:
deery eerie gullfly flocking forth with furthers fletched on e’ryquill, winding rupt and take him down spy rolling to finis tear affirmative, so a mocking jaywalker may play a racounteur on stage and stygian crowds applod, no two peace is of silver to rub toferry, save a chemical mind inandaround aboats weighing in at thriftyfive hundredth puns. Punch Livy begats a legion eager to level golden eagle aquilae unto allyouranks, and Punch Goth sends them allbackagain. From forth the fatal lions den two third cups of sugar to bake the Christians in, applieth liberally to wall walled polities and polises, till Constantine has his vision checked and checks the pantheon at the bridge, tooth ink, what glories Romulus’ flock inferret had his interrogative with the accumulated syllables Tarquin better betted, ninebooks two thirds fed to flame for the price of all he paid, assuring Franks and Longobardic making an ass of you and me. Bede but a bauble, Monmouth a mouthful, Talesine to soon for trigonometry and a lang tyme syne I tried to carry ones with an abacustard last stand, back, back from the marginalia of syncopatico pharmacopeia, kleptohydro-philooo-symmetree barking woof, enough blusterbusting blunderbrain, turncoat to a straightjacket I knew you couldn’t tell the joke with a strait face, lace tovall a jaunteel manor. Prydain me, Isle begin again but keep plucking the harpstrings and send in the fin again to stir my crater of tales, and howl adin of screams and widewhites of eyes as I pull from the crupting throb a book! The Colossus’s Cookbook, of oatmiles, beach cobbler, prime meribian, and parasangria to get mighty drunk on, eternal feasts and Jovian hangovers, but seek a meagerest of footnotes under the continental breakfast for a bite of apocryptal scripfer concerting oriens of barley, the base of Erin’s potation, the story of Simoniker and his Sidh girl Goldiflour, devouted to him by a sour fatefull geis incurred by a snub to Nike at the battle of Coinforge, thus Sidh must always say yes to a man with ‘nike’ in his name, whose croft was known as uisce beatha water of life which Simoniker did messenterschmidt to be the fountain of youth, andina trench withal gasmask he digit trading mustard and chlorine for pools of whisky and by Goldiflour’s art reverbst ancieneered barleygrasstalks, andindodang, damned a million frogs and furters at Somme faraway stalemight, and blessed a million eerie fourpaterswith the drink that digs Thames tunnels makes maidens frisky, alloft hereabove in a footnote, which to find in the Colossus’s Cookbook is towhittle a redwood to a toothpick, tooth ink, toothersdays ago is only onewednesday ado plus three cowboysdays and two cattleraids and a flock og geis flight inall cardinal directors.
— Recipes, written 1959, published Winter 1963 (2)
The student of Couth’s work begins to see parallels between his more experimental work and his lived experience. Halston’s father, Randal Couth, fought with the 41 Infantry “Sunset” Division of the United States Army, survived the torpedoing of the SS Tuscania which sank off of Ireland, and saw action at Muese-Argonne. Doubtless some of these events were relived as stories in the Couth household, inspiring his older brothers to seek their own (less fortunate) military careers, and clearly informing Halston’s writings. Other sources in his imitation of Joyce stand out, as well; Roman History, Classical Mythology, Early Britain, Celtic lore, legends of whisky, even snippets of Irish folk songs (3). While it may remain a mystery how many of these influences were brought to bear in Halston’s life, his interests, preoccupations, musings, and gloomiest visions can all be seen laid bare in his early writings.
This, in extreme opposition to the work of his latter years.
He walked as far as he could. The sun shrieked silently. It was a boil of radiation on the sky’s nice face. The trail of salt continued. Each pinch was larger than the last. No matter how impassioned his prayers, the wind would not blow. The air was dead. At length, the salt dots coalesced into a line. He no longer had to connect them. Then the salt was a curve. It was a labyrinth. It was a clock. As he followed it, he knew he was counting down to his own death. It was just as the Yellow Djinn had designed from the beginning: salt in the grave.
Rest in Peace, 1975 (4)
Simple, sober, repetitive, as colorless as it was meager. Couth’s later style, though still obscure in meaning and narrative, was a full pendulum’s swing from the days of his Joycean binges. At 46, Halston had successfully avoided the literary limelight, an English teacher in a one-high school town. The sole surviving son of a brood which, according to still-living friends, was halved by World War II and quartered by heart-disease. A mourning sister-in-law remarried him, and as if in answer his latter-day novels all featured vengeful, gold-crazed spirits, all written in this same dreadful, stony prose. Despite several more years of passable health, Halston intended Rest in Peace to be his final work, and as far as I can tell, his resolve held. A phrase more tired than sky’s nice face, we are sure to never find. One can only assume that he intentionally lamed his wild flair of youth, ensuring his exclusion from luminary consideration.
Couth’s publisher from the 60’s on was Lawk & Sangwidge Press — not found at its last known address, and absent area business listings since the 80's. From improvised investigations along Central Avenue (New Rockford’s main drag), the lone publisher seems to be recalled as a reclusive atheist transplant from Winnipeg, his business nothing more than a boutique vanity press. Inquiries as to whether there was any Edward Gorey connection with the names Lawk and Sangwidge (which briefly appear in The Unstrung Harp) were only met with blank stares. Perhaps it was a joke, of the very Literary Obscurist kind. But the true identity of the publisher of Lawk & Sangwidge will have to be a post for another day — if indeed, such a murky individual is ever pinpointed.
For the dedicated scholar of Literary Obscurity, a small collection of Halston Couth’s works is available by request at the New Rockford ND Public Library. Several listed titles had been overdue for return for over a decade.
— Scott
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Couth, Halston. The Tarnished Cenotaph. Lawk & Sangwidge Press. New Rockford, ND, 1965.
- Couth, Halston. Recipes. Hourglass, Poetry Quarterly. Bismark, ND. 1963.
- Joseph Lunn. The Humors of Whiskey / Paddy’s Panacea. 1825 (?)
- Couth, Halston. Rest in Peace. Lawk & Sangwidge Press. New Rockford, ND, 1975.
